Profiting from popping Sleepers
23rd April 2011 – 3.24 pmAnother Buzzard has been lost to a tower. Fin was scanning in our neighbouring class 3 w-space system when one of the two on-line towers noticed her covert operations boat's cloak wasn't active, and gave her a nudge as a reminder. A nudge with gun and missile batteries, mind you. But it's okay, most of the expensive modules survived the explosion and have been recovered, and Fin bought a batch lot of Buzzards after the previous accident. There was also no local activity around to notice the incident, which saves blushes, and the only reason Fin admits the loss to me is her mistaken impression that I routinely check the appropriate tab in the corporation interface.
Fin hadn't quite completed her scan of the C3 before having to return home in her pod, so I take my own Buzzard out to continue the exploration. The half-dozen good anomalies have been recorded, as are the locations of the two on-line towers and the system's static wormhole. I launch probes and resolve the three remaining signatures, finding a gravimetric and radar site, and the system's static wormhole. Resolving the static wormhole isn't as much of a surprise as it perhaps should be, as the other one is listed as being at the end of its natural lifetime and I simply assume it collapsed and has been replaced. But warping to confirm its collapse sees it instead still alive, if wobbly, and actually a K162 coming in from low-sec empire space. It's an easy mistake to make, as the wormhole is definitely of k-space colouring and it is natural to assume a C3 exits to low-sec.
The static exit leads out to the Bleak Lands, and is close to Amarr, but we don't need to go anywhere today. We could collapse our static wormhole and look for a better hunting ground, but it would be a shame to let those good anomalies go to waste, particularly now that I have got my marauder skill trained to level IV. We board combat ships back at our tower, Fin in to her Tengu strategic cruiser and me in to my Golem marauder, and we return to the C3 to shoot Sleepers for fun and profit. I note that my completed skill training combined with the Gist B-type x-large shield booster now replenishes 1,337 shield every four seconds, which is, um... there must be a word for that, but it escapes me. The increased effect of the target painter will be good, too.
Sleepers pop all over the place, neither battleship nor frigate lasting long, and our chosen anomalies have them all flying cockpit-first in to our missiles. There is no chasing coy Sleepers here. The C3 remains quiet, apart from our devastating all six anomalies, and all the loot and salvage is swept in to my Golem's hold as we go, not even requiring us to come back and be vulnerable in Noctis salvagers. And when my sole salvaging module is left struggling to scrap those final two ships Fin warps ahead to make a start on the next anomaly, it's all quite efficient.
We get home safely, and I drop the three hundred million ISK of loot in our hangar as Fin boards her Orca industrial command ship to start destabilising our wormhole. The return trip of the Tengu and the Golem in particular has already reduced the total mass allowance of the wormhole, and I suspect we won't even need the assistance of my Widow black ops ship to give it the final push. And my intuition is proved right, as the connection becomes critically unstable on Fin's third jump out in the Orca, collapsing it neatly on her way home. I have performed an initial scan of our entire system and ignored all the results prior to the collapse, so the new static wormhole glows like a beacon for my probes.
Our new neighbouring C3 is sadly quite dull. Nothing being visible on the directional scanner on entry is generally advantageous, but in this case there is little else to find. An off-line tower is all that litters the system, and there is but a single anomaly amongst the seven signatures to be scanned. Those signatures don't even offer adventure, turning out to be a ladar, ladar, ladar, ladar, and ladar site, the system's static wormhole leading out to low-sec, and even a second wormhole being a rather uninteresting K162 coming in from null-sec.
I jump out to visit null-sec, finding myself in the Paragon Soul region, which may be a first for me and almost interesting, but the two pilots in the system take shelter in their tower as soon as I show up. The low-sec exit, which Fin checks, doesn't offer any excitement either. We head home to get an early night after our earlier profitable Sleeper culling, and look forwards to more adventure tomorrow.
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