Sticking a flag in our pulsar home

My communication is received and two Orcas are moved fifteen jumps through high-sec, waiting for my return. It is a few hours after finding a route out from the class 4 w-space system we're looking to move in to, passing through a spider of a class 3 system, and we are hoping the earlier activity of roaming capsuleers has dissipated. I warm up the systems of my Buzzard covert operations boat and start jumping through wormholes, scouting for ships as I move along the proposed route out to empire space.

I find no signs of activity along the route between high-sec and the C4 pulsar system, but one of the connecting wormholes is now reaching the end of its natural lifetime, which presents a risk. We probably still have an hour or so left before the wormole collapses, but I am trepidatious. It has taken us a while, and plenty of scouting, to find this class 4 system suitable for occupation and I have spent another week or so parked inside waiting for a convenient exit to appear. It would be disheartening to become isolated from the system because a wormhole collapses behind me.

I make a rush from the wormhole to empire space, stopping in dock only as long as it takes to trade bookmarks with glorious leader Fin, controller of the Orca industrial command ships, before heading straight back to w-space and through the EOL connection. I am glad to find it remains, having had others disappear on me however briefly my exit to w-space, and I wait on the other side of the wormhole to keep an eye on the directional scanner in case of hostile ships entering the system.

As I wait I take my warp scrambler module off-line and use the freed ship resources to power a web instead. It takes a fair amount of capacitor energy to put a module on-line in the field, but I currently have it to spare. And once the Orcas appear through the wormhole I use the web to help sling the ponderous ships in to warp, speeding our journey. The wormholes survive, the systems remain clear, and we all make it safely in to the pulsar system. I warp us all to a safe spot I made on my first day in the system before heading off to find a suitable moon to anchor our tower around.

When asked what considerations I should give to selecting a moon Fin gives a vague enough reply to suggest that there aren't any out in w-space. One moon is as good as another, it seems, which I can understand. It is trivial to find any tower using only passive methods, and active scanning with combat scanning probes will locate one even more quickly. I look for a planet in a relatively central position, warping to one of its moons to see what it looks like. And it looks good, but I think I can do better, judging by the solar system map. I warp to a second moon, finding our new home. A ringed planet, a moon in silhouette, and the pulsar combine to create a startling backdrop.

An Orca warps in to my position and anchors our tower, which then needs to be fuelled. There is an apology when it is found we don't have any robotics, but a quick trip to market in a Crane transport ship—brought inside one of the Orcas—returns through the still-alive route to high-sec with the missing element. The fuel bay is stocked and our tower's force field is brought on-line. Shields up! We're home at last. Now I need sleep, there is much to do tomorrow.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: buzzard, crane, eve online, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, w-space