STHS - Super Terrific Happy Squad

STHS - SUPER TERRIFIC HAPPY SQUAD

This is the semi untold story of the partially romanticize adventures of the STHS!

The Super Terrific Happy Squad is group of Darkies we created last year with the idea to set up a POS in a Wormhole and live there for a few weeks. But why a Wormhole? Back in November we were dropping Black Ops in the Providence regions. We agreed nullsec hotdrops were the best Blops activity we'd get, but one region isn't big enough for us! What if we could access any region every other day? 

Week 50 - 2013
We purchased a C5 Wormhole today from our good friend and ex-Darkie Axloth Okiah. "Purchased"? Yes. Nowadays there is a complete market of explorers selling Wormhole systems and their exits. Axloth (who also co-runs a third party WH selling websites) got us the WH system we wanted and gave us a nice discount.

WH's don't get sold with an active POS on them, so we had to set up a 'holding' Tower ASAP. After a few collapsed holes and dead haulers (poor Martin) we got it up there. Meanwhile, Dark-Rising was going to war and the supreme leader put our plan on hold.

Week 2 - 2014
Dark has successfully merged into the EXE alliance, and done its duty on the Curse front. Having settled in Cloud Ring, it was time for the STHS to get really started! Setting up the main Tower (we took down the small, and launched a large with mods etc) went rather easy, except for the loss of an Orca in lowsec (again, Martin?!).
We invested a large sum of ISK into this, so the first task was grinding it all back by farming Sleepers. The thing with C5 wormholes is that this is absolutely not solo work. No, your uber solo Navy Raven won't tank 5k DPS, 15 neuts, webs and scrams.
We use 3 to 5 Tengu's with a subsystem to Remote Repping bonus to spider tank each other. This worked generally fine, until someone decides to burn out of repping range (Oh you didn't, Karashur!) ... On a few occasions I did lose my Mobile Tractor Unit, but fortunately they held no major loot.

Week 3 - 2014
Living in a WH POS is nothing like anything else. No gates to warp to have a peek next door, no localchat to spot a neutral coming in. The first thing you do when you log in is scan ALL the signature in your system - every day! Sig IDs change over DT so this becomes a daily ritual. You'd find new holes to scout and see if there are any other guys living next door to disrupt your Sleeper farming that day, or maybe for an opportunity to disturb theirs.
But this week we finally got into the fun business of our plan. Through the days we found wormhole exits literally everywhere. From The Forge to Stain, from Queerious to Outer Passage and Cobalt Edge. Unfortunately, being part of the CFC renders 1/3 of the Universe blue, so we had to pick our exits carefully. Nevertheless, we got our first shiny kills; Battleships and Tengu's! The best russian carebear is a dead russian carebear! (Sorry, Daro...) Especially when they drop a few bil on deadspace loot for us. ;) Nom nom nom!

Week 4 - 2014
Things are starting to pick up. We got the ISK re pay the invested money, so that leaves us more time for PvP. Underkings Loki wasn't “nullified” though, and roaming through the PvE systems proved difficult with all the shit I had to deal with:

Karashur luckily had more success finding us targets. Most notable kill of this week were 2 Tengu's ratting together in one Anomaly. It happened to be a crowded Station system with 20 or so lads in local. We killed one, but the second slipped out of our webs and got away. Given the chances of back-up warping on top of us, it was better to get one Tengu kill, than 2 Panther losses.

Week 4 - 2014 THE DISCLOSURE (of week 4)Saturday night started out as any other Saturday night. “You guys up for some pvp?” “Yeah, I guess ...”
The Hunter came across a very peculiar cloaky Tengu. About 5 times. But the 6^th time we got him and took his Light Missile fit out of his misery. This happened on a bubbled gate, when a random Brutix warped on top of us to join the PARTY OF DEATH and he too found his death swifty.

But all went not well. We took the risk/mistake of keeping our Blops in that particular system as a midpoint to extend our hunting field. Needless to say, all our names would be in any remote intel channel within seconds. Unaware of that at the time, Karashur found a Thanatos in an anomaly meanwhile. We jumped through, engaged, and that's when local went hot and Sabres and Inties warped in. All the 3 Blops got out thanks to the power of the MJD (their tackle was too naïve to think a Sabre's bubble was enough). Nevertheless, our Hunter Proteus died. Two lessons learned: 1) Don't keep a busy hostile system as your midpoint due THEIR intel. 2) Carriers die pretty damn fast with merely 3 Blops; before we MJD'd out, we took 25% of his armour out in half a minute.

 

Week 5 - 2014
Something about an unpaid bill and a Station, and 75 dead Titans. Yeah we missed that.
Moving on, this week we started on making some more ISK. We repaid all our 3 billion investments among ourselves, so all the ISK we got now is going straight to our profit banks. With 3 or 4 Tengu's running sites goes a lot smoother, and gathering a billion ISK a day seemed rather plausible. We've been less fortunate on getting nullsec exits, and the ones we did get were held by blues, so we had to keep our Black Ops at bay. Rest of the week we spend quietly killing more Sleepers.

Week 6 - 2014The POS fuel is slowly running out and RL complications were coming around the cornor, so decisions had to be made. My initial plan was to stay in the wormhole for about a month, so with 1 week of fuel left we decided this would be the last week. Or unknowingly, the last day. Monday early we found a Highsec route out so we decided to move all non-essential ships out (read: only keep the Blops!). We've made a fair bit of money and we thought it's best to spend the rest of our time on PvP. And so we did. That evening we sank an Orca and three Mackinaw's. And just when you think you're Frapsing some elite PvP action, someone opens up a convo chat and ruins the entire thing! Thanks Lev!!

Later that evening we got a new Highsec and agreed that this was it. After 2 long hours of hauling, probing and scouting we finally jumped our last wormhole back to "K-space" and we're back where we belong.

Thank you all,
Karashur, Martin Hartl, Kubiq and Prety Zinta