Operation Teabag

Politics in wormholes is fairly loosely controlled in the sense that you are not geographically located next to people, so you have no territory to fight over on a daily basis, per se, resulting in no panty-wringing sandy-vagina bullshit bluesfests of the Sov Null variety.

This is not to say politics and friends-of-friends gayness does not occur, nor convnient 'overview glitches' or shit like that, nor am i suggesting that it is not worth having a batphone. In fact, Operation Teabag and its denoument is as much about the batphone as it is about politics.

Like any well planned BUGRY operation, Teabag started out as a bit of retardation followed by a bit of smacktalk and ended up in a weekend long POS siege and so on. In this case, it started out with an attempted gank in a wormhole which saw the hero-tackling buzzard killed apparently half a second before the rest of the gang got point, and the Tengu pilot said something to the effect of "u fail, better luck next time". So, a quick d-scan of his POS later and it was decided that "next time" was now, and the troops were marshalled. (as a side note, the buzzard pilot miscalculated the warp range of the cavalry, miscalculated his survivability, and didn't tank his buzzard properly).

I, of course, was totally unaware of this as I was out bush.

I sign in to a nearly reinforced enemy POS, a 35 jump commute, and people who've been at it ad-hoc, for 10 hours already. I mean...the enemy POS had 4 guns, a dissy and a single ECM, so the POS siege kicked off with a pair of RR Domis and didn't escalate much for hours. Anyway, I make my way over and prepare for a weekend of camping a rapecage for 9 toons (a husband and wife corp apparently) all under 3 years of age. I brought a Panther and an Arazu.

The batphone guys all left the hole, my guys, having been at it 10 hours signed off, and the snoozing began. I went to sleep and woke up, signed in, missed some dudes ratting by a bees dick (not the locals, just random nubs from hisec) and sat down to camp bubbles.

Then, random convo from a guy in Surely You're Joking [HAHA]. Given we were friends of freinds, and set blue for some reason in the past (actually, it was the smackdown of CHAIN), we tried to resolve this diplomatically, as Exhale. and HAHA had been hired to defend that POS. For a cut-rate amount of 1Bn each, which suggested the defenders were mates, and skint. Threats were soon smooth-talked into an amicable agreement; the dead buzzard would be refunded, we'd leave the POS alone, and we wouldn't have to face 50 T3's and so on from HAHA, Exhale. and their batphone with a kitchen sink fleet. Sounds fine to me, this being a complete impromptu POS bash organised on 0 notice, for fuck all potential candy.

The funny thing is, our demands were cheaper than the end result. We wanted that Tengu, dead or handed over, in exchange for the buzzard he'd killed. He spent 2Bn ISK to avoid paying that rather ill-concieved ransom.

In the end, it turns out that someone else turned up to destroy the POS when the RF timer was up - they nearly achieved it, but didn't maintain hole control, so HAHA came and rescued the POS. The defender corporation also managed to lose 2 Tengus in their half-arsed defence of the POS, as well, so the losses were around 4Bn ISK.

 Funny thing, wormholes. Anyone can be watching what you are doing at any time...

In the end, Teabag wasn't a huge success. We trawled no kills, one loss, spent a lot of time and effort, and the POS remains standing. But my experience is that people cannot afford multiple merc contracts, however, we will find our way back into that hole at some point and, knowing carebears, their POS won't be any different or better defended. So we will likely have to finish Teabagging in the future.

The final take-home learning utcome for me was that running a collegiate corp of miscreants is like herding cats. Drunken, disorderly, belligerent cats. Its awesome.