Bringing more ships home
10th September 2011 – 3.49 pmWhy must there be scanning probes in the home system? I was coming home for an early night, after evading a counter-attack and scanning empty space, but now I feel compelled to plant myself on our K162 in an interceptor, to sit in wait for the scout. So that's what I do, swapping my strategic cruiser for a Malediction interceptor and jumping in to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system, the next logical destination for a scout scanning our C4. And now I wait.
And I wait, and I wait, but no scout comes jumping in to my almost-threatening ambush. Glorious leader Fin appears, though, which is relatively good timing. I ask her if she can seen any probes on her directional scanner in the home system, and she can see none. Ah well, I've been waiting for no one again, but at least I also haven't jumped back to check only to miss them by doing so. If the scouts don't want to press forwards, I can scan backwards, getting back in to my Tengu to look for the K162 that brought the scout here.
I launch scanning probes and take a look around our home system, as a Hurricane appears briefly. The battlecruiser goes as soon as it appears, and although I think I had found the new connection there is now no longer any sign of a signature I cannot account for. Either we have a cloaky Hurricane camping our system, or the wormhole that brought the scanning ship earlier has just been collapsed. It's possible whoever was scanning saw my interceptor rush off and decided not to bother with our system any longer, or maybe we indeed have another unwelcome guest. I suppose we'll find out soon enough. For now, we can collapse our own wormhole and take a second look for opportunity. I have time.
A Widow black ops ship paired with an Orca industrial command ship makes collapsing our static wormhole almost trivial. The C247 can withstand two million kilogrammes of mass passing through it before it collapses, and one round-trip of our two ships, masses augmented by micro warp drives, pushes one million kilogrammes through the wormhole. Along with the odd scouting ship here and there it only takes a couple of trips to kill our connection, all for perhaps a month or two of skill training to pilot a black ops ship that has no other real benefits in w-space. I still think it looks really cool.
Deleting my bookmarks and scanning the home system afresh finds the new wormhole, and I jump in to another class 3 w-space system. I see a Rupture cruiser and two towers on d-scan, which are all easily found. There may be eight planets in the system but there are only two moons in total, and the entire system is in range of d-scan of itself, making there nowhere to hide. Once the Rupture is confirmed at a tower and unpiloted I can safely say the system is not overtly active. Scanning the system reveals only the one anomaly but twenty sigantures, which are a fair few to resolve, but it shouldn't take long with two of us and we start sifting through them.
Two wormholes reveal themselves here, both links to empire space. The system's static connection leads out to low-sec space, and a K162 comes in from high-sec. The exit to low-sec is ignored for now as we check where the high-sec connection comes from, jumping out to the Khanid region. The high-sec system seems far from most systems of interest, but it places us within single-digit hops from where our remaining ships are stored. We've brought in most ships of obvious utility, and there are some that probably don't need to be returned, but that still leaves a couple that could be useful. I think I have time to collect one of them, the only question being which one.
I stow my Tengu and head out to high-sec in my pod. I wonder if I should get the Falcon for its ECM capabilities, or maybe the Curse for a more aggressive PvP ship, both recon ships having obvious benefits but fulfilling different roles. Or, my colleagues chip in, I can bring back both. I could, if I had time, but I am only making one trip tonight. It's already later than I wanted to stay in space. There is a bit of back-and-forth about cramming ships in to haulers, but Fin comes up with the best solution. She comes out too, collecting her second Orca and opening up its hangar bay for both the Falcon and Curse, along with some of the ships she has lying around.
Transferring the Falcon and Curse to Fin keeps me in my pod, but rather than fly naked back to w-space I pilot a Nighthawk command ship instead, which may come in handy one day. Or maybe it will be just another ship to take up space in the hangar and need to be moved between systems in the future. But it's nice to have lots of toys to play with, particularly expensive and capable toys. Our journey home is uneventful, staying safely in high-sec all the way to the wormhole, and the C3 and our home system remaining quiet and inactive. Now I can sleep.
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