Lynkfox's Note:

Originally posted by u/unfit_ibis on reddit in r/Eve on early May 28th 2024 (war had finished) here


Wormhole War, Part IV: Waffle House is Good Food

Tldr: In a big gamble, HAWKS assaults the SYNDE coalition staging and deals a staggering blow to their dreams of high-class dominance If you are just joining us, I recommend reading Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 in this series. I also recommend u/lynxfox essential Wormhole War tracker.

“Waffle House – Good Food Fast”

That is actually the irl Waffle House slogan, which makes it a perfect fit for the role that C6 would play in the Wormhole War. During the leaked SYNDE CTA at the start of the war, SYNDE lead Cyrus Kurush directed all SYNDE members to move the bulk of their combat capability to “Waffle House”, a C6 SYNDE farm that has a C6 static. Wormhole groups will sometimes move a full fleet to a different wormhole in order to take advantage of a specific static wormhole, for a specific reason. It is relatively uncommon to move an entire pvp group from their pvp home to a different hole for an extended period. And that was the marching orders given to SYNDE line members: move to Waffle House. Move your expensive implant sets. Move your mainline doctrine ships. Move your bashing ships. Move your skirmish ships. Waffle House was being turned into a fortress until HAWKS was brought to their knees. Working at Waffle House The pay is low, the hours long, but you can get a lot done rolling from Waffle House. With reportedly half of C6s owned by HAWKS, SYNDE planned to rage roll from Waffle House with impunity. And this is precisely what happened when the war kicked off. They made a massive number of timers right from the start, and then followed up those timers in the coming days. This is very atypical for wormhole conflicts, when typically one side evicts a wormhole or wormholes in sequence. You move in a fleet, you take hole control, you destroy citadels and anchor your own. At the end of this, you own the wormhole. Done properly, there is very little the defending side can do. In short, if a pvp group wants to evict a farm wormhole, they almost certainly can do that. SYNDE did not want to evict a farm wormhole. They wanted to evict a massive number of farms, and at the same time. Their diligent rolling from Waffle House during USTZ, when the vast majority of HAWKS citadel timers were set, allowed them to roll into armor timers and ref them, and then roll into hull timers and finish off those fortizars and other citadels. At the leaked April 7th coalition meeting, SYNDE lead Cyrus Kurush declared that in under two weeks, HAWKS had lost more than half of their C6 farms. This early-war dominance is what precipitated SYNDE Diplo Zelvig’s now-infamous “Given how this war is going” ultimatum to HAWKS.

APM: Autism Per Minute

Wormhole life is hard. It demands a lot of its residents. Most aspects of wormhole life are significantly more demanding than in other areas of EVE. Many people are attracted to the close-knit wormhole community, to the honor and principles that generally accompany wormhole existence. Many of those same people leave soon thereafter, unwilling to invest the time and effort needed to survive and thrive in the blind, chaotic nightmare of wormhole space. As is the case throughout EVE, wars are very demanding for leadership and line members both. This is doubly true for the warring wormholer. Defending the group’s pvp home is critical. Defending farms is a priority for the many members who own them and rely on them to fund their expensive wormhole pvp life. Participating in offensive fleets and evictions is necessary to have any hope of your side winning the war. In other words, war turns wormhole life from hard to seemingly unbearable for all but the most battle-hardened wormholer. There is a lot of evidence that SYNDE and their allies were unprepared for these demands. They were unready for the necessities of winning a Wormhole War. At a leaked coalition FC meeting, Cyrus Kurush bemoaned that HAWKS home remained off the table as a target for now because HAWKS was maintaining diligent hole control. Despite deploying farm defense fleets and, increasingly, supporting offensive evictions of their own, HAWKS home was hole controlled 24/7. If anything of concern was seen in chain, even a single SYNDE scout, HAWKS would roll off their chain. HK and NOVAC were doing likewise. By contrast, neither SYNDE nor their allies were hole controlling. Not their homes, not their staging. For both the ATRAX eviction and the later SUGAR eviction, full eviction fleets had simply transited into those home wormholes via their existing wormhole chains. Chains where a vigilant defender would have scouts. Chains where a vigilant defender would have the ability to roll that chain. Chains that were seemingly unobserved by wormhole participants in a massive war. It is unclear if this was inexperience or hubris, but it would prove to be a major liability. Waffle House was no different. They would leave full chains with kspace access points up at all times. This was to permit coalition members to transit to coalition staging, which is important. But no effort was made to stop HAWKS toons from traveling into Waffle House either.

