Scanning and salvaging

19th June 2010 – 3.37 pm

Early scanning sees me chasing the static wormhole around our system. Or, at least, its signature. I'm used to having the occasional cosmic signature be elusive but it is a new experience to need several scans to resolve the wormhole from a probabilistic ring to a single point to scan. I wouldn't mind so much but the class 4 system the connection today leads to is rather bland, an unpopulated system I last visited about a month ago. But the initial chase is echoed here, as I need to ignore rocks, gas, gas, and rocks as I sift through the many signatures looking for a wormhole.

In desperation, having exhausted all the signatures likely to be a wormhole, I purposely pick the weakest return signal to resolve. Normally, the weakest signals will be the magnetometric sites but I have already started to find and ignore them in this system, so I'll work backwards and see what happens. Lo, the weakest signal in the system turns out to be a wormhole, a static connection to a C5. I jump through and, noting the presence of a tower but no ships, begin a fresh scan. There are only three signatures in the system and I pick the weakest of them to resolve first, feeling rather contrary now. And, looky, it's another wormhole, leading to a C3 system. I may need to see if my probes have been sabotaged before my next expedition.

Only celestial objects appear on scan next to the K162 in the C3, and I launch probes to begin scanning. Warping around reveals the system to be unoccupied and my scan returns many anomalies that are good for plundering and a bunch of signatures to resolve. I trip over a wormhole this time, a secondary signal showing the 'unknown' type whilst the signature I picked turns out to be a gravimetric mining site. Resolving and warping to the wormhole brings me to a low-sec exit to empire space, the connection also reaching the end of its natural lifetime. It looks like another quiet day unless there are more wormholes, but I can find no others and head home to the tower.

I spy a Manticore stealth bomber in the home system. I don't recognise its name and it soon disappears from the directional scanner, but whether it has cloaked or jumped I cannot tell. I haven't seen any activity during my exploration and it could be possible I missed a second wormhole in the home system, leading in to us instead of out. I launch probes and take a look but find nothing new. The ship may have come from a different wormhole elsewhere that I failed to scan, or maybe it belongs to the tower in the C5. I take a quick look back through the systems for any traces of the ship but find nothing. I can't really worry about it at the moment and return to our tower to rest.

A little later, my colleague with the Tengu strategic cruiser turns up again. And again we have a C3 system waiting to be exploited. I have taken a second look around the w-space neighbourhood. The C5 occupants are nowhere to be seen and the EOL low-sec exit has collapsed. I haven't bothered to scan for the new static wormhole in that system, partly because it offers no direct gain to do so and partly because keeping it closed prevents low-sec tourists from invading the C3. My colleague fires up his Tengu and heads out to the C3 to engage Sleepers in anomalies, I sit in a salvaging Catalyst destroyer at the tower and wait until the first anomaly he tackles is almost clear.

Again I head out in a salvaging vessel to clear an unprotected site of wrecks, knowing that we've had our fun picking on capsuleers just like me recently. The C5 remains quiet, the previous low-sec exit has disappeared and the new one not found yet, and there is no sign of the Manticore from earlier. As long as I remain vigilant I should be okay, and the first site is looted and salvaged cleanly.

Another colleague turns up and wants a path to Jita, my communication skills obviously failing me. I try to explain several times that the exit to empire space was EOL and has collapsed since scanning it, which is why there is no bookmark to the wormhole. It doesn't exist. Eventually the message gets across and the new static connection to low-sec is scanned and found, whilst the Tengu finishes clearing a second anomaly, now with the help of another colleague in a Legion strategic cruiser. It looks like our ship hangar array is getting deadlier.

I warp in to loot and salvage the second anomaly, still no threats appearing to shoot me. A third anomaly is cleared by the Tech III duo and I sweep through the wrecks in that one too. Whilst combat is probably more glamorous there is something about the efficiency in good salvaging that really appeals to me. The C3 remains quiet, apart from our own antics, the C5 occupants are still nowhere to be seen, and we all get back to the tower safely. I transfer the loot in to temporary storage and calculate that I've brought back over a hundred and fifty million ISK in loot. Shared three ways, it's a nice haul for a few anomalies. I would have made a good target by the end of my salvaging.

  1. 2 Responses to “Scanning and salvaging”

  2. Another interesting read as many my questions I have yet to anticipate I find the answer to just reading. Awesome!

    Does a Static or K162 that reaches EOL or collaspes "immediately" respawn in that same system "immediately"? I figure the incoming K162 has to be activated from the other side whever in the universe it originates but does the system Static WH respawn immediately after it has collasped.

    This question came to me from scanning in my high sec system on more than one ocassion where earlier I had scanned all sigs in system including the WH and later I go probing and check see what I can find and absolutely nothing shows up at all as well on multiple scans for like at least 30 mins not even anomalys. I probably figured well maybe the signal strength on any WH that was there was just weak and undectable by my skill lvl or something else not aware of in spawn rate of WH and anomalys or both. Having at least lvl 3 in Astromectric I figured I just maybe it was due to skill lvl but hard to believe a complete blank on probe scans at random times. I should finally finish all my Electronics training today to finally learn Covert Ops and then get Astromectrics 4 and maybe have less a problem with scans.

    The other day I scanned 3 K162's coming into our high sec system from unknown space I have no idea if that was odd or normal. Yet I couldn't fir the life of things find our system static WH connection. Odd I figured. I didn't yet have any Cloak skills trained yet but wasn't that nuts to jump through a connection uncloaked to unknown space.

    I couldn't figure though looking at the K162 I had scanned down why they had different glow colors and if that meant anything at all about the WH.

    By Galo on Jun 20, 2010

  3. The different glow colours does have meaning, at least if the wormhole leads in to w-space. Each w-space system class has a different colour 'sky' or 'background' and this is reflected in the wormhole's colouring, effectively showing the system beyond. With some experience, the class of w-space system can be told by simply looking at the wormhole.

    The colour of the wormhole can be misleading if it leads to empire space, however. I haven't seen a pattern to these colours yet, beyond again reflecting the system's colour on the other side, so Gallente empire space looks as sickly green through a wormhole as it does when you have to actually be there.

    As for statics, yes, they appear immediately once the current one collapses. I have scanned moments after seeing one wormhole collapse and found the new static, as well as having a wormhole collapse between scans and picking up the new static on the next.

    But, as it has been pointed out to me, k-space wormholes are never static. If you find a wormhole in your high-sec system that isn't a K162 it isn't technically a static wormhole and won't appear elsewhere in the system once it collapses.

    By pjharvey on Jun 20, 2010

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed.