User:Amoni Panala/evictionofinnu

An Account of the Eviction of Innuendo

This is one account of the eviction of Innuendo "Innu" (J211936 ), a vanilla C2 3/H wormhole system, the then-current home the Wormhole Community. The purpose of this is mainly educational and historical. It is not meant to be definitive nor entirely objective. That said, I will do my best to clearly state when I am speculating or offering an opinion that cannot be supported by the facts. The reason for writing this now is simple: the EVE University forums were obliterated and with it a lot of Uni's history from this time period.

Prior to the Eviction

In 2023, I (Amoni Panala) was in No Vacancies. I had my alt, Kamille Panala, living in Nullsec Community. Kamille served as my teaching, mentorship, and newbie FC character in EVE University. We were in the middle of the campaign to defend the PC9 pocket, but the fighting had lulled as we heard rumors that for Cynosaural Field Theory real life was preventing them from engaging properly. I had chosen to live in nullsec because I knew very little about it and while my first love has and will likely always be wormhole space, I already had C5 space to play in. I had also noticed that WHC had become disproportionately represented by people who were more interested in PVE activities than PVP. I heard from people who were in WHC at that time that day after day there were fights to be had but they couldn't get enough people to undock to actually fight.

I wrote a scathing post on the now-defunct EVE University forums essentially saying that if people don't undock for PVP, they will leave themselves open to eviction. This was based on a vague and inconsistent notion that to krab in wormhole space is to take from it and to engage in PVP is to give back. If all one ever does is take, it is not only a drain on the entire wormhole ecosystem but also a sign of weakness. The idea behind calling it a sign of weakness is that if people are unwilling to undock in low stakes PVP fights, they won't be willing or able to put up much resistance when the stakes are as high as losing their home system. Most of the people who were already convinced that PVP was essential component of WHC appreciated the post. I had hoped that it would shake up what I perceived to be stagnation in WHC where too many krabs had come to believe they were safe and that they were not contributing enough to WHC unless and until they began participating in PVP.

It is my opinion that PVP and krabbing are both necessary in wormhole space and one without the other creates an imbalance. At the time, I was jaded against krabs because of my own personal distaste for krabbing and also experiencing some burnout with working with new players who require patience and a gentle guiding hand.

Ominous Foreshadowing

When I still lived in Wormhole Community as either Amoni, Zipporah, or Kamille (I cannot recall which); we were returning home from a little skirmish. I spotted an Orca jumping into Innu from the hisec static. We were excited thinking this would be juicy killmail for us, but then I hear Boran Lordsworth audibly gasp over comms and he tells us that one of our structures (I believe it was the either the fort or one of the industrial structures) had unexpectedly unanchored. This structure had been unanchoring for weeks. The unanchoring process took so long specifically because the goal was to reset the timer repeatedly and make it nearly impossible for random groups to know when the structure would actually unanchor. This was part of a process known as "flipping" in which a structure is unanchored and a new structure with the same configuration is anchored. The idea is that by doing this, any unnecessary or abandoned assets are removed to kspace and the overall value of the structure is brought down thereby making it a less appealing target for someone to bash.

Instead of a controlled unanchoring, we were now scrambling like kitchen workers trying to scatter rats that had found their way into the kitchen as 30+ hangar containers littered the area around where the structure had been. For folks who are not familiar with wormhole space, there is no asset safety in wormhole space. When a structure dies (or is unanchored), everything that was in the structure is launched into space in hangar containers. WHC called upon the Hauling Department as well as our friends from Nullsec Community (who were then a staging of Main Community) to help us with the logistics of gathering up and move all these stray assets into hisec. It was a lengthy process and it is not clear to me what, if anything, the Orca pilot was able to scoop before we scared it off. I do remember, as the person who first spotted the Orca pilot, that it was a Lazerhawks pilot.