Fortress Waffle House

For nearly 4 weeks, SYNDE had been turning Waffle House into one of the most militarized wormholes in EVE. Their primary focus while rage rolling was to burn HAWKS C6 farms. They also would routinely roll into the many SYNDE C6 farms. When they did, they would ping the owner, and ask if they had any dreads or force auxiliaries in the farm. Each day, more and more dreads and FAXes moved into Waffle House as SYNDE consolidated their strength. After the SUGAR eviction, a SYNDE allied FC asked Cyrus Kurush who the next HAWKS target might be. Kurush dismissed those concerns. HAWKS had simply taken advantage of a weak alliance member. SUGAR had been ill-prepared to defend their home, and they had stupidly given the keys to the castle to an HK spy. SYNDE had done what they could to salvage the situation, but there was nothing more to it than that. The SYNDE allied FC suggested that it would make sense for HAWKS to try to evict TURBO or Hole Control, or perhaps even SYNDE’s C6 home hole. SYNDE leadership did not think HAWKS would be willing to make an aggressive move like that, but their allied corps at that meeting took note. They began making contingency plans. Yes, the coalition had just lost a home hole. Yes, Kurush was right – that was mostly on them. But TURBO and HC were not interested in being next. That was on them too. They quietly and carefully began unanchoring citadels in their home systems, and encouraged their members to begin withdrawing their assets and ships to high sec. At this critical point in the conflict, on the heels of a major setback, the two biggest wormhole partners of SYNDE were looking to their own survival and not to the successful prosecution of the war. At no point in this meeting did SYNDE or any allied FC consider Waffle House as a potential target.

Actually Yes, A Potential Target

As soon as SUGAR’s home system fell, HAWKS, HK and NOVAC leadership discussed the next step. To them, it was clear: SYNDE staging. They were well aware of the increasing and ongoing fortification of Waffle House. This presented a major challenge, but also a massive opportunity to cripple the SYNDE coalition. HAWKS discussed what would be needed to accomplish this task, and weighed the risks and rewards. Coalition leadership felt that if they got an eviction fleet into Waffle House, it would be perhaps a 50/50 shot. If they succeeded, the war was won. If they lost, it would be a blow but one they could recover from. HAWKS, HK and NOVAC had been fighting in wormholes for a long tine. They knew their members were experienced, adaptable and resilient. A key strategist laid out the necessary elements – they would need a full coalition Vulture comp, along with a large number of capitals. They estimated that SYNDE had over 50 dreads and 12 FAX in Waffle House. If the HAWKS coalition took hole control during EUTZ, they would have several hours of hole control during which to infiltrate their own capitals using the exact same process as SYNDE had – connect to friendly farms, and import 3 capital-class ships from each. The strategist asked the FC team how many capitals would be needed to win. “I need 30 dreads by USTZ, or we probably feed everything,” came the reply.

