Clearing the home anomalies

8th August 2012 – 5.49 pm

Would you look at that. Some roaming fleet has blitzed all of our anomalies, bar three. And those three may have spawned overnight. It's a bit of a disappointment, really. All of that Sleeper action, and not even a salvager for me to shoot. On top of that, they don't even leave a wormhole behind for me to explore through, as the extra signature in the home system is a gravimetric site. Oh well, I'll just resolve our static wormhole and jump to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system as usual.

A tower and Chimera are visible on my directional scanner in C3a. Odds are low that the carrier is piloted, but not so low that I'll launch my probes from the K162, particularly when I can get out of d-scan range of the tower. I warp out, launch probes, and blanket the system as I look for the tower, which turns out to have moved one moon across in the past year, in some peculiar form of lunar drift. Naturally, the Chimera floats empty inside the tower's force field.

My probes reveal six anomalies and ten signatures, which resolve to be mostly gas, three magnetometric sites, and two wormholes. I'm always keen to find more than the exit to k-space that class 3 systems guarantee, but today all I get is a K162 from high-sec empire space to accompany the static exit to low-sec. The K162 takes me to the Genesis region again, which is interesting from a historical perspective but dull otherwise, and the exit to low-sec also leads to Genesis, an stargate's stone's throw from the other system.

I find myself alone in the low-sec Genesis system, so I launch probes and scan whilst looking for a rat. Two extra signatures turn out to be mere rock sites, and I pop a simple rat for a pitiful gain in security status. As I head home from an uninspiring w-space adventure, a wild Shev appears. That's good timing, as we can make some iskies from the few anomalies that were kindly left for us in the home system. Now, we could even collapse our static connection first, to isolate us and provide some protection, but where's the fun in that?

I get home, board a Sleeper Tengu strategic cruiser to match Shev's, and warp the two of us to the first anomaly. Missiles fly, remote repairs keep our shields healthy, and Sleepers explode. We move to the second anomaly, and then the third, and before we know it we need to salvage all the wrecks we left in our wake. Tengus are swapped for Noctes, and a pair of salvagers head in different directions to sweep up the mess.

And what a mess. Melted nanoribbons are everywhere. At least, they are in the cleared anomaly I'm salvaging. So much so that I daren't head to a second site without first ditching the 170 Miskies in loot and salvage I've already recovered from the first. We could both be ambushed and sent back to a clone vat in empire space and still make a profit after that one site alone. But we have two more to salvage, and although we don't get as lucky as with the first site, we still bring back 380 Miskies in total from all three cleared anomalies.

Home is swept clean, with just one gravimetric site now acting as a zen rock garden. I even have time for one last poke around the constellation. C3a remains quiet, with just the unpiloted Chimera obviously present, and no more signatures have appeared in low-sec to offer new destinations. Okay, I'm finished for the night. Or am I? I realise the high-sec system is yet unscanned, and I am compelled to at take a look. I cross C3a, jump through the K162, and launch probes in the high-sec system in Genesis. And the one extra signature in the system indeed resolves to be a wormhole, and a K162 from class 1 w-space at that.

My excitement is short lived, as jumping in to C1a has my ship appear over seven kilometres from the wormhole and sitting on the cosmic signature. I think that indicates no one's home. Six towers are on d-scan, along with a whole bunch of silos, so it doesn't surprise me that no one is in this system. But it could mean someone else opened this wormhole and that there is another K162 to be found. I launch probes and scan, and there is indeed a wormhole! Yeah, it's the one I'm sitting on that's labelled 'Unstable Wormhole' in the system map, Sherlock. Okay, there's nothing here. Now I'm heading home for the night.

  1. One Response to “Clearing the home anomalies”

  2. Aw..... no pictures :(

    As always..... great reading.

    By Barrak on Aug 8, 2012

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