Jab and Riposte

It's corp night again.  Last night I prepared C5a for us, should it prove worthy.  By going in a day in advance, I can instantiate all the 16-hour wormholes that may be sitting around there uninstantiated, and get them to go away.  So I don't have to pop them to be safe.  But of course, new wormholes can pop up all day long, and there's nothing I can do about it.

I have to check for new wormholes, and I might as well do it now, before my corpmates show up.  Actually I am only expecting Jayne tonight.  But last night I found the best gas site in the game, an Instrumental Core Reservoir, in C5a.  If it's still there today, which is highly likely, then we'll run it.  We can be in, kill the sleepers, and out probably before anyone can scan us down.  So that's my plan.  I warp to the wormhole C4a->C5a, and jump.

Plans change.  In this case, I see a full set of Sister's core probes, as well as two Ventures.  There is no live tower on scan from here (in fact I know from last night that there is no live tower in the system).  So the two Ventures are out in space somewhere.  Almost certainly gassing in the Core Reservoir, right?  A single narrow-band dscan confirms it. 

I am in my normal Manticore fit, unable to tackle a Venture.  So I need to refit to my fit with two scramblers.  Where can I do that?  I could go back home to do it, but that means two more uncloaks at the wormhole.  It also means five minutes of polarization.  Not a good option.  This system is rather small.  The furthest planet is an outer planet about 14 AU out.  That's almost far enough... fortunately, last night I scanned down a wormhole that is near that planet, and about two AU further away.  I think that is far enough to be off dscan.

I warp to the wormhole near the outer planet, making a safespot when I get close.  Then I turn around and warp to that safespot.  From it, I cannot see much on dscan.  It will do.  Of course I have no idea whose probes those are; it might be one of the Ventures scanning, or it might be some other ship.  If it is another ship, there's some chance it will come out here and dscan.  But at least I can hope that the pilot is probing and isn't dscanning actively.

I launch my mobile depot, then orbit it at 2500 cloaked while I wait for it to online.  Dscanning shows nothing during this time.  When the depot onlines, I get in close and uncloak, and refit.  Then I grab everything, and warp to the gas site at 100km.

As I warp over, I am considering my options.  Jayne should be online any minute now, and I might hasten that.  We got a similar setup last week, him dropping on them in a Sabre so we got pods.  But before I do that, I want to get on site and see what's happening there.

I land in the site.  I came in from the side, so I am not worried about being decloaked by the gas.  And indeed, the large cloud of C320 is entirely gone.  Both Ventures are there, now sucking at the small cloud, the C540.  This is bad.  A single Venture can suck up one of these small clouds in less time than it takes for sleepers to come, which is 20 minutes.  Two can suck it in 10 minutes.  I don't know how long they have been at it.  But probably they won't be on site for more than a few more minutes.

There's no time for Jayne.   I have to get in there pronto.  I bookmark the gas cloud, then warp to the sun (which is close) to bounce.  As I warp, I am trying to recall how large the C540 cloud is.  I think it's about 15km in radius, but I am not sure of that.  20km would probably be safe, but maybe not.  I decide to warp to 30km.  I land, then reverse and warp back at 30km.

I land near the cloud, about 18km from it.  A quick check shows one Venture is orbiting away from me, but the second is coming more or less towards me.  I move downward to meet it.  Once I get close enough, I uncloak and get to work.  The Venture's pilot tries to escape me, but with my microwarp I can catch him even though he is slightly faster.  Gradually my rockets do the job.  Boom.  He warps his pod promptly.

I scoop the loot from the wreck, which is not much.  There is a nice chunk of gas there, C320.  I want that.  But before anything else, I move off the wreck and cloak.

Combat done.  I start to ease back and notice the things again.  Dscan is clear.  The gas cloud is gone!  They must have sucked the last little bit of it as I was attacking them.  Talk about lucky timing!  A single minute later attacking, and I'd have missed them entirely.

I want that gas.  Not only is it worth 36m or whatever, it's the prize of battle.  The enemy may want it too.  But I am here and he's not.  I know where the bomber is, and he does not.  I quickly log on my alt Otto.  As he logs on, I bookmark the wreck and check dscan.  Nothing there.  I figure that the enemy may come back with force, but it's unlikely at short notice that they'll come with anything that will stop a Venture.  Even if they do bring a bubbler, I can see it coming on dscan.  And a Venture is worth the risk.  Otto takes one of my corp's Ventures, then warps over to the C5 wormhole.  Then he warps to the wreck bookmark, grabs the gas, and warps back home.  Ah, loot.

As I am sitting congratulating myself, I am still scanning.  I see a Venture.  Ah.  Perhaps they had the same thought as I did: come back in a worthless Venture to try to secure the loot.  Sure enough, a Venture lands on grid, but not at the wreck.  It's at the site's bookmark, about 20km from me.  The wreck is empty, so I figure the new Venture will leave.  Still, I move towards it in the hope that it dallies.  It moves, but not as I would expect, back where it came from.  Rather, towards the wreck.  That's odd... but it helps me close the range quickly.  Can he not see the wreck is empty?  No time to think about that.  I am in range, and I uncloak and open up.

Lightning strikes twice.

This one seems to go faster than the first.  Boom.  Again the pod warps in time.  Still, yay me!

A Sabre is on grid.  Crap, baited like an idiot!  Boo me!  The Sabre lands about 4km from me and fires a bubble.

I instinctively hit the microwarp and cloak.  And luckily for me, I am moving away from the wreck and far enough from it to cloak.  It's up to the Sabre now, to get to where I was going.  I know that even though I see me cloak immediately, he gets to see me for another 10 seconds or so.  So I just keep going straight, which is more or less to the edge of the bubble.  He starts moving towards me.

Now I juke and head directly to the edge, hoping to warp before he uncloaks me.  He gets about 8km from me, and fires another bubble.  Dammit.

Might have died here.

But then I get a break, and he changes direction, or maybe my juke worked.  (Hard to see what is happening in 3d.)  I make it to the edge of the bubble, and out.  He's 15km away; I am safe.  He fires a third bubble, but not near me now.  I keep moving out for a while just to watch.  Shortly he microwarps out of his bubbles and warps off.

Lessons here?  Well, there was nothing the first Venture could have done, other than be dscanning like a maniac and abort at the first sign of me as I crossed the wormhole.  I had scanned the site down last night, so he had no chance to see me probing for him.  Also, Ventures don't expect to get pinned by bombers.  So I cannot fault him at all.

One lesson comes from the fits on those Ventures.  Neither is excellent.  The second Venture should have had a warp scrambler or disruptor; if it had, my fate would have been sealed.  Both Ventures should have had a medium shield.  This would have given them more than double the hitpoints, doubling the time it would take me to kill them.  That also probably would have made the difference in the second fight, because had the Venture still been alive when the Sabre landed on grid its lock could have prevented my cloaking.  Note that both Ventures have empty slots.  You don't need a high-meta shield either; a simple Subordinate Screen Stabilizer costs about 15000 ISK.  Similarly, Ventures should have damage controls in the low.  That also increases hitpoints considerably.  (The fit I use for gas mining is found in my post How to Mine Gas Fairly Safely in Wspace.)

