Pausing on the way home

I have a plan. I got podded last night, under frustrating circumstances, and will be starting the evening in high-sec. I plan to buy some cheap ammunition, throw a capacitor-sucking shield booster on to my new Loki strategic cruiser, and cruise high-sec anomalies popping rats in a therapeutic manner, hopefully finding the odd piece of good loot in the process.

That's the plan, and like most others of mine it falls over immediately. My glorious leader has been busy already, having scanned a not-insignificant w-space constellation to provide me with three routes home, two through a high-sec connection. I can't say this is a bad result, though. Going home seems like a better use of my time than crushing some puny high-sec rats. I set my auto-pilot destination and start hopping stargates.

Fin also tells me of the Zephyr exploration ship she caught and killed. It's good to see one of us doing well at the moment. But she punctuates the kill report by pointing out how the w-space constellation appears to be becoming more active. I'm sure I'll almost certainly probably be fine. At the very least, I can jump in through the high-sec wormhole, take a look at my directional scanner, and go back to Plan A if I get the jitters.

Twelve hops through high-sec. Nothing much happens. It gives Fin a chance to call out ships and pilots visible in the systems she's passing through, taking a ship out to high-sec to conduct some business. The exit she's using, the one I'm headed for, is only two hops from Amarr. That's pretty convenient. It also lets me act as scout for her return. I can do that! I'm already regaining my confidence in moving through w-space.

I get to the exit system. No oranges in local, but I don't think any corporations from our constellation have been tagged. I can do that whilst Fin is away. The wormhole is clear in high-sec, jumping to the class 2 system sees nothing on the other side of the wormhole, and d-scan shows me some towers to reconnoitre. Seven towers, in fact, along with a few ships to check for pilots.

A Scorpion battleship is piloted in one tower, a Buzzard covert operations boat and Dominix battleship are piloted in a second, and a Legion strategic cruiser is piloted in a third. None of the ships or pilots looks to be considering doing anything, though. Moving on, I head to the wormhole to C3b, but I've no time to do a full reconnoitre of the next system. Fin's on her way back.

I jump through a clear wormhole to see four towers on d-scan, plus a Loki, two Dominices, and a Helios and Buzzard cov-ops each. There are no wrecks and d-scan suggests our next connection is clear. I continue my run to the next system, our neighbouring class 3 system and so the last in the route home. The first aspect I notice is the palindromic J-number, which probably shouldn't be a priority, so I punch d-scan and see two towers and eleven ships. They're probably not up to much.

Not much, but something. Core scanning probes are whizzing around, but they are only core scanning probes and not combats, so they won't detect Fin's Bustard transport coming through. Fin enters the system, warps to our K162, and jumps home. I ask Fin to let me know if anyone ambushes her, as I loiter in C3a to see how many ships are piloted and what they are up to.

C3a is a compact system. Four planets, both towers around a planet with two moons. It's pretty simple. One tower is pretty much bare, just an empty shuttle inside the force field, the other holding the rest of the ships, all of them piloted. Well, I think it's the rest of the ships, as I don't count ten, but d-scan shows me none elsewhere. One appears abruptly, a shuttle warping to land on top of and decloak an Anathema cov-ops a few tens of kilometres outside of the tower's force field.

I consider my options against the Anathema. It looks like he's aligned between a tower and distant planet, so I could probably bounce close to him. But how long will it take to pop the cov-ops, and how long will it take the tower to lock on to my ship? Fin reckons I have a ten-to-fifteen second window, but that will be for the guns. I remember hearing that the warp scramble batteries take longer.

Barely remembered hearsay is the best kind of indicator to rely on, so I turn my Loki around, bounce off the right planet, and warp back to, well, the wrong tower. It doesn't matter, as by the time I get to the right one the Anathema has wisely moved back in to its force field. That's my limited fun over, and Fin's too. She briefly considers heading back to high-sec for another run, but agrees that a convenient connection doesn't justify getting greedy. If anyone was watching we'll just lose, and this feels like the kind of constellation where someone is watching.

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Tags: anathema, bustard, buzzard, dominix, eve online, helios, legion, loki, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, scorpion, w-space

Red ring of death

I found myself some minor excitement, now it looks like there may be some miner excitement. The EVE University-held class 2 w-space system I'm in has a single anomaly, an ore site, and a Skiff exhumer coincident with it, according to my directional scanner. Of course, there are also six towers that I can see, a bunch of other ships, and I've only just engaged a Talwar destroyer and Sentinel frigate on a wormhole in to this system. The Skiff's got to be bait, right?

