Closing C4 WHs, solo-style

Day Nine

Closing a new 2B wormhole is as easy as jumping an heavy (100MN prop mod on) Orca six times and a single heavy battleship two times through it. In most cases that closes the hole just fine. You want to make sure you have your ships on the right side when it does thou. And you don't want anyone else to interfere. The battleship can be considered a throw away ship, but it would hurt to lose the 800M Orca. Still, it needs to be done. Closing wormholes is the basis of any safe carebearing.

When I'm stalking people I use information from what ships they jump into, if they align, and most importantly, what I have seen them do before. If I have seen an Orca do a quick appearance on a WH its most likely a closing op going on. If they don't have multiple Orcas their polarization timer is my time to set something up till catch and kill the Orca. If they do it easy for me by announcing their plans way in advance, well, so much better.

This have made me formulate a quick and cloaky policy for my own doings. Always assume there is eyes watching you. You want as little information-leak to these eyes as possible. Just showing a piloted Orca will tell them a lot. And attract interest.

• Never be uncloaked at your POS. The more you can get them to guess what ships you have, the better.
• Never announce intent in advance. Don't jump into a BS + Orca and align to a WH.
• Never be uncloaked if you can help it. If you warp to a zero on a WH you do so with the intent of jumping.
• Make it quick. If you think the coast is clear, you have nothing to gain from lingering. Any extra time uncloaked is a chance for information-leaks, or worse.
• The more time you can spend cloaked, scouting a WH out in advance, the better. The absence of you seeing somebody jump is not the same thing as "safe" but if you have not heard WH activation the last 20 min it's not very likely there's somebody else there. Unless you have drawn attention with juicy targets before of course.

Since I only have one Orca-pilot and I need to do three trips back and forth, I have two timers to wait out. This goes against the whole "be quick and cloaky" approach, but I try and come as close as possible.

Typically I scout the WH with a cloaky Tengu first. Check the inhabitants. What ships on scan? What pilots on? Any POS'es out of d-scan? The more activity, the more time I spend on the WH pre-scouting. Showing a cloaky Tengu also raises the bar for what "my side" fly. A cov ops is only a scout, a Tengu is a potential pvp-ship, even a cloaky one. I want anyone to think twice before warping anything to the WH that could potentially be dangerous for my closing ships.

First Orca jump is quick, just warp there, jump in, jump back, and then warp away and cloak up. Anyone not spamming d-scan should miss it completely. For anyone paying attention, it's good if they don't realise that's the first Orca-jump in a closing sequence. While I wait out the polarization timer, I stay on the other side in the Tengu. Checking for signs of new activity. Scan probes? Anything warping to the WH? Anythig jumping?

After exactly 5 min, I do the second Orca-jump. The less time I give people to react the better. If I see a set of combats probes go out after the first jump, this is no reason to hold back on the second, giving them even more time to figure out what's happening. After the second orca-trip I stay for a few minutes at the WH with the Tengu and then jump back home, and switch it out for a Scorpion. When both timers are out, I do the last Orca-jump together with the Scorp. The Scorp is then working as a scout, and bait. The idea is that if anyone jumps the gun on the Scorp I might get away with the Orca. I also have the mass on my side. Anyone that wants to kill me will have to do it while following me through, because I will close the WH on the way back with the Orca.

Unless I have reasons to believe there's nasty things lurking, I stay cloaked with the Orca on the WH while waiting out the polarization. That way, the Orca works as a scout while I switch from Tengu to Scorp for the last jump.