A few days ago was my corporation's "Corp Night", which is our weekly get-together to run C4 or C5 PVE sites to make ISK. (We also will attack small-gang targets of opportunity if we find them, but this is rare.) We have been doing almost solely C5 sites because they pay better than C4. Because of this, our home system has gradually filled with anoms. There were enough of them that I felt it was getting embarrassing. It's like having a messy house; even if you don't have guests, you know. So we ran our own sites for a change.
Among the sites we ran were four data sites: two Unsecured Frontier Trinary Hubs, and two Unsecured Frontier Digital Nexuses. Among the four, we got one of the "site escalation" waves, which is an extra sleeper battleship and an abandoned talocan cruiser. The latter is a loot can requiring a relic analyzer, which opens via the normal minigame. It normally contains one or two hull sections in some state of repair (intact, malfunctioning, or wrecked), which are used to make T3 cruiser hulls. Typically one of the cans is worth a few million in loot; not bad, but nothing earthshaking.
Well, this time in the one talocan can, we got a small wrecked hull section. It showed no price on the mouseover, because this is a new item introduced in Rhea to build into the new tactical destroyers. In the long run, it is likely that the prices of small hulls will drop to below that of the equivalent cruiser hull. However, in the short run the prices for these hulls are very high. People are paying a huge premium for the first Confessors.
(Here's the EVE Central search for "hull section". As of this writing, Jita has the following prices for high buy/low sell:
Intact Hull Section: 23m/33m
Malfunctioning Hull Section: 2.2m/9.4m
Wrecked Hull Section: 500k/3.0m
Small Intact Hull Section: 215m/350m
Small Malfunctioning Hull Section: 100m/269m
Small Wrecked Hull Section: 36m/100m )
Nice. So moral here is: do not ignore your data sites! Even if you don't feel them worthwhile to run for the normal blue loot and salvage, warp in to check for the Talocan relic. If it is there, cargo scan it to see what it's got. If there is a "Small [X] Hull Section", you want it! Crack it in a tank with logis [update: this doesn't work; any sleepers on site means you cannot crack a can], or clear the site and crack it.
Continuing with the story... the next day I noticed that all the data sites had despawned, except one. In that site, I had not bothered to open any cans because all the data cans in these sites are essentially worthless. (Yes, I scanned them all. I keep hoping for a nice blueprint or something, but it does not seem to be in the loot tables.) Anyway, this one extra half-dead site left a slightly unkempt system. It annoyed me enough that I decided to fly over there and crack a can just to get rid of the site.
So I jumped into my exploration Buzzard, and warped on it. Much to my surprise, there was a Sleeper battleship on grid! I tried to cloak, but no, too near a can! Uh oh... Warp! Warp! ... and I escaped. Whew. As I warped off, I noticed an abandoned Talocan cruiser.
Now, I am quite certain that can was not there two days ago. If it was, I'd have looted it. Nor was the Sleeper battleship. I'd have noticed that, too, when I entered the site and scanned all the cans.
What happened here? Evidently, you get a "die roll" each time a sleeper data site is instantiated, and if lucky, you get the escalation wave (which includes the Talocan can). We did not get it on corp night, but then the site got de-instantiated at downtime. Coming back two days later, I instantiated the site again; the site records that all the sleepers are dead, but I got a fresh check for the escalation, and more luck.
So, the moral here is: when you check out a sleeper data site, and there is not a Talocan relic, or there is but it contains relatively low-value stuff... don't give up! Come back the next day, and the next, and the next, and try again! (Sites despawn on the fourth downtime after they are first instantiated, so four tries is what you get.)
Showing posts with label Exploration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exploration. Show all posts
Friday, December 12, 2014
Sunday, November 30, 2014
In a Relic Site
It's Thanksgiving weekend. Lots of people playing EVE, including lots of newbs. I am in wspace as normal, and I've been neglecting things here a bit while I answer questions. Time for a roam.
I set off up into our C5 static, but nothing is doing there. There's no incident wormholes, just its static. So I don't open the far static. Instead, I run small sites, raking in 60m ISK in about a half hour including scanning. Not bad. Now down into C4b.
C4b is also empty, and with no wormholes except its statics, it also seems likely to be zipped. OK, I'll run small sites here, too. I clean out four gas sites and one ore anom, getting lucky on nanoribbons this time for 90m ISK. Then I head back home to get back into my Manticore, and return to C4a to explore its C2 and C5 connections. I try the C2 first, under the general theory that lower in wspace I am more likely to find easy kills. Thanks are due CCP for putting in nullsec data and relic sites into C1/C2/C3. These are great places to look for ganks.
C2a, like the two previous systems, feels disused. My first clue is no towers or ships on dscan. The second clue is the pile of 20 sigs. There are also 10 anoms; not that many given so many sigs. Now I warp around to see an outer planet. No tower or ships: that's my third clue. Also a check of the system in tripwire shows that is has lowsec/C2 statics; not as desirable as a highsec.
I think I have a backwater system here, perhaps untouched for days; that's my strong intuition. More than one of those sigs are going to be data/relic sites that I can solo. So, before doing anything further, I head back home to get my exploration Buzzard. Not only can it run the sites (with both relic and data analyzer IIs), it scans considerably faster too. I scan in C4a and C4b on the way home, and back. No activity. Good.
I return to C2a, fire probes, and start scanning. After some considerable time, I find a fourth clue: this system has piled up a large number of those nullsec data/relic sites. In fact, there are ten of them (!), and also two sleeper data sites. There are also, unfortunately, a large number of wormholes: five of them, plus the one I entered through. So there is some risk in hacking. But I figure it is worth the risk, especially if I cherry-pick. And also if I cache loot. (The remaining sigs are gas sites.)
I head into each site, scanning cans to see what's there. Two of the data sites have an augmented decryptor, so I go ahead and do the better cans there. Many of the relic sites have decent tech II salvage, and I run four of them. Each time I get more than 10m ISK or so, I run out to a safespot I make in the outer system, to dump all the loot in a jetcan. If I get killed, at least I won't lose most of the loot. I don't get killed. And... it's almost dinner time in the real world. So that is enough. I head back home to J213139, 150m ISK worth of salvage and other stuff aboard. Bye EVE, for now.
And... back! Food heated, family fed, things said, time's fled, The Boy abed. Now time for some hunting. I head into C5 just for a look, including popping out into nullsec on the off chance I can find anyone there. I don't. I am eager to head back to C2a... with all those exploration sites. The six I ran will be gone, but the four I passed on should still be there. I've got the stuff I want out of there. Now I want to open it up, get explorers in, and kill them. Time to fly to those five wormholes.
All of the wormholes are outgoing. One is the lowsec static, one is a small wormhole to C2, and the other three are connections to C2. I sense a trend. I guess that just as exploration sites have dead-ended here, so have random wormholes. Interesting pattern.
I head into lowsec first. It's a faction warfare system in Minmatar control, evidently. That's not likely to attract many explorers. Then into C2b, C2c, and C2d. None of them are very promising. Towers in each, nobody home, no probes, and nothing obvious going on. Sigh.
I head back into C2a, and run out of steam. I think I'll just sit here, in the inner system, where I can dscan to all of the sites that are left. And I will join rookie chat and answer questions.
I join rookie chat. 2600+... yeah, I think they may need me. Anyway, I get some good answers in. One guy has a devil of a problem: he has no money to speak of, and he bought PLEX, but he cannot sell them because the taxes are too high. (Evidently, a sale is not permitted if you cannot pay the tax up front? Seems strange to me. But that was his report.) Anyway, I PM him and give him 10m ISK to allow the transaction to work... and it gets strange from there. But that's another story. He eventually gets it done and pays me back. Ah, not scammed by a rookie.
I am occasionally dscanning in C2a, not finding anything.
More than one question of "how do I make ISK fastest"? That's a real good question, one I don't really have a solid answer to. The boilerplate is "mining, running missions, ratting, factional warfare". I have the feeling too many of them are going to go mine, and that's not really what they want to do, but they know how, it's there. I think CCP should have a faction warfare mission in the advanced military sequence, where you have to go to a complex, fight a rat, spin a button for 15 minutes, and get bacon. Maybe have a second more powerful rat warp in on you. That would give newbs a taste of it and enough familiarity to hopefully try it out.
Anyway, the night is getting on. It's 11:15, and I'll be leaving EVE in a half an hour or so for bed. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, in C2a, but probes. Mmm. Well, probes don't necessarily mean anything. But they might. I keep more than half an eye on the dscan. I answer more questions.
Then I see a Probe. It has a character's name on it... hmm, could be a rookie. Should I kill a rookie? Well, yes. I should. I try to find it with dscan, but it is nowhere I can determine. Then it cloaks. The probes are still out there, so: patience. More questions.
Now I see the Probe again. I narrow it down to fifteen degrees on dscan, but it's in no known site. I have the feeling he is in a site, since he is not cloaked for a long time. But it must be a site that spawned since I was scanning. I could warp to the outer planet, launch probes and attempt to scan him down. But, I already know of other sites, and there is a chance that I'll blow it scanning, and he always has his chance to see probes. So, not a good idea. I'll wait. He'll get to another site eventually.
He finishes, then drops off my narrowed dscan. I widen it to full, and he's still uncloaked... probably moving to another site. I once again narrow it down, and this time, he is in a site I scanned earlier. Ha! Go time.
I warp to the site at 10km. It's one with widely-spaced cans, all of which are quite far from the warp-in. The Probe is at a can about 70km from me, hacking it.
I start moving back to get a perch, but that will take too long. Instead, I spin around the view to the opposite direction of the cans. There's a handy planet there in just the right direction, 3 AU from me. Perfect for making a perch. I warp to it at 100km, then back to the data site, again at 100km. Now I end up more than 150km from each of the cans. Perfect. I make a bookmark.
The Probe is approaching the most distant can, 200+ km from me. I can see him scanning it. I am ready to warp as soon as the overview indicates he is hacking it. But... he doesn't hack it. Uh oh. I guess he is being selective, just as I was earlier, and this is a crappy can. OK, I will wait. There will be another can.
He moves off toward another can. Microwarping, from the looks of it. I consider warping to the can to attack as he arrives, but I'd really rather attack him when he has the minigame up. He has several more cans to try, so I will wait.
There is time for me to kill. I check out the character I am stalking to see if he's a newb.
He's not new. In fact he is two years older than I am. Good. No qualms about killing and podding him, then. (What's he doing in a Probe?)
He finally gets to the can he's headed to. Again I see him cargo scan. This can, though, he tries to open.
I warp in at 10km. He is circling the can, and I end up about 13000m from him, but he is heading toward me.
I approach him, then uncloak and start firing. My lock completes. He's pinned! He heads away from me. My torps hit: shields down. He heads away from me, but he cannot microwarp, and apparently does not have an afterburner. The range stays at about 4500m. His ship is little or no faster. A second volley: shields wiped, armor almost down. A third: deep structure. And zoom! He warps.
WHAT? Oh. He must have had warp core stabilizers; that's why he had to cargo scan from so close. A good trick... I might think about it for my Buzzard. I dunno. It's nice to cargo scan from afar, but it's also nice to thwart gankers.
Oh well. Live and learn. Time to go to bed.
I set off up into our C5 static, but nothing is doing there. There's no incident wormholes, just its static. So I don't open the far static. Instead, I run small sites, raking in 60m ISK in about a half hour including scanning. Not bad. Now down into C4b.
C4b is also empty, and with no wormholes except its statics, it also seems likely to be zipped. OK, I'll run small sites here, too. I clean out four gas sites and one ore anom, getting lucky on nanoribbons this time for 90m ISK. Then I head back home to get back into my Manticore, and return to C4a to explore its C2 and C5 connections. I try the C2 first, under the general theory that lower in wspace I am more likely to find easy kills. Thanks are due CCP for putting in nullsec data and relic sites into C1/C2/C3. These are great places to look for ganks.
C2a, like the two previous systems, feels disused. My first clue is no towers or ships on dscan. The second clue is the pile of 20 sigs. There are also 10 anoms; not that many given so many sigs. Now I warp around to see an outer planet. No tower or ships: that's my third clue. Also a check of the system in tripwire shows that is has lowsec/C2 statics; not as desirable as a highsec.
I think I have a backwater system here, perhaps untouched for days; that's my strong intuition. More than one of those sigs are going to be data/relic sites that I can solo. So, before doing anything further, I head back home to get my exploration Buzzard. Not only can it run the sites (with both relic and data analyzer IIs), it scans considerably faster too. I scan in C4a and C4b on the way home, and back. No activity. Good.
I return to C2a, fire probes, and start scanning. After some considerable time, I find a fourth clue: this system has piled up a large number of those nullsec data/relic sites. In fact, there are ten of them (!), and also two sleeper data sites. There are also, unfortunately, a large number of wormholes: five of them, plus the one I entered through. So there is some risk in hacking. But I figure it is worth the risk, especially if I cherry-pick. And also if I cache loot. (The remaining sigs are gas sites.)