'Yes', says Fin, the Skiff must be bait. It's not like I need confirmation, but getting a sanity check is always welcome. I warp in to the site to take a look anyway, and the exhumer looks authentic from a distance, sitting next to an arkonor rock. It even warps away, disappearing out of the site for a minute, before returning to the same spot, as if it has just dropped off a load of ore. It's good acting, but it's a ruse.

I warp closer to the Skiff, close enough to see the hull shimmer with an active tank, easily close enough to see that its mining lasers aren't active. It's not even mining. It's miming mining. Oh sure, I'm still tempted to shoot it, just to find out that of course it's bait and I shouldn't shoot it, but I actually listen to sense and just take my word for it. I warp away, leaving the mimer alone, and reconnoitre the system properly.

It's a small system, everything sitting in range of d-scan, and only six moons around the planets. The C2 is saturated, no doubt a conscious plan by EVE Uni to help protect their presence in w-space. The ships in the system are evenly spread amongst the towers, which I only detect using d-scan. I don't much care to ping each tower and confirm pilots. I bet EVE Uni has rules about not leaving unpiloted ships floating inside force fields.

I launch probes to scan. Apart from the one anomaly there are three signatures: the wormhole I entered through, and the two static wormholes. I ignore the first and resolve the other two, an exit to high-sec and a connection to class 3 w-space. The C3 wormhole has a Raptor interceptor land on it as I warp away after bookmarking its location, which is good. The interceptor is back in this system and not loitering on the other side of the low-sec entrance. It's perhaps a good time to try to get out the way I came.

I warp to the K162 from low-sec, see no ships, and jump through to a waiting Talwar, Sentinel, and a third ship, which I only later identify as a Proteus strategic cruiser. I am also under two kilometres from the wormhole, making it impossible to cloak immediately. Time is of the essence, as my appearance will no doubt have whatever EVE Uni pilots available warping to the wormhole, so I move, try to cloak, and get targeted pretty much immediately.

There's not much I can do in low-sec. Even if I could pop the Talwar and Sentinel before help arrived, the Proteus will hold me in place easily enough. I dive back through the wormhole to C2b. The wormhole is clear, I am nearly four kilometres from the locus, so I move and cloak. Come on, stupid ship; move and cloak. Ah, great. Apparently my first command was recognised, just flowed back to me with undue latency.

Not only did my cloak activate, making me safe, but the repeated command was not met with the usual 'damn, fool, your cloak already be active! Quit fucking with the buttons', but a resigned sigh of, 'whatever, I'll switch it off, make your mind up next time'. The first I know of this is seeing the red-ring of cloak inactivity surrounding my module. I didn't even see the green ring.

Did I mention the Raptor warping on to the wormhole in C2b as I moved from the wormhole? Yeah, he turned up to see my Loki strategic cruiser decloak for no reason, and doesn't hesitate in locking on to my once-more visible ship. Great. A glitch takes me from being polarised and safe to polarised and dead. I do what I can, which is target the Raptor, scramble his drives, and start shooting, but the Talwar and Proteus come from low-sec, and just about every ship in the w-space system comes to pile on Penny.

When I say just about every ship piles on me I am apparently understating. The Skiff even turns up. At least there's no ECM to frustrate me further. I rake through the Raptor whilst burning my ancillary shield boosters to stay afloat, but the incoming damage is massive. It was hurting badly, but I can't even tell if the interceptor is still in range when my Loki explodes around me. Not that it matters. I aim my pod for the high-sec exit, and even that goes wrong. I am caught again, and unceremoniously woken up in a clone vat.

Maybe I should have taken the safe route to high-sec in the first place. That's kinda boring though. What irritates me is that I was actually safe, it wasn't my actions that got me caught. I couldn't trust the cloaking command to have gone through if I was getting no feedback. What if it hadn't? How long do you wait? There's no point lingering on it, though. I do, of course, there's just no point to it. To bring the evening to a close I update my clone, buy a new Loki from Jita, and find a quieter system to dock in overnight.