“I think we’re being evicted”

SYNDE genuinely believed that Waffle House was unassailable. During EUTZ on Friday, Apr 19th, it was assailed. Two HAWKS fleets were mustered, with the first heading to a designated high sec staging and the other remaining in Jita. The split fleet was necessary since each fleet was nearly large enough to roll the wormhole leading into Waffle House. After enjoying success with their early-war Vulture comp HAWKS had added the Nightmare battleship to the mix. This both increased that comp’s punching power, and also significantly increased its mass and made it harder to infil into a contested wormhole. The initial HAWKS fleet calmly entered the Waffle House wormhole chain, and transited several holes before jumping unopposed and unnoticed into Waffle House. HAWKS immediately did two things – set up a POS and take hole control. As u/loroseco (HK leadership) explained regarding their choice of J115844 as the HK staging, being able to “moon block” is an essential part of defending a wormhole from eviction. A single open moon gives a potential evictor an opportunity to anchor a “staging POS” from which they can assemble ships and provide a safe haven for their fleet. Most wormhole groups will “moon block” home holes and any other important wormholes with POS in order to force any invader to kill a POS before they are able to get a real foothold in the system. The home holes of every major participant in this war were moon blocked. Waffle House, the impenetrable fortress, was not. Within minutes of their arrival, HAWKS had a fully functional POS from which to stage their eviction. It is perhaps overstating it to suggest that they took hole control, as SYNDE did not have it to be taken. Primarily a USTZ corp, SYNDE had a limited presence in other TZs. HAWKS rolled the connection they had used to infil Waffle House, and then scanned out the new chain. They located a suitable low sec entry, and the other alliance Vulture fleet left Jita and raced to join the eviction. It was at this point that a lone SYNDE line member woke up, yawned, grabbed his favorite coffee and sat down at his PC. As he did every morning, he undocked his covert ops ship with the nice skin, dropped probes and scanned out the new static. He warped to the new static sig in his Pacifier. He landed in a bubble, surrounded by over 100 hostile ships. Cautiously putting down the vanilla latte he had been enjoying, the prober hopped on SYNDE comms and with shaky voice declared “I think we’re being evicted.” Frustrated by the lack of a response, he typed in the same message in Discord pinging his CEO Cyrus Kurush directly. A few minutes later, a small SYNDE contingent bravely (and bizarrely) warped to that same static, landed in the bubble, and were promptly sacrificed to the awaiting fleet. That bizarre and inconsequential 10b loss would barely register in an eviction that would feature the biggest fight of the Wormhole War. HAWKS got the rest of their subcap fleet into Waffle House. They reinforced the two SYNDE fortizars uncontested and anchored their own on grid. They then began quickly rolling, looking to get in any capitals they could get their hands on. The clock was ticking.

The Battle to Decide the War

For SYNDE, this was a surprise. It was not some disaster. It was certainly not great to see 100 HAWKS ships in their staging, but Kurush knew that come USTZ he would be able to out-form and out-class anything HAWKS could muster. But why leave anything to chance? He huddled up with Mark Resurrectus, head of TURBO and his closest ally. They formed a plan - and it was a good plan. HAWKS were already in a deep hole, losing farms daily. This reckless move by HAWKS could be just what SYNDE needed to bring HAWKS to the new wormhole community table, a table chaired by SYNDE. SYNDE had not planned on it, but this could well be the trap they needed to erase an entire HAWKS alliance fleet. The plan was simple: move the entire SYNDE coalition into a new staging wormhole. Not just SYNDE and TURBO, but all the SYNDE wormhole allies. This had been suggested earlier in the war, but now was when it actually made sense to bring the full coalition together in one wormhole. Form a full fleet specially theorycrafted to wipe the HAWKS Vulture/Nightmare fleet. Then rage roll during late EUTZ /early USTZ. Although the wormhole wing of their coalition favored late USTZ, Mark Resurrectus had taken the lead in coordinating with the Initiative. Init was willing to support, but not during USTZ. If they wanted Init, it needed to be EUTZ. Kurush and Resurrectus felt that was a no-brainer. It was time to end this war now, using all the weapons they had carefully honed over the prior year – and the most important weapon they had was the Initiative. The three-part plan was solid – rage roll and infil a heavy anti-Vulture fleet into Waffle House. Once that subcap group rolls in, log on all available dreads and FAXes in Waffle House along with additional subcaps. Combine those two fleets, take hole control, scan out a chain and get Init in. Once HAWKS saw their full coalition numbers, they would stand down and get hellcamped. SYNDE could erase the HAWKS fleet and fortizar at their convenience. Exfil was not an option. They could self-destruct or pod out, but Waffle House would be their graveyard.

