Stop! Thief!

Theft, or the threat of it, frames and drives corporate decisions in the wormhole community.

This starts with recruitment checks, which often include full API checks, interviews, trial periods in trial corporations, ad nauseum. None of this really makes you 100% safe from a corp theft. It cannot stop someone playing the long game, it just reduces the likelihood of amateurish attempts at stealing all the shinies.

The next level of defence is compartmentalisation, both within any single POS and by having multiple POSs, all structured via access grantable roles such as Corporate Starbase Config, and Starbase Management. Each level of restriction allows an extra SMA and component array (or Personal Hangar Array, with its own risks and limitations) within each POS. Depending on how you structure the corporate divisions, you can have 3 component arrays and up to 21 individuals at each POS. But everyone can access everyone else's ships, and steal them. Especially if you opt for the XL SMA and not three individual SMA's.

The third level of defense, to stop out of time zone thieves, is a double-edged sword. There's threat as well as promise in having someone who plays out of your TZ even by a few hours (ie; Eastern Australia vs Western Australia). On the one hand, they can protect your assets while you sleep. On the other hand, they can steal all your shit while you sleep.

Anyway, on to the tale.

Yesterday was a day of frustrations IRL; the shockabsorbers on my car needed replacing and I am poor-ish (#whitepeopleproblems levels of poor) so I am working on the piece of shit myself, and swapping them over required literally blood-draining efforts with an angle grinder and swearing. Then there was my main job, which I won't go into, except to say it involves Madagascar,  gold, and $1.5M of stolen money.

So i came on to EVE last night in a bit of a mood, and slaked my thirst for blood via getting a Wormhole Holder's Tengu, total bill 2.1B ISK. Sadly, did not whore onto that one as I was chasing his mate on the other side of a wormhole, and we failed to bag both. Fucking 100MN Tengus.

So, the SWIFT guys went to bed and I stayed up, being in W.A., for a few hours more, hunting off down the chain. When that proved fruitless, and Perth internet denied me a legit Stratios who uncloaked within 1km of me and I couldn't lock him for 7 seconds before he warped, I went home.

I noticed a legion on d-scan at home, and thought "Ohoho, bingo!". i tracked it to the B274 but it jumpped out to highsec. I jumped out and it turned out to be someone from SWIFT, jumping to highsec. I jumped home and was about to log when the guy jumped back in, in his pod, and warped off to one of the SWIFT POS's. I was immediately suspicious.

You see, Satheera Ishkari has been absent from the game for about 6 months. He re-subs and rolls around with us in, if I recall correctly, a bomber. He was always flying bombers. It's day 2 of him rejoining EVE, and here he is in a Legion the name of which was familiar, and i begin to think was actually someone else's neut Legion. He isn't on comms, he is absent from the shared intel channels, and this is about 20 minutes after everyone else has gone to bed in the East.

I swap my toons on the hole, as only TF can fly an Orca. I figure, OK, not 100% sure this is a theft we are interrupting, but fuck it. I'll reimburse if he did in fact own that Legion. Besides, Satheera sounds like a pedo on comms and I've never liked him, so this will be a worthwhile expense of ISK if blue on blue action gets sanctioned.

Sure enough, back he comes in a Loki which I know isn't his. I holler on comms for a corpie who is playing PI mogul on his alt in another wormhole, and get him to log his BUGRY toon in (the traitorous cur, how dare he make ISK). I explain the situation and bang the Orca out and in the B, and cloak it inside.

Satheera comes back, again in a pod, and goes to the POS. I begin anchoring a small bubble and we camp, ready to gank him.  He comes back in a Proteus which isn't his, and the bubble onlines after he jumps out. I follow with the Orca and it goes critical on his heels. He seems a bit surprised, as he just sits there as I do a U-turn, light the 100MN and slam him out.

He only now gets in the intel channel, asks why we are rolling the B, and then logs off, relogging in his alt. So, we roll the O477 and begin work on the new B274. Unluckily for him, his alt is a scrubby tard in a Probe, and we have reshippped into ceptor and Sabre. He doubletaps himself while innocently asking in the intel channel why we are rolling the hole, secure in the knowledge that we won't kill him because he's blue.

Wrong, buddy.  We send Elsom Skor back to hisec, and sacrifice his corpse at the foot of the Altar of Bob in the Eye of Bob. I draft an email explaining the sitch and head to bed.

Satheera represents the third kind of risk of thieves - someone who has just come back from a break, and may or may not want to restart playing with your corp. In fact, when people go long-term AFK, I reassign their roles and they start at the bottom of the ladder when they come back, for this very reason. But like I said, if you play the Long Game, there's not much that can be done except register some comments on evewho.com and C&P on the forums, for the next CEO to google up.