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Tags: eve online, loki, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, proteus, pvp, raptor, scanning, sentinel, skiff, talwar, w-space

Flirtation with EVE University

I come on-line to see my glorious leader and a trail of bookmarks. I follow the trail to see where they lead, which is first unsurprisingly in to a class 3 w-space system. My notes tell me that the exit goes to low-sec empire space, and combine with my directional scanner to inform me at-a-glance that the tower I see is different than the one a year ago. The tower from my last visit should be well out of range, some 50 AU away.

The tower in range is small and has just about no defences, only shield hardeners. 'Yeah, I thought about it', says Fin, clearly understanding the implicit desire to test the tower for strontium. But even if the second tower didn't remain on the edge of the system, albeit also without ships, shooting a tower is still a tedious endeavour. I just take my Loki strategic cruiser on a tour of this system.

Fin has scanned the static wormhole, finding a K162 from high-sec in the process. The K162 is at the end of its life now, but the exit to low-sec is healthy, the devil-man of Heimatar shining through. I jump through to see what else may be out there, landing in a faction warfare system with six extra signatures to scan. No wormholes, though, just a couple of combat sites and plenty of gas.

Nothing in low-sec, nothing in C3a. What to do? I'll hop a gate, hopefully not too dangerous a proposition in a faction warfare system, and see if I can find better opportunity. The stargate is safely crossed, taking me to a more active system, again with six signatures. The combat, data, data, and relic sites are disappointing, but at last a wormhole! And, in warp to the first, I resolve a second.

Landing near the first wormhole sees a K162 from class 2 w-space, but more interesting is the Astero frigate also here, also investigating the connection. Unfortunately, the Astero warped in from a different direction, at as cautiously a distance as I chose, putting her rather too far for me to hope to catch. But she's just sitting there, examining the wormhole, giving me a chance of getting in range. I start edging closer, closer, but the Astero finally gets its bearings and burns towards the wormhole, jumping through when in range.

I won't catch the Astero, not even if I decloak and burn to the wormhole myself. I still get closer anyway, decloaking and activating my sensor booster in case she comes back out polarised, but whatever the pilot sees in the C2 it is enough to keep her attention. Never mind, I have another wormhole. It's another connection to class 2 w-space, this one outbound, and with a Talwar destroyer and Sentinel frigate sitting on it.

Both destroyer and frigate warp before my ancient reactions catch up with my senses, but never mind. I have my own C2 system to explore, albeit through a poor outbound wormhole. Or maybe I don't, as the Talwar returns before I crawl cloaked in to jump range, followed shortly after by the Sentinel's reappearance. Now I'm curious. Curious enough to check the pilots' affiliation. EVE University.

These being EVE-Uni pilots doesn't bode well for my solo ambush, not with so many pilots in the system. But what the hell, right? I decloak, get my systems working, and target the Talwar first. He seems like a threat. I gain a positive lock, scramble his engines, and start shooting, stripping his shields quickly but without knowing if that's good or not. Maybe he's armour-tanked. Whatever his situation, the pilot predictably bails out through the wormhole. Let's see what the Sentinel does.

The frigate's shields drop precipitously too, but the Sentinel is pretty nippy. He zips out from under my warp scrambler, far enough that he may have thought he was merely disrupted, and warps clear. Okay, let's chase that Talwar. I jump to C2b, see the Talwar on the wormhole still, and re-engage. Yep, he returns straight back to low-sec. I'm not foolish enough to polarise myself in such a situation, where my target almost certainly has plenty of back-up and I have none. I just push away from the wormhole and cloak, as a Stabber cruiser warps in.

The Stabber's pilot is in EVE-Uni too, so I suppose this C2 is under their control. If that weren't confirmation enough that not continuing the engagement polarised was a sensible move, once the Stabber fails to find my cloaked Loki and jumps to low-sec only to have a Raptor interceptor follow seconds behind it is pretty convincing. It looks like I've found myself some minor excitement.

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Tags: astero, eve online, loki, low-sec, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pvp, raptor, sentinel, stabber, talwar, w-space

Finding Impass

There's no change in space, as far as I can tell. That's a little over 14 AU, for what it's worth, and I'm fairly sure space extends at least a little beyond that. Perhaps I should take a better look around than merely punching my directional scanner in a safe spot in the home system. I launch probes and scan my way out, which is through our static wormhole, as usual.

Ships! I see ships! Not on the other side of the wormhole, thankfully, but on d-scan. And with a tower also visible. Still, ships. An Oracle and Hurricane battlecruiser, Manticore stealth bomber, Flycatcher interdictor, Curse recon ship, and Cerberus heavy assault cruiser. It's a motley bunch, and with no wrecks visible I'm supposing they aren't up to much.

