Dullness in scanning

3rd March 2012 – 3.54 pm

It's just me and my Tengu. I'm going to see what I can get up to in a covert strategic cruiser today. Two new sites appear in the home system for a start, but neither of them are interesting and I merely bookmark them and move on. Our neighbouring class 3 w-space system looks much more exciting, with a tower and Covetor mining barge visible on my directional scanner! My excitement is short-lived when a tighter d-scan beam places the Covetor coincident with the tower, and although it's possible a gravimetric site could be in the same five degree vector warping to the tower finds the barge unpiloted and inactive. It could have been beautiful in flames.

Opening the system map shows this C3 to be small, too. There is nowhere to hide and so no activity, leaving me free to launch probes and take a look around. No anomalies pop up on my probes, and the seven signatures are mostly gas harvesting ladar sites. A single magnetometric site could provide some profit later, and the two wormholes give me a static exit to null-sec k-space and a K162 from low-sec empire space. Heading to low-sec puts me in a system in the Genesis region by myself, and with an anomaly. My continuing and painfully slow quest to gain security status can progress. But maybe it can progress more quickly if the null-sec system is as kind to me. I head across C3a and out to null-sec to find myself alone in the system and with loads of anomalies! If only the anomalies weren't full of stupid drones, I may actually have gained some meaningful security status today.

Ignoring the drones here, I scan the null-sec system to find just the one other signature which resolves to be Radiance, whatever that is. I don't care to find out, so head back to low-sec to pop some rats there. Except by the time I get back to the low-sec system there are two other pilots there, one in an Ishkur assault ship with drones out. He skedaddles when I launch probes to scan, no longer having an anomaly to plunder, but the other pilot remains and forces me to resolve a gravimetric site and second wormhole. I warp in to the mining site to see if there are any incidental rats, but only stumble in to space stonehenge—with rotating centre!—and so warp away to investigate the wormhole I resolved. It's a lovely K162 from class 2 w-space, where the system beyond will hold a second static wormhole to more w-space. I can keep exploring.

D-scan shows me a tower and no ships in this C2, which is a fairly standard result. I locate the tower and prepare to launch probes when a Helios covert operations boat lets its presence be known, warping to the tower but not inside its shields. I am 150 km away from the uncloaked ship, and I could try to crawl that distance but suspect it would take far too long, so go with my previous plan and warp away to launch probes covertly. If the Helios stays uncloaked where it is now I can easily get a solid hit that I could warp to using my probes, and if he doesn't then I am ready to scan. Of course, he doesn't stay still, or visible, as it is a rare occasion when I get that lucky, and I catch sight of him only once more, still out of the force field, before he cloaks. I choose to ignore him. I can scan and find someone else to shoot.

I bookmark twelve anomalies, if only because it doesn't take long to do, and sift through seven signatures. A signature high above the ecliptic plane turns out to be a wormhole, quelle surprise, and the second static connection is the only other unknown wormhole I find. Warping to the wormhole shows it to be a connection to more class 2 w-space, giving me continued exploration again, and I jump in. D-scan is clear in C2b, so I launch probes, fling them out of the system, and warp away to explore as I configure the probes for a blanket scan. I find occupation but no activity on the edge of the system, leaving me free to scan the seven anomalies and six signatures here. It's a simple matter to resolve a super-stable static connection to low-sec and a second wormhole I bookmark from the scan results but leave unvisited for now. I want to see if low-sec has any rats for me to pop.

I appear in a system in the Derelik region, where I remain alone just long enough to find the two anomalies full of Sansha rats using a passive scan before a couple more pilots enter the system to spoil my plans. The pilots look to cross the system and leave again, so I warp in to the first anomaly and pick the biggest rat there, which is still piddly, and manage to pop it before I am once again sharing the system with other capsuleers. Ratting safely here is a lost cause, I think. I head back to w-space and warp to the second static connection, which is, oh, a K162 from high-sec. I think I'll be scanning again. With the safety of high-sec to jump to I sit on the K162 and launch probes to resume scanning, trying to remember which signatures I previously ignored.

The second static connection is rather easy to find, being in a wormholey position in the system, making me wonder how I missed it the first time. The connection leads to more class 2 w-space. This chain could continue for a while. But jumping in has d-scan light up with fifteen towers, plus a Buzzard cov-ops and a Tengu somewhere, along with plenty of scanning probes, but surprisingly no silos. A refresh of d-scan some seconds later shows all that plus a new pod appeared, showing more activity but none that I really care to find. Trying to work out where each ship is and which towers are active will take more time than I have spare for what will likely be no gain beyond more comprehensive notes about this system. A quick check shows eight anomalies somehow surviving in this overpopulated system and a lack of wrecks, so I turn tail and head homewards.

I pause on my return journey to see where the K162 from high-sec comes from. Hello, dull grey mist of Lonetrek! You really got shafted when the designers were handing out nebulae. But I have a fondness for one of my old mission regions, and there is a nice ring of systems I can zip around looking for anomalies to improve my security status. There are no anomalies in the current system, though, so I jump to the next where I find no anomalies, so I jump to the next where I find no anomalies, so I jump to the next where I find no anomalies, and now I'm wondering why I don't just use copy-and-paste for this. The first anomaly I find is eight systems away, which in a ring puts me two systems from where I started. And it's the only anomaly I find during the complete circuit. It's pathetic. I'm doomed to be a pirate. I pop the few rats I find and return to w-space, warping across quiet systems until I reach home, where I hit the sack.

  1. 6 Responses to “Dullness in scanning”

  2. That's amazing that you discovered Stonehenge. You're a genuine explorer.

    We would send Stanley out to find you but he failed Astrometrics.

    By Stabs on Mar 4, 2012

  3. I wasn't going to mention it, but I pulled the rocks in to my hold and took them home to display in our tower. Of course, they were too big to fit whole so I had to chop them up a bit, but they are better appreciated in our hangar than floating in uncivilised space.

    By pjharvey on Mar 4, 2012

  4. "...being in a wormholey position in the system."

    What is a "wormholey position"? :)

    By Sauron Bauglir on Mar 8, 2012

  5. I'm glad you asked!

    Wormholes can appear in fairly mundane positions in solar systems, but they can also appear in rather eccentric positions, and certainly places where there tend not to be sites. If a signature is more than 4 AU away from a planet, or far above or below the ecliptic plane, that is a wormholey position and the signature is almost certainly a wormhole.

    By pjharvey on Mar 8, 2012

  6. As ever, an unending font of information.

    I love you man :)

    By Sauron Bauglir on Mar 10, 2012

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