Bearing

I've been low activity in EVE lately.  A lot of this has to do with other games occupying my time -- Clash of Clans, Star Wars Commander, and Castle Clash.  But it also has to do with luck.  I've had a good run of luck in having my system zip itself up.  When I am zipped, I hate to waste it.  Instead, I head out into our local anoms for some carebearing.

Last night was an example.  I've had five gas sites in my system for a while, which I have carefully not touched.  Most scouts coming through don't seem to instantiate sites, so the sites tend to persist until I want them.  Several of these gas sites had been there for a week.

Yesterday morning, I had three connections.  My two statics, and a connection from a C4 with a lot of towers.  These people were fairly busy yesterday.  But then they popped their own wormhole in the afternoon, leaving my static C4 in EOL.  So I knew I had just my two connections.  By the time I logged in last night for real playing, my static C4 had self-terminated, leaving only my C5.

The C5 system, I knew from yesterday's fruitless roam, was unoccupied.  So the chance of getting traffic from it is slight.  My system is very likely half-zipped.  I'll picket the C5 wormhole, while I do stuff in my system.

First, I trigger all my gas sites except one.  I do not think I will have time to slurp them all.  Then I wait for 20 minutes for the sleepers to come.  (I get off an attack or two in Clash of Clans.)

A bit later I get Von into his Rattlesnake and kill the four gas sites.  Two of them are Ordinary Perimeter Reservoirs -- the site with sentries.  Bouncers and precision cruise missiles deal with these nicely.  Then on to two Bountiful Frontier Reservoirs.  Gardes and precision cruise missiles kill the cruiser rats, then a Gecko kills the frigates.  (Yes, Geckos can track frigates.  690 DPS.  Sometimes they one-shot them.  Go figure.)

After the sites are killed, I warp back home to switch into a Coercer to salvage.  The sentry sites don't have anything, of course.  But each of the other two sites has about 40m in salvage and blue loot.   Good pay for the amount of time it takes.

Next I have some PI to do.  Von is first, but all my PI characters (three of them, on two accounts) need to do it.  So I get into an Epithal, and start making the rounds.  Each planet gets about 50000 units of P1 goods; this is enough for about two weeks of operations.  Each planet produces a complementary P1 good, and a P2 good.  The P1s sometimes get carried on to a complentary planet.  Those which don't, and the P2 goods, go back to my tower.

Ordinarily when I do PI, I do it in an insecure system.  Each time I warp out from my tower, I blind a hunter by warping to a safespot inline with a planet I am not going to.  But I skip that tonight, speeding the process.  Nobody uncloaks and kills me.

Von watches the wormhole for a while as Otto does his PI.  Then I swap again, and log off Von for his PI and gas sucking alt.  The alt does PI first.  Then on to the gas sucking.  He has perfect gassing skills, and an implant.  So he sets to work.

This is work for him, maybe, but not for me.  I have nothing to do for hours now, except listening for the wormhole noise on my picket, and strobing the discovery scanner every 10 or 20 minutes to check for new wormholes.  I dutifully do this, minus the occasional break for coffee and bathroom.  No wormholes connect.  Evidently nobody sneaks in while I am completely AFK.  I do see a new combat anom appear.  I watch as the sites go down one by one.  Every half hour I have to warp back to my reaction tower to dump the gas.

The C5 connection goes EOL, and I am tempted to use my picket to help mine.  But I leave him there just in case.  (I explore through EOL wormholes.  Others might too.)  Also, I want to know when the C5 goes away, because I would like to enter C5a when I am done for the night and check it out.

Hours later, it's time for bed.  I've tapped out three of the sites and a bit of the fourth.  80m in sleeper loot, and 100+m more in gas.  The C5 wormhole is still alive.

When you read a blog like this, it's easy to get the notion that EVE is really interesting all the time.  But I only write the good parts.  I write about the one percent moments, and some of the boring stuff that sets them up.  I rarely write about the 99% when that's all there is.  But it's there, and like everyone else, that's what I spend most of the time doing.  Scanning.  Safe PVE.  Gassing.