I head into each site, scanning cans to see what's there. Two of the data sites have an augmented decryptor, so I go ahead and do the better cans there. Many of the relic sites have decent tech II salvage, and I run four of them. Each time I get more than 10m ISK or so, I run out to a safespot I make in the outer system, to dump all the loot in a jetcan. If I get killed, at least I won't lose most of the loot. I don't get killed. And... it's almost dinner time in the real world. So that is enough. I head back home to J213139, 150m ISK worth of salvage and other stuff aboard. Bye EVE, for now.
And... back! Food heated, family fed, things said, time's fled, The Boy abed. Now time for some hunting. I head into C5 just for a look, including popping out into nullsec on the off chance I can find anyone there. I don't. I am eager to head back to C2a... with all those exploration sites. The six I ran will be gone, but the four I passed on should still be there. I've got the stuff I want out of there. Now I want to open it up, get explorers in, and kill them. Time to fly to those five wormholes.
All of the wormholes are outgoing. One is the lowsec static, one is a small wormhole to C2, and the other three are connections to C2. I sense a trend. I guess that just as exploration sites have dead-ended here, so have random wormholes. Interesting pattern.
I head into lowsec first. It's a faction warfare system in Minmatar control, evidently. That's not likely to attract many explorers. Then into C2b, C2c, and C2d. None of them are very promising. Towers in each, nobody home, no probes, and nothing obvious going on. Sigh.
I head back into C2a, and run out of steam. I think I'll just sit here, in the inner system, where I can dscan to all of the sites that are left. And I will join rookie chat and answer questions.
I join rookie chat. 2600+... yeah, I think they may need me. Anyway, I get some good answers in. One guy has a devil of a problem: he has no money to speak of, and he bought PLEX, but he cannot sell them because the taxes are too high. (Evidently, a sale is not permitted if you cannot pay the tax up front? Seems strange to me. But that was his report.) Anyway, I PM him and give him 10m ISK to allow the transaction to work... and it gets strange from there. But that's another story. He eventually gets it done and pays me back. Ah, not scammed by a rookie.
I am occasionally dscanning in C2a, not finding anything.
More than one question of "how do I make ISK fastest"? That's a real good question, one I don't really have a solid answer to. The boilerplate is "mining, running missions, ratting, factional warfare". I have the feeling too many of them are going to go mine, and that's not really what they want to do, but they know how, it's there. I think CCP should have a faction warfare mission in the advanced military sequence, where you have to go to a complex, fight a rat, spin a button for 15 minutes, and get bacon. Maybe have a second more powerful rat warp in on you. That would give newbs a taste of it and enough familiarity to hopefully try it out.
Anyway, the night is getting on. It's 11:15, and I'll be leaving EVE in a half an hour or so for bed. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, in C2a, but probes. Mmm. Well, probes don't necessarily mean anything. But they might. I keep more than half an eye on the dscan. I answer more questions.
Then I see a Probe. It has a character's name on it... hmm, could be a rookie. Should I kill a rookie? Well, yes. I should. I try to find it with dscan, but it is nowhere I can determine. Then it cloaks. The probes are still out there, so: patience. More questions.
Now I see the Probe again. I narrow it down to fifteen degrees on dscan, but it's in no known site. I have the feeling he is in a site, since he is not cloaked for a long time. But it must be a site that spawned since I was scanning. I could warp to the outer planet, launch probes and attempt to scan him down. But, I already know of other sites, and there is a chance that I'll blow it scanning, and he always has his chance to see probes. So, not a good idea. I'll wait. He'll get to another site eventually.
He finishes, then drops off my narrowed dscan. I widen it to full, and he's still uncloaked... probably moving to another site. I once again narrow it down, and this time, he is in a site I scanned earlier. Ha! Go time.
I warp to the site at 10km. It's one with widely-spaced cans, all of which are quite far from the warp-in. The Probe is at a can about 70km from me, hacking it.
I start moving back to get a perch, but that will take too long. Instead, I spin around the view to the opposite direction of the cans. There's a handy planet there in just the right direction, 3 AU from me. Perfect for making a perch. I warp to it at 100km, then back to the data site, again at 100km. Now I end up more than 150km from each of the cans. Perfect. I make a bookmark.
 |
| At my perch. |
The Probe is approaching the most distant can, 200+ km from me. I can see him scanning it. I am ready to warp as soon as the overview indicates he is hacking it. But... he doesn't hack it. Uh oh. I guess he is being selective, just as I was earlier, and this is a crappy can. OK, I will wait. There will be another can.
He moves off toward another can. Microwarping, from the looks of it. I consider warping to the can to attack as he arrives, but I'd really rather attack him when he has the minigame up. He has several more cans to try, so I will wait.
There is time for me to kill. I check out the character I am stalking to see if he's a newb.
 |
| The target is old. |
He's not new. In fact he is two years older than I am. Good. No qualms about killing and podding him, then. (What's he doing in a Probe?)
He finally gets to the can he's headed to. Again I see him cargo scan. This can, though, he tries to open.
I warp in at 10km. He is circling the can, and I end up about 13000m from him, but he is heading toward me.
 |
| At the can. |
I approach him, then uncloak and start firing. My lock completes. He's pinned! He heads away from me. My torps hit: shields down. He heads away from me, but he cannot microwarp, and apparently does not have an afterburner. The range stays at about 4500m. His ship is little or no faster. A second volley: shields wiped, armor almost down. A third: deep structure. And zoom! He warps.
WHAT? Oh. He must have had warp core stabilizers; that's why he had to cargo scan from so close. A good trick... I might think about it for my Buzzard. I dunno. It's nice to cargo scan from afar, but it's also nice to thwart gankers.
Oh well. Live and learn. Time to go to bed.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
A Hit and a Miss
It's the weekend. The Boy is away, and so I play. EVE, that is. I log Von then I log my alt, Otto. Since I have the two accounts, I try to use the second even when I concentrate mostly on the first. Often this means ice-mining in highsec while I explore. But lately I have been logging on Otto in a Hound. I use him to monitor a wormhole in my home system, and to maybe help trap people at my tower's nasty decloak trap.
Our home system has its normal two connections. The C5 is getting old, but I have time. I check out our C4 static first. We instantiated it last night, and it only has about an hour left. I explore it down a few layers finding nothing interesting. In one final system I find a guy idling at his tower in an Occator. I watch for a few minutes. Then I realize I can't hang out here for long, and return back up the chain.
Coming back into my system, I see a new sig. That's interesting, because it is likely to indicate activity. I scan down the new sig, which is a wormhole as expected. It is a C2. I head in to explore. Meanwhile, I fly Otto over to watch it, in case anyone enters. They probably already did -- that's why the K162 is there -- but you never know.
In C2a there are four live players at a POS: two in Tengus, another in a tranport, and a scout. It's always nice to see live players. But they are not doing anything, so far as I can tell. After I sit and watch them for five minutes, I give up. I scan the system down to see what may lie beyond.
Beyond is a highsec exit, which I transit to highsec and bookmark just in case. Then I return polarized, not fearing that any more. Another sig is a second C4 connection. I head further down the chain.
In C4f, I find a guy all by himself, mining gas in a Prospect. Unfortunately, I assumed the system was empty after seeing all but an outer planet. I started scanning his sig before flying to the outer planet he is near. He sees my probes, and aborts to a POS that is also at the outer planet. I start to scan down the system including the sig he was in. He is sitting at his POS. After a while, he gets in an Anathema and goes out to scan. Presumably he has noticed my new wormhole.
I get a fancy new idea. Perhaps he will go to my new wormhole predictably. I am nearly done scanning. So I scan down the wormhole I entered. I have already bookmarked the wormhole itself, as a matter of course, when I came in. But I don't know where its signature is. Thus the scanning. I find the signature in one try since I know precisely where it is. Then I fly to it. I pull my probes.
Now I watch the enemy probes. I am waiting for them to vanish. Eventually they do. I wait 20 seconds, then I uncloak and turn on my sebo.
I am hoping that he has pulled his probes because he found my wormhole. (Presumably he should have already scanned down everything else.) He will want to bookmark the wormhole proper, so I am hoping he'll warp to the sig at zero. This is the lazy thing to do, but safe 99% of the time. I hope to be the 1%. I'll be there at zero. There is a good chance he'll be uncloaked. If so, I hope I can lock him before he can warp.
That's the plan. In fact, nothing happens. I watch dscan and after about 20 seconds I see him. We are not near his POS, so I guess he must have exited one of the other wormholes. Oh well. I'll have to keep trying this one.
There are two further systems that he might have exited to: a C1 and a C2. I randomly choose C2, and keep exploring. I don't see him there. There are three guys as a POS, doing laps just inside the force field. I watch this for some time, then give up. I re-enter C4f. I check the POS -- still gone. Then I check out C1.
I am warping around C1 to look for towers when I hear wormhole noise. Alert! It must be Otto. I focus on Otto's screen, and I see a Stratios enter. I like the look of that. Unlike cloaky T3s, Stratioses cannot be interdiction nullified. As such, they can blunder into my trap as easily as its normal victims which are covert ops frigates. I warp Otto back to my perch just off the decloak trap. I watch for a few minutes but nothing happens. Oh well.
I turn back to Von in C1. There is a guy in a Venture, but he's idle at a POS. There are some ore anoms, which he might be thinking about mining. There is no gas, there being just two sigs. So I wait, to see if he makes a move.
I hear guns. Eh? Otto! My POS guns are firing! Yes, there's the Stratios. I uncloak Otto and get his sebo on, then lock the Stratios with shaking hands. I don't want to miss this. Locked! It is dead unless it has warp core stabilization. I set Otto's orbit at 15km. I doubt the Stratios can kill me in the short time it has left, but I don't want to find out.
The Stratios attempts to get out of the trap. It clears the warp bubble, but evidently it does not have warp core stabilization. I expect the Stratios to lock me, but it does not come before the tower kills it.
I am ready, and immediately lock up the pod. Pods should be able to flee even a boosted frigate, but I guess he is so flustered from the attack that he dithers that extra second. Otto locks. He kills the pod with torpedoes.
Well, score one for little Otto. Otto the spider, sitting so patiently in his web... Otto grabs the corpse and loots as much as he can from the wreck. Nice stuff: Coreli A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating. Loot fairy loves me today. Then he gets a Coercer to salvage, even though it is T1. Leaving a wreck in your trap is a red flag.
Then Otto heads back out to sit at the C2 wormhole and watch. Maybe someone else will come in.
Back to Von. The Venture has logged out. So I head back up. Back in C4f, I fly to the POS to check and the guy who was there earlier is not there... but his Prospect is on scan! He'll be in the gas again. I dscan to verify: yes, in the gas.
I warp out to distant planet to refit to my anti-Venture fitting. I hate taking the time, but I think it will be necessary. A Prospect has no built-in warp core stabilization, but I expect it to have two points fitted because it has the low slots for it, and why not? What else helps it survive? So I waste two minutes refitting. Then I fly to the gas site (a vast frontier reservoir) at 20km.
I land on grid, and there he is, 50km away. There is only one gas cloud, the C28 cloud. Evidently he has already sucked the C32 cloud entirely. I watch for a moment to see which way he is moving. And... he is not moving. It's hard to believe: he is just sitting there sucking gas. (Listen, kids, this is a bad way to do it.) Well, he may not know how to mine safely, but I know how to take advantage of that. I move straight at him.
This will take a while, so I look around to see if there is any celestial that I might bounce off of. But there's not. So I just keep moving at him. I have to steer up a bit to avoid the cloud, but it's only a mild change of vector. Won't be long now... 21km...
I am almost to warp scrambler range: 15km. I start to rehearse in my mind what I'll do. 12km. Suddenly the gas cloud vanishes! Oh no! He'll warp for sure. In desperation, I uncloak and pulse my microwarp, and start locking. I initiate my scramblers. I hope that the lock completes and I am in range to scramble.
He vanishes. What? Ah, Prospects can cloak. He's probably warped by now, but I continue in the direction I was hoping for a lucky decloak. No such luck. He's gone.
Our home system has its normal two connections. The C5 is getting old, but I have time. I check out our C4 static first. We instantiated it last night, and it only has about an hour left. I explore it down a few layers finding nothing interesting. In one final system I find a guy idling at his tower in an Occator. I watch for a few minutes. Then I realize I can't hang out here for long, and return back up the chain.
Coming back into my system, I see a new sig. That's interesting, because it is likely to indicate activity. I scan down the new sig, which is a wormhole as expected. It is a C2. I head in to explore. Meanwhile, I fly Otto over to watch it, in case anyone enters. They probably already did -- that's why the K162 is there -- but you never know.
In C2a there are four live players at a POS: two in Tengus, another in a tranport, and a scout. It's always nice to see live players. But they are not doing anything, so far as I can tell. After I sit and watch them for five minutes, I give up. I scan the system down to see what may lie beyond.
Beyond is a highsec exit, which I transit to highsec and bookmark just in case. Then I return polarized, not fearing that any more. Another sig is a second C4 connection. I head further down the chain.
In C4f, I find a guy all by himself, mining gas in a Prospect. Unfortunately, I assumed the system was empty after seeing all but an outer planet. I started scanning his sig before flying to the outer planet he is near. He sees my probes, and aborts to a POS that is also at the outer planet. I start to scan down the system including the sig he was in. He is sitting at his POS. After a while, he gets in an Anathema and goes out to scan. Presumably he has noticed my new wormhole.
