Causing ripples
5th April 2014 – 3.38 pmI'll leave this class 2 w-space system alone. The one hauler I tried to catch got away and was replaced by a scout, who disappeared. I doubt anything interesting will happen here. But that's okay, as I've not been through our static wormhole yet, which could offer all sorts of wonderful opportunities for seeing towers empty of ships and scanning my way out to known space. How can I resist? I head home, warp to the wormhole, and jump through.
Hey, look, my directional scanner is showing me a tower with no ships! I can hardly contain myself. Checking my notes has my last visit being recent, just three months earlier, giving me a location for the tower. I also find out that the static exit will lead to null-sec. That's something to aim for, I suppose, and maybe I can scan there for more wormholes whilst ratting for profit and security status. Or, you know, find other w-space connections in this class 3 system first.
Launching probes and blanketing the system reveals thirteen anomalies and a puny five signatures, only two of the signatures being chunky. One will be our K162, the other is merely gas. That's my hopes for finding a decent connection ruined, as exploration through outbound wormholes still feels lacklustre, but I'm aiming to modify my perception. Still, there's always the null-sec exit, which, thankfully, looks to be the first skinny signature I choose to resolve.
Yep, I drop out of warp next to the K346, shimmering with the blue lightning bolt of Malpais. I could stop scanning now, but don't, because I'm not too bright. Data site, relic site. Yeah, I could have stopped, but it's probably good to know what's around more fully. Now out to Malpais, see what null-sec holds, which apparently is a lack of pilots and a lack of signatures.
So I can't scan, but I can still rat. I warp around rock fields looking for a decent rat ship to pop, and although I find one I also find its friends. Three battleships flanked by a few frigates is probably too much for my casual-feeling self, and when warping to a different rock field has the same small fleet apparently following me I decide to hop a stargate and try again in a different system.
System hopping takes me to potential activity, with a dozen pilots in the system, lots of anomalies, and a single signature. Checking for ships finds some, with Mackinaw exhumers, a Rorqual, and a few combat ships somewhere. Probably in a tower, but you never know. Getting closer sees a Blackbird recon ship on d-scan apparently popping rats in an ore site, but gone before I can get my Loki strategic cruiser close enough to see. The mining ships are predictably floating inside a force field.
As I lurk and watch the locals, I am apparently causing ripples in a mostly ignored intel channel. It seems the miners are getting their knickers in a twist about my being in the system. My spies are everywhere. Although I am looking for wormholes I would certainly trouble the miners if they didn't pay me any heed, and I can't say I'm concerned when the locals break out their combat ships, not when they don't take them out of their tower. Besides, the one signature in the system turns out to be a combat site, so I lose interest in hanging around.
I go forwards again, knowing that my route makes a triangle that will take me back to my exit, but only in to a system with three other pilots and a lack of signatures. That sends me back to the exit system, where I don't bother trying to find any rats to pop this time, and simply head back to w-space. Seeing no change in C3a makes this the end of the night for me. I jump home, hide in a quiet corner of space, and go off-line.
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