For reasons that will become clear later, I am of the opinion that this accidental unanchoring was not an accident, but an intentional act of sabotage for reasons that I can only speculate were meant to "teach WHC/EVE Uni a lesson." The official story from leadership, up to and including the then-CEO, is that the unachoring fiasco was caused by a miscommunication and bad timing. At the time I was discouraged from conspiratorial thinking as it was deemed neither productive nor based in fact. This is understandable given how little we knew at the time.

The Eviction

Initial Incursion

In early December of 2023, I received a DM over Discord telling me that my prediction came true and that a large fleet of Legions had stormed Innuendo and were reffing structures. The first 24 hours were absolute chaos as many in leadership were unavailable due to real life. Some WHC folks were podded out of Innu either due to unfortunate circumstances or not being fully cognizant of the fact that with this opposition force ("opfor") maintaining strict hole control, they would not be able to return. I was eager to help WHC but the folks who were there were busy trying to figure out what they were doing and how to respond.

Thera

Once enough of leadership became aware of the situation and willing pilots were assembled, there was an attempt to infiltrate Innu by way of closest connection from Thera. Groups of people formed up into squads, given an exit from Thera, and told to burn as fast as possible to the hisec entrance of Innu. This was only mildly successful as the opfor were diligent in their hole control. Hole control is a tactical maneuver where all wandering wormholes are rolled off (i.e. closed) and the static connections are kept at critical (10% or below their allowed mass before collapsing) with a rolling ship on the outside to close the hole in the event that anyone they don't want coming in should appear. Locator agents were used to try get a fix on where the hisec static. If you know the name of the pilot who has their ship on the outside of the wormhole ready to close it, you can use a locator agent to find them.

WHC folks tried to organize skirmishes to antagonize, exhaust, and distract opfor from their hole control efforts. Unfortunately, this would occasionally result in someone who was already in Innu getting podded out. It was for this reason combined with the low efficacy of the infiltration squads from Thera that this strategy was abandoned. Folks were told to sit tight and wait for further instructions.

POS Staging

One member of WHC who had been podded out pitched leadership on the idea of trying to roll a static C2 connection as a means of getting into Innu. A POS was anchored and I led the initial wave of Unistas from all areas of New Eden to our infiltration staging. People took turns rolling the C2 static for hours on end across timezones. Unfortunately, there are 537 C2s and therefore the chances of this method succeeding were miniscule. I was there and on comms when the discussion and decision was made to stop rolling for Innu. The main concern, as I recall, was that we were risking burning out both the most enthusiastic and the most casual participants. The most enthusiastic were putting incredible amounts of effort and hope into their attempts to roll into Innu. The most casual participants were essentially sitting in space waiting for the moment someone said, "warp to me and splash the wormhole" for hours on end. Either way, it wasn't very fun for anyone and there's only so much a person can take before they want to do something, anything else. The only good thing that came out of that time was that I and a few other teachers had a captive audience to teach crash courses on everything related to wormholes and PVP.

Opfor

Before I can continue with the rest of the story, I need to talk a bit about the opfor. Opfor was not one corp or alliance, but rather a loosely affiliated group of pilots who do evictions for fun and profit. One notable alt corp was Corporation 98646435 which at the time had a name that was so obscenely racist and culturally insensitive that CCP eventually stepped in and changed it the way they will with pilot names. As I said, this was an alt corp that included an alt of CSM's own Mick Fightmaster (this I only learned later from Mick himself when he casually bragged about being part of the eviction in NoVac's comms). I don't believe anyone used these alts to hide their identity as much as they enjoyed the edgelord nature of their corp and character names. There is also the simple fact that having alts who can do evictions while your main stays wherever it is normally staged is extremely convenient.

The majority of the group were wormholers: Lazerhawks, Hard Knocks (who at the time were considered dead), as well as a variety of smaller names and characters in NPC corps. It is important that I name Lazerhawks and that I now explain that EVE University's FC Team boss (manager or director, I cannot recall), Sparklez Ripper had her main in Lazerhawks while one alt was serving as leadership and a central part of WHC's strategic management team. When Sparklez stepped down from her leadership position it was only weeks before the eviction kicked off.