The main lesson is my own mistake.  Don't double dip.  If it seems too good to be true, as it was to have the second Venture go for the wreck in spite of the wreck being clearly empty, leave off.  It's true that I got the kill and I got away.  But I got it only because his fit was bad, presumably because he was rushed in making it.  I risked far more than he did.  If he lost, he lost a Venture worth a half million ISK.  Big deal.  If I lost, I lost not only a 40m bomber but a 100m pod too, and I'd be back out in known space with no known way back home.  I'd have to scan out with Otto.  Probably take 30 jumps across highsec.  Serious inconvenience.  Big loss.

Stupid or Fearless

A C6 system connected to my system last night, and I scanned it down then.  I found some good gas, a Vital Core Reservoir, and I sucked gas for 20 minutes until the sleepers came.  Today, I am eager to go get some more of that tasty C540.   But with the passage of 10 hours, it's wise to look around first.

I reenter the game in my Manticore, and first update my own system.  There's a new site, which turns out to be gas.  OK, first I'll check out C4a.  Last night it had nothing going on, and I hope to verify that again today. 

I warp to the wormhole, and sure enough I land not on it but at its signature location.  This means that nobody has been on this grid since downtime.  That's what I want to see.  I jump in, look around, and find nothing different.  OK.

Back home, then onward into C6a.  I warp to the wormhole, noting that this one has been activated since downtime.  Hmm.  I jump.

A dscan from the wormhole shows nothing, but then it is way over at the edge of a rather large system.  Last night I bookmarked the one local tower, so that's the place to look.  I warp to it at 70 km.  As I get close, I dscan.  There are four ships on scan: a Megathron, an Anathema, and two Covetors.  All thought of gas is gone.  Are the Covetors out in space?

I land on grid, and sure enough the Megathron and Anathema are safe within the POS forcefield.  Both are manned.  The Covetors are not here.  Could they really be mining in an open system?  In wspace?  I get dscan going and quickly find them in an ore site.  Yes is the answer. 

Easy.

I warp to the ore site at 10km.  There they are, very close to each other and also close to a can they are mining into.  Looks like an easy kill.  A trap?  No, not those ships.  I think these guys are just stupid.  Or fearless.

I am 149km from the can, so just a tiny bit of movement and I can warp to it.  I turn opposite the Covetors and move a bit.  Now I can warp to the can at zero.  I can and I do.  No fancy moves today. 

I exit warp close enough to one of the Covetors that it decloaks me.  That's fine; I was going to uncloak by hand anyway.  I get my systems on, locking both Covetors.  I put my warp scrambler on as I am locking, but not my painter and torpedoes.  Once both locks complete, the scrambler gets one of the Covetors.  I open fire (and paint) the one I don't have scrambled.  I hope it won't warp in time, and it does not.  Boom, gone.  I attempt to lock the pod, but it does warp in time.

One down.  One to go.

Now for the second Covetor.  Torps and painter on.  Dscan shows no change; I doubt they'll try anything with a Megathron, and if they do I can leave faster than he can lock me.  After a few rounds of torps, boom again.  This time the pilot is not so fast, and I get the pod locked in time.  I send him back to highsec.  Ha ha!   I scoop the corpse and a few bits of loot that fit (there are huge chunks of plagioclase that don't).  Then I get away from the wrecks and rocks and cloak.  Aaah, safe again.

Now I watch on dscan as the three remaining locals sit at the their tower, trying on various ships.  I am hoping they send over a Miasmos or something to try to fetch their ore.  But they don't.  These guys are stupid, or fearless, mining in an open system.  But not that stupid or fearless.

After a while, I get bored.  I warp to the outer planet and launch probes, then back to their tower to watch them as I scan.  Fortunately I have Tripwire, so I can ignore most of the sigs that were here last night.  Even so there are four new ones.  I set to scanning.  

It appears that they have noticed the probes.  They get into different ships.  Then one by one, they log out.

As I scan I warp around to wormholes as I find them.  I find three.  The first is a K162, highly disrupted.  Hmm.  The second is a small wormhole, outgoing. 

The third wormhole is another K162, also highly disrupted.

Wait a second... these guys may not be as stupid as I thought.  They disrupted all the wormholes except a small one, and that one small wormhole is outgoing.  They may have seen it appear, and intentionally not opened it.  Why didn't they disrupt the wormhole to my system?  ... Or did they?  Did I enter the system through a highly disrupted wormhole and not even notice?

I warp over to my wormhole.  Yup.  Highly disrupted.  Who's stupid now?

(I explore through EOL wormholes all the time, but rarely through highly disrupted ones.)

A Sloppy Scanner

It's getting late in the USA timezone, and it's a weekday.  I have not been on today, so my bookmarks are probably out of date.  These are not propitious circumstances for hunting.  But I am building troops in Star Wars Commander, and I have nothing to do in Clash of Clans.  So, let me see what wspace holds tonight.  I log in, still in my trusty Manticore as usual.

First I clean up my home system's bookmarks, and scan out new ones.  There is a new gas site, and a new wormhole.  The old C4 static is gone, so the new wormhole must be it.  There was another C4, also now gone.  And there is the static C5, which Hiljah found last night.  It is now deep into EOL, some 50 minutes to go according to the timing of her bookmark.  So, I am not going that way.  That leaves my static C4.  I warp to it, bookmark it, then head in.

C4a is not active, indeed unoccupied.  But a check with tripwire shows that it has C1 and C2 statics.  Those are good possibilities, what with the nullsec sites now in there.  C4b also has only six sigs; I won't have to sift through a lot of gas and relics to find the ways out.  I find a K162 leading to a C4, as well as the expected C1 and C2.  I head into C1 first.

C1a has nothing going on where I enter, but it is medium system with one outer planet about 17AU from my wormhole entry point.  I move off, fire probes, hide them, then warp out.

I see a Probe on scan.  Also there is a POS.  The Probe is probably at the POS.  I'll look for it.

As I start looking for the POS, a Heron appears.  Hmm.  Maybe also at the POS?  A bit of scanning shows that is untrue: they are in different 180 degree sections of space.   The Heron is not in a forcefield!  Prey!  As I narrow down to 90, then 60, the Heron launches probes.  Aha!  I doubt I can kill it -- it should recloak soon -- but I will try.  That the probes are still not out probing is a good sign for me.  The guy is slow, possibly distracted by another account.

I find the Heron at moon 7, with its probes still around it.  I throw my Manticore into warp.  While I am in warp, I keep dscanning forward.  The probes disappear.  Rats.  But the Heron is still there... it should cloak any second.  I land on grid with it.

The Heron is some 210 km away.  I orient to it, and I can see that there is a planet almost in line with him.  It's a bit "up" from the direct line.  I ponder my options.  How old is the character, anyway?  A quick check shows a year or so.  That's plenty for me to be quite unconcerned about her feelings -- she should know the score by now.  The only way I can get close to her is to warp back and forth twice.  Of course, the pilot will probably cloak long before I can do that.  Still, she has not cloaked yet... then she cloaks.  Finally.

That was way too much time uncloaked.  Herons cannot warp cloaked, but they can move, albeit slowly.  Still, I have the feeling that this particular Heron won't.  She's been slow and lazy about security at two points so far.  So I bookmark my location, then warp off to the inline planet.  Then I warp back 100km, and make another bookmark.  Then I repeat the process.  One final move: I bookmark my location then point straight up and fly about 10km.  This is, hopefully, where the Heron is.

