EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

That night, while the attackers sleep the sleep of the absolutely fatigued, the Swarm begins deploying SBUs on the gates of 49-, initiating an assault on their very own system. After the SBUs go live, Swarm capitals siege the iHub, knocking it into reinforced for a day - which also flips the Swarm-owned SBU's on each gate into an invulnerable state until the outpost becomes vulnerable. 

The implications take some time to dawn on the attacking forces, but when they do, the reaction is explosive. In order to successfully attack the 49- outpost now, the attackers realize that they have to somehow kill the invulnerable SBUs, replace them with their own SBUs, guard their onlining SBUs for three hours, and then attack the station. Complicating matters further, the Swarm could offline their SBUs with a button-click, instantly 'restarting' the siege of the outpost if it was under attack, forcing the attackers to online new SBUs. The attacker's task wouldn't be impossible, but it would be miserable; now they would have to win a fight at 4:00 in the morning local time to force the SBUs offline, then stay up another three hours or longer to put up their own, staying up well into the work-day. 

Enraged, the attackers petition, only to discover that this is a legitimate (if unprecedented) use of game mechanics. They choose to go forward with their assault on the outpost anyway - only to discover the second trick up the the defender's sleeve, a heretofore-unused cynosural system jammer. Since the system had never yet been jammed, for weeks the attackers had relied upon moving their capitals in and out of 49- with impunity. Now 400 defenders were waiting for them with a brand-new jammer deathstar in a system still 'under siege' by the defender's own SBUs.

Calling for a meeting, the leaders of -A-, SysK and IT did not like the situation they were faced with; despite having alarm-clocked again for the fourth time in a row, they chose to cancel the attack at the last moment. The final siege of 49- ended without a fight. The outpost was saved and the attackers gave up in disgust, enraged and embittered by the sheer number of nights they had been forced fruitlessly to stay awake. 

And that's how the first phase of what could be Delve III ended. Thank god for war.