Thera II/IV: The Uni Strikes Back

As the bulk of Uni's leadership was brought up to speed on the situation, a new plan was formulated involving hiring Wingspan for their locator services. I was the FC leading the infiltration group on that final push to get into Innu. To be clear, while I was honored to be the FC that led that last desperate play for an entrance, it was mostly because I was the FC that said, "I will do it." I also had a bunch of people working behind the scenes to help and so while I got to be the voice on comms giving orders, there were a lot of people working hard to make that the plan happen. Wingspan is renown throughout New Eden for their wormhole locator services and they are highly efficient at finding wormholes. They were able to find us a connection to Innu via the C3 static. We had to burn several jumps through lowsec and nullsec; getting smartbombed to fuck once and having to burn back again. After bouncing from stargate to ping to stargate for several systems, the one system I decided to warp the entire fleet direct to the gate was the one where we got smartbombed by some random Machariels. Despite this frustrating delay, the locator services strategy proved to be the most effective as we successfully infilled approximately 20+ pilots.

11th Hour Betrayal

At some point during our efforts to infil as many pilots into Innu as possible, likely around the time the second Thera infil operation began, we became aware that our strategic reserve of doctrine ships intended specifically for this type of situation were gone. They had been there not long ago and were at the moment of our greatest need missing. There are no logs that record who takes and places assets in the cans and hangars used to store all those doctrine ships. I will return to that later. As the FC trying to rally people to Thera, I did my best not to share this detail as it was not going to do anything except discourage pilots from joining the infil fleet. Our hope was that despite this major setback that we would have enough ships from WHC folks that we would be able to have something for everyone to fly.

The Final Fight for the Fortizar

By the time the infiltration fleet had arrived in Innu, the only remaining structure was a fortizar named The Rock, the main docking structure for WHC. The structure was in hull and therefore there was no reason to hold back. Although those of us who had been a part of clean up operation from the unscheduled unanchoring had seen a few capital ships in Innu after years of speculation that there were caps in some director-level hangar (and adamant denials from leadership that the Uni had capitals), this was the first time that we had seen all the capitals undocked. Unfortunately, the capital fits had not been updated in some time and were not optimized for the engagement we were facing.

That left the subcap fleet, FC'd by Archimede, to try to push off opfor long enough for the structure to repair. While initial shipping up was roughly something of a doctrine, the ships were ill-equipped and died quickly. A lot of pilots who had joined the fight were inexperienced with PVP but eager to help. This meant that even if we had had a proper doctrine ready to go with the right ratio of DPS, logi, tackle, links, and EWAR that we would have been operating at a significantly lower fighting efficiency and that is not an indictment of all those who took time away from their regular play experience to help with the final fight. It is the nature of a learning corp that draws hundreds of new players each year that there will always be more eager pilots than capable pilots. I'm certain that everyone who showed up to the fight did their best and that's all anyone can ask of them. After initial shipping up, reships were a hodgepodge of random ships that had been turned over by WHC members to be distributed as needed. Eventually the ships that had been turned over were exhausted and people were forced to warp from hangar container to hangar container looking for something they could reship into.

After a few hours that felt like only a few minutes and simultaneously a few years, the fortizar was destroyed and opfor podded the majority of defenders out of Innu.

Rumors and Speculation

Sparklez

In the post-mortem fireside chat and subsequent write up conducted by then Director of Education, Anidien Dallacort it was all but confirmed that Sparklez Ripper, though she had left her leadership position officially and moved her alt to Lazerhawks still had several other alts in key positions with access to the strategic doctrines and likely had been the one who had taken WHC's reserves right before the final fight. It cannot be overstated how pivotal the removal of WHC's strategic reserve of doctrine ships had been in the Uni's ability to defend itself. Her main that had always been in Lazerhawks was part of the opfor group.

