Devultured

Two days ago, we smashed into reinforced mode an undefended small tower that appeared in our system.  Yesterday, as the reinforcement timer ticked down, we logged in to find the tower was stripped.  Not only were all the ships gone that they had had sitting out in the bubble.  The SMA and CHA were gone too!  I did not know you could unanchor modules from a reinforced tower.

(I find the possibility to unanchor loot-carrying POS parts from a reinforced tower rather unfair.  Say that you know you are going to lose a tower, and you want to deny the stuff in your CHA to the enemy.  Unanchor it!  Everything in it is lost, but it was going to be lost anyway.  And you get it back, at least.  Or worse: an X-Large SMA.  It's packed with ships that you know you cannot get out.  Perhaps there are some T2s that you cannot fly, so you cannot self-destruct them.  And in any case, taking three minutes per ship to self-destruct is very tedious!  No problem!  Just unanchor the XLSMA and everything in it is gone.)

Anyway, I don't think there should be a problem tonight getting rid of the tower.  Since the enemy evidently departed, I think it is unlikely they will be hanging around the system.

I log on about 7:30, and immediately warp out in my Manticore to have a look at the tower.  It should have come out of reinforced mode at about 6:00.  Sure enough.

Now time to look at signatures.  I need to get stuff in.  If we have a decent connection, that's more important and the tower can wait.  But there are only two sigs.  One is an old data site that's been around a few days.  So the other is our static.  This means we are almost certain to be zipped up.  Well, being zipped up is great for shooting the tower.  Unfortunately, nobody is on but me.  But I figure that Von and my alt together using torps can do the job.

I warp back to the tower, and log on my alt.  Then I get both characters into torpedo Ravens, and tweak the fits slightly.  No 100mn afterburner needed, and replace some of the normal drones with two bouncers we happen to have.  (Gardes would be better, but we don't have any.)  Then it is off to the tower, at 20km.  Both guys lock, deploy drones, and start shooting.  The tower is at 31% initially.

Time passes.  I am making slow progress against the shields.  It will take a while, but there's nothing else to do.  Well, actually, I could log in my market alt and buy stuff.  But then I don't think I'd have enough DPS here.  I'll just keep plonking away.

The minutes pass.  After the first fifteen minutes or so I relax a lot.  If anyone is here watching, they have had plenty of time to do whatever they are going to do.  I am alone in my own private wspace system.  All I have to do to stay safe is keep nudging the discovery scanner every time I reload.  Nudge, nudge, nudge.  Two sigs, two sigs, two sigs.  All is fine.

The tower's shields last an hour.  I have to fly back once to get more torpedos.  I synchronize my two characters shooting, so that they both reload at the same time.  Then I start reading blogs in the two minutes of firing.  (Eve is boring.)  Eventually, I am into the tower's armor.   Do something else; shoot; nudge.  Still two sigs.

Just as I am passing half structure, some of the guys start to log in.  I tell them to get out there if they want a piece of the kill.  A couple of them do in time.  The last bit goes fast.  Boom.

I like a tidy house.

We open up our static.  C4b is a not a great system given my desire to transport stuff.  It has a C5 static.  That's not a good prospect for a safe route to highsec.  But we search it down anyway.  C5 has a C4 static.  The guys have an amusing mistake where they go back into C4b thinking it is C4c.  They search it down a good ways before noticing there's a bookmark from me here.  How'd that get here?  And why does this system have the same layout as C4b... oh.  Eventually we find the real C4c; it has a C4 static.  OK, that's enough.  No transport tonight.  I am going ghostbusting.

Hiljah does eventually find a way out: hs->C3a->C4d->C4c->C5a->C4b->home.  We bring in a few guys in Epithals that escaped the recent unpleasantness.  That's enough for tonight.