April 21st: D-Day at the Waffle House

At 1600 on Sunday, April 21st, SYNDE coalition had completed their preparations in their new staging system. Their entire coalition was on hand, ready to do battle. Cyrus Kurush had secured the support of his top two FCs: former HK member Phi Feynmann and wormhole pariah Peter Moonlight. They formed an arty Tempest fleet, one that could outrange the pesky Vulture fleet, supported by Cyclone Fleet Issues, rail Megathron Navy Issues and Leshaks. They pinged all Waffle House capitals to be logged in but stay docked in their fortizar. TURBO lead (and by now also CCP employee) Mark Resurrectus shared with SYNDE coalition leadership that not only was Init on standby to join them, but that he had secured a commitment from a prominent Goonswarm FC that they would also bring a fleet to support. This declaration by Resurrectus brought some fear and confusion to the HAWKS side. There had been no Init ping. There was no evidence that either Init or Goons had formed. Were they pre-staged? In what ships? Where were they? Locator agents worked overtime as HAWKS desperately tried to determine Init and Goon locations and intentions. The hole control team in Waffle House binged on caffeine and paranoia and rolled the Waffle House static if so much as an Ibis was spotted in chain. The reality was less exciting. The SUGAR support effort had been a debacle as far as Initiative leadership was concerned. A full Initiative bomber fleet had pinged, formed, transited and waited fruitlessly in a shattered wormhole for nearly two hours. Following that disappointment, Initiative leadership had determined that they would no longer form fleets for SYNDE unless content was at hand. The Initiative had claimed several high class wormhole farms – both directly from SYNDE at the start of the war and also by evicting a number of HAWKS farms. They had gotten much of what had been promised to them in the way of high-class wormhole farms. They had not, however, gotten to enjoy the sort of pvp content that their line members wanted and expected. It had turned into a series of Resurrectus requests for fleets, only for those fleets to get no content. It had been many weeks since their tengu fleet had wiped the HAWKS ravens during the Voidlings eviction. That had been a lot of run, but that was a long time ago. Since then, SYNDE had destroyed a lot of HAWKS farms but seemed to be losing most fleet fights. So on April 21st, when Resurrectus gave them the green light that rolling had begun, the Initiative said “ok great”. An “ok great” that Resurrectus interpreted at “fleet will be ready to go when you get hole control” and an “ok great” that the Initiative meant as “good luck, let us know if you actually get a way in and we may support”. At precisely 2031 EVE time, the SYNDE coalition rolled into Waffle House. D-Day had begun.

