Bad Opsec Gets Paid

It's the weekend.  Jayne is around during the day, and we've got a C3 static with some sites.  So, what the heck, let's make some ISKies.  We get our mains and alts into Ravens and Drakes, ready to stomp some sleepers.

This morning, I've been in C3 and searched it all down.  It's got no anoms at all, except an ore site.  The locals must be doing them -- but they have left two Relic sites with nasty 1300 DPS final waves.  And a lot of gas; evidently they don't gas mine.  There is just one wormhole incident other than ours: the nullsec static.  I looked out there, and there were people in the system.  But that's all right -- nullies never come up into wspace. 

We traverse the wormhole, and check the number of sigs -- it's correct.  Thanks, discovery scanner!  We are not totally safe, but with only nullsec to bother us (and they never do), we feel pretty safe.  We warp to the first site, and start running it.

The last wave is indeed nasty.  The pesky frigates warp scramble my Drake and the sleeper battleships are nossing me.  My team is shield repping me, but we don't have enough to keep pace.  The first frigate falls to my missiles.  I am almost tapped out of capacitor, and that will be bad, as it will shut off my active tank.  Now I start on the last frigate, and it's not dying fast enough.  Die, scum.  Beep beep beep -- the capacitor is empty.  I align to a nearby planet.  The frigate dies, I am released, and I warp.  My shields are at 25%.  Whew.

Meanwhile, the rest of the fleet has been killing down the DPS.  One sleeper battleship down, then two, and the site is pretty much done.  I warp back in as the Noctis glides in to salvage.  We have to sit around a while anyway, and boost up our shields to full according to SOP.  The Noctis finishes, and moves off to hide.  We sit a bit longer to recover capacitor.  Then we go to the second site.

This time, the third wave goes easier.  The sleepers are beating hard on my alt's Raven.  I kill the sleeper frigates with my Drake, and my alt aligns... he pulls drones... but just as he is about to warp, the sleepers switch to another battleship.  That's nice.  We finish the site soon enough.  We're sitting around boosting, and the Noctis has started salvaging.

That's when I notice a Loki and Arazu on grid, about 17km off.  Uh oh, fight.  Are they going to attempt to kill our Noctis out from under us?  That's my first thought, having done something like that myself.  I don't recall exactly what an Arazu is, but I seem to recall it as a cloaky T2, probably not too much tank.  So I call it primary and start locking it.  I get heavy missiles going, then hobgoblins and my alt's Raven's systems.  They are warp scrambling us.  Not good.

Then Falcons appear and start jamming us, and many T3s are on grid.  Shortly, pretty much everyone is jammed.  Strangely they have no interdiction bubbles.  They are not going after my drake; just keeping it scrambled.  The enemy proceeds in order, cutting us down one after the other.  We can't do anything through the jams, and have no real escape capacity.  They kill off my alt's Raven, and I am surprised to see no warp bubble.  So my alt's pod escapes.  I have a moment unjammed, and I notice there's an enemy pod.  We must have gotten someone, the Arazu as it turns out.  I try to lock the pod, figuring it's the only thing on grid I can alpha.  But I am jammed before my lock completes, and I remain permajammed the rest of the slaughter.  Everyone else is dead.  Then I get all the DPS.  Not long then... and boom.

Still no bubble -- weird.  I gtfo to a customs office, then warp off homeward.  I want to tell the enemy "Nice ambush" (actually, I just spew out "nicce" with my adrenaline-shaking fingers), and then the customary gf -- Good Fight.  The enemy good-fights us back as a courtesy.  Really, it was not on our side.  We were caught flatfooted and slow to react.  Whereas they pulled off a nice ambush.  I never saw their guys until they were on grid.  I was dscanning, but obviously not enough.  So much for my theory of nullies never attack in wspace.

Jayne gets a bomber and goes back, and takes a few runs at their Noctis, which they've brought in to clean up.  But he cannot do anything.

Lessons: usually I am better about operational security, but this time I got complacent.  Always put a cloaked scout to watch every incident wormhole, or zip it up.  We didn't do that this time, and we paid the price.  Also, always flee whenever you see any significant force land on grid where you do not expect it and cannot fight back.  It is true that we happened to get that Arazu, but that is all.  If we had fled immediately, we might have at least gotten a few Ravens out.  As it was, we lost everything there and were spared losing our pods, too, only by the unusual choice of the enemy not to bring interdiction.