A Fly Looks Funny

Alone again.  The corpies have gone, so it is just me today in wspace.  I'm going exploring, so I get in my exploration Buzzard.  I named it Spyglass.  I scan down our wormhole, and fly to it.  What's up, static?

Staticmapper says C3a has a lowsec static.  OK, I can work with that.  But first, I check the local system for anything interesting.  Usually there is nothing, but you never find anything if you don't look.

There's a dead tower on d-scan.  Nothing else.  Unoccupied?  I can't sell it -- my babysitter is busy.  But there are several planets out of range.  Flying out there finds a live tower.  Nobody is home.

I launch probes.  Scanning finds a second wormhole from C4, but I don't investigate.  I find a lot of gas which I ignore.  Eventually I find the lowsec static, and I hop out, into Amarr/Minmatar factional warfare.  This is unfortunate, because there are a fair number of pilots present.  I fly around the local area, gate to gate to gate.  Lowsec is perfectly safe with a stealth cloak, at least if you stay cloaked.  But you cannot stay cloaked while doing exploration.  Some pilots use dscan and their wits to avoid being blown up, but I don't.  I just make a policy to never be uncloaked for more than 10 seconds outside of highsec, unless there is nobody in the system with me.  This certainly cuts down on my being ganked, and I think in the long run is superior for me given that getting killed when you are based in wspace is a bigger deal than getting killed when based in kspace.  But it does reduce the opportunity for profit.

All my hops are futile.  This area is strangely bereft of sites, and too populated.  The few empty systems have no sites.  The few systems with multiple sites also have multiple people, who don't seem to be moving much.

OK, forget it.  I'm calling it an early night.  I head back to my wormhole: jump, warp, jump, warp.  And back into C3a.

I dscan as a matter of routine, expecting nothing.  But there's a Myrmidon on dscan.  And four Garde Is.  What's this?  No sleeper wrecks.  Is he just starting a combat site?

I spin around the dscan.  First I look at all of the anoms, but he is not there.  And I try a mining site too, just in case.  Not there.  What is he doing?  Sitting at a wormhole?   No, not at either wormhole.  OK, let's look at planets... not there, not there, not there.  Finally I look at the last planet in range, he is there.  Why?  Ah.  The dead tower.

It makes some sense.  He is bashing the dead tower, or more likely, some anchored part there that may contain something of value.  I did not fly to it earlier.  Maybe it has POS parts that are worth something.  I fly to the first moon at 100, preparing to zoom in and dscan all the moons to locate the tower.  But as luck has it, this is the moon with the stick.  I am sitting 180 from the Myrm and the tower, and his Gardes.  

I warp to the tower at 30 to get a better look.  And I see what I thought I saw at 180: this tower has plenty of guns and ECMs anchored, but it has no container-parts.  No parts that might possibly drop anything of value.  And indeed: the Gardes are shooting the tower itself.  And not only that: the Myrmidon is not shooting.  He is not using lasers.  Just his Gardes.

My first thought is that I have a cloaky T3 just a hop away.  Or a Manticore.  Or maybe even not a cloaky... could I get him with a Drake?  But waaaaait just a second here.

I have shot structures in wormholes.  In my first wormhole there were two COs that I took out; I did it in a Vexor with lasers and drones.  I did it overnight, AFK, in a bare jump-clone.  I left myself logged in, firing, all night; the kills happened before downtime.  But sticks have massive hitpoints, many more than COs do.  So, there is no realistic way this guy in the Myrm is doing anything here.  Or else, he's an idiot.

I sit for a while, watching him.  I figure: if he is really trying what he looks like, then he's not going anywhere for the next, oh, 3 or 4 days.  So there is plenty of time, unless someone else wanders in to gank him.

Is he an idiot?  Maybe he is just really naive.  I look at the pilot's history: he dates from 2010.  So, the chance that he is naive is pretty near zero.  And I recall my own wormhole, still sitting there after an hour, as well as the other one from some other C4.  These make it even less likely that even the most naive player would be out bashing structure.

I sit for a while more, still watching.

It's got to be bait.  But there's one more thing to check on: is he local or not?  So, I note his corp, and I am about to warp out to the outer system where the live POS is, to see who owns it.  Right then, he pulls drones, then turns and warps.  Where to?  I go to the outer planet as planned, and sure enough, he's there at the POS.

OK, now I know it was a fishing expedition.  I wonder what would have happened had I brought a ship.