Tales of a Waffle Stomp: I’m Not Mad, Just Disappointed

As soon as SYNDE began jumping their Tempest fleet into the Waffle House, HAWKS rolled the Waffle House static in a bid to prevent any SYNDE allies from coming through that wormhole chain. Longtime HK FC Kappa Pride would be leading the HAWKS fleet on this day, taking time away from his FRT FC duties to support HAWKS as he had throughout the war so far. Pride was a bit baffled by the comp opposing him – Tempests are not a fleet ship used much at all in wormholes. Once he got a good count of the enemy fleet loading grid in Waffle House, he added the 100 plus in the SYNDE fortizar and compared that to his own fleet. Pride was confident he could hold his own on grid as long as they had not significantly under counted the SYNDE caps available to his counterpart, Cyrus Kurush. Several things happened in quick succession. Pride called for HAWKS subcaps to undock, and 150 vultures alongside 70 nightmares began loading grid on the HAWKS fortizar. Kurush called for both subs and caps to undock from the SYNDE fortizar. Combined, Kurush had at his disposal 120 cyclone fleet issues and 55 tempests. With wormhole mass limits tight, Kurush was relying on FAX to provide him with logistics. He was confident that his capital superiority would win the day. He expected approximately 30 dreads along with 6 FAX. What he got was a dozen dreads and 4 FAX. This was the immediate aftermath of the SUGAR eviction then the rapid infil and reinforcings of the SYNDE fortizars in Waffle House. Many SYNDE line members – fearing the worst – had turned their combat caps into suitcases. They had repackaged subcaps, and put all the most valuable hulls and mods into their capital. Waffle House might fall, but they wouldn’t lose their most valuable ships and mods. When the call came for dreads to get ready, some got ready. Many thought to themselves “I can’t lose this, they won’t miss this one dread”. On the day and in that moment, Kurush found himself missing them all desperately. There was nothing to be done but play the hand he was dealt. There would be plenty of time for recriminations and blame later. As soon as the new static wormhole was probed out in Waffle House, Kurush directed all his available capitals to warp to it at 0. They were going to make a stand and take hole control. If they got a favorable chain – please let there be a Fountain Nullsec connection – Kurush could bring in his trump card. Three SYNDE probers jumped the static, SYNDE HICs and Sabres put up bubbles to keep the W237 static clear of HAWKS ships. As the caps entered warp, he fleet warped the CFI and Tempest fleet along with them. HAWKS FC Pride watched this in almost stunned disbelief. He kept refreshing his directional scanner and checking the enemy numbers. He was certain that a large number of dreads and possibly FAX remained docked in the SYNDE fort, awaiting the best moment to escalate. That was fine, Pride had been leading HAC fleets since Kurush was recruiting for a C4 corp. He directed the HAWKS allied fleet to align to the wormhole, and initiated fleet warp at range from the now heavily bubbled wormhole grid. The HAWKS fleet landed on grid and both sides opened up with all the violence they could bring to bear on a hated enemy. Kurush directed his anchor to keep their subcaps near their FAX logi and then focused his broadcasts on HAWKS Vultures. Kurush was confident that that his 4 triaged armor FAX would be more than enough to keep his DPS ships alive. Pride immediately began primarying SYNDE links Claymores. 90 seconds into the fight, HAWKS had lost two Vultures while SYNDE had lost all 6 of their command ships. Each of them died before any FAX reps landed. A FAX pilot shared afterwards that he had not had time to set up his watchlist, and had only had time to watchlists the FCs in monitors when battle was joined. Only 2 of the 6 Claymores even broadcast, and those broadcasts came too late. As Pride shifted HAWKS fire to the SYNDE CFIs, Kurush discovered to his horror that without information command links, the HAWKS fleet was now outside his fleet’s targeting range. The HAWKS fleet now outranged him. The faster HAWKS comp would be able to maintain range control indefinitely. Pride called for HAWKS sabres to make sure that the SYNDE caps remained tackled, and then could barely broadcast SYNDE targets fast enough. The rout was on, not two minutes into the fight. The HAWKS FC had asked for “30 dreads by USTZ” as an essential ingredient for this to be a competitive fight. Obsessive hole control, rage rolling and cap infiltrating had gotten HAWKS more than double that amount. Still concerned about potential cap escalation, HAWKS undocked two dozen dreads and warped them to the combat grid to eliminate the SYNDE dreads and FAXes. Over 30 pvp dreads remained docked. They would not be needed. At one point during the brawl, Pride had asked if logistics reps were holding. The logi FC replied that he was not sure as there had not been any broadcasts. Apparently, once the SYNDE links were killed, the HAWKS fleet went several minutes without a single broadcast for reps. Hundreds of ships engaged with each other, and one side was taking no damage at all. After the fight, the mood on the HAWKS side was subdued. Pride declared that it was the most disappointing large fleet fight he had ever FC’d. He had wanted and expected a fierce and challenging contest. Once their links ships were killed, SYNDE line members and their allied pilots on grid could only wait for their turn to die. It was a defeat of the highest order for SYNDE. One SYNDE dread escaped by jumping the static. Every other SYNDE capital on grid died. They lost 111 of 117 CFIs. They lost 51 of 54 tempests – with the 3 who lived benefiting from a HAWKS bifrost who booshed 4 of them out of the bubbles and then could only hold tackle on 1 while the other 3 warped off grid. In total, HAWKS lost 72 ships – mostly Sabres – for a total of 20b lost. SYNDE lost 419 ships for a total of 343b. This was and remains the biggest single fight in the Wormhole War. Seething, SYNDE lead Cyrus Kurush was not close to waving a white flag. They still had the numbers. They still had the Nullsec trump card. They just needed the right opportunity to bring it all to bear. Mostly, he needed his corp and his allies to show the same heart and commitment that he had throughout. They needed a morale boost. They needed to log in and and give SYNDE the victory they so rightly deserved for all their planning, all their effort. It was time to get back to the core strategy: burning HAWKS farms. HAWKS could not stop it before, and they could not stop it now. If HAWKS thought knocking out Waffle House would stop the SYNDE war machine, they were delusional. Well-funded and highly-motivated, Kurush would turn this around.

