Nicely isolated
23rd May 2010 – 3.45 pmI don't have much time but I have a desire to explore, or hunt. The possibility exists of finding a target or two and surprising them, disappearing as quickly as I appear. I even have a colleague to help, and a quick scan of our system finds the static wormhole. We warp to it and jump, keen to find items of interest. An initial return of the direction scanner looks promising, with a tower visible but no force field, but the off-line tower has no desirable modules visible and only weak defences. I warp off to investigate this abandoned tower, getting an initial bearing using d-scan.
Arriving at one of three possible moons I decide I have been unlucky, as no tower or defensive modules are visible. I then realise that my troubles with the overview are not quite over yet, as a couple of shadows in the distance turn out to be the tower and a few gun batteries. The brackets for the structures are not showing, and I still don't know why. It's possible that in trying to return my desired settings yesterday I misconfigured others, but I don't think I could have got them this badly mangled. For safety, so that I don't decloak around defended towers accidentally, I use some of my limited time to reconfigure yet again my overview, adding the structure and module brackets back to my display at least. I doubt this is the last modification I'll need to make, though.
This abandoned tower is the only structure present, making the system unoccupied. With our static connection leading in here it comes as no surprise to see that the system has plenty of signatures, and I re-join my colleague in trying to find the next wormhole on our route. Because I warped off to find the off-line tower rather impetuously I forgot to bookmark the wormhole home, so I need to resolve the wormhole completely to return to it and bookmark it. As a result, I have no comparative signal strength to use to try to find other wormholes in the system and have to rely instead on experience and intuition. So it is that we both scan and discard all but one signature in the whole system, the final one necessarily being the static wormhole. It takes a bit of chasing around too, my colleague surmising that it is thus likely to lead to a C5 or C6. Indeed he's right, as warping to the resolved signature finds a connection to a C5 system. We jump through the pristine wormhole.
The class 5 system is also unoccupied with plenty of signatures to sift through. To find targets we need to continue scanning for another system. Thankfully, I am able to get a comparative scan of the return wormhole to improve my results, and after only one false return of some rocks I find a wormhole around the outer planet. This connection is also pristine, not yet begun its cycle of life, and leads in to deadly w-space, a class 6 system. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I jump through. I bookmark the wormhole home and use d-scan to take a look around, seeing nothing in particular initially. The system is big enough to have planets out of d-scan range and I start warping around to find any occupants, but I find none. An unoccupied class 6 system makes a change from all the ones we find populated with capital ship pilots. It also means our own system is relatively safe.
With our current route heading from home, though a C4, C5, then C6, all unoccupied, our only danger is from other connections opening in to those systems or our own. As it stands, our corporation has the opportunity to explore and plunder three systems of increasing danger with minimal chance of interruption. I suggest we don't scan the C6 for a wormhole and instead keep it clear, in case a corporation fleet can form later to take advantage of this excellent situation. Besides finding the opportunity, my time has run out for now. We both head back home to our tower. I copy the bookmarks we have gathered in to our shared can and take myself off-line.
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed.