It seemed like a really good idea at the time

You know me, I like making people laugh. As such, April Fools day is my unofficial holiday, where each year I pull some elaborate heist over a nearby friend, making an extremely trivial change that is extremely difficult to do, like swapping my friend’s car from one side of the street to the other while he sleeps.

This year, I turned my brain towards a simple, yet massive prank: In between the hours of midnight and five AM, I was going to move the WH PoS one moon to the left, then, send a corp mail saying “har har i wuz spy and stole your iskies”.

Plans were made. I wrote the letter, made safespots to hold the ships and cargo, and sat patiently and waited for the day of reckoning. Part A of the plan was to move all the ships, using the Orca or my handy ship command skills to move the ships, then the cargo, to the safe, which was about 15 AU off grid. Part B was to use a blockade runner to unanchor the guns, then the empty corp hangar, then the PoS, re-anchoring it one moon to the left, anchor corp hangar n such, guns, send the mail and go off to sleep. Predictably, things started to go horribly, horribly wrong around Part A and continued to fail explosively for the rest of the night.

At midnight, the American players in corp had gone to bed and the UK ones were not scheduled to wake up for another five hours, I started unanchoring the spare corp hangar while moving the ships from the maint bay to the safespot. I managed most of the hulks, all the Gallente ships and all other ships that would fit into the maint bay of my Orca. Then, the first problem of the night struck.

Raath (maker of staticmapper.com, for all your WH static needs), had recently purchased a Falcon, intended for use in all things jamming and currently floating in space next to the maint bay. This would normally not present a problem, since the falcon fits in the Orca’s maint bay, but he had left a module in it. For the uninformed, when a ship has a module in it it can’t be stuffed into a maintenence bay on another ship, and since I hadn’t taken the five week training session on “how to fly Caldari t2 cruisers”, the ship was going nowhere.

While I was perfectly willing to leave Raath’s Typhoon (Minmatar Battleship) floating in empty space for about twelve hours, a 100 mil Falcon hull was an entirely different story. To leave the Falcon safe, I made a a plan to scan an exit, get a small tower in with an alt, have the alt put up the tower where the old tower was in the name of the altcorp while I put up the Caldari large tower on the one moon to the left.

I start scanning, find a C5, which goes to a C6.

Russians.

To make matters worse, Russians with two carriers, two dreads and various tech 2 ships, including a Vulture (Caldari Command Ship), a ship whose skill training time is just under a third of a year.

To make matters even worse, ships were appearing and vanishing along with capsules, so they were active. I drop sister probes, do a 32 AU scan and recall probes. two sigs in system, I look at the size of the red sphere, look at the planets that it encapsulates, pick one on the edge, and warp to it, drop probes again, scan, wormhole.

Mindful of the fact that if WE saw scan probes in system, we would immediately close the connecting WH.

I pop into their static and look around. Static C4, end of lifetime, which means that I can’t risk getting an alt and tower in. I speed back through to our C6, get the Orca (250,000,000 kg) and a calculator, and pass BS and Orca through until the WH goes critical.

Making the first smart choice all night, instead of blindly passing the Orca through, I move my scan alt into the connecting WH, then jump the Orca through. Then watch, as the WH closes, leaving all of my alts on the wrong side of the WH, and no-one but me has the BM for where the ships are.

I web the orca through the Russian C6 (noticing scan probes as I do so), flee through the end of lifetime C4 link and logoff he Orca, then start scanning the 35 sig system. Literally, the last sig is the WH, C2, highsec static, Orca gets out, Covops out.

After a string of cursing, I tear through the Russian WH and wake up a corp mate. The corpmate, who logs in his Myrmidon (Gallente Battlecruiser), says that he needs combat probes to scan out the 1.5 bil pile of ships.

