A Spectator

Friday evening, late.  I get back from doing IRL stuff.  Let's see what is happening in EVE.

I log in, and Jayne is on.  This is nice -- he's already scanned down much of the constellation.  Our home, C4a, connects to a C5 via K162, and downstream to C4b through our static.  I go in to explore C5a as Jayne works downstream.  C5 is a bust: some Russians seem to live there, but they are not home.  There is a nullsec connection, but none of the high-level gas sites.  Downstream, C4b has a C1, a C2, and a C3 hanging off it.  Jayne explores the C1 and finds a highsec connection about 10 jumps from Jita, near Amarr.  This is quite good for getting in the PI goop we need.  And we've got some stuff to go out: sleeper loot, and PI goods.

We get moving.  We spend the next hour moving goods out and then in.  Most of the time goes to crawling across highsec in a freighter.  Once we get in two Epithal loads, I spend some time with my Jita alt doing the bits of PI one needs to do in system.  Then I fly him back out, load up the freighter, and head to Amarr.  He's got too much stuff to head straight back to Jita, about 1.4b.  No way I am going through Niarja with that.  But the path to Amarr is all 0.8 security or higher.  Nobody will be ganking freighters in that.

While I freight in highsec with my alt, Von will roam around my wspace constellation.  Maybe there will be someone to kill.  You never know without looking.  I start in C1a, where I have been watching the C1->C4b wormhole for our runs in and out.  Nobody in C4b, no surprise there, since we have been running through it.  Now time to explore the two systems that Jayne didn't: C2a and C3a.

C3a first.  Dscan from the wormhole is not promising: a live tower but no ships, nothing interesting.  I pop probes, and warp out to an outer planet.  Nothing here either.  Well, there are four sigs, so I will kill the five minutes of polarization scanning.  I scan down the system.

My alt gets to Amarr.  In Amarr I drop part of the load and make a courier contract to get it back to Jita.  The part of the load I am carrying is now down below 1b.  Once I get it past Niarja I can autopilot it.  And that's probably what I will do, since I only have one more system to look at before declaring for bed.

I warp across C3a to the wormhole, and jump into C4b.  Then across to the C2 wormhole, and into C2a.  This also seems uninhabited, but that's almost never the case in C2.  Sure enough, there is a tower at the outer planet.  There are a few sigs, but resolving them finds lowsec and an EOL wormhole to C5.  Neither are tempting.

Nothing to do.  Time to head home and log off.  I jump back into C4b, and move off the wormhole.  I still have a jump to clear Niarja, so there is no hurry getting home.

I get a private chat request, from one Solitary Companion.  (I guess she's not so solitary if she's talking to me.)  Hmm.  No idea who she is, but I always answer these things -- curiosity compels me. 

I think I won't attack this.

I say Hi.  She asks where I am from: C1, 2, or 3?  I answer back cryptically, not sure what she is after.  She says her group is doing a tower bash.  This confuses me: I've just been through the entire constellation and I have seen no bashes.  We talk a bit longer and eventually I figure out she is talking about C4b -- where I currently am.  But there's no bash here.  That's when I realize I forgot to dscan when I came in.  I dscan.  Ah.  Ships and drones.  Lots of ships.  There is a bash here.  It must have just started.  I ask Solitary about this, and she confirms they just came in to start the bash 10 minutes ago.

I warp to my static K162: still there.  Whew.  I ask why they do not close all the incident wormholes; she says they've got eyes on all of them.  Not as good IMO, but whatever; they've got a pretty strong fleet.

Naturally, I am interested in seeing the bash up close.  I did not bother to find the tower earlier, but now I will.  I search it down via the normal dscan method, and warp in.  I am more than 100km off, so I warp up closer so I can look.  I frame a nice picture.  Then I inspect the tower.

Let's play spot the design errors.

The tower has ECMs all over the place, which is bad enough.  The pure ECM-based defense is obsolete outside of C1.  But then I look closer.  All of the ECMs that I can see are just anchored -- not online.  I mention this to Solitary, and she confirms there were only two of them online when they started!

We chit chat a bit more.  She's from a wspace corporation living in a C4/C3.  They are looking to expand, so they wanted a system more suited for newer players.  They settled on C4/C1, and evidently found this system and decided to take it.  Also, bashing the tower would be good experience for their new guys.

Having got my treasured snapshots, I decide to leave.  I am nervous that they might be closing my wormhole and not telling me.  (Also, it's late, and my alt has made it past Niarja.)  I wonder if they will jump me on my way back into my own system, but there is nobody there.  OK, cool.  I orbit the wormhole at 30km, just to keep eyes on to see if they close it.

Eventually they do.  I see two battleships, a Rattlesnake and a Dominix come in and leave.

Five minutes later, the same two come one at a time, as one expects when you get close to the mass limit.  (These I take pictures of.)

Then another battleship leaves.  I figure it is just a third one that Solitary's corp has pressed into service, and I must have missed it coming in.  But Solitary asks me if I am trying to close the wormhole.  No I am not -- you are!  Confusion... 

The new battleship, it turns out, is a Russian who got trapped in my system closing the C5.  (Somehow I missed him.  Not a great day for my discernment of people nearby.)  He had actually said something in local, which my corpmate noticed.  Cyrillic.

[ 2014.04.05 03:25:05 ] xXxinorixXx > привет
[ 2014.04.05 03:25:30 ] xXxinorixXx > поиогите пожалсуйса!!

I try to translate it via google, but no luck.  My corpmate translates it somehow (does he know Russian or something?) into a request for help.

Anyway, the Russian is a lucky guy today.  Solitary and his crew help him out, giving him bookmarks out.  (Wow -- nice people in wspace!  Who knew?)  The wormhole is left in a highly disrupted state.  I find out my one late-night corpmate has no plans to explore, so I won't pop it myself with an Onyx.  I say bye bye to Solitary and log off.