A Ghost Site Disappoints

Two nights ago, I went ghostbusting in Stain.  Skunked.  Last night, I did it again in lowsec, out to the EVE gate.  Very few people around, but no ghosts.  Skunked again.

Tonight I fly again.  (I need to think of a name for my exploration Tengu.  Nosey, perhaps.)  Tonight our static C3 has a lowsec, and it comes down in Harner, which is in a corner of Solitude.  I scan down the local system.  Nobody is here but me.  There's a data site, which I run, to modest gain.  And there are two lowsec gas sites.  One has a low-value gas.  But the other... Celadon Cytoserocin.  Currently second most valuable gas in the game.  I think about it a while, then log out to bring in my farming alt.  (He has better gas skills than Von does.)

I mine on and off for a while, twice interrupted by people entering the system.  I mine the gas orbiting at 1000, so it is easy to move off and cloak.  Jayne shows up later and brings down two characters; we suck it dry quickly.  Now back into wspace, dump gas, and change characters.

Back to my original plan.  Ghostbusting.  Where?  Well, let's see if highsec Solitude is well populated.  I would not mind finding a site there first to run, so I could get the feel of it.  But that's unlikely unless it is pretty abandoned, and I just don't know how populous the place is.  So I set course for Gererique.  All of the systems I go through have people in them, lowsec and highsec.  So, I guess this is not the place to bust.  OK, plan adaptation: I am heading for nullsec.  Fortunately, Solitude borders nullsec.  So I can get into Syndicate in just a few jumps.  OK, off I go.

I am a little bit scared of a camp at the border, but I have been this way before and there was none.  (There was a camp going the other direction coming from contiguous empire, but I am not going there.)  And today there is none.  Also no ghost site, but now I am into null and there is nobody here.  So things are looking good.  I am planning to hit the local cluster here, since I don't have a lot of time.

Angry Concord Guy never sleeps.

When I enter Iggy (as I think of I-YGGI), there is a ghost site!  It shows up on my scanner as a normal combat anom, named "Improved Serpentis Covert Research...".  But there's also another player.  Hmm.  I order a warp to the site anyway, and cloak immediately.

Before I leave grid, I see the other player on grid.  He's leaving.  Nice!  It's all mine!  Except... it isn't.  I get a popup for the ghost site when I warped to it, but when I land, there is no ghost site.  And it has disappeared from my list of anoms.  Hmm.  My guess is, the guy I saw leaving just ran the site and left.  It despawned between when I warped and landed. 

A minimalist site -- very un-CCP-like

That's a disappointment.  Nothing to do but keep looking.  I set course north.  Two hops later, in A-ZLHX, I get lucky again!  Another ghost site.  And also another player.  I warp to the site, cloaked.  Here is what it looks like: there are four cans in a square, with about 20km between cans.  You warp into the center of it, I think.  (I warped to 10, being cautious, and ended up near the lower-left can.)  Above each can is a flavor object (bunker, small tower).

I sit for a second gathering my thoughts.  I do not really want to run the site with anyone in local.   On the other hand, if she is in local in a frigate maybe I can kill her when she comes to the site.  So I look at dscan for her: no ship appears.  I check out the system: it's all in range.  This makes me suspect she is cloaked.  But then I notice there is a station.  OK, she's probably there.  No way for me to check, though.  And it's been long enough that I doubt she is going to come in a frig.

Well, Nosey is designed to run away pretty well.  And I can't just sit here.  So, I mentally formulate and rehearse my escape plan, and then uncloak and start scanning cans.  I will want to get the can with the best stuff first, since it may be all I have time for.  First can: some minerals and some junk.  Second can: junk.  Third can: junk.  Fourth can: minerals and junk.

BOOM

Hmm.  Should I hack for basically nothing?  I would if alone, but it's not a good risk:reward proposition.  So I don't.  Still, I am curious to see what will happen.  So I back off from all four cans, and wait.

