Two-day timer
27th June 2014 – 5.37 pmIt's all quiet at home. Just me and some gas clouds. And loads of anomalies still. I should probably clear one or two more, to warm up, feel productive, keep the iskies flowing in. It's got to be more interactive and profitable than sucking some gas too. I resolve our static wormhole first, for reference, and warp to the tower to swap to our Golem marauder.
Today's anomaly, same as yesterday's. Drop the mobile tractor unit, shoot Sleepers, salvage wrecks lazily drawn to me, all the while forcing updates from the discovery scanner. Yeah, it's more interactive than sucking gas, what with target switching, but I also highly recommend an unstable capacitor reservoir to keep matters interesting.
As always, I leave the last two wrecks in space, not waiting for the MTU to pull them to my expensive Golem, returning instead in a cheap destroyer to sweep up. That'll do, I think. One is enough for tonight, and it's a profitable one at that, bagging me about 115 Miskies.
Now to explore probably empty w-space. I suppose I should keep my pecker up, what with the unexpected battlecruiser carelessness of yesterday, but I know that such opportunities are considerably rarer than they used to be. Let's see what's out there tonight. I jump through our static wormhole to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system.
A mobile depot is visible on my directional scanner from the K162, nothing else. Launching probes and performing a blanket scan reveals ten anomalies, six signatures, and three ships. Ships, huh? All three are by a distant planet, according to my combat scanning probes, a planet that has a tower, according to my notes. I'm not expecting much, but I warp in that direction.
The tower that was here is now not, hardly a surprise for information almost two years old, but a new one is around a different moon, easily found. Inside the new tower's force field is a Sarum Magnate frigate, Prorator transport, and Dragoon destroyer, none of them piloted. That's cool, I'll scan instead. The system's static exit leads to high-sec, which could be okay.
Scanning resolves gas, the static wormhole, a chubby wormhole, some data, and more gas. The chubby wormhole is a K162 from class 4 w-space, but one at the end of its life. So, naturally, the high-sec exit the C4ers resolved is also wobbly with age. It's not so bad, I suppose, as poking through takes me to Essence, and a boring system anyway.
I check C4a too, through the dying wormhole, where updating d-scan sees absolutely nothing. Opening the system map has a single planet out of range where there may be occupation, but if there is I very much doubt anything is happening. I leave this system alone. Back to C3a and I stab the mobile depot with my blasters, doing no real harm because of the weird two-day reinforcement timer.
What's the point of the two-day timer on the mobile depots anyway? I thought the depot was useful for having a travel fit for your ship, getting through hostile space, and refitting without a station for whatever purpose. Surely then the pilot would scoop the depot back to his hold. Or, if there's no room after the reconfiguration, the ship would be refit and the depot scooped before the pilot goes off-line.
What kind of expedition requires a two-day deployment? If a capsuleer is so careless or cavalier about his assets that he is willing to leave them unattended in hostile space for an extended period they should accept any consequences. I imagine the assets are only 'risked' in this way because the depot implicitly allows it. If the reinforcement timer were a couple of hours, plenty of time to wander space and return, I'm sure pilots would take more care of what is theirs.
Whatever the reason behind the curiously long reinforcement timer, it is what it is, which is longer than wormholes remain stable. Whoever owns this mobile depot is mildly inconvenienced at best, such is the state of w-space currently. Never mind, at least I made some iskies this evening.
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