[ 2010.04.01 06:00:16 ] haav0c > corpmate…
[ 2010.04.01 06:00:18 ] haav0c > you busy?
[ 2010.04.01 06:00:25 ] haav0c > we’ve got a bit of a problem.
[ 2010.04.01 06:04:12 ] haav0c > and by “bit”
[ 2010.04.01 06:04:14 ] haav0c > i mean.
[ 2010.04.01 06:04:17 ] Corpmate > whats up?
[ 2010.04.01 06:04:21 ] haav0c > well
[ 2010.04.01 06:04:25 ] haav0c > say, hypothetically.
[ 2010.04.01 06:04:31 ] Corpmate > uh oh
[ 2010.04.01 06:04:35 ] haav0c > a dude made a plan for an april fools joke.
[ 2010.04.01 06:05:31 ] Corpmate > wait….it’s past midnight there already
[ 2010.04.01 06:05:37 ] Corpmate > im not falling for this
[ 2010.04.01 06:05:52 ] haav0c > >.>
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:02 ] haav0c > let’s also say that he’s been moving ships for the last hour
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:09 ] haav0c > and ran into a little snag
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:15 ] haav0c > that raath’s shiny new falcon
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:25 ] haav0c > had shit in the cargo
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:32 ] Corpmate > 😦
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:42 ] haav0c > and he wasn’t about to leave a shiny falcon floating at the old pos, so he started scanning.
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:46 ] haav0c > and found russians.
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:49 ] haav0c > active russians.
[ 2010.04.01 06:06:58 ] haav0c > so he tried to close the WH by himself.
[ 2010.04.01 06:07:02 ] haav0c > hypothetically.
[ 2010.04.01 06:07:19 ] haav0c > and let’s also say, hypothetifuckingcally.
[ 2010.04.01 06:07:28 ] Corpmate > and did this dude hypothetically lose an orca?
[ 2010.04.01 06:07:32 ] haav0c > that he is currently in an occupied system
[ 2010.04.01 06:07:37 ] haav0c > with no link to our wh
[ 2010.04.01 06:07:42 ] haav0c > and the orca logoffskied.
[ 2010.04.01 06:07:56 ] Corpmate > lololol
[ 2010.04.01 06:08:08 ] Corpmate > so ur in a russian occupied system in an orca?
[ 2010.04.01 06:08:16 ] haav0c > no, that was two WHs ago
[ 2010.04.01 06:08:25 ] haav0c > we’re safe from the russians.
[ 2010.04.01 06:08:28 ] haav0c > but…
[ 2010.04.01 06:08:42 ] haav0c > most if not all of our shit is currently floating in a safespot
[ 2010.04.01 06:08:48 ] haav0c > to which only i have the BM.
[ 2010.04.01 06:08:48 ] Corpmate > do orcas have scanners fit?
[ 2010.04.01 06:08:50 ] haav0c > no.
[ 2010.04.01 06:09:05 ] haav0c > but that’s irrelevent
[ 2010.04.01 06:09:13 ] haav0c > because i’m in a covops with the fucking orca
[ 2010.04.01 06:09:20 ] Corpmate > dude…i can’t fly most of the ships
[ 2010.04.01 06:09:23 ] haav0c > exactly.
[ 2010.04.01 06:09:32 ] haav0c > so, what i’d really, really appreciate right now
[ 2010.04.01 06:09:51 ] Corpmate > u need me to scan out the safe spot?
[ 2010.04.01 06:09:55 ] haav0c > is you scanning a route while i try to get out of WH space with the orca intact, get back into WH space and clean this shit up.
[ 2010.04.01 06:09:56 ] Corpmate > and put a bm in the can?
[ 2010.04.01 06:10:24 ] Corpmate > omg
[ 2010.04.01 06:10:33 ] Corpmate > /emote /facepalms
[ 2010.04.01 06:11:18 ] haav0c > raath and blake can…probably clean the shit up
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:13 ] haav0c > it’s…
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:16 ] haav0c > kinda southey
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:21 ] haav0c > well
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:29 ] Corpmate > about how far away?
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:30 ] haav0c > it’s not too far off the center of the system
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:33 ] haav0c > umm
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:35 ] haav0c > 10 au
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:39 ] haav0c > maybe 16
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:48 ] Corpmate > so, not a very safe spot… ….
[ 2010.04.01 06:12:50 ] haav0c > no.
[ 2010.04.01 06:13:01 ] haav0c > i kinda figured that i’d be fucking done by now.
[ 2010.04.01 06:13:04 ] Corpmate > how many ships are there?
[ 2010.04.01 06:13:12 ] haav0c > bout…ten
[ 2010.04.01 06:13:17 ] Corpmate > what kind?
[ 2010.04.01 06:13:25 ] haav0c > itty Vs, domi
[ 2010.04.01 06:13:26 ] haav0c > …
[ 2010.04.01 06:13:28 ] haav0c > the hulks.
[ 2010.04.01 06:13:33 ] Corpmate > i can fly both of those
[ 2010.04.01 06:14:03 ] Corpmate > and how was this supposed to be an april fools joke? im not getting that part.
[ 2010.04.01 06:14:20 ] haav0c > included in this package was a leter saying
[ 2010.04.01 06:14:30 ] haav0c > “haha i was a spy all along i’ve taken everything”
[ 2010.04.01 06:14:39 ] Corpmate > hahahah…ic
[ 2010.04.01 06:14:56 ] haav0c > and the joke was that the pos was moved one moon to the left >.>
[ 2010.04.01 06:14:59 ] haav0c > instead of being taken.
[ 2010.04.01 06:15:08 ] haav0c > i planned this shit for months, man.
[ 2010.04.01 06:15:11 ] Corpmate > what? u moved the pos?
[ 2010.04.01 06:15:13 ] haav0c > no
[ 2010.04.01 06:15:17 ] Corpmate > thank god
[ 2010.04.01 06:15:18 ] haav0c > that was part C
[ 2010.04.01 06:15:27 ] haav0c > this right here is part A crashing and burning.
[ 2010.04.01 06:15:53 ] Corpmate > im not sure i have combat probes in my ship…so that’s a relief….hope we have some in the cargo bays
[ 2010.04.01 06:16:05 ] haav0c > …
[ 2010.04.01 06:16:11 ] haav0c > the cargo bays…
[ 2010.04.01 06:16:16 ] haav0c > that i put in the ittys?
[ 2010.04.01 06:16:22 ] Corpmate > …
[ 2010.04.01 06:16:26 ] haav0c > ho boy.
[ 2010.04.01 06:16:45 ] Corpmate > so…what is left at the POS?
[ 2010.04.01 06:16:50 ] haav0c > …
[ 2010.04.01 06:16:57 ] haav0c > breaath mint and the ore.
[ 2010.04.01 06:17:10 ] Corpmate > roflmao


Thankfully, someone with more foresight than me had put combat probes in the “we’re screwed” container, which I had somehow missed in my initial “move everything to the safe” stage. He finds the ships, gets them back to the PoS, and we all log at about…five in the morning.



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