It all goes down as I have read on the forums. After about a minute and a half, Serpentis pirates appears.  I am cloaked so they are no problem.  Shortly, they blow up all the cans, and then they warp off in all directions.  (I don't think I have ever seen NPCs do this; it's kind of cool.)

I have a look at the rest of the small area I am in.  No more ghost sites.  And that is about it for my play time tonight.  Then I decide to log off here, so I can try again tomorrow. 

Wormhole Noise to be Fixed

A quick note for wspace denizens.  Since Rubicon, you may have noticed, as my corp has, the complete absence of wormhole sounds.  This obviously makes sound-based pickets useless, which would be a fairly dramatic change to wspace life.  Well: this has been reported to CCP and, according to CSM rep Chitsa Jason, it is a bug which they intend to fix.

Whew.

A Ghostbusting Bust

Rubicon day 2.  Last night, I noticed the market spikes in PI goods that Rubicon has caused.  Since we make some of them, and had a big load ready to export, the corp pitched in and did a supply run and return.  We made a nice windfall, too.  But I did not have time to really play with Rubicon much.  (The log in screen is spiffy.)

Tonight, I am eager to go out and find a ghost site.  I have my fit all dreamed up, but not yet created.  So the first thing to do is find my way out of wspace.  I spend a while scanning.  C3a has a highsec; very handy.  But the highsec is quite a few jumps to Jita.  I keep looking.  There is a second C4 linked to C3a, which I go into so I can activate all the things.  Just doing my part.  And there is also a C2 link.  I go to scan down C2a; it also has a highsec.  But there are some live pilots, so I go and get my Manticore to watch a while.  They don't do anything foolish, though, so eventually I give up and scan the system down.  There are four sigs, and three of them are wormholes.  There's the C3 connection I came in, but also the expected highsec static, and a nullsec.  Oooh, nullsec is nice.  This is just what I was hoping for: an easy way out to null for some ghostbusting.  The highsec is just four jumps to Jita.  That is also quite handy.  Clearly, Bob wants me to go ghostbusting out in null tonight.

I go back home to get Artemis, my cloaky Tengu.  She's fallen on hard times; I don't use her much any more.  I keep getting killed in her and not getting kills.  She's going to be converted to my ghostbusting fit.  (Artemis will return as a Loki, real soon now.)  I exit without running into anything nasty in C2a, and head to Jita.  Buy this, buy that.  My trade alt is sitting idle in The Forge, so I bring him back to trade a few items I know I have.  Gradually the fit takes shape.  I also get parts for a similar exploration fit, and a spiffy new mobile depot (1.8m and dropping.)  Now I am ready to go.

I fly back through highsec to the highsec entrance to C2a, and go in.  Nobody around, so I warp to the nullsec wormhole, and transit.  And I am... where?  Out in Stain somewhere.  JS-E8E.  Nobody in system, so that is nice.  But no ghost site.  Don't forget to bookmark the wormhole on this side!

OK, time for dotlan maps.  I have a Firefox window dedicated; I raise it and type in JS-E8E and... nothing.  Try again.  Nope, dotlan is down.  Argh!

Um.... help?  I realize with a small shock how hopelessly reliant I am on dotlan.  I am dropping out into lowsec and nullsec in new locations every day.  (I try to get dotlan again; still nothing.)  I am never going to memorize where I roam; I have to use maps.  I certainly cannot navigate using the in-game map -- that's too painful.  But I recall there is another map I have seen out there on the Internet.  So I do a search and call it up -- Ombey's.  It is a static map -- nowhere near as useful as dotlan.  But still, I can use it.  I find the Stain map and determine my direction: from JS-E8E to G-ME2K.  Let's go.

Where I was, and Ghosts were not.

I warp to the first system, TG-Z23.  Two in local, no ghost site.  Oh well.  Off to a side branch.  Nobody and nothing.  Back to the main path.  Hop.  Nothing.  Hop.  Nothing.

