After moving into wormhole space this April, I have learned how to survive in this type of space through my time in two w-space corporations, one of which was being evicted, and which I left before serious damage was done.
I lost everything, but made a fresh star, and moved into another corp. This group was larger and more active, and I like it a lot more.
After a month in the corp, we started to merge into a large wormhole alliance, known as Holesale Operations, one of the larger wormhole groups in the game. With the recent discovery of a Hard Knocks spy, we soon found out that our enemy has plans for Holesale Operations.
What do alliances and wormhole wars look like?
Up until then, I hardly noticed we were in an alliance. Alliances in wormhole space are different then alliances in k-space in that they act like, well…alliances. In w-space, corps typically live in their hole (a C5-C5 in our case), and only interact with the alliance on a large scale when needed. We have a highsec staging area, and you are expected to go out and do stuff with the alliance, but most of the PvP is done with your corp, fighting against the people you are currently connected with via wormholes. Alliances are only really seen in full force when evictions happen, and the whole alliance comes together to defend the system being attacked. This time, it is the alliance capital.
Evictions are very different then your typical nullsec war/invasion. Evictions usually only involve an attack on one system, and you can’t move your full force of people in there easily: wormholes appear and disappear within a span of 24 hours, and collapse when overloaded with mass. You can’t move a massive cap fleet into one, because even the largest connections can handle 3 dreads one way, or about 4 carriers. Both alliances try to establish hole control (a term used when you have control of what goes in/out of a wormhole by camping it). The attacker tries to establish structures in system, then starts their assault.
What is the Holesale Capital like?
Our capital system is like one you would find in nullsec, just small for a large empire. We have a Keepstar, and three Fortizars, along with a large amount of engineering complexes, refineries, and other small structures. For the attackers, the main problem would be the Keepstar and Forts, because those are armed and significantly harder to kill. Once those are killed, the system becomes much easier to attack. The Keepstar is needed in the system not only because its hard to kill, but it fields the only doomsday weapons that can be found in wormhole space.
Why would someone want to evict another corp?
In w-space, there is no such thing as asset safety. Instead of your items being delivered to another station after a structure blows up, like in k-space, all of the loot drops when a structure blows up in a wormhole. On top of this, the way people make money in wormholes is based off of items. Ratting in w-space does not produce bounties, and instead produces ‘blue loot’. PI is also the second most common way to make ISK in wormholes. When people are making 500 million ISK a week per character doing PI, and up to two billion an hour per character doing PvE, then you have a massive amount of loot accumulating. On top of this, there are lots of ships and survival goods built up in a structure, since you don’t always have access to a market.
Wormhole groups will roll holes for hours on end trying to find structures to kill for their possible loot pinatas. Even anchoring structures make fine targets, as they can drop anywhere between 300 million to two billion ISK worth of salvage.
The largest possible eviction EVER!
So let’s get to what is happening. Holesale Leadership has discovered a Hard Knocks spy has been embedded in the alliance for about a year! During that time, the spy has been building up a capital fleet of about 150 ships, including dreads, FAXes, and carriers, along with a good-sized fleet of Machariels. After the spy was discovered, Hard Knocks has started to go through with their plan. They placed down POS in the Holesale capital, and already has a fleet in-system, built and seeded by the infiltrator.
The week of August 20 saw mass pings go out to prepare Holesale corporations for the impending war in the home system. Holesale as a whole will be preparing for the war.
As of right now its not sure if HK plans to follow through with an attack on the home system, as Holesale has killed staging structure with little opposition. We will have to see if Hard Knocks plans to fight back and actually go for their goal of killing the Keepstar in system.
If they do attack, this has a very good possibility of becoming the largest wormhole battle ever fought.