A visit to this class 3 w-space system from only two weeks or so ago should have the tower unmoved from its previous location, which lets me quickly warp to it and see that all the ships are floating unpiloted inside a force field. Back to scanning. It's a messy system, fifteen anomalies and twenty signatures to sift through, with three wormholes amongst the gas, relic, and data sites.

The first wormhole is the static exit to low-sec, looking like it leads to Aridia. The second is just a K162 from null-sec, but the third is a K162 from class 2 w-space. That's what I'm after. I get the exit in Aridia first, just in case I encounter trouble, and note the opportunity of extra signatures in the system. But w-space first, and back through C3a to jump in to C2a.

Over ten towers are visible on d-scan in the class 2 system. Eleven, in fact. There are also two Dominix battleships somewhere, but still no wrecks so probably no activity. I can't be bothered to locate all of the towers, as it takes time and effort for generally no benefit, however much I like to keep notes, but looking for the ships seems like a good idea. One Dominix is piloted in one tower, the second piloted in a second, neither doing anything. That was fun.

I leave Fin watching a ship or two come in through C2a's static exit to high-sec that she has resolved, and monitoring a more-distant tower that has angrier-looking ships floating inside it, and return to Aridia to look for better opportunity. It's not often I consider scanning Aridia to be a good idea, but it's bound to happen occasionally. Actually scanning the four extra signatures only finds three combat sites and a pocket of gas, though. Stupid Aridia.

At least I find a clone soldier trying to mind his own business in a rock field. Popping him for security status gain would be less stressful if a new contact didn't appear in the system as soon as I engaged the rat. I align my Loki out and keep shooting, thankfully popping the rat without interruption. But now what? I think I've exhausted my options. That is, until I remember the null-sec K162 in C3a.

Another system to explore, and is that a ratting carrier I see on d-scan? Maybe, but probably not any more. There are rat wrecks galore on d-scan, but it looks like the Thanatos has retreated to the safety of a tower on my appearance in the system. Never mind, there are extra signatures to check for wormholes, all four resolving to be combat sites. Balls to it, I'm going home.

Wait a minute. I'm in Impass. This is a neat realisation, as it is one of the two regions I was yet to visit for my collection of New Eden wormhole colours. I'm glad I noticed before going off-line, or I'd have been a mite upset. I jump back to C3a, grab the requisite images of the colours shimmering through the wormhole, note the nebulae they represent, and feel like I've made some progress this evening before heading home. It's a good feeling.

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Tags: cerberus, curse, dominix, eve online, flycatcher, hurricane, manticore, mmorpg, oracle, penny ibramovic, scanning, thanatos, w-space

Null-sec to null-sec to null-sec

Screw the Sleepers, a statement more meaningful were there many left in our home system. I paid my dues to maintaining our presence in w-space yesterday, culling plenty of the drones to help keep our wallet healthy with ISK, and today I am off exploring. Our neighbouring class 3 system seems like a good place to start, what with it being through my only choice of wormhole, so off I go.

Our static wormhole turns out to be not such a great choice of direction after all, an empty return from my directional scanner almost making staying at home preferable, particularly when there is only a single, moonless planet out of range. But our neighbouring system is often merely a gateway system, a link to further exploration. I launch probes and scan.

Thirteen anomalies, eleven signatures, and an exit to null-sec to hunt down. Great. Gas, relics, gas, gas, gas. So much gas. No one's been through here for a while. That weak wormhole is almost certainly the K346 I'm expecting, so I warp directly towards it. Yep, it's the exit, and probably the only wormhole I'll find amongst the weak signatures. I ignore the rest and head out to null-sec.

I'm spat in to a system in Cobalt Edge that lacks pilots. I shall rat and scan. I can just about manage that, with two rock fields and one extra signature, and all looks rosy. A rock field presents a rat battleship, and the signature resolves to be a wormhole. But the joke's on me, as it's an S199 wormhole, leading from this null-sec system to another null-sec system.

Well, wormholes are better than stargates, so I jump through to appear in Feythabolis, alone again, but this time lacking signatures to scan. I try to rat, a cruiser being plenty in a system where I'm not scanning, and I suppose it's either hop a stargate or head home and collapse our static connection. The former's easier than the latter, and I like to follow the path of least resistance.