WHOOOSH!  OK, the engine noise is annoyingly loud.  I am zoomed in all the way.  Were they always this loud?  I don't think so, but then I never zoom in this much.  I zoom out.  Jump.  Warp to next gate.  WHOOOSH!  Wait -- I am zoomed in again!  Back off again.  And the next gate: zoomed in again.  WHOOSH!!  Ugh, a bug.  I hope they fix it.

On the plus side, this is the first time I have been in nullsec with interdiction nullification.  And I must say, it is wonderful to have.  I don't spend a minute thinking about bubbles.  I just warp, gate to gate, as if it was lowsec.  It's mindless movement.

I explore all the side branches as I go.  No ghosts anywhere.  Stain is not haunted in this direction.  Systems are mostly unoccupied; out of the 21 I go through in this direction, three of them have two players other than me, another four have one, and the remaining 14 have zero.  So I feel like I am in the right place.  There's a decent chance that I will get a ghost site -- if it is here.

I make it to the end of the line, and head back.  11 hops, all of them retracing my steps.  So perhaps a small chance of a ghost site popping up.  No ghost sites.  I am back to JS-E8E.  I check, and dotlan is back up.  Hurrah!  Now I can get a decent map showing number of jumps.  I decide to head south, towards a cul-de-sac with almost zero traffic in the last hour.  Set course for 9O-ZTS.  16 jumps.

Hop.  Warp and WHOOSH.  Hop.  Warp and WHOOSH.  Initially a few systems with people, but then even fewer people than the other way.  But also no ghosts.  I explore a few side-systems on the way.  Then I get to the end, and explore the rest of the cul-de-sac.  No ghosts.

It's getting late, so reluctantly I head back.  Again I am retracing my steps, but I check for sites and there are none.

Total tally for the evening: 43 systems hit, 27 of them twice.  Of those, perhaps 12 had anyone in them other than me.  No ghost sites.  Skunked.

In wspace, I check out all four systems in our constellation tonight: no ghost sites there, either.

A Ghost Site Fit

So-called "ghost sites" are a new feature in Rubicon that I have been eager to try.  The idea is a rare site that everyone in the system can see easily on scanner, with good treasure, but a timer.  As soon as the first uncloaked player is on grid, the timer starts.  This can be from a few seconds to a few minutes.  When the timer is up, some rather nasty rats show up (they warp scramble).  They shoot at you a little, then BOOM.  The site's cans and all the treasure goes bloey.  Then the rats shoot at you a bit more, and warp off.  Given the nature of the site, it seems likely to create some interesting PVP situations.

There's been enough info come out on the site that I feel fairly confident in publishing a fit for it.  I'll revise this if I ever find one (see next post), and have actual experience.

To run a Ghost site, you want a ship that can tank a couple of 10000+ explosive blasts, plus more tank to deal with the rats for 30 seconds.  And it also should be good at escaping from human hunters, which means a good tank, some PVP ability especially against tacklers, and speedy enough to escape from bigger things.  I got the latest Rubicon-updated EFT, and played with it.  I thought the new SOE ships might work, but not really.  The Asteros is a frigate, and there is simply no way to make them work against explosions of the size we are talking about, not to mention the rats and PVPers.  The Stratos, although it can easily tank the site, has three things going against it.  First, it does not have enough lows do more than a buffer fit.  So, if you did get damaged, repair is an issue.  Second, its PVP escapability is relatively low.  Its recloak delay is a concern to me.  Finally, unlike a T3 it cannot get bubble nullification, and since I plan to do most of my busting in nullsec, this is a big problem.