Now I wait.  As I warped back and forth, I could see the probes when I was relatively close to my entry wormhole.  That suggests that my wormhole was brand-new, and this pilot is searching only for it, having probably already scanned the system.  That's good; it means once she finds it, she will uncloak and warp over for a look.  She may, at least.  And may is good enough for me to wait patiently for a shot.  Even though she'll probably get into warp too fast for me.  Still, one has to try.

I wait some more.

Don't uncloak and sit there.

And there she is.  20km -- not too bad.  Actually I am rather proud of how close I am.  But it is not within warp scrambler range.  I head straight at her, hoping that she'll be as tardy in warping off as she has been in starting to probe, and in recloaking after probing.

My hope and waiting pay off.  I look at her, and she's not moving.  Just a few seconds more...

Then I am range, and the same old thing happens.  I uncloak, get systems going, and the lock completes.

Too late.

Then she is smashed quickly by my torpedoes.  (Moving would have helped a lot.)  I almost lock the pod, but the pilot is alert by this point and warps free.

I scoop the meager loot, then move off and cloak.

A stabber appears on dscan, then drops onto grid and orbits the wreck for a while.  I don't uncloak.  The stabber goes home.  I do too, quite a bit happier I think.

When you want to start scanning, uncloak, fire your probes, wait for the reload, then get cloaked.  Get yourself recloaked before you start serious scanning, and before turning your attention away.  Sitting uncloaked in wspace is asking to be killed.

Also, especially in a non-covert-ops capable ship, move (cloaked) when you scan.  Even moving at 1/10 speed, if it takes you 15 minutes to scan you'll go quite a ways from where you were.  If I see a covert ops cloak, I won't bother hanging around because it will probably leave without me knowing.  But that's not true of the lesser cloaks.  Even if I cannot catch you when you uncloak, I can see you and maybe figure out where you are going when you warp off.  Then maybe I can catch you there.

Finally, unless there is some good reason to be still, keep moving when you are uncloaked.  This makes it very hard to sneak up on you.  And in the event that someone does sneak into range, your movement lowers the damage you'll take from torpedoes.

A Gank on Scan

It's the weekend.  I am out in my Manticore looking for prey.  C5 I want to leave closed until later today.  So I head out through our static C4, into C4b.  It has occupants who aren't home.  It also has three wormholes I find: its C1 and C3 statics, and a connection from a C4 other than mine.

I check out C1 and C3 first.  With the new null sites, C1-C3 are my highest chances of getting a kill.  In both case, nothing going on.  There are no side wormholes in C1a at all.  C3 has an EOL C4 in addition to its highsec access.  I do open both systems up to highsec, hoping for a later gank.  Then I return to C4b.  That's my one remaining unexplored direction, so that's where I am going.  As I come back up from C3a, I notice its wormhole has gone EOL since I went in.

I mark the EOL wormhole, then warp across to C4c. Ah.  The wormhole to C4c is EOL too.  I figure that whoever scanned the C3 also instantiated this one.  So, it's got almost four hours to go.  Plenty of time to look around.  I go into C4c.

In C4c, I dscan as I always do from the wormhole.  Aha!  There's five Tengus on scan, and wrecks.  Also two tractor units.  Site runners!  I move off the wormhole and cloak.  There are combat probes on scan; Tengus can certainly have combat probe launchers, and they are running sites in an open system.  So I figure they are looking for people like me.  Hopefully they did not notice me.

Now I start trying to figure out where they are, looking at anoms.  I don't succeed in this -- perhaps they are in a signature site.  But there are a few anoms out of dscan range, and also a lot of anoms total.  So I bookmark all of them, just in case.  Even if the site-runners are not at an anom now, they may well move to one.

Now I start trying to find the enemy again.  I still can't.  But as I am doing this, I notice some new ships on scan.  And then more.  Then all the Tengus are gone.  Except one. 

Um... those are not PVE ships.  I think I am witnessing a gank, albeit remotely.  I grab a screenshot, then look again in a few seconds.  In the first there's one Tengu still visible. 

Shortly it is gone, replaced by a wreck and a corpse.  (A later killboard search reveals the kill and the podkill.)  Not long after that, the tractor unit is gone, also replaced with a wreck.

I try to figure out what anom they are in, but they're not so far as I can tell.  Drat.  It sort of makes sense though -- who rats in an anom in an open system?  Crazy people.  It's fairly crazy to rat in an open system at all, even in a sig, but at least then you have a chance of seeing probes on scan before the gank hits.

Anyway, if the site-runners were in a relic/data site, then it may still be scannable.  (Hopefully no cans were cracked.)  I guess I will have to scan.  I warp to an outer planet, unfortunately not that far out.  The site is still on scan, so I'll just have to be quick.  I decloak, fire my probes, and recloak as fast as possible.  Then I start scanning.

No battle here, only my probes

There are 17 sigs on scan.  Sigh.  I set to work.  I scan down sig after sig.  Nine are gas, which I ignore as soon as I determine it.  Those wrecks can't be from a gas site; there are battleship wrecks and also too many.  There are four relic sites and one data site.  I dscan each site as I find it, expecting it to be the one where the battle happened.  No luck; none of them have wrecks or anything else.

The remaining sigs are wormholes.  One of them I came in.  There is also a connection to a C3, and another to a C4, both of which are EOL.  I sit at the C3 when I find it, and as I scan there is a steady procession of ships exiting.  First there is a scout, one Gin Andtonic, with Adhocracy.  (I like a good G&T myself.)  Then a procession of Tengus, all with Kreigsmarinewerft:  Haja Hakaari, Ted Stinger, Molasse, Avallarion Selara, and Silly Sin. It appears both the Germans and Adhocracy came from this direction, although maybe Adhocracy came from the other direction and that scout I saw is just moving forward. 

Once my scanning is done, I go back into the inner system.  I can't find the battle site.  I start to wonder if I can track it down by constructing its position.  It seems crazy, and is.  Still, I start scanning for the site as something to do.  I know I can't really find it, but it's good practice anyway.

After a lot of work narrowing it down on dscan, I finally notice I am honing in on a bookmark.  That is a bookmark of a Sleeper Sanctum I made when I first entered.  I should dscan that just to be sure... oh.  Yeah, that's where the wrecks are.  I don't know how I missed it earlier.  (This is why you make bookmarks.)  The site is apparently unoccupied now, save for wrecks.  I warp in for a look.

Abandoned?

There are juicy sleeper wrecks in a nice ball.   There are also two unlooted sleeper wrecks that evidently did not get pulled in before the tractor was killed.  They are about 40km and 20km from the wreck ball.

Sleeper wrecks!  Precious!  We wants their salvage!

So... hostiles know about this site, obviously.  Two groups, actually: the Germans/Condi and the gankers/Adhoc.  That's a big do-not-risk sign.  On the other hand, it's been quiet here for a while, and I have ceased scanning for a few minutes at least.  Also, any new explorers or locals that enter the system will not be able to get on grid with the wrecks.  The anom is gone, and there's nothing left here that is scannable.