I get a fancy new idea. Perhaps he will go to my new wormhole predictably. I am nearly done scanning. So I scan down the wormhole I entered. I have already bookmarked the wormhole itself, as a matter of course, when I came in. But I don't know where its signature is. Thus the scanning. I find the signature in one try since I know precisely where it is. Then I fly to it. I pull my probes.
Now I watch the enemy probes. I am waiting for them to vanish. Eventually they do. I wait 20 seconds, then I uncloak and turn on my sebo.
I am hoping that he has pulled his probes because he found my wormhole. (Presumably he should have already scanned down everything else.) He will want to bookmark the wormhole proper, so I am hoping he'll warp to the sig at zero. This is the lazy thing to do, but safe 99% of the time. I hope to be the 1%. I'll be there at zero. There is a good chance he'll be uncloaked. If so, I hope I can lock him before he can warp.
That's the plan. In fact, nothing happens. I watch dscan and after about 20 seconds I see him. We are not near his POS, so I guess he must have exited one of the other wormholes. Oh well. I'll have to keep trying this one.
There are two further systems that he might have exited to: a C1 and a C2. I randomly choose C2, and keep exploring. I don't see him there. There are three guys as a POS, doing laps just inside the force field. I watch this for some time, then give up. I re-enter C4f. I check the POS -- still gone. Then I check out C1.
I am warping around C1 to look for towers when I hear wormhole noise. Alert! It must be Otto. I focus on Otto's screen, and I see a Stratios enter. I like the look of that. Unlike cloaky T3s, Stratioses cannot be interdiction nullified. As such, they can blunder into my trap as easily as its normal victims which are covert ops frigates. I warp Otto back to my perch just off the decloak trap. I watch for a few minutes but nothing happens. Oh well.
I turn back to Von in C1. There is a guy in a Venture, but he's idle at a POS. There are some ore anoms, which he might be thinking about mining. There is no gas, there being just two sigs. So I wait, to see if he makes a move.
I hear guns. Eh? Otto! My POS guns are firing! Yes, there's the Stratios. I uncloak Otto and get his sebo on, then lock the Stratios with shaking hands. I don't want to miss this. Locked! It is dead unless it has warp core stabilization. I set Otto's orbit at 15km. I doubt the Stratios can kill me in the short time it has left, but I don't want to find out.
The Stratios attempts to get out of the trap. It clears the warp bubble, but evidently it does not have warp core stabilization. I expect the Stratios to lock me, but it does not come before the tower kills it.
 |
| Finish him. |
I am ready, and immediately lock up the pod. Pods should be able to flee even a boosted frigate, but I guess he is so flustered from the attack that he dithers that extra second. Otto locks. He kills the pod with torpedoes.
Well, score one for little Otto. Otto the spider, sitting so patiently in his web... Otto grabs the corpse and loots as much as he can from the wreck. Nice stuff: Coreli A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating. Loot fairy loves me today. Then he gets a Coercer to salvage, even though it is T1. Leaving a wreck in your trap is a red flag.
Then Otto heads back out to sit at the C2 wormhole and watch. Maybe someone else will come in.
Back to Von. The Venture has logged out. So I head back up. Back in C4f, I fly to the POS to check and the guy who was there earlier is not there... but his Prospect is on scan! He'll be in the gas again. I dscan to verify: yes, in the gas.
I warp out to distant planet to refit to my anti-Venture fitting. I hate taking the time, but I think it will be necessary. A Prospect has no built-in warp core stabilization, but I expect it to have two points fitted because it has the low slots for it, and why not? What else helps it survive? So I waste two minutes refitting. Then I fly to the gas site (a vast frontier reservoir) at 20km.
I land on grid, and there he is, 50km away. There is only one gas cloud, the C28 cloud. Evidently he has already sucked the C32 cloud entirely. I watch for a moment to see which way he is moving. And... he is not moving. It's hard to believe: he is just sitting there sucking gas. (Listen, kids, this is a bad way to do it.) Well, he may not know how to mine safely, but I know how to take advantage of that. I move straight at him.
This will take a while, so I look around to see if there is any celestial that I might bounce off of. But there's not. So I just keep moving at him. I have to steer up a bit to avoid the cloud, but it's only a mild change of vector. Won't be long now... 21km...
 |
| Closer... closer... |
I am almost to warp scrambler range: 15km. I start to rehearse in my mind what I'll do. 12km. Suddenly the gas cloud vanishes! Oh no! He'll warp for sure. In desperation, I uncloak and pulse my microwarp, and start locking. I initiate my scramblers. I hope that the lock completes and I am in range to scramble.
He vanishes. What? Ah, Prospects can cloak. He's probably warped by now, but I continue in the direction I was hoping for a lucky decloak. No such luck. He's gone.
Monday, August 25, 2014
A Sidewalk Twenty
It's evening. I am out exploring in my Manticore. I've explored out into highsec, straight down from my home system with no branches. I am not ready to quit yet, and there are five signatures in this system. I'll scan them down and see if any are wormholes.
As it turns out, all of them are. In addition to C3a, which I came out of, there are connections to C2a, C3b, C3c, and C1a (though this one is EOL).
I poke into the EOL wormhole first, since it is most time-sensitive. (I am not much concerned with the wormhole evaporating since (a) I won't be in long unless there is a target, (b) I have a highsec, and (c) it is a C1.) A quick fly-around shows there is nothing here beyond a tower. I quickly fly back out.
Next I poke into C2a. I see probes and a Magnate from the wormhole, and no tower. This is interesting. I move off the wormhole and cloak, and attempt to figure out where the Magnate is. It is evidently out in space somewhere I cannot get at. I warp around to look for towers, and to launch my own probes out of range of the Magnate. When I am done with that, I return to the highsec wormhole. The Magnate has gone. I warp around again, but it has moved on. I scan down the system, hoping that it has gone deeper into wspace and may be returning this way. There are five wormholes, but all but one go known space: two lowsecs, my highsec (one of the statics), a nullsec.
The last wormhole is a second C2, but it is EOL. I go in for a quick look around, but the Magnate is not here, or at least if it is it is cloaked and not scanning. OK, I give up on this direction. I head back out. As I exit into highsec, there is a Hawk at the wormhole. I hold gate cloak, and strangely it enters the wormhole without even finding out who and what I am. But anyway, onward.
I head into C3b for a look around. Lots of sigs. This one has no tower and a nullsec exit. Boring. Back to highsec.
Now my last chance for action uphill from my highsec exit system. Into C3a. This one has an nothing going on, but there is a further wormhole to explore. It's a C4 system, and in I go. I scan from the wormhole as I always do.
Whoa. Did you see it? If not look again.
There's a tower with CHA and SMA. But something's missing. No force field. Yes: a bare tower with goodies waiting to be plucked. Or else... a trap.
There's a good economics joke in this vein. Two economists are walking down the street, when suddenly the first one points and says, "Hey look. A $20 bill on the sidewalk." The second economist says, "Nah, impossible. If there were, someone would have already picked it up."
I am mindful of the possibility that it is a trap, but this is easily discovered. I start looking for the tower. First its planet, which I warp to. Then it's a matter of picking the right moon.
As I narrow-band dscan for it, I am starting to think of how I might deal with a potentially very large amount of loot. As we learned last time we sacked a naked tower, there is potential to get a lot of ships. So, having an Orca can be very nice. Particularly if there are ships you can't fly. (I still can't fly the majority of T2 ships.)
I am considering bringing my alt down from Jita in his Orca. It would be a long trip... but just as I do this, Jayne logs in for his nightly PI. Now, that is good timing. Also it turns out Jeedmo, who has been online but very quiet, is active too. So now we have a decent force of characters to safely pull off moving an Orca in and out of wspace twice.
By this time I have located the tower, and flown to it at 20km. It is not online (as it must be if it was a trap). So, yes. We got ourselves a sidewalk twenty. Now, time to pick it up.
We get on coms, and I tell them what's up. I don't want to kill it yet, on the off chance that someone comes by. Instead I want to get an Orca ready first. We are going to move down our Orca from our POS in wspace, but then Jayne's alt sees that pesky Hawk down in C2a. I am not really keen to move an Orca around with it flapping about. Shall I bring down my Jita alt?
No, says Jayne. He can just buy a new Orca out in highsec. Highsec: wow. It's full of stuff that you can buy. Jayne finds a nice Orca just three jumps from us at some minor hub, for only about 30m ISK more than Jita price. We'll take it! He also buys a modest fitting for it: some stabs, some shield tank, and a cloak. Then he heads out to us.
Meanwhile, I am scanning down the system to see what other entrances there might be. (And also to activate all the things -- it is a C4.) There are no other wormholes. Well, that's easy. Jeedmo comes in to picket the C4 entrance. Jayne is picketing the C3a->hs wormhole with his main. And his alt has the Orca coming.
Now it is time to kill stuff. I start with the SMA.
Killing it takes a bit more work than I had anticipated: I use more than a full load of Scourge torps. But it dies soon enough. I am very disappointed to see an empty wreck. Nothing dropped. It turns out to have held only a single Bestower. (You can't see that in the zkillboard, but I can in game. The Bestower was T2 fit and carrying six warp disruption batteries, hence the 40m valuation.)
Jayne is ready to come in, so I tell him to do so. There has got to be something in this corporate hangar array. Right?
I kill it, and sure enough I get something. Three jetcans. Hardly a full load, but a quick look shows substantial value. And it all fits in an Orca. I bookmark a can.
Jayne enters a minute later and warps to the can. He grabs it all, turns, and flies right back out. I go out ahead of him on the offchance someone is there, but we know they aren't. And they aren't.
Out in highsec Jayne takes the Orca to a station, and contracts it to my Jita alt. Job well done.
As it turns out, all of them are. In addition to C3a, which I came out of, there are connections to C2a, C3b, C3c, and C1a (though this one is EOL).
I poke into the EOL wormhole first, since it is most time-sensitive. (I am not much concerned with the wormhole evaporating since (a) I won't be in long unless there is a target, (b) I have a highsec, and (c) it is a C1.) A quick fly-around shows there is nothing here beyond a tower. I quickly fly back out.
Next I poke into C2a. I see probes and a Magnate from the wormhole, and no tower. This is interesting. I move off the wormhole and cloak, and attempt to figure out where the Magnate is. It is evidently out in space somewhere I cannot get at. I warp around to look for towers, and to launch my own probes out of range of the Magnate. When I am done with that, I return to the highsec wormhole. The Magnate has gone. I warp around again, but it has moved on. I scan down the system, hoping that it has gone deeper into wspace and may be returning this way. There are five wormholes, but all but one go known space: two lowsecs, my highsec (one of the statics), a nullsec.
The last wormhole is a second C2, but it is EOL. I go in for a quick look around, but the Magnate is not here, or at least if it is it is cloaked and not scanning. OK, I give up on this direction. I head back out. As I exit into highsec, there is a Hawk at the wormhole. I hold gate cloak, and strangely it enters the wormhole without even finding out who and what I am. But anyway, onward.
I head into C3b for a look around. Lots of sigs. This one has no tower and a nullsec exit. Boring. Back to highsec.
Now my last chance for action uphill from my highsec exit system. Into C3a. This one has an nothing going on, but there is a further wormhole to explore. It's a C4 system, and in I go. I scan from the wormhole as I always do.
 |
| Something here is off. |
Whoa. Did you see it? If not look again.
There's a tower with CHA and SMA. But something's missing. No force field. Yes: a bare tower with goodies waiting to be plucked. Or else... a trap.
There's a good economics joke in this vein. Two economists are walking down the street, when suddenly the first one points and says, "Hey look. A $20 bill on the sidewalk." The second economist says, "Nah, impossible. If there were, someone would have already picked it up."
I am mindful of the possibility that it is a trap, but this is easily discovered. I start looking for the tower. First its planet, which I warp to. Then it's a matter of picking the right moon.
As I narrow-band dscan for it, I am starting to think of how I might deal with a potentially very large amount of loot. As we learned last time we sacked a naked tower, there is potential to get a lot of ships. So, having an Orca can be very nice. Particularly if there are ships you can't fly. (I still can't fly the majority of T2 ships.)
I am considering bringing my alt down from Jita in his Orca. It would be a long trip... but just as I do this, Jayne logs in for his nightly PI. Now, that is good timing. Also it turns out Jeedmo, who has been online but very quiet, is active too. So now we have a decent force of characters to safely pull off moving an Orca in and out of wspace twice.
By this time I have located the tower, and flown to it at 20km. It is not online (as it must be if it was a trap). So, yes. We got ourselves a sidewalk twenty. Now, time to pick it up.
We get on coms, and I tell them what's up. I don't want to kill it yet, on the off chance that someone comes by. Instead I want to get an Orca ready first. We are going to move down our Orca from our POS in wspace, but then Jayne's alt sees that pesky Hawk down in C2a. I am not really keen to move an Orca around with it flapping about. Shall I bring down my Jita alt?