I can almost fly Lokis, but since I want to do this now, that leaves me with just a Tengu as the ship of choice.  Here's what I came up with:

[Tengu, Explorer-Ghostbuster]
Damage Control II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I

Data Analyzer I
PL-0 Shipment Probe
Pith A-Type Explosive Deflection Field
EM Ward Field II
Core C-Type 100MN Afterburner
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 150

Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Light Missile
Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Light Missile
Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Light Missile
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Expanded Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Medium Memetic Algorithm Bank I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I

Tengu Defensive - Supplemental Screening
Tengu Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Tengu Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Tengu Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
Tengu Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier

The probe launcher is there because I live in wspace and plan to scan in it.  And also because power is tight and I cannot fit another rapid light launcher.  (A non-rapid light missile launcher, though, or rocket, I could.)  Players with better skills than I have can use T2 launchers.

This thing is going to be hard to tackle and keep tackled.  A single long point won't work.  It's immune to bubbles.  It goes 1300m/s using its afterburner, so it will outrun heavy ships.  It uses a few of the new rapid light launchers to generate a bit of damage against tackle.  It tanks explosive like a champ; Pith Explosive Deflection Fields are in low demand and therefore cheap.  And finally, it can roam in nullsec ignoring bubbles.

To use it, get to nullsec (and/or maybe less-trafficked parts of lowsec).  Get your dotlan maps ready, and plot out a long string of systems.  Ghost sites are rare.  You need to look at a lot of systems to have a chance to find a ghost site.  Now you just hop from system to system, checking local and your scanner each time.  

If you do find a ghost site, warp there ASAP.  If anyone else is in local, go in cloaked.  Once there, if you see someone you'll have to figure out how to proceed by ship type.  If a frigate, I would not worry about it; a T3 is probably more likely and potentially worth skipping the site for.  

Assuming you are alone, head for a can as you lock up all four cans and start cargo-scanning them.  Go to whichever one has the best items.  Crack it, grab the loot, and repeat as indicated.  If you are lucky enough to have nobody else in local, keep an eye on just local.  Otherwise, keep an eye on dscan if you can.  I would hack the cans orbitting at 2500m if possible, so that you may be able to cloak.

We Steal Some Gas

It's Rubicon eve in EVE.  I log on late.  Jayne and Hiljah are around.  Jayne has scanned down our surrounding systems du jour.  We have a C5 incident, in addition to our static C3.  The C5 is interesting: many anoms (30?  40?), and just six sigs.  Evidently these people are not much for sleeper-killing as a key form of money making.

There are three towers, with a manned Buzzard sitting at one.  And they appear to be Americans: one tower is named CostCo.  A look on dotlan shows activity about 48-42 hours ago.  So, perhaps American west coast.  So we are not too keen to do anything substantial.  However, Jayne points out that the guy is aligned to his tower.  This probably means he's been sitting there a while.

I ask about C3.  It's not particularly interesting.  It attaches to a C3b, which is evidently Russian owned, and there are some sites.  But now that we have gotten used to C4 sites, C3 anoms just don't have the same allure.  And also it's a bit late to run sites.  If it was 8:00 PM, that's what we'd do.

I decide that given the time constraints, we should scan down the C5 hoping for one of the two best gas sites.  So Hiljah and I go in there and scan it down.  One sig is their static wormhole, which connects them to us.  That's easily ignored.  I get the four sigs in the middle while Hiljah is busy on the outer one.  (Gotta work on the in-game and/or out-of-game skills!)  Anyway, I find two gas sites, but they are relatively low value ones.  Not worth the risk.  (I instantiate them both, as I have started doing for all gas and rocks in whatever system I find them in.  I figure that although it's obvious that C5 sites are constrained to only appear in C5s, it may well be that gas and rock sites that I find anywhere in wspace may be able to come to us, assuming they are the sort that ever appear in C4.)  I also find two relic sites.  Or maybe data; whatever.  No luck for me.

Hiljah finds a good gas site: a Vital Core Reservoir.  OK, let's consider running it.  On the one hand, we'd be quite exposed.  And the inhabitants have someone there, that Buzzard.  On the other hand, the Buzzard is apparently inactive.  He has reacted to our probes.  Also, the Reservoir is out of his dscan range (though the entrance wormhole is not).  And finally: ISK.  Nice gas.  And since we don't have that much time anyway, and we are not going to bring in combat ships to kill the gas guardian sleepers, the time we have works with the 20 minutes or so before the guardians appear.  I decide to go for it.  Jayne is not interested and logs off for the night.

Before we do anything, I have an alt that I will be using whose medical clone needs to be upgraded.  He's in a Heron ready to go.  So, out to C3a and then lowsec.  A medical station is one jump away.  Nobody is in the first system except me.  One guy in the second; I never see him.  I upgrade the clone and get back into wspace.

While I am gone the Buzzard in C5 logs out.  That's nice for us.  Everyone into a Venture!

Now we are ready to go.  Three characters will be sucking gas.  We plan our opsec: Hiljah already has an alt on the tower; he will dscan the inner system.   Any of us at the gas can dscan the outer planet; that will be my job.  We discuss a few contingencies.  In particular I worry that the C5 guys will notice us and put a bubble up at the wormhole.  In that case... well, what do we do?  We go to a safespot and log out.  Try to get back later on and sneak back home.  If they close the hole?  Well, our Ventures have probe launchers.  Everyone clear?  Clear.  Let's go.

The actual op runs easily.  We warp to the wormhole and transition, and hold cloak.  I send in one of my alt with a microwarp to make sure the sleepers have not already been triggered.  They have not.  He zooms over to the C540 cloud and calls for the other two guys to warp to him.  They come in; we all mine gas.  Dscan, dscan, dscan.  Nothing (dscan) appears.  Dscan, dscan, dscan.  Except (dscan) eventually the sleepers, 20 minutes later.  Wake up!  I fleet-warp us out, and we are all a bit richer with ninja'ed gas.

I spend a while yakking on coms, buying stuff Hiljah has produced and moving it to our main tower to be exported.  Then I reship into my exploration Buzzard and head out into lowsec to explore.  Half an hour later, I have 45m in loot from a nice relic site.

How to Make ISK from Highsec POCOs

Gevlon has a business idea for making money using highsec POCOs after Rubicon drops.  Since I did a lot of thinking about it to criticize him, I figured I would amalgamate my comments into a post.  For background, go read (or review) my Highsec POCO Predictions for Rubicon.  I'll wait.

Gevlon's Idea Will Fail

OK.  Gevlon's idea is to form an alliance specifically to raise wardec costs.

The alliance is just a price cartel agreement. Anyone can join... By joining you have to set the tax rate the same as everyone. ... You can't wardec a player owned corp if it's in an alliance, just the alliance itself. Such act has high cost if the alliance is huge, protecting the alliance from wardecs for their customs offices. 

But not for mutual defense:

What about PvP-ers, who wardec the alliance not because they want POCOs, but to get fights? Well, they won't get any. The in-alliance corps never fight.  ... So for their max-cost wardec they get nothing but the opportunity to shoot customs offices. How can you defend your customs offices? If anyone wardecs the alliance, it makes the war available for mercenaries, so you can just join with your shooter corp and defend your POCO.

This, as I told him, is a bad idea.  You must defend your POCOs or there is very little reason for the alliance.  This is because of the relatively high value of POCOs relative to the cost of wardec.  I pointed this out two weeks ago in my Predictions:

I have seen people say the wardec cost would have a big effect, and initially I agreed with them.  It seems plausible that a 10x cost difference for war would matter a lot.  But after thinking about it, I feel it will affect only small corporations.  

Consider a medium sized corp with 25 pilots.   In a battleship, each pilot can do about 1000 DPS.  POCOs have 10m shields and reinforce at 25% shields.  Thus this corp can hammer one into reinforced in just five minutes.  Killing a POCO after reinforcement is easier.  They have 250k armor and 200k structure.  So it would be very fast.  In a week of war, and unopposed, a corp could reinforce or destroy 20 POCOs a day.  Since POCOs cost about 100m ISK, the cost of the wardec is a small percentage of the capital at stake.  The cost of the fleet is much more than the POCOs it destroys.