My wormhole is EOL, and there is some chance that I missed noticing that when I first bookmarked it.  But I don't think so, nor would I have missed EOL status on both it and the C3 wormhole back in C4b.  And if I do get trapped in here, it's not a big deal -- I'll just scan out -- but it would mean a half-hour or so wasted doing extra scanning and burning across highsec.

All in all, I think I will wait.  I know from examining local chat when I entered the system: 16:41.  Now it is 17:30.   I've spent all that time hunting then watching the gank then scanning.  Those wrecks were either fresh or created after I entered.  So they'll last until 18:30 at least, probably a longer.  In fact, longer.  I notice the tags on the wrecks: some of them are Adhocracy tags.  Evidently Adhocracy finished off the last wave.  (Why they did not salvage themselves, I don't know.  Maybe they will try?)  I know -- or I think I know -- the timing on my entry wormhole.  Hopefully the gankers and gankees do not know the timing, and will want to stay out of the system to be safe. 

If either group does come back, it might be with a gankable salvager.  I slowboat away from the tractor unit, making a perch 263 km from it.  Now I am poised if they do come back.  My plan is to sit here and watch my overview and dscan for an hour or so.  Then I'll try for the salvage and loot myself.

At about 18:15, I get my alt Otto online, and warp over to check out C4b.  It is still empty.  OK.  I go back home and get in a salvaging Coercer.

In C4c, Von sees a Buzzard on scan.  It fires Sisters Core Probes and cloaks.  Well, it can't find me here.  Ha.  It scans for a while.  And a while longer.  Yeah, there are 17 sigs.  It is still scanning at 18:30, so I hold up Otto.  Hey Buzzy, I'd like some privacy here!

Finally, the probes disappear.  I start dscanning intensely, hoping to see the Buzzard again.  After two minutes, I do.  I expect that is him leaving.  OK, go time.  Good luck, Otto.  Otto sees a Sister's core probe in C4b.  I deduce the Buzzard is there, and will probably see him, but I doubt he will do anything.

In Otto goes.  He warps direct to the site and starts salvaging.  No point in being coy.

Grinding wrecks.

All the wrecks but two are already in a ball, thanks to the efforts of the now-dead German tractor unit.  (Too bad about Noctises.  Grr tractor units.)  Otto salvages furiously in his cheap little destroyer, thanks to six salvagers and cheap rigs. 

Getting to the last wreck.

Nobody ganks Otto.  He has to microwarp over to get the two wrecks not in the ball.  And then, that's that.  Salvaging done, Otto flees.  Von flees just after.  I don't want to get stuck here!

Loot.

Nice loot.  Thanks, Adhocracy!

A Foolish Viator

I'm back on the hunt.  It's the weekend, a good time for interacting with people not in my time zone.

But so far, I have not found anyone.  Earlier I opened C4b then C2a off of C4b, finding a route to highsec.  But C2a also had a number of nullsec-style relic and data sites, and no incoming wormholes.  So I took some time to run the sites in my Buzzard, making 100m ISK in salvage.  I opened the highsec wormhole before leaving, if it was not already.  Come on in!

Now I am returning to hunt.  At least one of the sites will still be there, so I am hopeful of finding an explorer.  I am in my Manticore, fit up to hunt light ships: using rage rockets and a second warp scrambler instead of the torpedoes and target painter in my standard fit.

C2 is still empty.  Drat.  Well, there are two new sigs.  Probably wormholes, but maybe new sites.  Either way, I want to know.  I fire probes, recloak, then scan down the two.  Both are wormholes, one outgoing small one to C5, the other from C4. 

I try the C4 first.  It's small system, everything in dscan range from the wormhole.  One tower, no ships on scan.  That's unpromising.  I activate their two anoms, then duck back through the wormhole.

On to C5.  I enter the system and dscan, seeing nothing interesting.  But this is a large system.  I'll have to warp to two outer planets to see it all.  So I start doing that.  The first has a tower with ships.  I dscan it down: nobody home.  Just empty ships.  OK.  I warp into the inner system: nobody home here either.

There is one more planet to check.  I warp to the outer system.  Here I see two towers, with several ships, and a Viator on scan.  OK, now we are talking.  This has "guy doing PI" written all over it.  Or maybe another empty ship.  Only one way to be sure: get on grid with it.

I start looking for towers.  With my second dscan I am surprised: the Viator is not in a tower shield! 

Must find and kill!

I dscan the planet, expecting to see him there doing PI.  But he's not there.  OK... is he close?  Dscan at 1m klicks shows he is.  Maybe he is at a moon?  (But why?  No time for that.)  I feverishly dscan for the moon I assume the Viator is at... and it is at a moon.  OK, moon 5.  I warp in at 50km, cautiously.

I land on grid.  There's the Viator all right.  And there is an Amarr tower onlining, with ten minutes to go.  Also there are a small number of POS defenses already anchored.  Hmm.  I don't know why he is not cloaked, but there he is.  I bookmark the tower, then head for the local POCO as a convenient bouncing point.  I return to the scene 10km from the tower.  I hope I don't run into anything... and I don't.  OK.  The Viator is about 20km, so I start moving to him.  Just stay uncloaked, Mr. V.  Stay uncloaked.  He stays uncloaked.

Closing in cloaked.

I am not gaining on him much.  Is he moving?  Ah, yes he is moving towards one of the anchored laser batteries.  Evidently he wants to do something there...maybe put in a crystal?  Can you do that with offlined modules?  (No time to research that.)  He slows, and I close.

Now I am in scrambler range.  It is too late for him.  I uncloak, get the lock started, and get my modules on.  Locked, scrammed.  My rockets crash into him... och.  Not a lot of damage.  They'll kill him eventually, I think.  But not for a while.  I wish for my torp fit, but wishes are not horses.  Instead I turn to my dscan, trying to dial the range down enough to get warning of incoming.  I don't succeed; I'll just have to assume those ships at the tower are unmanned or asleep.

No ships come.  Instead, as I head into structure he ejects.  I try to lock the pod, but it escapes.  Oh well.  I cannot fly a Viator, and I am three hops away from home.  There is no hope of capturing it.  So, I kill it.  Then I scoop my loot, and get out.  Sisters probe launcher!

I return a few hours later, and the tower is offline again.  I guess I scotched his plan.

In retrospect, I am guessing his plan was to online the tower for a single hour while he scooped the few defenses around it, then offlined it and took it down.  And it would have worked fine, if he'd only cloaked or absented himself while the process was going on.  He learned the hard way what I thought everyone in wspace knows: never be uncloaked outside of a POS without good reason.

Fun in C1

It's Christmas eve.  I am not working.  So, in between family I work in some Christmas EVE.  I am out for a roam in my Manticore.

My system's static C5 connects to C5a, as it always does by definition.  C5a has Russians in it, and they are still awake.  But it looks like they are winding down if they were ever doing anything.  I lurk about hoping they do something, but apart from a few moves in between far-scattered POSes, they don't.  Eventually I give up and scan their system.  I see a Tengu and Loki appear, neither of which I can do anything about even if I did get them outside of their POS bubble.

I'm about done here.  Onward.  C5a has a static C1, which I just scanned.  Ever since Hyperion, C1s, 2s, and 3s are great places to hunt.  So I am eager to get in there and see what's up.

