Hitting a Mistake

The weekend.  Always a good time to look for unwilling playmates.  Today I am on and off my computer, as I do things IRL. My system should be zipped since my old static should have just died.  So I return to the computer to see what I can find.

A glance at my scanner window shows that there is a new signature.  I check for where it is, then warp into the middle of nowhere to launch probes.  I find the wormhole in two iterations, mindful that there may well be scouts in my system who would want to see that.  Wormhole found, I pull probes immediately and warp over to look.

The new wormhole's color shows it as going to C4.  So, C4c.  (C4b is reserved for the system through our static.)  As I sit and ponder, I see a Cheetah appear near it and jump.  Interesting.  Perhaps there is someone I can kill on the other side.  I'll need all the eyes I can get, and I have no corpies on line.  So I log out my Jita alt, then log Otto, my sidekick, on my second account.  He's already in his Cheetah, ready to sniff around the enemy system.  By this time the enemy scout should be long gone, so Otto warps to the wormhole directly and jumps.

Nobody is at the wormhole uncloaked.  A tower with a Cheetah is on dscan.  That's my guy.  I quickly move off the wormhole and cloak, then I start looking for the tower.  It's at the system's outer planet.  I warp over to it, then isolate it at its moon.  I warp up for a look.

The Cheetah is not actually my guy. It is empty.  However, as I sit there, a Vargur warps up.  Hmm. The enemy system C4c is medium sized.  Perhaps there is something happening on the other side, out of dscan range.

I warp over to a conveniently located ore anom.  THen I dscan, and sure enough.  There's no force field on scan, so no active tower.  But there is indeed a Golem on scan.  No wrecks, though, so I  wonder what it is doing.  Perhaps bashing a structure?  But then I dscan against and there is a sleeper wreck.  OK, they are running an anom.  I quickly bookmark all anoms, then search among them for the one with the Golem and wrecks.  I find it, except that now it is a Golem, wrecks, and Thanatos.  Two marauders running sites, and they intentionally opened their system first?  That makes no sense at all.  But there they are.

Soon they are joined by a Vargur.  One of them pops out a mobile tractor (of course).  So I bookmark that, and also start moving back away from it 150km to a perch.

The Thanatos deploys Firbolgs, which is when I finally realize that Thanatoses are carriers and not marauders.  They are not very good at this.  It sends the Firbolgs 100km to the battleships.  And it also leaves them on cruisers.  (One can imagine very little damage.)   Since they are taking quite a while, once I have my perch ready, I warp out to the tower to get eyes on.  Only the unmanned Cheetah is there.  OK, this is my opportunity to jump Von in, in my Manticore.  I am hoping to catch a salvager.  Otto remains at the tower, so I can see what they are doing.

I warp back to my perch in the anom, then wait.  Eventually I realize that the Golem is salvaging.  So I am not sure what I will be able to do here; perhaps nothing.  The enemy finish the site, then the Thanatos warps out.  And then the Vargur, too.

I could steal that.

There are still many wrecks to go, and I consider warping over to some of the battleship wrecks to grab their loot.  It's perhaps the only thing I can do at this point.  But doing that would reveal me, and I'd prefer a decent target.  So I just watch.  At their tower, the other two characters are just sitting, although the Thanatos is gone and there is second Cheetah out instead.

I sit back in the anom at my perch, trying to think of ways to be a nuisance.  A Golem's cruise missiles would not hurt me much, but it probably has drones (I was not paying enough attention earlier), and they would.

The only thing I can think of is maybe he will pull the tractor full of loot, creating a can.  If he does this routinely, I'll take a shot in the next site they run at stealing the loot right out from under his nose.   I'll have to uncloak at just the right time, but I figure that I will get a clean shot at it and can warp and/or recloak before a marauder can lock me.  But he may not pull the tractor while it is still full; you can remove the loot from a tractor unit by hand if you want.  I want to see what he does, so I warp to the can at 70km.  Now I look at the Golem up close, to see its tractor-pull in detail.  (Also I can make a nice screen shot.)

Just sitting there.

Finally, the last wreck is hauled in and salvaged.  And then, strangely, the Golem just sits there.  It's a pretty strong signal that the account is being multiboxed; already I think this is no more than two guys, and I am increasingly thinking it is just one on all three accounts. 

Looks safe.

The Golem aligns, and warps out.  He did not pick up the tractor!  (More evidence it is multiboxed.)  It's go time for me.  I did not count on a mistake like this: I am too far to get there fast and too far to warp.  I bounce off a nearly planet and warp to the tractor at 10km.  Dscan is clear.

I uncloak while I am landing, then start shooting the tractor unit as I set an orbit around it at 1000m.  Via Otto, I can see what is happening at their tower.  They cannot dscan to where I am, so I think they must still be ignorant of what I am up to.  The Golem lands on grid.  They don't do anything immediately.

It takes a minute or so to kill a tractor unit; they have a lot of structure.  But it pops before they do anything, and I think they don't know.

Gablooie!

Bank error in your favor.

 I swoop in and grab the loot.  Then I pop the tractor wreck, just to be extra mysterious. Then I cloak and move off.

Now I want to see their reaction.  I am about 10km off when I see the Vargur landing on grid.  I sails right up to where the tractor was.  Then it sits for a second, and turns and warps.

I remain in the system for some time.  They get out a Tengu and warp.  It disappears.  Then they get out a Nereus and go sit on the wormhole for a while.  Obvious bait is obvious.  I don't bite.  They keep trying, going through the wormhole for a while.  I take an opening where they are all at the tower to get Otto out.  He remains watching their hole from my side.  Then they go through to the other side, with both Tengu and Nereus, and sit for a while.  I am not sure what they are thinking here, except maybe that I'll attack the Nereus on the wormhole when it comes back in.  But I don't.

They don't start running new sites.  Eventually I pop probes and scan down their system, looking for more wormholes to explore, and also hoping that maybe I can catch them doing something later today or early tomorrow.  There are no other wormholes; the system is a dead end.  I plan to explore tonight, so I am done here now.  I head out the other way.