Staying out of trouble with my scouting
29th October 2012 – 5.30 pm'C4a may be gone. It was EOL.' I didn't know we had a connection to class 4 w-space, but warping across the home system sees the K162 wormhole still there and still wobbling away at the end of its life. My glorious leader is through our static wormhole and scanning the C3, having already found its static exit to low-sec empire space, and a K162 from high-sec. So what's the plan? 'Plan?' Yeah, that list of objectives that don't get done. 'Well, the C3a occupants are AWOL.' Okay, so we can't poke them. How about C4a? 'I honestly didn't look.' That's fair enough, as getting isolated without a route home is a bit reckless, but Fin's found our route home now so I can risk the EOL wormhole to see what's stirring in C4a.
Nothing's stirring in the class 4 system. My directional scanner is clear from the wormhole, leaving a single planet out of range. There was a tower around that planet a little over two years ago, and I suppose it technically still is there, just off-line. I launch probes to scan for dead K162s, at least until I see the twenty-eight signatures I'll need to sift through. I just turn around and go towards Fin, who, by the time I cross the home system and jump to C3a, has resolved another wormhole. This connection is T405 wormhole that leads to more class 4 w-space, so I play leapfrog and jump ahead as Fin completes scanning.
D-scan is clear in this C4 too, and the seventeen anomalies a passive scan picks up isn't looking positive for finding occupation. Indeed, there isn't an active tower in the system, letting me resolve the thirteen signatures to find out why. The weak static wormhole leads to deadly class 6 w-space, which doesn't seem like the best connection to have, particularly if you can't move capital ships through it to take advantage of all a C6 can offer. But it won't stop me roaming through the wormhole in to the system, and I continue exploring the constellation.
C6a has five towers on d-scan from the wormhole, along with a Legion strategic cruiser at one of them. Taking a look around the rest of the system, initially out of d-scan range, reveals eight more towers and more ships. The strategic cruisers, logistics ships, and heavy interdictor don't appear to be active, being coincident with towers and there being no wrecks visible, but they aren't exactly dozing inside the safety of force fields either. A Myrmidon battlecruiser with ECM drones appears on d-scan, as does a flight of core scanning probes.
I'm heading back. My own probes pick up a mere two anomalies and three signatures, which combined with a bunch of pilots and an active scout gives me some concern. The competent corporations in C5 or C6 w-space tend to crash unwanted wormholes with some efficiency, and as much as I believe in my ability to out-pace other scanners it is better to avoid getting in to such races in the first place. I turn my covert Loki strategic cruiser around and head back the way I came, continuing through C4b to C3a, where I warp across the system to see where the K162 from high-sec originates.
I jump to high-sec right behind Fin, who had the same idea. 'I hear you! peeing', she says, but I think those sentences are unconnected, Fin hearing the wormhole flare with my jump and then taking a bio-break. I'm no Marilyn Monroe, after all. The high-sec system is in the Derelick region and seems pretty dreary, being many hops from civilisation and not holding any other signatures to resolve. But Fin sees it differently, noticing the DED station and realising we can sell the loot we got from site overseers recently. I didn't even know that's what you did with them.
Fin returns home to fumble around the tower looking for the loot, as I see if anything has happened to the wormhole linking C4b to C6a. Jumping through the T405 connection sees the core probes probably from C6a now having moved in to C4b, which pretty much answers my question without having to check the next wormhole explicitly. I return to C3a, and from there I warp homewards. There's not much happening tonight, and what there is I don't really want to get involved with anyway. I'll satisfy myself with the simple scout through a few w-space systems.
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