No, says Jayne. He can just buy a new Orca out in highsec. Highsec: wow. It's full of stuff that you can buy. Jayne finds a nice Orca just three jumps from us at some minor hub, for only about 30m ISK more than Jita price. We'll take it! He also buys a modest fitting for it: some stabs, some shield tank, and a cloak. Then he heads out to us.
Meanwhile, I am scanning down the system to see what other entrances there might be. (And also to activate all the things -- it is a C4.) There are no other wormholes. Well, that's easy. Jeedmo comes in to picket the C4 entrance. Jayne is picketing the C3a->hs wormhole with his main. And his alt has the Orca coming.
Now it is time to kill stuff. I start with the SMA.
 |
| I want lots of ships |
Jayne is ready to come in, so I tell him to do so. There has got to be something in this corporate hangar array. Right?
 |
| I want lots of loot |
I kill it, and sure enough I get something. Three jetcans. Hardly a full load, but a quick look shows substantial value. And it all fits in an Orca. I bookmark a can.
Jayne enters a minute later and warps to the can. He grabs it all, turns, and flies right back out. I go out ahead of him on the offchance someone is there, but we know they aren't. And they aren't.
 |
| Loot. OK, not $20 worth. |
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Passing at my Static
It's the weekend. Yesterday Jeedmo got himself stuck out, when a wormhole closed rather unexpectedly sooner than expected. So today I am scanning out, looking for highsec.
I find our static, which will be a C4. I jump through, in my Manticore just in case there is someone there that's gankable. Nobody around, though. I scan the system down. It has a C3 static, which is good news for getting people in. But the static is EOL. Magic 8-ball says: try again later. OK, I set up a listening picket on the wormhole, then do other stuff for a while.
After only about an hour, I hear the zluuurrrp! noise of a wormhole going away. I raise my window, and sure enough, gone. Not a bad wait. Now I scan down the new wormhole, and warp to it. Crossing into C3a finds a system with just four sigs and one anom. Nicely kept; thanks guys. The system has a highsec exit. Perfect for my purposes. The sigs are a gas site, a relics, and two wormholes. There's a nullsec, and finally the highsec static. I pop out into highsec, mark the wormhole, then tell Jeedmo. He'll be back this way eventually.
Meanwhile, I notice there's a ghost site in the highsec system I landed in. Well, that's worth something if I can get there in time. So I head back into wspace, risking polarization. Nobody around. I warp back up the chain to home, and reship into my ghostbusting Tengu. Then back down the chain, and out into highsec. Is the site still here? Yes. (Surprisingly, people do not seem to do these sites very fast in highsec.) I warp to the site, then smash through it quite rapidly. One can has nothing in it, but I fly to it after getting the other three just to see if there would be time. I get to it, and crack it quickly, then warp off just as the Serpentis show up. Ha ha. I score two blueprints.
Since I am in the ship anyway, and I have a nullsec exit, I figure I am fated to do ghostbusting tonight. So out to null I go. I am out in Esoteria. There is no loop I can exploit, which is unfavorable. But there are multiple cul-de-sacs, several with zero jumps and some more with just a handful.
The situation looks great, but I have little luck. I explore fifty-eight systems, most of them twice, finding just one site in which I get little time before the enemy shows and blows the can I am at. Nice implant, poof. Oh well. Nothing interesting happens in the rest of the run, just a lot of warping and no finding. Sometimes ghostbusting is like that.
 |
| One of these things is not like the others. |
A quick check of the probe scanner shows that there are no new sigs. So, he must have lost a ship here. Probably lost to my wicked decloak trap. OK, so he will be headed out -- right to me. In fact he must already be in warp, since my tower is not in range. Just as I am making these deductions, the pod warps onto grid with me. Naturally, I start trying to lock it to kill it. It lingers briefly at the wormhole, and I cannot lock. Why? Oh, my gate cloak (duh). I double-click to drop cloak, and try to lock, but the pod jumps.
I'll be polarized and the chance to get it is poor. Still, I jump too. Then I drop cloak hastily, but this time the pod does not linger. It warps. I warp to the wormhole to C3a, hoping to get one or two more shots at it. But either it beat me here and jumped already (I don't think so), or it did not go this way.
I check the scanner. Ah, there's a new sig here in C4b since I was here earlier this evening. Since I am here for five minutes anyway, I scan it down. Wormhole, to C2. That's where he went.
My five minutes are up, so I head home. Warping to my tower shows the expected wreck. (Here's the kill.)
 |
| Almost out. |
I swap ships to get a Coercer salvager, then bounce off a perch to get the loot. A nice set of Sisters probes.
 |
| Loot |
Sunday, June 8, 2014
A Fight Nearby
It's the weekend, afternoon local time. Prime time in Europe. When I play in European time, I often find targets. Today I am more interested in scanning a decent connection to kspace, because my corp needs to get PI goods in and out. But I am in my Manticore, and I will certainly take a target if I can find one weak enough.
Our static connection links a C4 system. C4b has a static C3, through which C3a has a lowsec exit. It's fairly deep in lowsec, and far from Jita anyway. Not helpful. There were a couple characters in C3a apparently doing nothing, in a Loki and Proteus. I watched them at a tower for a while as I scanned.
There's also a second C3 connected to C4b. This one also has a lowsec static, but in this case it is usable in a pinch, being adjacent to highsec and about 16 jumps from Jita. The lowsec system had four characters in it, so not great but not awful either.
There is one more system to try hanging off of C4b: a C2. I left this one for last. The good news here is that C2s that connect to C4s are almost always doing so through a static. C2s are all dual static, and those with a C4 connection also have a highsec. So I am guaranteed that. The bad news is that pretty much all of the C2s with highsec statics are lived in, usually by fairly strong corporations. (That's why I left it for last: so if I attracted attention on the far side with my probes from when I scanned down C4b, anyone trying to camp the hole coming in would have plenty of time to get bored.) Let's see about this one.
I warp to the C2 and jump. There's nobody at the wormhole, but dscan shows a lot of towers, force fields, and ships. T3s, a couple Epithals, a Viator, other ships. Lots of dead towers too; it appears this system is moon-locked. It's not looking good for running goods, but it is possible all those ships are just sitting empty. I'll find the Epithals first.
I move off and cloak, then use dscan to find two of the three Epithals at one planet. I fly to that planet, which has three active towers. I get lucky; the random moon I flew to has a tower where there is a Loki, manned. Ugh. Not looking good. (I get the corp: Anomalous Existence.) But I find the Epithals after some dscan work, and get in look range of their tower. By the time I find them, there is just one. I look around at all planets in range for the other, but it is not out gooing, at least not in range of me. It might be at an outer planet, or it might have logged off. I watch the other Epithal. I try to use my force powers to suggest that it wants to move, but it remains stubbornly immobile.
I am sitting and watching for quite a while. Meanwhile, I am also dscanning, and I can see that the other ships I have seen on scan are active. Some disappear, others appear. This system is altogether too active for my taste.
A second Epithal warps in to my tower. So I watch both of them for a while. Then the one that warped in logs out. Oh well. Back to the first one. A Rapier logs in.
At this point I am starting to worry about getting back home. So I figure I will scan out the highsec for possible future reference, then head back up. I warp to the outer planet to fire probes... and land on an online tower again. There is nobody at this one; it's just a reactor tower. Still, there are ships on scan even out here. I have not seen such a well-lived-in system. I warp to a second moon, which has an offline tower. Now I can fire probes. I find a C2 connection, and nullsec. The last of four sigs is the highsec. I don't go out because I expect them to be watching. I pull probes, then sit at the tower with the Epithal and watch it for a while. Being boring.
Time to get out. I can see the wormhole to C4b on dscan, and nobody is there. (And no bubbles.) They are not on the near side, anyway. I wonder if there will be a Sabre on the far side. I warp right to it, and jump. I half expect something when I cross, but nobody is there. I move off the wormhole and cloak, and I am safe. Good for me. Now I move out to 30km and just watch, orbiting the wormhole. I am definitely not going to be moving goods with these people connected to my chain. And all by myself, I am not going to pop our wormhole, either. So, it looks like a slow night. Time to surf the web.
I am doing other stuff for a while, when the wormhole sounds. Let's see what it is. It's a Falcon. And a Sabre, a Proteus, a Stratios, and an Arazu. They fleet warp off. I can see the direction: it is towards planet V and a bit down from it. I wonder what's there? I get the system map up, and check. Ah, the wormhole to C3a. Well, I want to see if they jump. I pursue, warping to 30km from the wormhole.
I land on grid, and I see them. I feel a bit exposed, since they may have more people warping up behind me. I move off in the down direction to get off the ecliptic. Then they all disappear. The wormhole has not flashed nor sounded. They did not jump; they must have cloaked. OK. Interesting. I get about 35km off the wormhole and down from it, then I sit and watch it.
Now a few minutes pass. A new ship warps on grid: a Procurer. A Procurer? Ah, bait. They must be trying to bait someone, probably the guys in C3a. Was there an ore site? The bait enters the wormhole.
Minutes pass. Nothing seems to be happening. Then the fleet uncloaks.
They mostly sit; one orbits. Perhaps they expect somebody to come across. But this does not happen.
After a while, more of them warp up and park.
And then one by one, yet more warp up. These are all T3s, presumably of the non-cloaky variety -- the better to kill stuff.
A Rattlesnake warps up too. (No picture, sorry.) Then suddenly, the wormhole flashes. They are jumping, all of them. I am left alone. I consider jumping to follow, but I cannot do much against this fleet, and the risk is significant. So I just sit.
Minutes go by. A few more ships warp up individually and jump. Then a pod comes through the other way. Looks like they found someone. I think about trying to get up close to ambush a pod, but even with my sebo I don't think I can lock fast enough, and again there is risk. So I stay put. A second pod crosses. Then the Sacrilege returns. More waiting. And the Procurer. I wonder whether someone took the bait or did they have to search further.
Finally the bulk of the fleet appears. Presumably victorious, losing two of their number for more of some enemy. A few more stragglers trickle out, then things are quiet. I have not kept careful track. But I think enough of them have left. Curiousity gets the better of me and I go in to look around, to see if I can find any trace of a fight.
C3a has no wrecks anywhere. I exit to lowsec to look around. There is an ore site, which has a Gallente Frigate wreck in it. This is not the fight I missed. I drive up and loot it just on principle. Then I cautiously warp home, none the wiser for what happened.
As I write this, a look at the killboards suggests they got a fight in a C4 that I had not even gotten to. I think there was an EOL C4 connection off a C4 down there; maybe that was where it went down.
Our static connection links a C4 system. C4b has a static C3, through which C3a has a lowsec exit. It's fairly deep in lowsec, and far from Jita anyway. Not helpful. There were a couple characters in C3a apparently doing nothing, in a Loki and Proteus. I watched them at a tower for a while as I scanned.
There's also a second C3 connected to C4b. This one also has a lowsec static, but in this case it is usable in a pinch, being adjacent to highsec and about 16 jumps from Jita. The lowsec system had four characters in it, so not great but not awful either.
There is one more system to try hanging off of C4b: a C2. I left this one for last. The good news here is that C2s that connect to C4s are almost always doing so through a static. C2s are all dual static, and those with a C4 connection also have a highsec. So I am guaranteed that. The bad news is that pretty much all of the C2s with highsec statics are lived in, usually by fairly strong corporations. (That's why I left it for last: so if I attracted attention on the far side with my probes from when I scanned down C4b, anyone trying to camp the hole coming in would have plenty of time to get bored.) Let's see about this one.
I warp to the C2 and jump. There's nobody at the wormhole, but dscan shows a lot of towers, force fields, and ships. T3s, a couple Epithals, a Viator, other ships. Lots of dead towers too; it appears this system is moon-locked. It's not looking good for running goods, but it is possible all those ships are just sitting empty. I'll find the Epithals first.
I move off and cloak, then use dscan to find two of the three Epithals at one planet. I fly to that planet, which has three active towers. I get lucky; the random moon I flew to has a tower where there is a Loki, manned. Ugh. Not looking good. (I get the corp: Anomalous Existence.) But I find the Epithals after some dscan work, and get in look range of their tower. By the time I find them, there is just one. I look around at all planets in range for the other, but it is not out gooing, at least not in range of me. It might be at an outer planet, or it might have logged off. I watch the other Epithal. I try to use my force powers to suggest that it wants to move, but it remains stubbornly immobile.
I am sitting and watching for quite a while. Meanwhile, I am also dscanning, and I can see that the other ships I have seen on scan are active. Some disappear, others appear. This system is altogether too active for my taste.
A second Epithal warps in to my tower. So I watch both of them for a while. Then the one that warped in logs out. Oh well. Back to the first one. A Rapier logs in.
At this point I am starting to worry about getting back home. So I figure I will scan out the highsec for possible future reference, then head back up. I warp to the outer planet to fire probes... and land on an online tower again. There is nobody at this one; it's just a reactor tower. Still, there are ships on scan even out here. I have not seen such a well-lived-in system. I warp to a second moon, which has an offline tower. Now I can fire probes. I find a C2 connection, and nullsec. The last of four sigs is the highsec. I don't go out because I expect them to be watching. I pull probes, then sit at the tower with the Epithal and watch it for a while. Being boring.