Nobody on scan, and I warp around a bit to find one live tower with nobody home, and nothing else.  But there are fifteen sigs.  Time to scan.  My scanning reveals eight data sites (four of them sleeper sites), four relics, and three wormholes.  One wormhole is the one I entered from, and another is the N110 static to highsec.  I jump out to find the exit in Caldari space, eight jumps from Jita.  The final wormhole is an EOL and highly disrupted connection from C5.  Well, that probably won't be much of a problem.

I do note one interesting thing: one of the sleeper data sites has a talocan frigate in it.  So I confirm for myself that these do exist.  (I suspect all sleeper data sites have the potential.)   I bookmark a spot near the talocan.  Perhaps I can run this site.  But not now -- later.  Now I have family to attend to.

Talocan and guard.

Later, I return to the computer.  There's a small amount of time before dinner.  A dscan in C1a shows something interesting: a Helios!  The local POS is out of range, so that Helios must be out in space somewhere.  I see his sisters probes, so he appears to be an explorer looking for loot.

(Jaws theme.)

Sure enough, in a minute I find him on narrow-beam dscan in one of the data sites I scanned earlier.  I throw it into warp, to 100km.  When I land on grid, the setup is perfect.  He is heading to a can about 170km from me.  I start to warp to it at 10km, then stop to make a perch just in case.  Then I warp over.  The Helios approaches the can and scans it, then starts hacking.  Perfect.

I set myself to orbit the Helios at 1000m.  Then I wait a few seconds, and when i am in scrambler range, I uncloak.  And the expected happens.  Getting out of the minigame and warping is practically impossible in time, and he does not manage it.  So, dead Helios.  I try, but the pod warps free.  I loot the wreck, and the loot fairy is in tune with the season.  The Sister's launcher survived.

Now I lurk a bit more, but I've got to go.  I head back into my system just in case.

Later, I return.  A quick trip through C5 and into C1 shows nobody around.  OK.  I log in my alt, thinking about running that data site for the talocan. Otto gets in a Falcon, then warps down to watch the C1's highsec entrance.  Then I warp back to get my small-site running Tengu.  I find a relic analyzer and put it in my cargo, then head down the chain.

Arriving in C1, I warp into the data site and start in on the sleepers.

Squishing small sleepers.

The difficulty is comparable to an easy gas site, except three in a row.  This is nice.  I use rage missiles on most of the cruisers, then javelins on a few that pull range beyond normal assault missile range.  Then I kill the frigates.  Then I refit to salvage, and clean up.  Finally, I get the relic analyzer on and hack into the talocan frigate.  It's an easy puzzle, which is trivial to run with virus strength of 40.

Puzzle can't touch me.

I quickly find and crack the system core.  I am rewarded again, with two small hull sections.

Lucky loot.

Merry Christmas.  Probably won't post again for a few days.

Culling a Flock

It's midday Sunday.  The Boy is out at a guitar lesson, so I am in EVE.  I've checked out two systems, a C4 and a C5, adjacent to my home system.  No targets.  Now, into a second C5 via a K162.  I'm not particularly hopeful of finding anyone doing anything dumb, because after all they connected to us.  They presumably know they are not zipped up.  That's why I left this one for last.  Still, you never know in EVE.

Ships on scan!

I am right to not know.  I cross the wormhole and dscan, and what should appear but a flock of Ventures.  Also an Orca and a tower, almost certainly boosting a gas mining operation.  Eight targets!  Visions of mass slaughter arise in my mind, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.  I can only kill multiple Ventures if they are being extraordinarily stupid.  First things first: get on grid.

Is there an outer planet?  There is an outer planet.  I warp to it at 100km, as always cloaking immediately as soon as my gate cloak drops.  This is my first chance to blow my cover, and there is nothing I can do about it.  With eight of them, probably at least three actual players, there is a decent chance someone is dscanning.  Will the see me?  I hope not.

I make a safespot out in space near the outer planet, which is pleasingly abandoned.  Also there are no sigs out here, so there is little reason why any of the natives would come out here.  I warp to the safespot, uncloak, deploy my mobile depot, and fire probes.

The probes I throw out of the system.  I'll get back to them.  The depot is for refitting.  I need to refit my Manticore from its normal configuration into its Venture-killing config.  The Venture killer removes the normal target painter for a second warp scrambler, which is needed to tackle a Venture with its built-in +2 warp core stabilization.  My anti-Venture fit also forgoes torpedoes.  I've been using light missiles for Venture killing, because I have had them at level V for a while.  But recently I trained Rockets V, so I get to try rockets for the first time.  Yay, me.

My minute is impatient.  Then I refit, get the rockets loaded, scoop the depot, and it's hunting time.

I warp to the inner system, then get a rough bearing on where the Ventures are.  2.4 AU from me, and generally up and left of the sun.  I set my probes to 2 AU distance, then move them into a rough position as my marker.  Now I start trying to hone down to 5 degrees.  Usually getting down to 15 degrees is fast, while the last step to 5 is hard.  (CCP: very please to put in a 10 degree setting?!)

This time, I am trying for five degrees for a while with no success.  Then I back out to 15 degrees and the Ventures are not there.  What?  Try at 360: there.  Again at 15, then 30, and 60: not there.  I guess they moved.  Strangely, they are the same distance from me, 2.4 AU.  But somewhere else.  Back to the start of my search.

I narrow and narrow, and get to 5 degrees.  OK, that's it.  I check my distance, and have to work it a little bit to get it to look like 2.4 AU.  (This is done purely by eyeball, and is a bit of an art.)  But now I am ready to scan.  I set the probes to 0.5 AU, and scan.  Scanning... and a red dot, 49%.  OK, quickly, drop the range to 0.25, adjust, and scan again.  100%!  A Vital Core Reservoir!  I retract the probes to hide them.  I am "below" the site, which means it is safe to warp in at 100km.  So I do.

Warping... and on grid.  And sure enough, there is the big gas cloud, the C540 one, with all eight Ventures orbiting it, sucking gas.  The little cloud is already sucked up.

The good news is that an orbiting Venture can be sneaked up on.  Or so I think.  I have never done it successfully before, but that's because my average kill is not orbiting.   Stupidly, they sit still.

The bad news is that they are all over the place.  The gas cloud has a radius of some 70km.  There is no way I am going to get two of them.  Orbiting while you mine is not the absolute best way to do it (here's how to do it right), but it is solid play.

Currently I am more than 100km from edge of the cloud.  This is too far to approach in reasonable time, but too near to warp.  Well, I can bounce.  I bookmark the C540 gas cloud (that is, its center), then warp off site to a nearby planet.  Then I warp back to the cloud at 70m.  I end up nearer to the edge than I thought, just 9000m.  But it's actually pretty much perfect.  I am near the edge, ready to go.  Now all I need is for a Venture to come to me.

A quick look around shows one Venture in particular that appears to be headed nearly at me.  He's 70km from me, but approaching fast.  OK, that's the one.  The Venture's orbit is mostly towards me, but a bit to the "down" direction from my perspective.  So, I maneuver down to intercept, and also include a slight angle in towards the cloud.  The approach is working.  The target is getting closer: 50km, then 30km.  I am getting close to the cloud: 7km, 5km.  I stop for a bit.  That's close enough.

