Wardecs, Business and POS

I’m sure there’s plenty of high-sec industrialists, who are afraid of wardecs. There are players who do PVP on one character and Industry on another, but there is also lots of those who only like to build sandcastles, letting someone else destroy them (as long as it means profit of course). Corporations made of the other kind of players are at increased risk of non-consensual PVP. That’s why I’ve decided to write up how such corp can deal with agressors, based on our recent experiences.

There are two types of wardecs

One that is merely a nuisance and another that can be a show-stopper.

The beginning of new year saw an omnidirectional “Burn highsec” campaing by the Marmite Collective. While dangerous for travellers, these kinds of wardecs are more less safe for business, as Marmite’s rearely attack POS or POCOs, and logistics can always be done by out of corp freighter alts (or even Red Frog if need be).

But Aideron Technologies has fallen victim to another wardec in January: The BEA’s – Unintended Consequences alliance (a merc wing of what otherwise looks like a probably dead industry/pve alliance: The Butterfly Effect). They claimed they have a contract against Aideron Technologies for transgressions of one of our members. It sounded unlikely, even more so because they didn’t give any names. They were seen around our home system, so we have promptly halted all the production and pulled all the labs, turning on hardeners and waiting for the agressors move.

They didn’t talk to us until the last day of the first week, when they demanded a ransom (slightly more than one PLEX worth of ISK). Otherwise a fleet of Vindicators and a handful of other faction battleships would level all our POCOs and POS (mind Aideron Technologies has no POCOs at all, but whatever). Of course they all logged on instantly and undocked their shiny battleship fleet to show they’re not joking. Not sure why (probably has something to do with our diplo), but they let the first wardec expire and started another one, giving us 24 hours of time. It was a perfect window to pull down all towers to safety, thus there was nothing more they could ransom us for.

Fear not, the agressors didn’t stop there. For us not honoring the ransom they offered, they stated they are going to wardec us indefinitely, to completely break and disband our corp.

The war lasted exactly one more week

I am not going to lie. After having a blast in Stay Frosty FFA, I was eager to do some PVP. I was even devising strategies how to fight their Vindicator bash fleet. Unfortunately, Aideron Technologies being a purely industrial corp with only a handful pilots experienced enough in PVP was not going to fight. And my one man army of me, myself & I was not nearly enough to do so either. But I’ve gathered as much intel as I could, written it all down on the corp wiki (there is a few pages of information there now!) and had my locator agent pin the enemies on the map. Guerilla warfare favors use of fast ships like Vagabond and e-war ships like the Curse, so I fit a few of each. Surprisingly enough, the whole second week of wardec they only hopped online briefly to what seemed skill queue updates. Their killboard ends on January 30th. There is no sign of them afterwards.

Does it mean Aideron Technologies is not doing industry anymore?

Well, we’ve pulled all our POS down, which means we no longer have the labs to use. Our enemies thought we have no other choice: either pay up the ransom, or loose the POS towers (which means the industry would have to stop entirely, plus, AT has no standings with Gallente Federation to put the towers back up). Obviously, they were wrong, because we had a few more choices:

• First, having a POS is a simple convenience. A high sec corp doesn’t need POS at all to run industry. All you have to do is decentralize, find NPC stations with free Invention and Manufacturing slots. Copying in NPC stations is indeed a pain, but we are patient fellows.
• Secondly, we could join an alliance, increasing the wardec cost to a point where it’s not feasible for the attacker to keep the wardec up anymore
• Thirdly, high sec manufacturable capitals, namely Freighters and Orcas can be easily made without a POS, and the whole enterprise can still be profitable.
• Lastly, out of corp alts can always do the logistics

As you can see, wardeccing a high sec corp is easy. Killing their POS towers is only a matter of having enough force at hand. Stopping a corp from doing industry in high sec entirely? Nearly impossible, as they can stay turtled indefinitely, still making ISK in the safety of station.

And of course there is a handful of counters to a Vindicator bash fleet if you wish to fight back. They are short range Neutron Blaster fits you see. Is this enough of a hint?

Wardecs will happen, because this is EVE

As long as you stay in high sec, you will always be at the risk of wardecs. And that’s ok really. I mean, yes, they are a disruption of normal day-to-day operations. But this is exactly what I love EVE for: it’s unpredictable. Wars are a refresher, that makes the boring life of an industrialist less boring. They require creative thinking and using game mechanics to your favour. Which, again, is great. If I wanted a game that takes material records from database table A, inserts them as manufacturing tasks to table B, and then outputs them as new product records back to table A, I would write a browser game that does it myself (damn, this is an awesome idea! I think I should start writing that! …wait a minute, I still have a few outstanding projects).