Partially inspired by Tiberius StarGazer’s article on the last outpost constructed in New Eden, redditer darkrisingmitch shared his own story regarding the structures on r/eve. After being contacted by EVE News 24, he agreed to have his story published on our site, albeit edited for readers’ convenience.
Released in the “Cold War” Expansion of June 2005, Fully fledged player owned “Outposts” brought deep space play in EVE to a new level! – And then some! Previous to this corporations aiming to control areas of Null Sec had to live in the NPC stations and eventually (When added in Castor during 2003) conquerable stations, which could be shot by anyone over night for a while (Leaving you logging in to find you can’t re-dock). It was quite normal back then to log in, undock a torpedo raven and “re-take” your home system before heading off to do anything else. The grind was very real!
Many corporations rushed to be the first to deploy these new and exciting homes for their pilots. Ascendant Frontier [ASCN] were the first to achieve this. Only a day later 5P-AIP station was deployed by Oberon Incorporated who were part of Stain Empire at the time.
It was no surprise that the regions of Esoteria and Feythabolis would be the first regions to see these things constructed, since before being able to warp to zero or having jump freighters, these places were simply too far from anything. These first outposts sparked off a series of wars however, which threw the regions into the spot light for many years to come.
As EVE players always do, the developers gave them the tools and they set about using them to advance their own goals. Outposts started to pop up in mining systems to provide local refining, in central locations to provide alliance fleets a staging system and in forward bases at the extremities of alliances’ sovereignty, to provide some brave souls a port in a storm.
Our corporation was founded on the 26th of Jan, 2006. So by the time we were up-to speed many outposts had already dotted the landscape of null-sec. Our journey from playing with Red Alliance [RED] in the N-RAEL system in the Great Wildlands region to joining Xelas Alliance was very short. Less than six months after forming, we were packing our bags and heading off (With 13 members) to the Fountain region to join up with the Greater BoB Community (GBC), as part of one of their blue alliances (Pets!).
When we arrived we found the alliance living in the phoenix constellation of Fountain, in the A-1CON system, which was all fine and well, until famed PvP corporations Celestial Apocalypse and Outbreak moved into YZ-LQL, literally next door. With some experience FC’ing from my days in Stain, Blue Flame the alliance leader thrust on me the position of XO and lead FC. For a few months we attempted to fight back, with some success and some horrible failures. But the writing was on the wall – If we were to continue to live in Fountain, we needed to get out of Core (The NPC constellation in the region) and construct our own “Outpost”.
Band of Brothers [BoB] was the most successful alliance in the game at the time, and its support, protection and direction spurred us on to achieve our goal. The system of PNQY-Y was selected, due to its proximity to the hophib system in Aridia and the Outer Ring region. Many of the alliance’s corporations had been living out of towers for many months since the fighting in Core had been raging on, so a Gallente outpost with offices was the only real choice (The systems around PNQY-Y were also only good for gas mining).
Things moved pretty quickly from that point, we raised the required ISK very fast and set about building ‘The Egg’. The original outposts were built in two stages, first you built the construction platform – which needed to be hauled into space using a freighter then anchored. At which point you had to fill the egg with the materials required to construct the outpost. After these two stages were complete, you clicked build and waited patiently for the next Downtime (hoping someone didn’t come and scramble your eggs).
Building things in remote locations in 2006 was not as simple as it is now. There were no Jump Freighters, so it wasn’t uncommon to see alliances escorting large fleets of Freighters (Which were pretty new themselves) through deep space. And of course these fleets were often without logistics cruisers and had mixed battleship compositions. We had constructed the outpost itself in Nare, and needed to move it through the local pirate infested Aridia. We knew we would need maximum numbers to escort the freighters, but of course couldn’t post ‘IMPORTANT RED PEN OP!’ or similar due to inevitable spies, so instead had to form our fleet using word of mouth and only trusted individuals.
The move op itself went smoothly (Still can’t quite believe this). Once in Hophib, we dropped one freighter off at the station (holding the egg stuffing) and moved the one containing the outpost platform to PNQY-Y where we had constructed a tower to store it before deployment. We then had to unload the stuffing from the Hophib freighter into Iteron V industrials and fly them manually to the tower in PNQY-Y – Those of you who are familiar with the region will know that first warp in D4KU-5 is a killer. Well we had to do that warp a few hundred times to move all those inputs. Why? Well in those days you couldn’t unload a freighter at a corporate hangar in space, you could only interact with the cargo at a station.
So eventually after many hours we had everything in PNQY-Y in a tower, and we went ahead and deployed the thing, once again using an army of Iteron Vs to move all the goods from the tower to the egg. I made a little video at the time and thought with the removal of Legacy Outposts and our bright Citadel future ahead of us, I would upload it to youtube and share our little story with you all.
Video of the Construction and Deployment of the Outpost in PNQY-Y
Link to the original reddit post can be found here.