Now the target is 20km, and closing.  I start moving a bit more down, and as he closes to 10km, towards him.  Time for pew!

I uncloak, and start locking.  All systems on: 2x scrambler, sebo, rockets.  The lock completes: got him.  My rockets start up, and the range stays short.  Good.

I pounce.

He is past me, and starting to pull away.  I may have to pulse the microwarpdrive to keep up.  But it seems like not.  Distance is maintained at about 4000m.  Then boom, he's dead.  I am ready, and start locking the pod.  He's not ready, it seems, because he does not get the pod out in time.  Locked!  And podded.

I attend to the overview: no ships left on grid but me.  I didn't have any awareness of them leaving.  Tactical tunnel syndrome.

I approach the wreck and grab the corpse for my collection.  Then I open the wreck and loot.  The loot won't fit: there is a lot of gas, which is large stuff.  (The loot fairy smiled on this gank.)  I grab all the fittings, and fill my hold with a small portion of the gas.  In fact, there is significant value in gas.  But I can't take it, so I perforce will leave it.  Perhaps they will try to get it back.  I'll hang around.  I bookmark the wreck just in case I need to get back fast.

This would be a good time to find their tower.  I burn away from the gas and the wreck, and get cloaked.  Safe, I turn my attention to dscan.  OK, they are at that planet.  I warp to a random moon (wrong one), then dscan up the right one and warp in to have a look.  I have to approach the tower to get close enough to see.

The flock is there, but some have already refit into various other ships.  An Archon?  I don't think they intend anything here except logging out.  Sure enough, poof it is gone.  I watch them all as one by one, they get into a big ship of some kind, then poof.

Gas loot.

Finally one is left, still in a Venture, and the Orca.  I sit and watch another few minutes.  Nothing. I doubt they will do anything.

Now I resume being my greedy resource-harvesting self.  There's 12m worth of gas in that wreck, and I want it!  I log in my alt Otto, who warps to my tower to get a gas-carrying Miasmos.  Then I have a better idea: a Venture!  Otto gets one of our gas-mining Ventures, then removes the expensive gas miners, just in case he gets whacked.  Then he renames it, to the same tag and name as the natives were using on their Ventures.  I figure this might confuse them if they see it on dscan, at least long enough.  I doubt they are paying attention, but you never know.

Otto enters the system and warps to the wreck.  The guys at the tower don't move.  Otto lands on grid, grabs, and goes.  Gas mining the hard way.

A Brace of Ventures

Sunday.  I've been crawling wspace all weekend, to no avail.  I've seen a lot of probes and a few scouts, and I have seen people doing nothing at POSes.  What I have not seen is sleeper wrecks, or miners, or gassers.  But I keep hoping.

I am now two jumps down the chain from my home system.  My home system connects to our static C4, which connects to a second C4, where I am.  There are many wormholes here.  I've explored a further C4, a C5 (EOL: I stayed only long enough to see nothing happening), and another C5.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  There's another C5 through a small wormhole.  This is no problem for me, in my Manticore.  I jump.

Dscan from the wormhole shows nothing beyond a POCO.  I am near an outer planet in this system, which has a fair number of signatures.  Only three anoms, though.  System may be inhabited.  Won't find out the truth here.  I bookmark the wormhole, then warp to the inner system to look around.

The system.  My entry on the right.

As I warp across the system, I dscan.  Ventures on scan.  Six of them!  I am in a C5.  C5 plus Ventures almost always means one thing: a core gas site.  There is an ore anom among the three here, but it's in the outer system.  And nobody mines rocks in wspace anyway.  These guys are mining gas.

I work a bit to find a general location for them.  While doing this I see a Flycatcher on scan.  Overwatch?  Unknown.

Then I warp back out to the outer system to refit and launch probes.  My Manticore is currently fit with its general purpose gank fit.  I want the anti-Venture fit: it uses light missiles for better damage against such tiny targets.  It also has two warp scramblers, since one cannot hold a Venture.  Where to refit?  I make a safespot between two moons; that should do.  I check dscan -- clear -- then uncloak and launch my mobile depot.  I hate being exposed!  I also launch probes, then throw them out of the system.

I sit for my tortured minute, nervously watching my dscan for combat probes.  No probes, but I do see a Venture on dscan.  Ooops.  Evidently they are not locals, and are coming from the other signature out here. Will they bug out?

My minute is up.  I swap in the new fit as fast as I can, then grab the depot and cloak.  Safe again!

Range and bearing.  Ready to scan.

I warp to the inner system, to the planet nearest where I think the gas site is.  The Ventures are still there.  Good.  Now I get setup to probe for the gas site.  The range is 2.7 AU.  I set the probes in the correct spot for my 60 degree scan, then start the narrowing.  I get to 5 degrees with surprising ease.

I decide to risk missing the site or having to scan multiple times for a shot at getting it in a single try.  I set my probes to 0.25 AU.  And... I scan.  Ping, ping... a hit!  100% on an Instrumental Core Reservoir!  I recall the probes, and warp to the site... no, wait.  Cancel that warp.

I am looking "down" at the gas site.  (Space has absolute directions.)  Gas sites are aligned up/down, more or less: they are safe to warp into from the sides.  From above in particular, you don't want to warp in at any range for fear of landing in the large cloud.  (Its radius is 50km.)  The gas clouds decloak anything in them.

The only thing really decently far away is the outer system.  So I warp out there to bounce back to the site, at 50km.  I figure to check out what the Ventures are doing and then form a plan of attack.

As I warp back toward the inner system, but still out of range of the site, I dscan and see three Ventures.  Uh oh.  Did they see my probes?  I land in the site (nicely far from the gas), and no Ventures.  Bummer.  I bookmark the gas clouds anyway. 

I warp back to the outer system, and get confusing hits on dscan.  Ventures, then no ventures.  I warp back in.  Same thing.  Eventually I make a safespot right out in the middle of the system, so that I can dscan both out to the outer planet and to the gas site.  I can see the Ventures briefly a few times, but narrow-band dscan shows them not in the gas site.  Spooked, I'd say, but not enough.  They are either warping to and fro among safespots, or possibly cloaking.  Either way, they are still in system.

I'll wait.

I get out my phone and get a game or two of chess in.  Occasionally I dscan and see nothing.  But after a particularly intricate endgame, I dscan again and there they are again.  Narrow band dscan at the cloud: there.  Ha!

I warp back to the gas site, this time at 20km from the site's center.  (I am already far enough away that my angle of approach should be fine.)

I land in the site, and sure enough.  Ventures.  Three are doing something... don't know what... clustered near the edge of the cloud but not moving.  They are about 60km from me.  Perhaps transferring cargo?  Several others seem to be in the middle of the cloud.  And two are orbiting at speed.  I decide to try for an orbiter.  I look at them and find one that seems to be coming around the gas cloud to me.  I wait... he's off to my right a bit.  I start moving that way.  But the cloud is very close... 10km... 6km... I have to slow down, and vector to my right.

Here he comes!  I am close.  But not quite close enough.  I am not going to risk blowing it. 

This guy lived.

OK, I have determined that intercepting a Venture at the edge of a 50km cloud is pretty difficult.  Let's look again at the others.