And note that Gevlon's alliance actually make things easier for an aggressor.  It's a one-stop shop for targets.  Say that Gevlon has gotten 50 corps to join, each with 20 POCOs.  Now you go to all of them and demand they hand over their POCOs to you for half their value, or war.  Each one individually cannot afford to hire Noir.  Collectively they could, but they have no organization.  Perhaps they all stand firm and hope that the aggressor attacks someone else.  So he wardecs anyway, and attacks all of them.  After they each lose a POCO or two, they'll sell the others.

How to Do It Right

Gevlon's idea of an alliance is a good one.  But it cannot be passive as he wants.  A passive alliance is easy to beat.

The alliance should offer substantial services to its members.  It should have its own fighting fleet (more on that in a bit), and make a standing offer to members to buy their POCOs at 80% of par.  It also insures their POCOs at 50% of par: if a member loses a POCO, you pay out half the value.  This gives the incentive to the alliance to defend, and some insurance to the members that you will, while not giving too much of a free ride.

Of course, getting a decent fleet able to fight and win will take a substantial amount of time.  There is no such time before November 19.  Yet the first-mover advantage will be huge.  How do you deal with that?  You retain the mercs necessary to defend all the members' POCOs. Find the best mercs you can -- Noir? multiple groups? -- and get a long term contract with them, six months at least, saying (1) that they won't wardec your alliance for any client, and (2) that they will be available to fight for you on call (other obligations permitting). Perhaps this is a billion per month. Who knows: ask them. It might be quite reasonable.

How do you pay for hired guns?  You charge a fee per POCO, perhaps 10 million ISK per month. (This is about 10% of its build cost; I should think that is cheap for decent protection.)  Charge more for rarer planet types (i.e. storm), or those in better locations (i.e. near Jita).  (What exactly to charge is a hard problem, but that's why you need a leader with spreadsheet chops.  I am sure Gevlon can figure out a good price structure.)  If 10m a month sustainable?  I think so; recall the analysis Mabrick did.  A single user of a POCO can generate that much in taxes.  If the POCO has more than a handful of users, the owner still makes good money.

With my guess of the merc's retainer fee of 1b per month, once you get 100 POCOs, you make money. If you cannot get 100 POCOs, you lose money. If the mercs you hire cannot beat some larger group and it kills your POCOs, you lose a lot of money. If you welp fleets, you lose a lot of money.  It will take a very deep pocket investor.  It will have substantial risk.

Note that hiring mercs as the primary defenders is only really applicable during the bootstrapping phase of the existence of the alliance cartel.  As soon as possible, you will want to start insourcing your protection, with mercs hired only in exceptional hard situations.  Find a good fleet commander, and hire him to organize a navy for you.  Men will flock to fight under a good FC.  Remember the lesson of nullsec: players in a game don't care about money so much as they care about "content".  If you offer them fun they'll pay you for it.  Fighting in massive battleship fleets should be fun.  I would join.

Why do you need your own fleet?  In part the reason is that relying on mercenaries is bad idea -- they may be working for the other side; they may turn on you; or they may just not be available due to other obligations.  But it is also because insourcing should be cheaper.  Noir has elite pilots that can fight anywhere in all types of situations; you need only be concerned with ships and tactics that are allowed in highsec.  Also, Noir's pilots have no reason to care about the POCO business.  And you should be under almost constant wardec as the biggest, fattest target around, and you will need a very substantial fleet to defend yourself.  (My guess is hundreds of pilots.)  If it takes raising POCO fees to support your fleet, so be it.  Any owner who does not like the fees is perfectly free to leave the alliance and defend his assets on his own.