Time to get out. I can see the wormhole to C4b on dscan, and nobody is there. (And no bubbles.) They are not on the near side, anyway. I wonder if there will be a Sabre on the far side. I warp right to it, and jump. I half expect something when I cross, but nobody is there. I move off the wormhole and cloak, and I am safe. Good for me. Now I move out to 30km and just watch, orbiting the wormhole. I am definitely not going to be moving goods with these people connected to my chain. And all by myself, I am not going to pop our wormhole, either. So, it looks like a slow night. Time to surf the web.
I am doing other stuff for a while, when the wormhole sounds. Let's see what it is. It's a Falcon. And a Sabre, a Proteus, a Stratios, and an Arazu. They fleet warp off. I can see the direction: it is towards planet V and a bit down from it. I wonder what's there? I get the system map up, and check. Ah, the wormhole to C3a. Well, I want to see if they jump. I pursue, warping to 30km from the wormhole.
I land on grid, and I see them. I feel a bit exposed, since they may have more people warping up behind me. I move off in the down direction to get off the ecliptic. Then they all disappear. The wormhole has not flashed nor sounded. They did not jump; they must have cloaked. OK. Interesting. I get about 35km off the wormhole and down from it, then I sit and watch it.
Now a few minutes pass. A new ship warps on grid: a Procurer. A Procurer? Ah, bait. They must be trying to bait someone, probably the guys in C3a. Was there an ore site? The bait enters the wormhole.
 |
| Bait moves forward |
Minutes pass. Nothing seems to be happening. Then the fleet uncloaks.
 |
| Falcon x2, Proteus, Sabre |
They mostly sit; one orbits. Perhaps they expect somebody to come across. But this does not happen.
After a while, more of them warp up and park.
 |
| Falcon x2, Onyx, Proteus, Sabre, Sacrilege, Stratios, Vagabond |
And then one by one, yet more warp up. These are all T3s, presumably of the non-cloaky variety -- the better to kill stuff.
 |
| Falcon x2, Onyx, Legion x2, Proteus x3, Sabre, Sacrilege, Stratios, Vagabond |
Minutes go by. A few more ships warp up individually and jump. Then a pod comes through the other way. Looks like they found someone. I think about trying to get up close to ambush a pod, but even with my sebo I don't think I can lock fast enough, and again there is risk. So I stay put. A second pod crosses. Then the Sacrilege returns. More waiting. And the Procurer. I wonder whether someone took the bait or did they have to search further.
Finally the bulk of the fleet appears. Presumably victorious, losing two of their number for more of some enemy. A few more stragglers trickle out, then things are quiet. I have not kept careful track. But I think enough of them have left. Curiousity gets the better of me and I go in to look around, to see if I can find any trace of a fight.
C3a has no wrecks anywhere. I exit to lowsec to look around. There is an ore site, which has a Gallente Frigate wreck in it. This is not the fight I missed. I drive up and loot it just on principle. Then I cautiously warp home, none the wiser for what happened.
As I write this, a look at the killboards suggests they got a fight in a C4 that I had not even gotten to. I think there was an EOL C4 connection off a C4 down there; maybe that was where it went down.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Basics: Staying Hidden in Wspace
I had a good basic question from a reader via email.
The goal of the hunter is to see, but not be seen. So, how does one go about stealthily looking for targets in a wspace system?
To see people in wspace, you can't use Local. (Actually, you can see them via Local if they do talk, but of course the first rule of wspace club is: nobody talks in Local.) You can only see someone who is uncloaked. You'll see him on overview if he is on grid with you, or can see his ship using dscan. Any time an uncloaked ship is within 14.3 AU of you, you'll see it when you dscan. The same is true of scan probes: you can see them if they are within 14.3 AU. Seeing scan probes is one of the more common ways to know someone is around, although not what ship it is.
To avoid your ship being seen, the rule is "stay cloaked all the time". This means that you hunt in a ship with a stealth cloak, and you use that cloak at pretty much all times except when you are on-grid with a target and attempting to kill it.
There are two main exceptions to "stay cloaked all the time". One is that you have to uncloak briefly when you drop gate cloak after entering a system. This will only appear to you as a second, and you cannot be locked once cloaked (as you see it). However, from the point of view of other people on grid, and those watching on dscan, you are visible for about 10 seconds. So they will have a fair chance to see you.
Here's what you should do routinely upon entering a system. You should always dscan upon entering a system in wspace, while still holding gate cloak. If you see ships and a tower, they are probably at the tower. But you can use narrow-beam dscan to check that out. If you do find a ship out in space, congrats. You're in a fairly rare situation. Go get 'im!
Once you've dscanned to check things out, you want to move off the wormhole and cloak as soon as possible. Here's how to do that. Right click on the wormhole and select Orbit at some distance. 20km is good, but mix it up with other distances. Immediately upon doing this, your ship will start moving, and it will lose its gate cloak. Click your microwarpdrive to get it going, then cloak as soon as possible. (You can't cloak if you are within 2000m of anything, most particularly the wormhole.) Usually you can cloak immediately.
Once you are orbiting a wormhole cloaked at 15, 20, 25 or 30km (be random), you are very unlikely to be decloaked by anyone. The volume is quite large. Don't forget to bookmark the wormhole, so you can get back to it. (Here's my article on the naming conventions I use for bookmarks.)
Another exception to "stay cloaked all the time" is that you must be uncloaked to fire probes. Often you can do this as you burn off the wormhole just after you entered. I combine the two actions unless I see a ship on scan; in that case I usually don't, since hiding your probes does take a bit of time and it also will take your attention away from the overview. But if you see no ships, you can save time by launching probes. Do the same moves as I just discussed above, except that just before you cloak, fire your probes.
What about the case where there is a ship on scan? To avoid being seen, you should look for a place to fire probes that is outside of the range of any known target. This is easier in larger systems; in general outer planets are good for this. Warp around to various planets and see if there is one out of dscan of any ship. (How do you know? Dscan: if you can't see an uncloaked ship, it cannot see you.) Sometimes you'll just have to fire probes in scan range of a tower, or ships that might be manned, or even known manned ships. If so, do it and recloak as soon as possible.
But what about your scan probes? Scan probes are visible on grid when you first deploy them. After that, they are detectable only via dscan, and can be detected at all times except when they are moving. (Scan probes cannot cloak.) Even if nobody saw your ship when you uncloaked to fire probes, firing probes still leaves them sitting out where you fired them. Anyone coming within 14.3 AU can dscan and see them. Seeing scan probes is plenty of warning for anyone with any sense to realize that they are not alone in the system.
Because scan probes will give away your presence, you want to move them immediately to a location where they cannot be seen. How is this possible? It's possible if each scan probe is more than 14.3 AU away from every point in the system that anyone could be. Since wormholes can appear as far as 8 AU from a planet, you want to move your probes to at least 24 AU away from any planet.
Here's how to hide your probes. You move them just like you do when scanning, except that here you are trying to put the probes where there is nothing rather than something. Bring up the system map, then set your scanning distance to 16 AU. Now move the probes out of the system, such that all of bubbles showing the probes' coverage are at least 8 AU from all planets. (8 AU is half of the 16 AU bubble size; you can eyeball this distance by comparing to the bubble size.)
Press the "Analyze" button; the probes will warp to their assigned locations way outside the system. (The scan itself will run, and of course never have a result since nothing can be out that far.) This process of moving your probes away from where anyone can be to hide them is referred to colorfully as "throwing your probes out of the system". (Anyway, I say it, and I got it from Penny. Perhaps she is original.)
Note that it is not possible to scan things down and have scan probes remain hidden. So you won't be able to find a gas site, for example, with a Venture in it without the Venture being able to see the probes on dscan. You can attempt to minimize the amount of time that the probes are visible to a target. But that's a different article. An article which Penny has already written.
You frequently mention that you warp into a new wormhole and "throw your probes out of the system" so people can't detect the scanning. I was wondering what that means and how I do it.Good question! To explain it properly, first you need to understand the context, and that is hunting in wspace. You want to find targets, and sometimes scan down sigs, without them noticing you are there. If they know you are there, they'll POS up or else swap into nasty pointy ships. I feel we need some humor to set the mood here:
The goal of the hunter is to see, but not be seen. So, how does one go about stealthily looking for targets in a wspace system?
To see people in wspace, you can't use Local. (Actually, you can see them via Local if they do talk, but of course the first rule of wspace club is: nobody talks in Local.) You can only see someone who is uncloaked. You'll see him on overview if he is on grid with you, or can see his ship using dscan. Any time an uncloaked ship is within 14.3 AU of you, you'll see it when you dscan. The same is true of scan probes: you can see them if they are within 14.3 AU. Seeing scan probes is one of the more common ways to know someone is around, although not what ship it is.
To avoid your ship being seen, the rule is "stay cloaked all the time". This means that you hunt in a ship with a stealth cloak, and you use that cloak at pretty much all times except when you are on-grid with a target and attempting to kill it.
There are two main exceptions to "stay cloaked all the time". One is that you have to uncloak briefly when you drop gate cloak after entering a system. This will only appear to you as a second, and you cannot be locked once cloaked (as you see it). However, from the point of view of other people on grid, and those watching on dscan, you are visible for about 10 seconds. So they will have a fair chance to see you.
Here's what you should do routinely upon entering a system. You should always dscan upon entering a system in wspace, while still holding gate cloak. If you see ships and a tower, they are probably at the tower. But you can use narrow-beam dscan to check that out. If you do find a ship out in space, congrats. You're in a fairly rare situation. Go get 'im!
Once you've dscanned to check things out, you want to move off the wormhole and cloak as soon as possible. Here's how to do that. Right click on the wormhole and select Orbit at some distance. 20km is good, but mix it up with other distances. Immediately upon doing this, your ship will start moving, and it will lose its gate cloak. Click your microwarpdrive to get it going, then cloak as soon as possible. (You can't cloak if you are within 2000m of anything, most particularly the wormhole.) Usually you can cloak immediately.
Once you are orbiting a wormhole cloaked at 15, 20, 25 or 30km (be random), you are very unlikely to be decloaked by anyone. The volume is quite large. Don't forget to bookmark the wormhole, so you can get back to it. (Here's my article on the naming conventions I use for bookmarks.)
Another exception to "stay cloaked all the time" is that you must be uncloaked to fire probes. Often you can do this as you burn off the wormhole just after you entered. I combine the two actions unless I see a ship on scan; in that case I usually don't, since hiding your probes does take a bit of time and it also will take your attention away from the overview. But if you see no ships, you can save time by launching probes. Do the same moves as I just discussed above, except that just before you cloak, fire your probes.
What about the case where there is a ship on scan? To avoid being seen, you should look for a place to fire probes that is outside of the range of any known target. This is easier in larger systems; in general outer planets are good for this. Warp around to various planets and see if there is one out of dscan of any ship. (How do you know? Dscan: if you can't see an uncloaked ship, it cannot see you.) Sometimes you'll just have to fire probes in scan range of a tower, or ships that might be manned, or even known manned ships. If so, do it and recloak as soon as possible.
But what about your scan probes? Scan probes are visible on grid when you first deploy them. After that, they are detectable only via dscan, and can be detected at all times except when they are moving. (Scan probes cannot cloak.) Even if nobody saw your ship when you uncloaked to fire probes, firing probes still leaves them sitting out where you fired them. Anyone coming within 14.3 AU can dscan and see them. Seeing scan probes is plenty of warning for anyone with any sense to realize that they are not alone in the system.
Because scan probes will give away your presence, you want to move them immediately to a location where they cannot be seen. How is this possible? It's possible if each scan probe is more than 14.3 AU away from every point in the system that anyone could be. Since wormholes can appear as far as 8 AU from a planet, you want to move your probes to at least 24 AU away from any planet.
Here's how to hide your probes. You move them just like you do when scanning, except that here you are trying to put the probes where there is nothing rather than something. Bring up the system map, then set your scanning distance to 16 AU. Now move the probes out of the system, such that all of bubbles showing the probes' coverage are at least 8 AU from all planets. (8 AU is half of the 16 AU bubble size; you can eyeball this distance by comparing to the bubble size.)
Press the "Analyze" button; the probes will warp to their assigned locations way outside the system. (The scan itself will run, and of course never have a result since nothing can be out that far.) This process of moving your probes away from where anyone can be to hide them is referred to colorfully as "throwing your probes out of the system". (Anyway, I say it, and I got it from Penny. Perhaps she is original.)
Note that it is not possible to scan things down and have scan probes remain hidden. So you won't be able to find a gas site, for example, with a Venture in it without the Venture being able to see the probes on dscan. You can attempt to minimize the amount of time that the probes are visible to a target. But that's a different article. An article which Penny has already written.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Ninja Gassing One Night
There has not been a lot happening around me in wspace recently. Oh, I've been out hunting, but I have not found anyone acting foolishly other than occasionally myself. But tonight is a new night. I log in. What's happening, New Eden?