Those guys in the middle of the cloud... they appear to be right at the center.  This is a huge no-no.  Don't do it Venture people.  Anyway, I check their location using the tactical overlay, and I am right.  They are in the middle.  So, it's an easy approach: bounce off the nearest celestial, then warp straight to the cloud as already bookmarked.  It's a plan!

I warp, then warp again.  The gas will uncloak me; I don't need to do that myself.  So I get ready to hit my sebo and start locking.  The Ventures will all flee, of course.  But I might get two if I am fast.

I land on grid.  I leave warp and the gas uncloaks me.  I start the sebo and then lock the two nearest Ventures.  I turn on both of my warp scramblers, but not the light missiles.  I'll pin one while I shoot another.  The one I am shooting will be able to leave if the pilot is alert.  But I hope he won't be alert.

The plan works.  The one is pinned, and my missiles make short work of the second.  Wow, fast.  I start on the one I have pinned.  Strangely, they are not fleeing.  There's a third Venture still in range, so I lock it.  The first pod flees.  Now the second one dies, and, oops.  I am warp scrambled.

Hmm, I guess it was a trap.  Oh well, no bubble here, not yet.  I'll kill everyone close and then see about escaping.   I open up on the third Venture.  Strangely, none of them are shooting me and I see no drones out.  No damage.  As I check for how I might escape, the one scrambling me warps.  The third one dies.  They are all gone, except one pod.  I kill that.  (It was the one I killed second, I find out in retrospect.)

I check dscan.  Nothing.  OK, safe.  Or safeish -- I am still in a warpable spot they have bookmarked.  But I gather what loot I can carry, which is trivial, and the precious corpse.  Then I warp back home ASAP.  I have a dinner engagement IRL and I must leave in a few minutes.  Back up the chain to home, then I warp to safespot and leave EVE.

I feel good.

A look at the killmails shows another mistake: the Ventures have almost no tank.  No shield extender; no damage control.  Extra hitpoints get you a few extra seconds to react.

An Ishtar in C1

It's Sunday evening.  I've been on EVE half the day, with little to show for it.  I did get in some POS fuel earlier, taking advantage of a nice connection three jumps from Jita.  And my Jita alt got his PI goods moved up and down to and from planets.  He had almost run out on all of his planets.  So that was nice.

The main highlight of the day was watching a frigate party swarm a Venture at a wormhole deep down my chain.  (Presumably they came through a small wormhole in the system, from C6.)  I blundered into this, having seen the ships on scan and gotten curious.  I looked, then warped to 70km to the wormhole they were clearly at.  As I aligned for warp, I hit a dscan and there was a freshly -fired warp disruption probe.   Augh!  Abort!  I tried to abort, but it was too late.  I warped and of course ended up about 10km from the wormhole.  But I don't think the gankers knew I was there; they were looking for other prey.   Still, when I hit grid it was only them there.  I had an alarming moment thinking they saw me on scan (which they may well have) and were gunning for me.  But they were not.  I slid back from their bubble and did not even have to warp.  So when the Vexor jumped in a few moments later, I got a good view.  Sorry, no pix.  I wasn't thinking clearly.

Anyway, now it's after dinner time.  By now the main traffic of the day will have died down.  But I still have a nice chain scanned, so it's time to head out and see what I can get.

I head down into C4b.  Nothing.  It's got several wormholes off it; by now they may or may not be there.  But if they are, I am heading in.  If they are EOL, that probably means I instantiated them earlier in the day.  So I'll look.

I look in C1a.  Nothing.  Back up, then to C2a.  The wormhole is EOL.  I head in.  Nothing.

Jayne comes on, and we get on coms and chat a bit.  I'll call him if I can find something to attack.  He logs off.

I head into C1b.  C1b is a terminal system for my chain -- since its static did not lead to more wspace, and it had a lot of sigs, I did not search it down.  I just looked for towers, which there were none of.  And targets, which there also were none of. 

But that was earlier today.  Right now, my dscan from the wormhole is promising.  There's sleeper wrecks, and an Ishtar.  Anything else?  A mobile tractor unit, as one would expect.  And Republic Fleet bouncers.  I move off the wormhole and cloak.

C1b is an anom graveyard, with perhaps 50 anoms of various kinds.  So I am not bookmarking them all.  Instead, I swing around dscan as if looking for a POS at a moon.  Quickly I narrow it to the right site, then warp in at 100km.  This is lucky, since it appears the Ishtar has finished the site and is now setting to salvaging, using salvage drones. 

Salvage drones?

Do salvage drones really work?  Maybe with top skills?  I guess they do work because he slowly cleans out the wrecks.  (He also has a normal salvager.)  He scoops his tractor and warps off.  I catch the direction and easily find the new site.  A sleeper wreck appears on scan. 

Now I text Jayne.  I want to drop on this guy, but I also want a gang.  While I wait, I warp into the sleeper anom and bookmark the target's tractor unit.  I watch him kill a few sleepers.  I start wondering if I can gank this guy without help.  But this rumination is cut short.

Having been there just a few minutes before, Jayne is back on in just a minute.  I tell him the situation, including that the target is in a C1.  This means our "normal" PVP fleet, battleships and Onyx, can't be used.  Our selection of gankfleet material that aren't battleships is meager.  (We try to limit the total value of ships at our POS.)  Anyway, we have Falcons, so Jayne grabs one for his alt.  (Not great in retrospect.)  And he uses his PVP Stratios, which is already perfect for this sort of thing, other than its costliness.

While he is making these choices, I swap my two characters.  Otto can't fly my Onyx, so he heads downchain to becomes my eyes on the target.  I head back upchain to reship.  When I get there, Jayne is ready.  I swap into Onyx.  We're already fleeted, so I fleetwarp us off. 

EVE is pretty.

Back down the chain.  C4a to C4b to C2a to C1b. 

Meanwhile, Otto watches as the target clears the site he is in.  He is now salvaging, with wrecks still being pulled in.  This is a choice point.  He's probably far more alert on dscan now, so there is some risk he'll warp.  The gank would probably be more likely to go off if we wait for his next site.  But that assumes there will be a next site; there is always the chance he'll leave after this one.  Also, I don't fancy waiting out in wspace, even in a decently strong fleet.  There's always someone bigger.  And it could be a while -- he's salvaging with drones.  So I order us in.  We'll take our chances.

We jump the wormhole, then warp to the tractor unit.  The die is cast.  Will he see dscan and warp in time?

No.  We land on grid, and I raise my warp bubble.  He can't warp, but maybe he can run.  We lock him up and get warp scramblers and a web on him.  Now he cannot outrun us either. 

Die, MTU loot thief.

We start in on him, and it is clear pretty quickly that we can break his tank and that he won't escape.  That established, we stop shooting the Ishtar and lock up the tractor unit to kill it first.  We don't want to lose any juicy loot to it.  It dies.

Almost dead.  No, you can't tell.

Now we turn back to the Ishtar and grind it down.  Boom.  The pod, squish.  I turn off my bubble.  We run around collecting drones, Jayne loots the wreck, and I grab the corpse for my personal trophy case.  Then we GTFO and head back upchain.  As Penny says, job's a good one.

A Reckless Ratter

It's the weekend and I'm in EVE.  I spent the morning running across highsec after I got trapped out of my home.  Now I am back in my system, and ready to explore.  I head through our static C5 into C5a.  Otto mostly scanned it down earlier.  Now I start poking into adjacent systems to see what's there.

