On CVA space..

So most recently I was a pretty active member of the CVA coalition out in Providence space for a few months to try my hand at nullsec, and see how deep I could seed myself into their garden of expensive spaceriches. And I have to say, it's a mountainous load of crap. I don't even know where to begin with the amount of fail that's in the air out in Providence, so I'll work with what I got.

I worked my way into an industrialist corporation part of Apocalypse Now, which is one of your standard carebear alliances that obsesses over bragging that they own sov space, but are essentially being piggybacked by CVA (which says a lot about how terrible you are, considering CVA can't even protect their own moms from themselves these days) in exchange for being in their joke of a coalition.

The entirety of my experience in the warm hands of Apoc space can be summarized in this short but informative video. Being so close to Catch, you'd get triple A wandering in with so much as a single stealth bomber and the entire fucking region goes into lockdown mode. So I spent my hours perfecting my PI setups and counting station spins while alliance leadership shit out concrete bricks anytime undocked one of their own carriers within 10 jumps, and threatened to get their precious non-working killboard a lossmail that would supposedly attract anyone from Jita to Japan to our space.

I immediately established that the CEO didn't know anything about what his supposed specialized field was. To put an example off the top of my head, it had to be explained slowly to him why people were ice mining Dark Glitter instead of Enriched Icicle, when the refined value of the former was triple the latter. His two directors at the time weren't even proper directors, and nobody generally seemed to give a shit about the corp as a whole when the CEO would blow a tampon when he logged in to find nobody was ice mining for his towers.

So I decided that this venerable group of champions would be a great place to sink my teeth into. Now it takes a pretty thick skin to be able to pull the trigger on your 'fellow man' in-game as it can anywhere, but when you put it all in the context that you have to suffer through a few months of failed PVP ops, being locked down from the entire region because of a single cloaked Pilgrim, and corps in your alliance folding nearly on a weekly basis to either reform because of shit management (in some cases being kicked entirely only to have that former corp merc Apoc out of spite,) you find it much easier.


So eventually getting tired of my isk per hour being comparable to fishing for pennies in a scummy, green, muck filled muddy wishing pond, I used what permissions I had (which were rather extensive) to strike. The entire operation took about 4 hours, and in the end I had offlined three towers, salvaged and looted the modules and towers of two, along with the fuel of all three. The third tower I didn't bother taking down was an alliance deathstar, since it would have taken so damn long, but I at least stole the cyno generator the alliance was using before just offlining the tower altogether.

One of the things I worried about when planning my grand escape was what I was going to do with "all the shit." When you start to add up all the assets a corp has, you quickly realize that there's no real legitimate way to carry all of their crap back up Jita mountain in any elegant manner, so I decided to melt down what I could, save for anything worth not melting, and pos fuel. In the end, the vast majority that was larger than a blueprint was sold back to Providence on the market. Ships, pos fuel, and the odd expensive implant or module. I didn't have to carry much on my way out.

In my deconstruction of all the corp's assets, however, I noticed a Providence sitting in one of the ship maintenance arrays. Awesome, I thought, but this fat piece of shit is too big to haul out and I can't pilot it myself. So I asked around in alliance intel on an alt character if anyone could pilot a Provi, and sure enough someone by the name of Aeryn Guerra pipes up pretty quick. I offer the guy 50 mil if he moves the Providence to the corp's home system one jump out, and he mentions his hesitation because his pod is worth upwards of 750 million because of a mining foreman link. So I reassure the dude, give him a password to get into the bubble, and sure enough he takes the thing to the station and trades it over for the 50 mil. Day's not even over and I've already netted a billion.

Aeryn thanks me, I thank him, and we part ways. But unfortunately for him, that's not the end of it. Once I've gone and set up market orders for all the fuel I've stolen for dirt cheap (which, humorously, was purchased in large quantities by the very corp I stole them from later) I get back in my hauler and head out to the final POS to pick up some miscellaneous blueprints, moon goo and modules. I then notice that Aeryn Guerra is just sitting in his so-called expensive pod about 100 km off the pos bubble. I do a couple runs, and notice the guy isn't moving, and start wondering why the hell his dumb ass is leaving a nearly 1bisk pod sitting there afk. So once I finished draining the entire corp wallet, the entirety of their assets, and have my market orders set up, I pack what little I can into my drake and undock for the last time. Sure enough, his inattention hasn't ceased, and he was still afk off the bubble. Fortunately the warp in point was not a difficult one, and I decide to make my exit known.

True to his word, the thing had a mining foreman link on it. The guy must have gotten real flustered and heard the low armor claxons and such, because he convo'd me pretty freaking fast after he went pop. What he didn't know at the time was that I was the same person that asked him to move the provi, so the entire thing seemed pretty random to him. I play dumb at first, then move on to tell him that he's been podded because he assisted in theft of corporate assets.

