Ransacking a radar site in low-sec
12th December 2011 – 5.24 pmAn empty system is a quiet system. I'll see if I can find one not quite so empty, which means scanning our home first. After a minor absence a couple of anomalies have reappeared, the rocks are gone, and I'm left with a single signature to resolve. There is nothing but our static wormhole that needs to be found, and I warp to it and jump through to explore our neighbouring class 3 w-space system for today. It's just planets and moons at first blush, only celestial objects appearing on my directional scanner from the K162. There are two planets out of d-scan range, offering hope for occupation or activity, so I launch scanning probes, throw them out of the system, and warp away from the wormhole.
One ship, fourteen anomalies, and nineteen signatures are returned from my probes with a blanket scan of this C3. The ship is a Retribution assault ship, sitting unpiloted in a tower around the planet that I happened to choose to warp to first. Checking my notes places me here some nine months ago but the notes are no longer relevant. The tower I've found is not listed and the two that are have since been torn down cleanly. I don't even have the type of static wormhole listed, our last appearance here having us try to catch a Drake battlecruiser and fail. There's no one here today, so I can scan and determine the static wormhole now, and with so many signatures to sift through I shall concentrate on looking only for wormholes.
Maybe it's because wormholes tend to sit further from celestial objects than other types of cosmic anomalies, but there seems to be a tendency for them to appear as split signatures on scanning probes. Picking one of these split signatures lets me pluck a wormhole out of the noise straight away, which I resolve but don't visit just yet. Otherwise, my goodness, it's just rocks out there. I ignore gravimetric site after gravimetric site, until a single ladar site interrupts the monotony, and then a second wormhole appears in the middle of my probes. I shall assume that is all to be found, as there are only two weak signatures left, and I warp to the wormholes to see where exploration takes me next.
The first wormhole is a static exit to low-sec empire space, and I jump out so that I have the destination system registered in case I get in to trouble and need to come back this way. Today I find myself in the Molden Heath region, which is fine for scanning but not for logistics. And scan it I shall, as jumping back to w-space and warping to the second wormhole may put me next to a connection to more class 3 w-space but the wormhole is reaching the end of its natural lifetime and I'm not keen to explore through a dying link. Low-sec has a couple of additional signatures to resolve, or at least determine their type. Both signatures turn out to be radar sites, but I find the second impossible to resolve. That's okay, I rarely come out to empire space for this kind of activity. Then again, I am by myself and w-space tends to be more of a slog when solo, so a low-sec radar site may be a good way to pass some time.
I head home, through the sleepy class 3 system, and swap my scanning boat for a Drake, refitted with a codebreaker for the radar site. There are no rats to greet me when I warp in to the site, leaving me to pootle along to the containers, making me think that perhaps I should have tried to squeeze the micro warp drive on to my battlecruiser. I hack a couple of cans and find that some Angel rats aren't keen to see me steal anything from empty boxes, turning up to be little more than a minor distraction as I crawl between the cans. A pilot entering the system is more of a threat, particularly when he is followed by five more, all plain as day thanks to the populated local channel, a blessing compared to the opaque communication channel in w-space.
I see no scanning probes looking for me, and even though I am in a site that requires scanning to find I am not comfortable. There is nothing preventing these pilots from scanning known sites in advance and swooping down on unsuspecting pilots who are too preoccupied looking for probes on d-scan. I align my Drake out and get ready to warp, seeing a Hurricane battlecruiser on d-scan, then two, now three. And they are gone. It looks like a roaming fleet was just passing through, local draining down to just me and the pilot of a Badger hauler, who I am content to share the system with. A few more Angel rats appear to let me profit from their bounties, and I clean out the rest of the containers.
It seems I was a little unfair in proclaiming the cans to be empty. The first was, which coupled with previous experiences of empire space sites like this made me less than optimistic, but my earlier experiences are also mostly in high-sec space and less profitable anyway. Tonight's haul gets me over a handful of decryptors and some datacores, all of which adds up to maybe thirty million ISK in profit, which isn't shabby at all for my time. And it serves to remind me that my research agents are still accumulating datacores for me. I should probably get around to making another datacore run, but only when I've nothing better to do. I seem to be okay for iskies at the moment. For now I simply head home, through the C3 that continues to show no change, and get some sleep.
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