Spoopy Eviction Defense AAR – Spoopy Newbies

(Written by Jolly Eginald, now Spoopy CEO)

The first stage of any eviction attempt is to anchor a POS. The only structure that can provide a space to store ships with the protection of a timer. To defend against this we had "POS blocked" our moons, but I had misunderstood the mechanics and was disappointed they did not generate a stront timer. The enemy had scouted a time when we were all offline, they killed the first POS at 18:59 on a Monday, it was reported in pings at 19:47. They just missed us, but we would have taken that fight anyway. 22 Ikitursas with support were reported shortly after, we would be hard pressed to defend that with our best form. It was best to let them finish the initial ref, and protect our pods. With hole control anything is possible, but without pilots hole control is impossible.

The game of hole control against a superior force is one of attrition. You use speed to scan down each new hole faster, and get your pilots to the connection before they can roll it closed. You do it again and again again in every timezone. Our pilots trickled in, but it was slow going at first. Their siege Astras anchored in the afternoon on Tuesday, all we could do was keep pressing their rollers. The armor timers on the L structures came and went on Wedneday, we were now into hull with timers at 16:00 on Friday. It had now been over 48 hours of us getting pilots into the hole in a meager trickle, and our next timers are Thursday at 17:46. Kill timers for 2 medium structures we had, decoys that would prove pivotal. Late late Wednesday we're pressing the rollers, Thursday morning we're still making them roll. At this point the rollers are starting to dog it, and we've finally got a decent number of people in. It's time to make our move. We muster all the forces we can, hastily refit 8-10 ratting marauders and undock with about 20 people. We engage on the null static at a time with a decent connection to Brave space. We're not really holding, but we keep them occupied enough to get in a fleet of shuttles containing about 30 upside down guys and Alha'zred.

Now we're in business. We form a 50man Drek/Guard fleet to contest their weakest time zone and we are able to hold the null static indefinitely. Our troops pour in. As our fleet swells we start hitting their Astras, we reinforce the second one with seconds until downtime. Servers up and we start hitting their thier POS. They're still not contesting so I drop a new Astrahus to create another timer at the same time as our Azbel hull, 15 minutes pass uncontested (I should have dropped another Azbel but that's only 1 of many fuckups). Next our Athanor repairs still uncontested, but it's obvious they're pushing numbers. We have around 130 and I think they were at about 40, but I'm still worried as they undock well fit Ikitursae and Proteii against our Shitfit Dreks for the final timer of the day, our Raitaru kill timer. With Alha at the helm, the enemies don't stand a chance.

Enemy structures all reinforced to kill timers, we have a fresh Astra anchoring and our medium structures repaired. Comms are buzzing, pilots are partying on the undock, I'm wary. Things look good for us now, but things looked good for them not 24 hours ago. A frighole spawns, my guys are too burnt to maintain hole control or our alliance mates don't know how and they don't have the manpower to retake them anyway. Both sides are bringing in pilots and DSTs. A friend of my old boss reaches out to a current friend of mine who they're also friends with. They tell my friend that my enemies are friends of theirs. The enemy has reached out for assistance, but my friend's friends have told them "no". They see that we're fighting good content. We all think the content's good, and we all know what happens to good content when fleet sizes get out of control. Nobody wants to see any more TiDi in wormholes. Ever. My friend's friend mediates with the enemy and we agree to put a cap on batphones. So the stage is set. Spoopy has Brave, and Hole Control has the 3 or 4 other corps that are already involved.

With a frighole spawned and both sides too exhausted for proper hole control we both redouble our efforts at hole control. US and AU timezones on both sides went into logistics mode to tighten comps for the main event. The first set of timers were for the Astrahus anchoring and Azbel hull. We took the fight first on the Astrahus and low and behold the enemy had gone against their word and called in the trigs bringing the numbers of both sides over 100. We put up a good fight, and FC of this round Joshi keeps us honest and pushes us to commit. We trade well and get the Astrahus online, but are no longer holding and are forced off grid. The enemy wins the second timer of the day, -1 Azbel.

Ok so we put a cap on batphones and they called the trigs. Big fucking whoop we were fighting in Dreks. Fortizar timer is still 2 hours out and Shattered is still at the salon getting his cat a perm. 18:48 Friday the fort timer ticked over and fleets engages. Hogtits and the Bandits in the middle in sniper T2Bs and Shattered circling with 150 of his closest friends. We prepared for a Leshak comp for 50 or so but we were truely humbled by the amount of Bravelings who came out to support us and redeem their own Praxis in-hole to get on the action. Thanks to a tremendous effort from everybody involved we were able to successfully defend the Fortizar, and Hole Control extended an invite to the table. Here's a video of the Fortizar defence from the eyes of the Marauder team

Hole Control agreed all wormholes belonging to Brave off-limits for 6 months, and we agreed to allow a until the kill timer of their structures to extract loot. They probably came out a bit ahead of their losses isk wise. That Azbel was our stager when we first took the hole and the Fort hasn't been around thaat long. Most active players had moved out of it by now, and while we don't like to lose AFK players' stuff they know the risks when they go AFK. They got to loot the Azbel baby, I should have just anchored that instead of the Astrahus. I should have boarded the freighter it was in before the fight like I had planned. I should have paid more attention to fits and consumables of our defense fleet. Lots of mistakes were made but we came out with our fleet and home intact and some great ideas on how to improve. Shoutouts: Alha, Joshi, Kel, Shattered, Barracus, Simwiz, Sarah, Itchie, Firmware, Jim, Xtrah, Yaen, and everybody who done did Logistics.