We have an extra sig in our home system. I deploy probes, and quickly discover the new sig is a wormhole, and a K162. (It's signature is "fat".) I get it 100% then resolve our new static wormhole. I won't fly to our static yet, since it may be uninstantiated. I fly to the K162. It's bluish -- a C2. That might be nice for transporting stuff. But it is wobbling. This means EOL. I get info to verify. Yep. Well, I am not going to transport anything via a wormhole that might close at any minute. I go in anyway, to check for Epithals and other easy targets. I am in for long enough to dscan; there are no ships on scan. OK, forget it. I jump back, polarized. Nobody there to kill me, good.
Now I fly to our static, maybe opening it, and jump through into C4b. Several towers, no ships. It is another C4/C4 system. It's got only two sigs. One is my system's K162; the other must be its own static. I deploy probes and find it. I leave it unopened for now. I have noticed via dscan that one tower has a hybrid reactor. Is it processing? The only way to know is to find the tower and look. So I do that. Looking at the reactor shows that it is indeed going. Of course, it may or not actually have inputs; but it's rare that I find one on at all. I run back home and come back with a siphon, which I deploy and bookmark. I'll return later to see if it will pay out.
Now, onward. I jump to the system's static, perhaps instantiating it, perhaps not. The system, C4c, is similar to the last system. Another C4/C4 with nobody home. There are five sigs this time: two gas, the K162 I came in, the static, and a third wormhole. Investigating it finds a reddish K162 to "dangerous" space: C5. I go in.
C5a has two pilots present at a tower: a guy in a pod, and a Loki. The Loki is aligned to the tower. This means it has probably been sitting there for an hour. But the pod just warped in. After I watch the guy in the pod do nothing for a minute or two, I figure it is time to scan. Scanning reveals, among other sites, an Instrumental Core Reservoir. For those not in the know, this is the most lucrative gas site in the game. It has a large cloud of C320, the mining of which pays on the order of 100m/hour. Whenever I find one, I get excited and want to yell out "Gaaaaas!".
Greed fills my dwarvish heart. But fear restrains me, ultimately. The guy in the pod has swapped into a Venture. Is he going to go to the site? Killing a Venture in a stealth bomber is not likely, but it can be done if the victim is not paying attention. I watch for another few minutes, where he does not move. Forget it. I consider triggering the site to prevent him from getting it today (at least without bringing a fleet to kill the sleepers). But I figure he may be going for some other site, or not going mining at all. I'll keep going and maybe come back later on to check again. When I come back he may be in the site (I'll try to kill him) or maybe he'll be gone (and I can mine it).
I back out to C4c, then go onward into C4d. As with the previous C4s, there is nobody home. This time the static is not a C4, but C5. After resolving a bunch of medium value gas sites in C4d, I head into C5b.
Nobody home in C5b. There are five medium ECM drones out somewhere, but I cannot find drones with core probes and tech-I drones are not worth looking for in any case. Five sigs. I scan. One signature is an Instrumental Core Reservoir; another a Vital Core Reservoir. Gaaaaas!! Two good gas sites! It's fairly rare to find even one. This is definitely worth doing.
I head back upstream towards home. On the way, I drop in on the siphon I planted. There is some small amount of loot, an hour's worth. I uncloak, grab it, and quickly recloak. It's worth about 800k. Looks like this siphon won't pay for itself. Bummer. I jump back home.
It's time to gather my mates. Jeedmo, the new guy, is easy. He's already on. He's young, but has recently trained gas mining enough to fly a gas miner with tech I miners. I also ping Jayne with a text, and he wants to go too when I inform him that one of the sites is the Instrumental. While we wait for Jayne to log on, I log off Von. I log on with Otto and my alt who is at good at gas mining. I get both characters into tech II gas mining Ventures. The fit, for those curious, is this:
Jayne eventually appears, and gets his ships ready. We get on coms, and start heading downstream to the gas.
The path is C4a->C4b->C4c->C4d->C5b. At each jump I am nervous, but nobody is there. We make it into C5a, and then warp to the site. Is it already instantiated? If so, we will drop straight into the midst of four warp-scrambling sleeper battleships. No, it's not. We all microwarp over to the C320 cloud, and start mining.
Now the dscanning starts in earnest. But we see nothing, neither ship nor probe. The clock ticks and our holds slowly fill. Finally, as expected at the 20 minute mark, two sleeper battleships appear. We are ready, so we each warp ourselves on to the next site, the Vital Core Reservoir.
Landing in the site, there are no sleepers. There are also the five ECM drones we have seen on scan, and the small C320 cloud is gone. Someone has mined here already. But we microwarp to the C540 cloud and start in on it. Jayne scans it: it's already been partly mined. But there is plenty for us, too. Back to dscanning.
After about 15 minutes, we start to fill up. Jeedmo is least full, so we head over and jettison gas for him to grab. But that does not buy us much more time. Otto fills up first, so I microwarp him over to the ECM drones and grab them. At about 18 minutes, we all are full, so we start back home. We make it without seeing anyone.
The run took less than an hour, netting us five full Ventures carrying about 250m in gas. That's a nice evening's work in wspace. After a bit more chit chat on coms, I do my PI and head to bed.
We have an extra sig in our home system. I deploy probes, and quickly discover the new sig is a wormhole, and a K162. (It's signature is "fat".) I get it 100% then resolve our new static wormhole. I won't fly to our static yet, since it may be uninstantiated. I fly to the K162. It's bluish -- a C2. That might be nice for transporting stuff. But it is wobbling. This means EOL. I get info to verify. Yep. Well, I am not going to transport anything via a wormhole that might close at any minute. I go in anyway, to check for Epithals and other easy targets. I am in for long enough to dscan; there are no ships on scan. OK, forget it. I jump back, polarized. Nobody there to kill me, good.
Now I fly to our static, maybe opening it, and jump through into C4b. Several towers, no ships. It is another C4/C4 system. It's got only two sigs. One is my system's K162; the other must be its own static. I deploy probes and find it. I leave it unopened for now. I have noticed via dscan that one tower has a hybrid reactor. Is it processing? The only way to know is to find the tower and look. So I do that. Looking at the reactor shows that it is indeed going. Of course, it may or not actually have inputs; but it's rare that I find one on at all. I run back home and come back with a siphon, which I deploy and bookmark. I'll return later to see if it will pay out.
Now, onward. I jump to the system's static, perhaps instantiating it, perhaps not. The system, C4c, is similar to the last system. Another C4/C4 with nobody home. There are five sigs this time: two gas, the K162 I came in, the static, and a third wormhole. Investigating it finds a reddish K162 to "dangerous" space: C5. I go in.
C5a has two pilots present at a tower: a guy in a pod, and a Loki. The Loki is aligned to the tower. This means it has probably been sitting there for an hour. But the pod just warped in. After I watch the guy in the pod do nothing for a minute or two, I figure it is time to scan. Scanning reveals, among other sites, an Instrumental Core Reservoir. For those not in the know, this is the most lucrative gas site in the game. It has a large cloud of C320, the mining of which pays on the order of 100m/hour. Whenever I find one, I get excited and want to yell out "Gaaaaas!".
Greed fills my dwarvish heart. But fear restrains me, ultimately. The guy in the pod has swapped into a Venture. Is he going to go to the site? Killing a Venture in a stealth bomber is not likely, but it can be done if the victim is not paying attention. I watch for another few minutes, where he does not move. Forget it. I consider triggering the site to prevent him from getting it today (at least without bringing a fleet to kill the sleepers). But I figure he may be going for some other site, or not going mining at all. I'll keep going and maybe come back later on to check again. When I come back he may be in the site (I'll try to kill him) or maybe he'll be gone (and I can mine it).
I back out to C4c, then go onward into C4d. As with the previous C4s, there is nobody home. This time the static is not a C4, but C5. After resolving a bunch of medium value gas sites in C4d, I head into C5b.
Nobody home in C5b. There are five medium ECM drones out somewhere, but I cannot find drones with core probes and tech-I drones are not worth looking for in any case. Five sigs. I scan. One signature is an Instrumental Core Reservoir; another a Vital Core Reservoir. Gaaaaas!! Two good gas sites! It's fairly rare to find even one. This is definitely worth doing.
I head back upstream towards home. On the way, I drop in on the siphon I planted. There is some small amount of loot, an hour's worth. I uncloak, grab it, and quickly recloak. It's worth about 800k. Looks like this siphon won't pay for itself. Bummer. I jump back home.
It's time to gather my mates. Jeedmo, the new guy, is easy. He's already on. He's young, but has recently trained gas mining enough to fly a gas miner with tech I miners. I also ping Jayne with a text, and he wants to go too when I inform him that one of the sites is the Instrumental. While we wait for Jayne to log on, I log off Von. I log on with Otto and my alt who is at good at gas mining. I get both characters into tech II gas mining Ventures. The fit, for those curious, is this:
[Venture, Gas Miner II]You can rig it if you want, probably for slightly improved agility, but we don't.
Emergency Damage Control I
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
'Dactyl' Type-E Asteroid Analyzer
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Gas Cloud Harvester II
Gas Cloud Harvester II
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Jayne eventually appears, and gets his ships ready. We get on coms, and start heading downstream to the gas.
 |
| Aaaand, they're off. |
 |
| Ventures are beautiful. |
Landing in the site, there are no sleepers. There are also the five ECM drones we have seen on scan, and the small C320 cloud is gone. Someone has mined here already. But we microwarp to the C540 cloud and start in on it. Jayne scans it: it's already been partly mined. But there is plenty for us, too. Back to dscanning.
 |
| 83% full, 43m ISK. |
The run took less than an hour, netting us five full Ventures carrying about 250m in gas. That's a nice evening's work in wspace. After a bit more chit chat on coms, I do my PI and head to bed.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Fleecing Some Tourists
Friday night. We're always looking for a good connection to highsec to do logistics. But there's nothing in particular planned. Let's see what EVE holds tonight.
I log in, and check for sigs. Just one. Evidently the gas site we have had has finally timed out and gone away. Scanning one sig is no problem, and I head for it, bookmark the wormhole, and jump into C4b.
C4b is interesting. There are two POCOs that are in reinforced mode, due to come out in five hours. I'll still be up then... hmm. There's also an Iteron V at a tower. I track it down and warp to it. Empty, as usual. Oh well. Scanning time. There are just two sigs, so that's easy. I ignore our static and then find the other.
It's EOL. Ugh. End of constellation, unless I want to pop a wormhole. I don't. I think I will log my Jita alt and move around some goods. Then I will just sit here.
Hours later... the wormhole finally expires. (Four full hours. Murphy strikes again.) Now I scan down the new wormhole, mark it, and jump through. C3b has six sigs: three gas, three wormholes. I know the wormhole I came though. The other two are a C2 and the C3 static. I'll investigate the C2 first, since it will probably have a highsec static.
I enter the C2. Nothing on scan from the wormhole. Checking wormhol.es shows that indeed the system has the expected highsec. I move off the wormhole, fire probes, and throw them out of the system. I'll scan after I check out the system for actives.
The system is rather large. It takes three warps to hit all the planets. I start at the third-to-outer planet. I have to check the second-to-outer planet (nothing), the inner system (live tower, no ships), finally the outer planet. Dscan here shows ships and lots of drones, and a tower. But no force field. Dscanning again shows a sleeper wreck. Ah. Got site runners. Two Ospreys, two Hurricane Fleet Issues, Gnosis, Brutix.
I dscan the one anom in range. They are not there. I do another 360 dscan. More wrecks; too many for a gas site. (And nobody would attack a gas site with a whole gang.) It must be a sig site -- a data or relic. There is one around this planet. But I do not have it scanned. I will try to scan it anyway; doing so will be good practice for me. I rarely get to hunt with probes.
Data and relic sites all have very weak signatures; I will have to scan at the minimum range to get a warpable hit. So this means that I will have to place the probes extremely precisely to do it in one scan. I doubt I can do that; I will shoot for two scans for a better chance. That is still starting at 1.0AU scans, meaning I need a fairly precise location.
First I use dscan to get a range. Twiddle twiddle. 6.1 AU. This seems a bit long, but it appears to be just in the range of the sig. Now, direction. 90 and 60 and 30 degrees are all pretty easy. 15 takes some time and 5 takes more. But finally I have the direction, and I crab-walk the my marker probe until it is about the right distance out. I change my mind and scan at 0.25 AU hoping for luck.
Nothing. Oh well. I try at 1.0AU. Nothing again. What? This should have worked. I must be totally off. I widen to 4 AU and move the probes closer to me. Now I get a hit, much closer to me that 6.1 AU. I guess I must have flubbed the range somehow. It takes me two more scans to get 97% -- argh! -- and the third succeeds. I throw the probes out of the system, then warp to the site at 100km. Dscan shows they have not abandoned it yet, at least.
I land at the site, and the enemy fleet is still working on the last sleeper battleship. This gives me some hope that they are slack and have not seen my probes. But in any case, I cannot attack this many people. So I hope that they make a mistake with their salvaging.
They finish the sleeper. Now it gets kind of strange. They are evidently using drones to salvage. Several of them throw out mobile depots, and refit. Then they head in to the cans to hack. Unbonused hacking on hard puzzles. Good luck with that. Of course, these being sleeper sites, you get all the tries you want. I still expect it to take forever, and it is hard to believe that these guys will just sit in the site for that long.
