Imagine for a moment that you are flying a Carrier, in this case a Thanatos, to do some PvE work in Eve Online. Now imagine that you are running a tad hot in that Thanny, the rat people are hitting you harder than expected and you are getting close to half-armor. You leave the site and jump two star gates, the same two you jumped earlier, back to the safe harbor of an NPC station. Seems extremely risky, but let's stick with the story here. Now, apparently, you hit the dock button and scoot off to use the restroom, or whatever you need to do. Unfortunately, as we all know by now, that dock button doesn't always work. And your Thanny is still sitting outside the station.
Sounds bad. But what if I told you that safe harbor NPC station is in Ouelletta. And, even worse, it is the home station of a group of nefarious pirates. Now that story suddenly gets much, much worser.
What you didn't know was that you were spotted when you arrived in local. And the call went out in fleet chat and in corp chat, "Thanny on scan." I was 7 jumps away when that call hit the airwaves and I was just about to slide in on a Comet. I immediately changed course and burned home. As did others that were online at the time. Thanks to Nihilaus Vause spotting your ship, we were all on our way home. It only took us a few minutes to organize a response, a rather rag-tag response, but an effective one. And we waited.
Nihilaus baited in the open. I sat in station inside my own Thanny. Several others cloaked up around the system in bombers. The rest waited with me inside, ready to pounce. Meanwhile we all tried to figure out what was happening. Was this the vanguard of a trap? Did the carrier have a cloak on it? Where did it go when it vanished from local? Was it from a Wormhole? None of us knew. A solo carrier in low sec is not a common sight these days. You could literally smell the smoke from our brains.
And then it just landed on station and sat there.
And sat there.
So I undocked in my Thanny and locked it up. No response. And then slowly it started moving, aligning possibly... so I made the call and launched my fighters. Others landed and got points so it couldn't run off. It was then that I realized it was already in half armor and surprisingly it died rather quickly. Certainly my two Imperial Navy Neuts and three squads of Firbolg IIs at zero range didn't help.
Now imagine you come back to your computer not only to find your carrier hasn't docked, but it is also under attack from another Thanatos and a swarm of nasty pirates. Some days are much worse than others.
Unless you are a pirate.