Dodging Dominix
6th June 2011 – 5.52 pmLots of ships could mean activity, but most of them are merely parked. A new class 3 w-space system to explore holds a Brutix battlecruiser, Buzzard covert operations boat, three Dominix battleships, a Drake battlecruiser, two Raven battleships, a Scorpion battleship, and a Scythe cruiser for Mick to see on his directional scanner. Quite a bevy of ships, and all but the Buzzard and Brutix are found to be empty once he locates the local tower. He also sees scanning probes on d-scan, sending me scurrying in an interceptor to our static wormhole in case the scout pays us a visit.
The Buzzard warps out of the tower and I get ready to intercept him, now accompanied by glorious leader Fin in an Onyx heavy interdictor, but it returns to the tower without jumping through to say hello. He doesn't sit still at the tower, though, warping away again not quite towards a planet. Mick suspects he's gone to a wormhole in the system, one he returns from soon enough and, back at the tower, swaps the cov-ops for a battleship. The Dominix warps away and disappears from d-scan, giving Mick a window to scan for the exit he's using. And with a battleship for a target I swap ships myself, boarding my Legion strategic cruiser back at our tower before returning to loiter on our wormhole.
The Dominix reappears on d-scan before Mick has resolved the exit but is gone again, and now he has probably seen our own scanning probes in the system. A wormhole presents itself to Mick's probes, and despite it being an outbound connection to class 3 w-space Mick doesn't think it is the link the Dominix is using. Further scanning reveals a second wormhole the Dominix wasn't going to, but a third in what looks to be roughly the right area. A fourth wormhole leading to another class 3 system is joined by a fifth, an outbound link to class 5 w-space.
We've certainly been experiencing some connected w-space recently, and today's nexus of a C3 perhaps explains why the locals haven't explored through our wormhole, as they probably haven't found us amongst the noise. 'I wager they have no idea where I came from', Mick says, with the wealth of wormholes disguising anyone's entrance in to the system.
'At this point', Fin replies, 'even I do not know where you came from'. Let's just hope Mick can find his way home when the time comes. He finishes scanning by finally resolving the system's static wormhole, naturally an exit to low-sec empire space. The Dominix is whizzing about the system again and now that Mick has all the connections mapped he sees that the pilot is hopping between wormholes, but we can't really say why at the moment. It's possible he is trying to collapse some of the connections, only not visiting ours because he doesn't know it's here.
If the Dominix jumps in to our welcoming wagon we probably need a bit more firepower. Fin swaps the Onyx for a Raven battleship, which should be enough with my Legion to strip the Dominix to its hull. And Mick has followed the target to an outbound C5 connection and seen him jump, calling Fin and myself in to the system to warp to his position. If the Dominix won't come to us, we will go to him. As we are in warp the battleship returns from the C5 and Mick gains a positive target lock, only to see the ship warp off anyway. We give chase, bump in to him again on a connection to class 4 w-space, and all three of us lock and shoot the Dominix this time.
Still it's not enough. The Dominix warps clear, its pilot saying 'lol you guys' in the local channel, clearly amused by our antics. It looks like we guessed poorly, assuming the battleship would be fully armed and armoured, instead it choosing to compromise its defences to stabilise its warp core as far as possible. Had we suspected this we could have kept Fin in the Onyx, its warp bubble preventing even a heavily stabilised ship from warping clear. And even though the Dominix pilot is confident in evading our current fleet he knows that if we have a HIC we'll field one, and that we can probably trace where he goes. We have no target here now, and with the late hour we head home for the night, another ship slipped through our fingers.
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