One deploys a mobile tractor unit. They sit in the site. Every so often a wreck gets successfully salvaged. But it's slow. One of them finally cracks a can. There's nothing obvious I can do to make trouble. And it looks like my hope of a salvager is not going to happen. Can they salvage intermediate large wrecks with drones? Maybe they have some salvagers to refit with.
I might as well bring in my probes and scan. They can't see the other planets from here, at least, and I doubt they have good opsec. I already know they either did not see me or did not care. And I also know there is a highsec and a C4 which they ignored. So I scan. Scanning finds no less than five wormholes: a K162 to highsec, the static highsec (which I open), a nullsec, a C2 (EOL), and another C2. I duck out of one of the highsecs to get an entrance, just in case I get daring and get killed.
All this time I am checking in with the enemy, warping to my perch. They're still there, half an hour after I first saw them. They've now got all the wrecks collected and salvaged. They are still working on the data cans. One of the Hurricanes goes over to collect the tractor. I consider trying to sneak in to grab the can when he takes it onboard. But this seems unlikely to work. So I just watch. He grabs the tractor. The can appears.
He does not pick it up. That's odd. I watch a bit more. He seems to be moving back to his friends. He still has not picked it up. Is he tractoring it? No, he just... left it sitting there.
This is my opening. I warp to the can at 10km. Then I check for celestials. They are all behind me. I will want to be aligned to one when I am ready to uncloak, so I sneak around to the left then towards the enemy (they are all about 40km off), then up. I stop with the sun and two inner planets decently inline behind the can. The sun will be easier to find, so I will use that. I raise my inventory, take a deep breath, then align to the sun. 5000, 4000, 2500. I uncloak, and double-click the can. There's the loot. Loot all. Click the sun, S, and zoom. I'm gone. I cloak ASAP. When I land at the sun I immediately warp back to my perch to watch.
The enemy break up fairly quickly. They warp off toward the inner system; I don't bother to check where, since I have little time remaining before bed. I get info on one, and check for the corp's CEO. Ah, she's one of them. I convo her:
Excitement over. I head out to highsec, drop the loot and contract it to my Jita alt, and head back up. Later I get myself killed shooting at guys shooting down those POCOs I saw earlier... but that's another story.
I log in, and check for sigs. Just one. Evidently the gas site we have had has finally timed out and gone away. Scanning one sig is no problem, and I head for it, bookmark the wormhole, and jump into C4b.
C4b is interesting. There are two POCOs that are in reinforced mode, due to come out in five hours. I'll still be up then... hmm. There's also an Iteron V at a tower. I track it down and warp to it. Empty, as usual. Oh well. Scanning time. There are just two sigs, so that's easy. I ignore our static and then find the other.
It's EOL. Ugh. End of constellation, unless I want to pop a wormhole. I don't. I think I will log my Jita alt and move around some goods. Then I will just sit here.
Hours later... the wormhole finally expires. (Four full hours. Murphy strikes again.) Now I scan down the new wormhole, mark it, and jump through. C3b has six sigs: three gas, three wormholes. I know the wormhole I came though. The other two are a C2 and the C3 static. I'll investigate the C2 first, since it will probably have a highsec static.
I enter the C2. Nothing on scan from the wormhole. Checking wormhol.es shows that indeed the system has the expected highsec. I move off the wormhole, fire probes, and throw them out of the system. I'll scan after I check out the system for actives.
The system is rather large. It takes three warps to hit all the planets. I start at the third-to-outer planet. I have to check the second-to-outer planet (nothing), the inner system (live tower, no ships), finally the outer planet. Dscan here shows ships and lots of drones, and a tower. But no force field. Dscanning again shows a sleeper wreck. Ah. Got site runners. Two Ospreys, two Hurricane Fleet Issues, Gnosis, Brutix.
I dscan the one anom in range. They are not there. I do another 360 dscan. More wrecks; too many for a gas site. (And nobody would attack a gas site with a whole gang.) It must be a sig site -- a data or relic. There is one around this planet. But I do not have it scanned. I will try to scan it anyway; doing so will be good practice for me. I rarely get to hunt with probes.
Data and relic sites all have very weak signatures; I will have to scan at the minimum range to get a warpable hit. So this means that I will have to place the probes extremely precisely to do it in one scan. I doubt I can do that; I will shoot for two scans for a better chance. That is still starting at 1.0AU scans, meaning I need a fairly precise location.
First I use dscan to get a range. Twiddle twiddle. 6.1 AU. This seems a bit long, but it appears to be just in the range of the sig. Now, direction. 90 and 60 and 30 degrees are all pretty easy. 15 takes some time and 5 takes more. But finally I have the direction, and I crab-walk the my marker probe until it is about the right distance out. I change my mind and scan at 0.25 AU hoping for luck.
Nothing. Oh well. I try at 1.0AU. Nothing again. What? This should have worked. I must be totally off. I widen to 4 AU and move the probes closer to me. Now I get a hit, much closer to me that 6.1 AU. I guess I must have flubbed the range somehow. It takes me two more scans to get 97% -- argh! -- and the third succeeds. I throw the probes out of the system, then warp to the site at 100km. Dscan shows they have not abandoned it yet, at least.
 |
| Watching from my perch. |
They finish the sleeper. Now it gets kind of strange. They are evidently using drones to salvage. Several of them throw out mobile depots, and refit. Then they head in to the cans to hack. Unbonused hacking on hard puzzles. Good luck with that. Of course, these being sleeper sites, you get all the tries you want. I still expect it to take forever, and it is hard to believe that these guys will just sit in the site for that long.
One deploys a mobile tractor unit. They sit in the site. Every so often a wreck gets successfully salvaged. But it's slow. One of them finally cracks a can. There's nothing obvious I can do to make trouble. And it looks like my hope of a salvager is not going to happen. Can they salvage intermediate large wrecks with drones? Maybe they have some salvagers to refit with.
I might as well bring in my probes and scan. They can't see the other planets from here, at least, and I doubt they have good opsec. I already know they either did not see me or did not care. And I also know there is a highsec and a C4 which they ignored. So I scan. Scanning finds no less than five wormholes: a K162 to highsec, the static highsec (which I open), a nullsec, a C2 (EOL), and another C2. I duck out of one of the highsecs to get an entrance, just in case I get daring and get killed.
All this time I am checking in with the enemy, warping to my perch. They're still there, half an hour after I first saw them. They've now got all the wrecks collected and salvaged. They are still working on the data cans. One of the Hurricanes goes over to collect the tractor. I consider trying to sneak in to grab the can when he takes it onboard. But this seems unlikely to work. So I just watch. He grabs the tractor. The can appears.
 |
| Nice loot. |
This is my opening. I warp to the can at 10km. Then I check for celestials. They are all behind me. I will want to be aligned to one when I am ready to uncloak, so I sneak around to the left then towards the enemy (they are all about 40km off), then up. I stop with the sun and two inner planets decently inline behind the can. The sun will be easier to find, so I will use that. I raise my inventory, take a deep breath, then align to the sun. 5000, 4000, 2500. I uncloak, and double-click the can. There's the loot. Loot all. Click the sun, S, and zoom. I'm gone. I cloak ASAP. When I land at the sun I immediately warp back to my perch to watch.
The enemy break up fairly quickly. They warp off toward the inner system; I don't bother to check where, since I have little time remaining before bed. I get info on one, and check for the corp's CEO. Ah, she's one of them. I convo her:
Excitement over. I head out to highsec, drop the loot and contract it to my Jita alt, and head back up. Later I get myself killed shooting at guys shooting down those POCOs I saw earlier... but that's another story.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Much Scanning and An Elusive Iteron
Wednesday. I am on before the corp, but we are planning to do some PVE money-making tonight. So there is plenty to do. I want to map out our constellation, preparing for hole-closing and site-running. How long will it take? We'll see.
I log in. From nothingness to somethingness, suddenly my Manticore exists. I cloak as I do my login warp, then a quick dscan. Nobody obvious. Some C2 guys ran our two anoms yesterday, so there's nothing for anyone to do in my system. I doubt anyone's around. Still, there are three sigs, not the two I'd hoped for. One is an already-known gas site. One will be our static. What's the other?
I warp out to our outer planet and launch probes. The two new sigs are quickly resolved, and from their signal strengths I can tell which is the K162. I warp to it first, bookmarking the other. The K162 is "dangerous" and reddish -- that means C5. Hmm. Well, better have a look. I enter C5a.
Dscan from the wormhole shows four towers, with some ships at them, but types that are not of interest to me. A quick consult with wormhol.es shows these guys are probably European. It's evening here in the USA; I doubt we'll see too much activity from them. But, still, there may be a few night-owls up. Let's have a look at the rest of the system.
I warp to the outer system, and dscan shows two more towers. One of these has an Iteron V at it. Now, that is of interest to me, if it is manned. I am at the right planet, so I dscan and narrow down the possible moons by range. Eventually I find the right one, and warp to it.
I land on grid with the tower. Yes, the Itty is there and it is manned. I am about 80 km from it so I look. It is not aligned with the tower: where did it come from? A planet, perhaps? No, it came from some spot out in space just to the right of the inner system... oh. It can from the wormhole to my system. It appears that these guys have opened my system's static, and have run in some cargo. Interesting.
I sit and watch for a few minutes. But the Iteron is not doing anything, and probably won't do any PI at any rate. I've got more exploring to do, so I warp back to the wormhole and jump. Time to check out what's downstream from us. I warp to the previously saved wormhole bookmark. Then I save the actual location of the wormhole, and jump through into C4b.
Dscan shows a tower, but no ships. A consult with wormhol.es shows the inhabitants are supposed to be USA timezone. But the tower has a Chinese symbol for a name, and there are Cyrillic names on some of the POS parts. I don't think these people are USA any more.
OK, let me check out the scanner for anoms... crikey! This system has as many sigs as I have ever seen. (Later, I count them: 33 sigs.) Anoms? Oh, about 40 of those, including 19 rocks. So, that's good news for running sites.
There's also some bad news. The system's static is a C1. That's not great for site-running, because we cannot pop it. We'll have to place a cloaked picket there. (Fortunately, we have a new guy in the corp perfect for this.) Also, the system is a wolf-rayet, which is bad for our shield tanked PVE fleet. I think it will work though. Worse for me right now: each and every one of those sigs might be a wormhole. Each and every one must be scanned at least to the point of knowing what it is (25%), and for practical purposes it must be scanned down fully and bookmarked. That's a grim prospect. I move off the wormhole, firing probes as I go. Then I throw them out of the system, and go to find the tower. It's easily found; I warp to it to watch. I'll sit here to watch while I scan, just in case someone logs on to do PI.
I start scanning. There are three sigs at the outer planet; those scan fast enough. Now I move into the second-to-outer planet, which has a lot of sigs. I get through the first few, when I realize that scanning in my Manticore is kind of dumb. I don't think any targets are going to appear; the impressive proliferation of sigs and anoms suggests these guys don't play much. It will take me just a couple minutes to get my Buzzard; the increased scanning strength amortized over 30 sigs should more than make up for the travel time. So I'll head back home. But before I leave, I activate all the anoms. (Thank me when you get a new site in four days.) Now through my static, over to my tower, and reship. Then I return and get probes back out. I am circling the K162 of our static wormhole, having found nothing better to watch. I re-scan the general area I scanned before, to re-ignore those sigs. Then I start working again. I complete about eight sigs near the second-to-outer planet, and move on to the third.
A ship warps on to grid. It's the Iteron V I saw before: same pilot. But he is coming back in. I missed him going out. He lands on the wormhole and jumps.
How did I miss him leaving? Probably he left when I was at over at the local tower. Anyway, it's too late. Even if I burned over the to wormhole and beat him to the C5 connection, I can't do anything in my Buzzard. No guns, no warp scrambler. So, I sigh and set to scanning some more. I doubt I will see him again: he should have seen my probes both leaving and coming back in.
I am getting close to having scanned out this third-from-outer planet, when I find a wormhole. It's a faint signature, so it is probably the static. I warp over at 30km to look. Sure enough: P060, to C1. I'll have to explore through it when I get a chance, but not now. I really don't want to lose my state. Rescanning 15 sigs? No thanks.
I resume scanning. Gas site, gas site, data site. I am close to done with this planet, when a flicker of movement catches my eye on my overview. What? Ah -- the Iteron is back! He's on the wormhole, and then whoomp-crackle -- he exits to C1a.
I have seen him three times now: at his tower in C5a (having just come from our direction), in C4b coming back in, and now going out. Obviously my probes are not deterring him. It's very likely he will be coming back in carrying... I don't know. Whatever he is trying to get in. And probably fairly soon; I guess from the timing of his last run that there must be a hub fairly close to where ever the C1 system connects to. If he's coming back in, I want to gank him. To gank him, I can't be in this Buzzard. I want my Manticore. I am mindful that it might be a trap... or they may have a cloaky T3 or T2 sitting in C4b to gank me. But I don't think so; nobody has gone for me yet. In any case, it's worth the risk.
I take another trip to my tower to reship again. Yes, this means I will lose my scanning-state, but hunting is more important than saving scanning time.
