Crashing and Sleepering

22nd January 2014 – 5.56 pm

Back down to one wormhole at home. That should help us decide what to do with our evening a bit more easily. And, obviously, I should check the state of our tower, because I don't do it often enough and occasionally I worry that I'll come on-line to nothing. I warp in, pull out the dipstick, and see that everything is healthy and full of fuel. I think I have my colleagues to thank for their diligence. Now to poke the static wormhole and see what we have next door.

Jumping to the neighbouring class 3 w-space and updating my directional scanner sees the normal sight of a tower lacking ships. What a surprise. Well, it's a slight surprise, considering that there was no occupation in this system three months ago. As a blanket scan reveals sixteen anomalies and fourteen signatures, the new corporation either moved in recently or haven't quite settled in yet.

I warp around to locate the tower whilst my glorious leader scans, her skills clearly outshining mine. I am still checking moons with d-scan when Fin lands on the U210. 'Everything else is just gas.' The static exit to low-sec leads to a system in Sinq Laison with extra signatures to scan for wormholes, which would be better if the exit weren't wobbling away at the end of its life.

'We should probably go for Sleepers to keep someone from repeating last week', says Fin. 'Bastards.' That sounds like a good idea. We've got in to a decent groove with the bland-but-profitable activity of clearing anomalies in the home system, spurred by the bastion module allowing us—okay, me—to use a Golem marauder instead of a Tengu strategic cruiser. I wouldn't say the ship is better, just different. You need to mix circumstances up a bit occasionally.

Fin comes back from low-sec, I tag the tower I finally find, and we both head home to grab some chunkier ships to start the wormhole's collapse. Nothing happens whilst we wait for polarisation effects to dissipate, which are terribly exciting times, and the wormhole implodes on schedule and with both of us in the home system. Now for some Sleepers.

Again we fly the Golem and Tengu, again I am in the Golem. When will I learn to share? Once I've got the hang of bouncing the marauder around under the influence of a micro jump drive, perhaps. But today I'm also keen to try out the new torpedoes that Aii imported. We've been using basic ammunition in the Golem so far, because our stock of expensive torpedoes was limited to what we might use in stealth bombers. Considering we barely fly them these days, there isn't much in the hangar.

Now we have a healthy stock of some Caldari Navy torpedoes, and I load up the Golem to see what difference it makes. A nice difference, that's what. I am slamming the Sleeper battleships harder than ever, and it feels good. If only I weren't also apparently taking more damage. I don't think the Sleepers like me. I wish I could find out why, but I tend to shoot first and forget about asking questions later when distracted by the explosions.

Golem launching torpedoes at a Sleeper battleship

The first anomaly is cleared, followed by a second and third, and still I'm working on getting the angles right for the MJD. At least when flying in tandem with Fin I can aim to get the bounce very wrong indeed and end up warping to a wreck. The turnaround is even quicker than waiting for the MJD to cool down. That's my excuse.

With the three profitable anomalies cleared of Sleeper ships, we take out our salvagers to tackle the second step of realising that profit, clearing the anomalies of Sleeper wrecks, bringing back over three hundred million ISK in loot. The final step is getting that loot safely to market, but that's for another day.

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