Ghost and relics

Back to the tower to lurk. I'm not expecting much in a system where I've just ambushed a hauler collecting planet goo, but where else am I going to lurk? Besides, it lets me watch for new contacts and potential ship changes, to see if the system gets hot or cold. And it looks like circumstances start warming up, when a new contact in a Crucifier frigate appears, followed by another in a Navitas frigate, but it all cools down again quickly when they both disappear off-line together. The Bestower pilot too, presumably now that his aggression flag has dropped.

That just leaves the piloted Epithal hauler at the tower, no doubt asleep. I'll scan. I ignore one gas site, two more gas sites, and the Epithal pilot wakes up, swapping to a Bestower. I can't be this lucky, can I? I hide my probes, just in case, but, like almost every time I've asked that question, no, I can't be that lucky. It seems that the pilot just prefers to go off-line in the Bestower. Back to scanning. Or not. One last blanket scan, with my probes outside of directional scanner range, sees that a new ship, tiny, is somewhere in the system.

Core probes appear in the system. I am in a scanning race with a new scout, and me with a head start. Time to take it seriously. I sift through the signatures looking only for wormholes, and come up with three of them. The U210 static exit to low-sec probably leads to Molden Heath, from its colouring, a K162 comes from class 2 w-space, and a K162 from low-sec is perhaps from the Genesis region. Oh, and there's a fourth wormhole, clearly source of the new scout, perhaps because there is a ship sitting on top of the signature.

The ship stays on my probes when I reconfigure them back to a blanket scanning formation. It is likely a frigate bouncing between wormholes and not a covert operations boat. That may mean I can catch him, but only if he has poor reactions, as those frigates turn and enter warp quickly. I also have no idea where he is any more. I warp to the U210, that being the most likely wormhole a scout would actually jump through, as the ship drops off my probes.

Intuition confirmed, the wormhole crackles shortly after I land at the low-sec exit. I decloak, activate my sensor booster, and watch an Astero frigate warp clear without any trouble from my Loki strategic cruiser. They are pretty quick, those new Sisters ships. I imagine that's the last I'll see of him too, and there's little point in checking behind his K162 from class 4 w-space now that anyone in his corporation will be warned of my presence. Let me head to low-sec instead.

I jump to Molden Heath, as predicted, where there is a ghost site in the system and no pilots. Hacking that's got to be worth a shot, even with the Astero at large. He may be more scared of me than I am of him anyway. Decision made, I head back home, change the fitting on my Loki to withstand the inevitable explosion in the ghost site, add a relic analyser, and return to low-sec to see what kind of loot I can snatch and grab.

Entering the site I scan the containers in turn. There's nothing exciting, but at least I can pick the container with the greatest amount of nothing exciting. At least the lack of anything interesting makes the hacking relatively straightforward to accomplish. One can is cracked and looted, I move my Loki to the second-best can and crack and loot that, and Angel rats turn up to self-destruct their site. Fools. Then again, I am warp-scrambled and a new contact has just entered the system. It's no big deal, probably.

Nope, I'm fine. The other pilot moves on without investigating what I'm up to. I'm not convinced twenty-five million ISK in loot was worth the effort, but I suppose I shouldn't sniff at it either. And instead of returning home to refit my Loki I realise I may as well rat and scan in my current configuration. I still have probes and a cloak, I can see what's here and come back only if it's worth it. It's not, really.

Three extra signatures resolve to be two data sites and a relic site, and although there's no wormhole at least not refitting means I can take advantage of one of those sites, spending a little more time to make a little more ISK. Four canisters in the relic site have pretty standard loot, as scanned by my ship. One canister is tougher to hack than the others, giving slightly better loot—not that I have enough hands to grab it all. But I finish the site, and I think I'm finished for the evening too. Having ambushed a hauler and hacked a ghost site, I don't think I've done too badly.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: astero, bestower, crucifier, epithal, eve online, loki, low-sec, mmorpg, navitas, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space