[ 2012.03.25 22:32:12 ] Aeryn Guerra > wtf gives with the podding?
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:13 ] Ophilia IV > Yo
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:19 ] Ophilia IV > Sorry about that
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:29 ] Aeryn Guerra > that was a 800 mill pod
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:41 ] Ophilia IV > I doubt that, i get a pod every time i eject from a ship
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:42 ] Aeryn Guerra > am i KOS to you or something?
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:56 ] Aeryn Guerra > really
[ 2012.03.25 22:33:06 ] Aeryn Guerra > check the price on the fucking mining forman mindlinks lately?
[ 2012.03.25 22:33:39 ] Ophilia IV > I haven't, but I heard the economy is doing pretty good since crucible. why are you asking?
[ 2012.03.25 22:34:46 ] Aeryn Guerra > cause that was plugged in at that point
[ 2012.03.25 22:34:55 ] Aeryn Guerra > why the hell would you pod someone that is blue / NRDS
[ 2012.03.25 22:35:37 ] Ophilia IV > Like I said I'm sorry I was aiming for the shuttle for target practice... you must have gotten in the way?
[ 2012.03.25 22:35:48 ] Aeryn Guerra > arent you funny
[ 2012.03.25 22:35:59 ] Ophilia IV > Why were you hanging out outside a pos to begin with?
[ 2012.03.25 22:36:09 ] Aeryn Guerra > next time i am helping out a corp m8 of yours moving a freighter i will keep it next time
[ 2012.03.25 22:36:19 ] Aeryn Guerra > if you guys are going to be dicks about that
[ 2012.03.25 22:36:41 ] Ophilia IV > I'm being as diplomatic as I can... I took a customer service class in college
[ 2012.03.25 22:36:50 ] Ophilia IV > How can I help resolve the situation?
[ 2012.03.25 22:37:01 ] Aeryn Guerra > then reimburse me 766 mill for the mindlink and i will be happy
[ 2012.03.25 22:37:34 ] Ophilia IV > Why should I reinburse you? You got in the way. This isn't even your space.
[ 2012.03.25 22:37:50 ] Aeryn Guerra > cause you are NRDS
[ 2012.03.25 22:37:57 ] Aeryn Guerra > again i ask am I KOS
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:02 ] Ophilia IV > Oh wait, you're the guy who helped our corpmate move that providence?
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:11 ] Aeryn Guerra > Ummm yep
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:20 ] Ophilia IV > Okay, that explains it. Sorry, you are KoS.
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:30 ] Aeryn Guerra > How are we KOS
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:48 ] Ophilia IV > That providence belonged to our corporation and you aided him in committing theft. You owe us a billion... with the implant down, thats 300 mil left. You can pay me directly or talk to my Ceo?
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:51 ] Aeryn Guerra > thats news to me
[ 2012.03.25 22:39:03 ] Aeryn Guerra > excuse me?
[ 2012.03.25 22:39:13 ] Ophilia IV > You heard me, theif. You owe us for stealing that providence.
[ 2012.03.25 22:39:31 ] Ophilia IV > the audit log clearly shows you traded it to him, how do you explain this?
[ 2012.03.25 22:40:01 ] Aeryn Guerra > Not my fault he was a corp theif
[ 2012.03.25 22:40:21 ] Aeryn Guerra > jsut helping about a friendly face
[ 2012.03.25 22:40:23 ] Ophilia IV > And it's not our fault that you helped him without asking some serious questions. You can either pay up or remain KoS to the alliance.
[ 2012.03.25 22:40:54 ] Aeryn Guerra > oh relaly
[ 2012.03.25 22:41:11 ] Ophilia IV > Yeah, we take this kind of thing very seriously.
[ 2012.03.25 22:41:25 ] Ophilia IV > The thief already been reprimanded and podded himself.
[ 2012.03.25 22:41:54 ] Ophilia IV > No, I was refuelling the pos and saw all this shit happen, which is why I know you did it.
[ 2012.03.25 22:42:10 ] Aeryn Guerra > why would i steal a providence when i have billions of my own!!!!!
[ 2012.03.25 22:42:13 ] Aeryn Guerra > dont need more
[ 2012.03.25 22:42:20 ] Ophilia IV > The greedy only get greedier.
[ 2012.03.25 22:43:23 ] Aeryn Guerra > fine im sorry about the providence but leadership will hear about this


So the clueless clownshoe pays me 300 mil just as the leaders of the alliance log in, and are inevitably pulled into the chat. Not wanting to delay things too long while I'm so far into the green, I close the chat and just start heading for the jump bridges out to high sec while my permissions are still okay, hoping confusion will last longer than anything I could say. Not a single soul stopped me, and corp didn't even blink until I was within pissing range of Jita.

The most angry of them all was the owner of the Providence, who actually started the lame 'watch yourself in RL' death threat song and dance. Really, davevanloo, that stuff is beneath you. I thought we were bros.

The CEO actually just kind of admitted that it took some dedication to infiltrate for a period of time better measured in months, congratulated me, and on my way I went, about 4-5 billion isk richer than I was when I woke up. While the payout was definitely nice, I can honestly say that I had some good times out in Provi space. Definitely not worth the upkeep of sticking around, but good times nonetheless. I sent them a nicely worded mail after I was safely away to clear the waters, come clean and say "Surprise!" and let them know some heartfelt wisdom that if they could survive this, then they were true bros and could overcome even the chains of the alliance that bind them down. I like to think it had some effect, since they seem to be still around today despite waking up in the morning with absolutely nothing left but their arses hanging in the wind.

Keep struggling on, East India Ore Trade.