I check out a C4, where nobody is home.  Then Jayne comes on.  He's around this afternoon.  We get on Skype.  Should we zip up our system and run our anoms?  We have six of them, two weeks worth.  Well... C5a has an Instrumental Core Reservoir.  I propose going after it, but we'd have to pop some holes or run with the system wide open.  Or we could just ninja for gas.  But if we are ninjaing, I'd like to get another guy on.  The discussion peters out.  I want to keep hunting, and not do PVE.  So, Jayne logs off.  I'll text him if anything interesting happens.

I head into C3a next.  It's a C3 system adjacent to C5a.  On entering I see the normal tower, with no ships.  There are lots of anoms, something like 30.  Obviously the locals don't run them, or not very often.  I launch probes, then throw them out of the system.  The wormhole is in the inner system.  There are two more planets to check: a second-to-outer planet about 20 AU off in one direction, and an outer planet way out in the other.  I head off towards the first.  Nothing.  OK, over to the outermost planet.

Landing near a moon, I am happy to see sleeper wrecks on scan, as well as a Loki and a Tengu.  Obviously they are running a site near here.  Exciting!  I turn on display of anoms, and point my dscan at each one with a 15 degree arc.  Nothing.  Am I sure?  I try again: nothing.  OK, they must be out in a signature site, which would be a data or relic site.  This is smart on their part, making them considerably harder to gank.

I am up for the hunt, though.  My probes are out of the system, but already launched.  I can use them for the patented Penny hunting method.  First I determine the range -- 3.5 AU.  Not good.  Data/relic sites are very weak sigs.  Even with a five-degree arc, out that far it is very hard to hit one in one try.  It will probably require two scans.  We'll see how alert they are.

I fiddle and fiddle.  Getting a place out in space down to a 15 degree arc is easy.  Getting it down to 5 degrees is hard.  But eventually I get the right bearing.  Moving the probes just right is fussy, but I get that done too.

I set the scan for 0.5 AU.  I align my Manticore in the general direction.  Then I scan.  I get two dots.  But that is pretty good.  The further dot is always the right one, and so I move the probes as quickly as I can and scan again.  100%.  I throw my probes back out of the system, and warp to it at 100km.

When I land on grid, the Tengu is gone.  The Loki is still there.  Maybe I can... nope.  It warps off towards the inner system.  Both ships are gone.  Well, rats.  Evidently they were alert on dscan.

The Loki seemed to go up and left of the sun.  What's there?  I look at my system map.  Well... the wormhole I came in, from C5!  Ooh.  I warp to it at 100km.  I am hoping to see the Loki leave, but when I get into the inner system, it is not on grid and it is not on dscan.  Dammit.

But all hope is not gone.  There is a beautiful wreck field in this system.  I hope the enemy will want it enough to come back, perhaps in a destroyer.  I can gank a destroyer.  (A Noctis would be too good to be true.)

So I sit.  I stay at the wormhole, because I want to see where they are coming from.  I think it is this, but it may be some other wormhole.  So I sit and dscan intermittently, while twiddling prices on the other screen.

After a few minutes, there's a Buzzard on scan.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  And then a Loki, with the same name as before.  Not a coincidence.  I warp back out to the site, again at 100km.  They are in it.  One of them deploys a mobile tractor unit.  I bookmark it, of course.  Perfect place to warp to.  Then the Buzzard goes to start cracking cans.  Aha!  

The scene.

I text Jayne: site runner in Loki.  Then I watch for a bit hoping that Jayne is free.  I'll move back and start making a perch.

There is time.  There are a lot of wrecks spread out all over the place, and tractor units are slow.  They will take time to collect.  (It's better to deploy a tractor when you first enter the site, not after.)  I can't count on Jayne coming though.  So I start to consider how I might gank them by myself.  I don't have anything foolproof.  We have PVP Ravens that can NOS, which could probably kill the Loki.  But it could probably warp before being locked.  (Certainly the Buzzard could.)  Also depending on its fit it might be able to escape one before dying.  We need an Onyx.  I doubt my Onyx could kill it, but I figure it might be worth the try.  At least I might be able to kill the tractor unit.

I log Otto on in order to keep eyes on them.  I bring him down the pipe, then into the perch.  Once Otto is in warp to the site, I warp Von out and back up the pipe to get into my Onyx.  He does this.  By this time perhaps half the wrecks are collected.  The Loki is sitting near them, but evidently it is not salvaging because no wrecks are vanishing.  Perhaps I can get a salvager later?

Jayne logs on.  This changes things.  Now we can surely kill a Loki.  We get on coms.  He gets into two of our PVP Ravens.  These are DPS, as well as neuting.  I am tackle: I put a warp scrambler on the Onyx to prevent the Loki from microwarping out of my bubble.  Then we fleet and move out.  Back down the chain.

While we do this, the Buzzard has finished the cans.  It moves over to the tractor unit, although I cannot figure out why.  Shouldn't it leave and get a salvager?  No matter.  It's the Loki we are gunning for.

After we transit into C3a, we warp to the tractor unit bookmark separately, so that my Onyx will arrive just ahead of the battleships.  Then we wait as we cross the 30AU or so.  Will they bug out?  No.  I land on grid and raise my warp bubble.  I start locking the Loki.  I don't even bother with the Buzzard; I plan to scramble the Loki and the Buzzard surely has a microwarp.  It will escape, and that's OK.

My lock completes.  The Loki is nailed!  I move to orbit it.  It deploys Warrior IIs and sets them on me.  Jayne lands next to me with both Ravens.  As expected, the Buzzard zooms out of my bubble and warps off.

The enemy starts to pull away from me.  It's fast.  But one of Jayne's Ravens has a web.  He locks, and turns on all systems.  Now I catch the Loki.  It's doomed.

Ganking.

We start to hurt the enemy.  But then I realize that mobile tractor is there.  Unlike last time, this time we are killing the tractor first, so it does not suck in our loot and destroy half of it.  We switch to the tractor.  It dies fairly fast, but the Loki has repped back up almost full.  That's OK.  It's not going anywhere fast.

With full DPS on it, and tapped out of capacitor by the Ravens, the Loki cannot stand our damage.  It blows up.  The pod is trapped by my bubble.  I lock it up and ask Jayne if he wants to whore, but he doesn't care.  So, boom.  A costly Pod express.

Jayne gasps at the loot he collects from the Loki wreck.  That thing was blingy! (1.4 billion ISK.  We got about 700m.)  Now we evacuate the system and hightail it back home. The pod was pretty nice too.

I head back in a Coercer to salvage.  I figure I might get killed, but probably not.  And unlike the Loki, if I do get killed I will be out a few million ISK for the ship and maybe another 100m pod.  (Nobody ganks me.)

Lessons learned: if you see probes when ratting in your expensive T3, GTFO and don't come back.  If you must come back, come back in something expendable.

It does occur to me as I write this that perhaps the ratter did not see my probes, and just happened to leave coincidentally because he had killed the last sleeper.  It's possible.  In this case, the lesson learned is watch that dscan.  It is hard to do that consistently; I don't.  Which is why I don't solo rat unless zipped up.