I return to the system in my Manticore. It will probably be a wait. Maybe the guy won't come back. Either way, I am going to scan rather than just sit. So I fire probes after I am back in the system. Then I warp back to the C1 wormhole. I orbit it cloaked at 2500m. This is the best compromise between safety (if something nasty comes in), and being on top of the hole to make sure I am in range if the target returns.
Now I scan. For the second time, I have to re-scan a whole bunch of sigs to ignore. The outer system ones I can ignore simply by their location. But all the other planets are close enough that they require re-scanning. It's fairly quick, though, since I only need a 25% hit to do the job, or sometimes even less.
Minutes pass. I finally re-ignore all the stuff I found already, and now I can start in where I was. More or less. It is time to start tackling the 10 sigs remaining in the inner system. I put in the probes at 8AU, and get several gas sites IDed. I get it down to six sigs, when bwaammmp. Wormhole noise.
I quickly exit the map mode, and get my mouse poised to turn off my cloak. Is it the Iteron? A ship appears -- yes, the Iteron. I uncloak, then I head towards him and start locking him. I get my sebo on, as well as my weapon systems. This should work; Iterons are slow aligning, right? It does work. He's locked; a round of torps hits him.
Then he's gone. What? Where? How? He did not warp. I am confused for a second, then I get it. He jumped back through the wormhole. I follow.
I expect to find him aligning on the other side. But he's not in sight. He is polarized, so he cannot jump again. And I am certain he has not had time to align and warp. So I conclude he must be holding gate cloak. I immediately drop my own gate cloak, and start orbitting the wormhole at 500m, sebo on, hand poised over the overview. When he appears I will lock him, and this time he shall not escape.
I orbit. I orbit some more. Evidently he is waiting out to the end of his minute. I wonder if he has friends scrambling to help coming from C5a. This makes me nervous, but there's nothing to be done. If the wormhole sounds, I will deal with it then.
I orbit some more. How long is gate cloak anyway? I thought it was no more than a minute. I check on my local chat: it's been two minutes. He can't be cloaked any more... and yet, no Iteron.
Oh. Stupid me. He must have a cloak: a normal old cloak. He must have come through the wormhole and immediately cloaked. I was a few seconds behind, and did not see it. This means he will be sneaking off the wormhole. Iteron Vs are not fast to begin with, and he will be at one-tenth or one-quarter speed. So he is still here. I just have to find him.
I start orbitting at 2500m. Then 5000m. It's slow; I realize that I'll have a much better chance to uncloak him if I turn on my microwarp. I orbit, microwarping. Then I cut across the wormhole to try a different orbit direction.
There's the Iteron. I have you now! I start locking, which completes almost immediately due to the sebo, and I open up. He's popped with the first round. There's the pod. I lock it, I think successfully, but before I can fire it warps clear. How? Ah, I have zipped beyond scrambler range due to microwarping. Oops. I cannot pursue since I have not scanned this system; presumably he will go back to highsec.
Let's see what he had. I move over to the wreck and open it. Disappointing. Just a cloak and some cargo expanders. (The killmail shows he had some ice products of modest value which got blown up.) I loot and scoot out of there.
Since I am here, I'll scan. The system does indeed have a highsec static according to wormhol.es. I want to find it so that my corp can get in and out. There are 10 sigs. I deploy probes and scan at 32AU to find and ignore any low-strength ones (the static is high strength as will be any K162s). But there is just one. Still, since I am not bookmarking everything and all the sigs are of the highest strength, it's not too much of a chore to scan them down. They are all gas sites, except the static. I go to check it out. Sure enough, it comes out two jumps from Hek. I bookmark it and head back in.
It is possible the guy will try to run in again, either in a new Itty V or his pod. So, I think I will go back to sit where I sat before, on the C1 wormhole in C4b. I enter, deploy probes, then start orbiting at 5000m. (He might also try an interceptor.)
For the third time, I have to find and ignore previously found sites. Sigh. I set to it. Once that's done, I finally scan down the last of the signatures and bookmark it. Job complete! Finally.
Jayne comes online. We discuss site-running and I tell him what happened. As this happens, I hear the wormhole noise. Ah, what will it be? I set my orbit to 2500m, then get ready. It's a Helios, same guy. It's very unlikely I can kill him, but I tell Jayne to get in position upstream as I try for it. I uncloak and start locking, and he's gone. Expected that. But worth to try; you never know.
Jayne gets a bomber to our static in time to take another shot, but that one fails too, as was likely. I expect the guy will not be trying anything else tonight.
I log in. From nothingness to somethingness, suddenly my Manticore exists. I cloak as I do my login warp, then a quick dscan. Nobody obvious. Some C2 guys ran our two anoms yesterday, so there's nothing for anyone to do in my system. I doubt anyone's around. Still, there are three sigs, not the two I'd hoped for. One is an already-known gas site. One will be our static. What's the other?
I warp out to our outer planet and launch probes. The two new sigs are quickly resolved, and from their signal strengths I can tell which is the K162. I warp to it first, bookmarking the other. The K162 is "dangerous" and reddish -- that means C5. Hmm. Well, better have a look. I enter C5a.
Dscan from the wormhole shows four towers, with some ships at them, but types that are not of interest to me. A quick consult with wormhol.es shows these guys are probably European. It's evening here in the USA; I doubt we'll see too much activity from them. But, still, there may be a few night-owls up. Let's have a look at the rest of the system.
I warp to the outer system, and dscan shows two more towers. One of these has an Iteron V at it. Now, that is of interest to me, if it is manned. I am at the right planet, so I dscan and narrow down the possible moons by range. Eventually I find the right one, and warp to it.
I land on grid with the tower. Yes, the Itty is there and it is manned. I am about 80 km from it so I look. It is not aligned with the tower: where did it come from? A planet, perhaps? No, it came from some spot out in space just to the right of the inner system... oh. It can from the wormhole to my system. It appears that these guys have opened my system's static, and have run in some cargo. Interesting.
I sit and watch for a few minutes. But the Iteron is not doing anything, and probably won't do any PI at any rate. I've got more exploring to do, so I warp back to the wormhole and jump. Time to check out what's downstream from us. I warp to the previously saved wormhole bookmark. Then I save the actual location of the wormhole, and jump through into C4b.
Dscan shows a tower, but no ships. A consult with wormhol.es shows the inhabitants are supposed to be USA timezone. But the tower has a Chinese symbol for a name, and there are Cyrillic names on some of the POS parts. I don't think these people are USA any more.
OK, let me check out the scanner for anoms... crikey! This system has as many sigs as I have ever seen. (Later, I count them: 33 sigs.) Anoms? Oh, about 40 of those, including 19 rocks. So, that's good news for running sites.
There's also some bad news. The system's static is a C1. That's not great for site-running, because we cannot pop it. We'll have to place a cloaked picket there. (Fortunately, we have a new guy in the corp perfect for this.) Also, the system is a wolf-rayet, which is bad for our shield tanked PVE fleet. I think it will work though. Worse for me right now: each and every one of those sigs might be a wormhole. Each and every one must be scanned at least to the point of knowing what it is (25%), and for practical purposes it must be scanned down fully and bookmarked. That's a grim prospect. I move off the wormhole, firing probes as I go. Then I throw them out of the system, and go to find the tower. It's easily found; I warp to it to watch. I'll sit here to watch while I scan, just in case someone logs on to do PI.
I start scanning. There are three sigs at the outer planet; those scan fast enough. Now I move into the second-to-outer planet, which has a lot of sigs. I get through the first few, when I realize that scanning in my Manticore is kind of dumb. I don't think any targets are going to appear; the impressive proliferation of sigs and anoms suggests these guys don't play much. It will take me just a couple minutes to get my Buzzard; the increased scanning strength amortized over 30 sigs should more than make up for the travel time. So I'll head back home. But before I leave, I activate all the anoms. (Thank me when you get a new site in four days.) Now through my static, over to my tower, and reship. Then I return and get probes back out. I am circling the K162 of our static wormhole, having found nothing better to watch. I re-scan the general area I scanned before, to re-ignore those sigs. Then I start working again. I complete about eight sigs near the second-to-outer planet, and move on to the third.
A ship warps on to grid. It's the Iteron V I saw before: same pilot. But he is coming back in. I missed him going out. He lands on the wormhole and jumps.
How did I miss him leaving? Probably he left when I was at over at the local tower. Anyway, it's too late. Even if I burned over the to wormhole and beat him to the C5 connection, I can't do anything in my Buzzard. No guns, no warp scrambler. So, I sigh and set to scanning some more. I doubt I will see him again: he should have seen my probes both leaving and coming back in.
I am getting close to having scanned out this third-from-outer planet, when I find a wormhole. It's a faint signature, so it is probably the static. I warp over at 30km to look. Sure enough: P060, to C1. I'll have to explore through it when I get a chance, but not now. I really don't want to lose my state. Rescanning 15 sigs? No thanks.
I resume scanning. Gas site, gas site, data site. I am close to done with this planet, when a flicker of movement catches my eye on my overview. What? Ah -- the Iteron is back! He's on the wormhole, and then whoomp-crackle -- he exits to C1a.
 |
| I bet you'll be back. |
I take another trip to my tower to reship again. Yes, this means I will lose my scanning-state, but hunting is more important than saving scanning time.
I return to the system in my Manticore. It will probably be a wait. Maybe the guy won't come back. Either way, I am going to scan rather than just sit. So I fire probes after I am back in the system. Then I warp back to the C1 wormhole. I orbit it cloaked at 2500m. This is the best compromise between safety (if something nasty comes in), and being on top of the hole to make sure I am in range if the target returns.
Now I scan. For the second time, I have to re-scan a whole bunch of sigs to ignore. The outer system ones I can ignore simply by their location. But all the other planets are close enough that they require re-scanning. It's fairly quick, though, since I only need a 25% hit to do the job, or sometimes even less.
Minutes pass. I finally re-ignore all the stuff I found already, and now I can start in where I was. More or less. It is time to start tackling the 10 sigs remaining in the inner system. I put in the probes at 8AU, and get several gas sites IDed. I get it down to six sigs, when bwaammmp. Wormhole noise.
I quickly exit the map mode, and get my mouse poised to turn off my cloak. Is it the Iteron? A ship appears -- yes, the Iteron. I uncloak, then I head towards him and start locking him. I get my sebo on, as well as my weapon systems. This should work; Iterons are slow aligning, right? It does work. He's locked; a round of torps hits him.
 |
| In pursuit. |
I expect to find him aligning on the other side. But he's not in sight. He is polarized, so he cannot jump again. And I am certain he has not had time to align and warp. So I conclude he must be holding gate cloak. I immediately drop my own gate cloak, and start orbitting the wormhole at 500m, sebo on, hand poised over the overview. When he appears I will lock him, and this time he shall not escape.
I orbit. I orbit some more. Evidently he is waiting out to the end of his minute. I wonder if he has friends scrambling to help coming from C5a. This makes me nervous, but there's nothing to be done. If the wormhole sounds, I will deal with it then.
I orbit some more. How long is gate cloak anyway? I thought it was no more than a minute. I check on my local chat: it's been two minutes. He can't be cloaked any more... and yet, no Iteron.
Oh. Stupid me. He must have a cloak: a normal old cloak. He must have come through the wormhole and immediately cloaked. I was a few seconds behind, and did not see it. This means he will be sneaking off the wormhole. Iteron Vs are not fast to begin with, and he will be at one-tenth or one-quarter speed. So he is still here. I just have to find him.
I start orbitting at 2500m. Then 5000m. It's slow; I realize that I'll have a much better chance to uncloak him if I turn on my microwarp. I orbit, microwarping. Then I cut across the wormhole to try a different orbit direction.
 |
| No pretty explosion. I was busy. |
Let's see what he had. I move over to the wreck and open it. Disappointing. Just a cloak and some cargo expanders. (The killmail shows he had some ice products of modest value which got blown up.) I loot and scoot out of there.
Since I am here, I'll scan. The system does indeed have a highsec static according to wormhol.es. I want to find it so that my corp can get in and out. There are 10 sigs. I deploy probes and scan at 32AU to find and ignore any low-strength ones (the static is high strength as will be any K162s). But there is just one. Still, since I am not bookmarking everything and all the sigs are of the highest strength, it's not too much of a chore to scan them down. They are all gas sites, except the static. I go to check it out. Sure enough, it comes out two jumps from Hek. I bookmark it and head back in.
It is possible the guy will try to run in again, either in a new Itty V or his pod. So, I think I will go back to sit where I sat before, on the C1 wormhole in C4b. I enter, deploy probes, then start orbiting at 5000m. (He might also try an interceptor.)
For the third time, I have to find and ignore previously found sites. Sigh. I set to it. Once that's done, I finally scan down the last of the signatures and bookmark it. Job complete! Finally.
Jayne comes online. We discuss site-running and I tell him what happened. As this happens, I hear the wormhole noise. Ah, what will it be? I set my orbit to 2500m, then get ready. It's a Helios, same guy. It's very unlikely I can kill him, but I tell Jayne to get in position upstream as I try for it. I uncloak and start locking, and he's gone. Expected that. But worth to try; you never know.
Jayne gets a bomber to our static in time to take another shot, but that one fails too, as was likely. I expect the guy will not be trying anything else tonight.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)