Taking Stock: Wormhole War to Date

There are a few key dates of note thus far. The official war began on March 24th. The SYNDE “Mission Almost Accomplished” coalition meeting and ultimatum to HAWKS took place around April 7th. The above Waffle House staging loss and brawl took place on April 21st. I once again credit u/lynkfox for his excellent work here - all below numbers are directly from his labors. Looking then at those two different two-week periods tells a powerful and factual story:

EARLY WAR (Mar 24-Apr 6)

Structures: SYNDE killed 15 fortizars and 23 other citadels (454b killed) while HAWKS killed 4 fortizars and 9 other citadels (122b killed). It was their primary focus, and SYNDE was flat-out dominating this phase of the war winning by nearly a 4:1 isk ratio. Fights: HAWKS killed 644 ships (343b) to SYNDE killing 485 ships (163b). Despite the strategic advantages of surprise and pre-war coordination, SYNDE was losing on grid at a 2:1 ratio during the most favorable period of the war. This was a harbinger of things to come. Overall: SYNDE blew up 617b in HAWKS ships and structures, losing 465b in the process. SYNDE held a major advantage in structure kills and but was clearly struggling at times on grid against HAWKS.

MID WAR (Apr 7-Apr 21)

Following the triumphal SYNDE coalition meeting, things began to go very badly for that side. Structures: With NOVAC joining the HAWKS side, HAWKS began aggressively retaking farms. Eager to retaliate for the early-war losses, HAWKS and their allies also began systematically taking SYNDE farms that had largely gone untouched during the first two weeks of the war. During these two mid-war weeks, SYNDE killed 3 fortizars and 19 other citadels (171b lost). SYNDE was pushed off key fortizar timers by HAWKS defenders multiple times. HAWKS destroyed 13 SYNDE fortizars and 34 other citadels during this same period (578b lost). The 4:1 SYNDE advantage in the early war turned into a 3:1 HAWKS advantage during this mid war period. Fights: Including the Waffle stomping, HAWKS killed 1575 SYNDE ships (769b), losing 1445 ships (282b) in the process for a nearly 3:1 ratio. As the war was progressing, SYNDE continued to be unable to win any major fleet fight. Overall: As the war hit the one-month mark, SYNDE had lost 1.3t in assets while killing 0.5t in HAWKS assets. By any verifiable measure, things had gone from bad to worse for the aggressors. In the next part, Kurush and Resurrectus will rally their SYNDE coalition troops for a final big push against the resurgent HAWKS war machine. Stay tuned for a new coalition staging, new comps, new tactics, successful spycraft, more Nullsec batphones, different results!