A fleet can also aggress.  Most of the time it will probably be busily defending, but what if you get a slack week?  The alliance should be the aggressor, demanding that lesser corps join or lose their POCOs.  Forming a monopoly where there is no natural monopoly is not like normal market competition: it takes force.

I Draw a Mack

It's the weekend, and I am around during the day.  Always a good time to look for people in wspace, since there is more activity in general.  And during the day Europe is still awake.

Our last static has gone away, and I have just opened the new one.  Now I hurry to get in C3a system.  Because of the new discovery scanner, time is ticking.  Anyone in the system has a big fat "someone coming" sign.  All they have to do is notice.  But I am hoping that someone won't. 

I enter the system, and dscan. There are two Macks.  Quickly as I can I move off the wormhole and bookmark it.  Then I point my dscan towards one ore anom, and then a second.  They are in the second.  It's go time.  I warp to the anom.

Things look good

As I warp in, I see one of the Macks leaving.  Does it have wind of me?  (Curse the discovery scanner.)  But then why not both?  Well, I can't worry about that.  If he sees the new sig, he sees it and will flee (or is stupid).  If he doesn't, then I have a chance.

The Mack is about 70km from me, and the asteroids are all around the same distance.  So I am going to have to bounce.  OK, where?  Well the sun is close, and it is about inline with a monster asteroid the Mack is near.  So I bookmark that asteroid, and warp to the sun at 100.  My guess is that he is about 10km from the asteroid.  So I warp back at 20km from it.

As I land on grid, I am happy to see he is still there.  I will have my shot.  Then I am slightly alarmed as I glide right onto him: 10km, 5km, 2km.  Oh well, I was planning to uncloak soon enough though not immediately.  So I uncloak and get my systems going.  Sebo, warp scrambler, torps.  And... got him.  I open up, and he is taking damage.  I orbit at 1000, hoping to kill him and quickly grab his stuff.

But he does not panic.  He deploys EC-600s, and sets them on me.  Uh oh... I am just into his armor... and I am jammed.  Crap.  OK, check dscan.  Nothing changed.  So I am going to hope and stick around.  Jam is counting down.  I am free!  I try to lock.  Lock faster!  Nope.  I am jammed again.  He is starting to rotate, so I start bumping.  Weak little bumps, but I hope they are stopping him.  Cannot tell.  Another 20s, and another jam.  I dscan; still nothing.  But it's too late.  He warps.

I quickly move off and cloak.  I want to see what they are doing.  So I get dscan going again and quickly isolate their POS on a planet with just one moon.  I fly there.  Then I warp over nearby so I can look at them.  They have two combat ships, an interceptor and a Pilgrim.  After a while, the interceptor changes to a Magnate.  Shortly, it warps off and disappears, and I see probes.  Looks like they intend to find the new signature.  I have an idea...  I warp back to my home system.

My guess is the Magnate will scan down our wormhole and perhaps it will come to visit.  We have around some special anti-frigate Tristans just for this purpose.  I figure I'll try one out.  So I reship into it, and go back to the wormhole.  I'm breaking my own rules for wormhole combat here.  It's stupid.  But I have the feeling... anyway, I get out my Warriors to decloak and apply DPS, and I buzz around the wormhole at 500.  It's all or nothing.

It's all of nothing.  I sit.  Nothing happens for a while.  Then... boomp; crackle.  It's them.  Let's see what it is.  I wait for what seems a long time.  It's holding cloak.  Perhaps planning its break for it? 

Then I see it.  It's the Pilgrim.  I am not sure exactly what it does, but it's not what I expect and so I immediately hit my GTFO warp.  At the same time, it jumps back through the wormhole.  Funny.  I guess we both spooked each other.  It probably thought I was tackle and had friends.  I have real life stuff to do so I get my Manticore and cloak in a safespot.

An hour later, I fly back to the wormhole to have another look at C3a.  But the wormhole is gone.  They popped it.