At the time there were a lot of rumors that she had done this to prove a point after longstanding disagreements with the way WHC was run had gone ignored. This is certainly plausible for a number of reasons. The first of which is simplest: in any organization that isn't a pure autocracy, there will always be disagreements among leadership about how to handle things. EVE Online's most dramatic stories often involve disgruntled members taking a vengeful turn on the people they once called friends. There was also a longstanding issue of absentee leadership, which is to say that there were directors and managers at that time who were either doing stuff elsewhere in New Eden on their mains (the Uni relied largely on alumni putting alts in key leadership positions in order to function) or had real life obligations that kept them from being more involved in the day-to-day affairs of the Uni. Sparklez herself was one of those absentee leaders towards the end of her tenure, though that may have been more because of disagreements with the rest of leadership than anything else.

The most infuriating thing about this for me personally was that rather than acknowledge that it was a mistake allowing Sparklez to publicly leave the Uni while quietly allowing her to keep alts with access to some of the most sensitive assets WHC had, Devalt opted instead to fall back on, "the Uni would not function without people in other corporations putting their alts in the Uni and running things."

Contract

As news of WHC's eviction spread through New Eden, the general consensus was that opfor were a bunch of assholes who may not have broken any rules but certainly set back the EVE community by doing what they had done. It was bad enough that CFT were glassing the Uni's nullsec staging, but now the Uni had to slowly rebuild and figure out what would be next for WHC. Someone from opfor took to Reddit to write a lengthy defense of their actions by saying they were merely fulfilling a contract. For the most part, this was considered to be either a bullshit fabrication or a poor choice on their part to take the contract in the first place. My impression is that there were at least some among the opfor that had not expected to become persona non grata among the EVE community. They had seen the whole thing as a paycheck and something to do over the weekend.

Insurance Fraud/Asset Denial

Between the shield and armor timer, armor time and hull timer; WHC was busy trying to destroy or coffin as many assets as they could. It is all too easy to accumulate a ridiculous amount of stuff in wormhole space. Part of it is that some people, like myself, have a tendency to want to have extra of everything to avoid running out without a convenient way of replacing it. Part of it is that WHC at that time had a lot of people who were not thinking about whether they had too much stuff in Innu. During the initial attack, it was still possible to trash any PVE and luxury ships, but once the structure hit low power after the armor timer was completed; the only way to destroy excess assets was to self-destruct or shoot it. Opfor was particularly fond of this last bit because it meant that if they were quick they could warp a dictor or a ceptor in and get an easy killmail.

In the post-mortem, it was noted that a variety of ships which may have been helpful in the defense had been destroyed as part of the attempt to keep it away from opfor. My opinion is that while having proper doctrine ships would have been a crucial element of defending Innu, it may not have been enough to stop opfor's assault. There were too few pilots, a major lack of leadership due to the real life timing of this event (Winter holidays), and a massive skill differential (professional eviction group vs. the learning corp) meant that the odds of WHC successfully defending were low even in the best case scenario.

Thank You's

After the fight was over, I broke down into tears from exhaustion and emotional fatigue. I don't think I slept more than a couple of hours over the course of three days. I gave a weepy thank you to a bunch of people.

I want to reiterate that thank you. Although I cannot recall all the names of the pilots who I thanked then, I'd just like to thank:

• WHC leadership for their efforts and patience
• All the other Uni leadership that came to help and especially those who were at my side and helped me when I stepped up to lead the final infil
• WHC membership
• All the people from Main and Incursion Community who set aside their normal play time to help WHC

As evidenced by the existence of WHC in their C4 home, this eviction was a lot of things but it was not the end for WHC.

Corrections

• Attribution of the post-mortem changed from Devalt to Anidien as Devalt was either sick or busy with IRL stuff at the time.
• The reference to Jilo as then-CEO was changed to Devalt since Devalt had stepped into the role of CEO shortly before this event.