A ratting Tengu strategic cruiser and Machariel faction battleship look interesting on d-scan, more so when they don't appear to be bugging out, rather less so when no anomaly matches up with their location. But I have a signature to scan and can get out of d-scan range of the ships, so launch probes and use the ratting ships as hunting practice.

I assume my targets are hiding in a despawned anomaly, and may not be expecting my combat probes to find them quite so quickly. I get a decent bearing and range, cluster my probes around where I think they are, and scan. It's a good hit on the Machariel—it would be embarrassing if it weren't—and almost resolve the Tengu's position. I send my probes back out of the system and warp in to see what's happening.

Ah, the pair are in an 8/10-rated DED site, which explains both why there isn't an anomaly visible for the site and why they aren't running. Well, the second bit is only explained when I drop out of warp near an acceleration gate, a ratter's version of the discovery scanner for d-scan. You can't get through the gate cloaked, so anyone coming for you will be made obvious early enough for you to escape. Fair enough.

Ignoring the ratters I scan the signature in the system. It's a relic site, how dull. Hop a gate, move out of bubbles no one's monitoring, and scan three signatures whilst ratting. Gas, wormhole, wormhole. Great in the scanning interface, not so great when one wormhole is a dying outbound link to class 5 w-space and the other is dead-on-arrival empty space. Hop a gate. No pilots, three signatures again. Data, data, data. Worse than relics.

There's one more system to complete the circuit. Hop a gate. No pilots, four signatures. Data, data, wormhole, data. The wormhole is another S199. Ha bloody ha, space. Still I go through, because why not, and appear in Stain this time. Again I'm alone, with two extra signatures to scan. Okay, I'll do it, but this is definitely the last system. Relics and more relics. That's it, I'm outta here. At least the Sansha battleships give me a good light show before I leave. Thanks, chaps.

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Tags: eve online, machariel, mmorpg, null-sec, penny ibramovic, scanning, tengu, w-space

Relaxing by making ISK

I've calmed down a little about yesterday's Epithal encounter. A little. Okay, not really, because nothing's changed. It's just best not to dwell too much on it. An evening spent blowing the crap out of Sleepers would probably offer some light relief, though, so with glorious leader Fin available and no incoming wormholes, we prepare a small fleet to fend off the indigenous population.

Once again I board a Golem marauder, but screw torpedoes. I'm switching to cruise missiles this time. Don't get me wrong, I much prefer the involvement in maintaining range on Sleepers that naturally engage us from further out than torpedoes hit, it's just that there are other circumstances to take in to account. Mostly, the vulnerability of the marauder, particularly when in bastion mode.

Nothing much changes between a torpedo Golem in bastion mode and a cruise missile Golem in bastion mode, apart from the stupidly long, order-of-magnitude greater range of the cruise missiles. It is this increased range that I want to exploit, naturally, but not for the range itself. Rather, the range lets me keep the Golem in a less risky location within the anomalies.

The torpedo Golem has to be close to the Sleepers, which puts it close to either structures within the anomaly or wrecks of other Sleepers. This makes it easy for an ambushing tackler to get close to the marauder, prior to a fleet warping in for the kill. Warping the Golem in to the anomaly from an arbitrary direction and keeping it sat well over a hundred kilometres from any wreck or structure, on the other hand, significantly mitigates the risk from proximity.

Mitigates, not militates against. Bastion mode still immobilises the ship for a minute at a time, which keeps the marauder an attractive target, as one that can't immediately move when threatened. But we do what we can, and early detection of new signatures combined with an awkward positioning of the Golem should go some way in to keeping it safe from hostile intruders. That, at least, is my reasoning.

So off with the torpedo launchers, on with the cruise missile launchers. We apparently don't have a decent stock of expensive cruise missiles, standard ones will have to do, but the damage should be consistently applied between waves, with no intra-site positioning required. My main concern is with how slow they'll cycle, but I think that is more a reaction to using low-quality launchers previously. Now that I can use the Tech II variants I am hoping I won't be frustrated. Let's see.

In to the first anomaly, with Fin besides me in a Tengu strategic cruiser, and in to bastion mode. Probably. I've managed to warp us in to a blinding gas cloud. Still, activate the launchers and hope the missiles can find their way to the target. The Sleepers won't know what's hitting them. Yeah, they're not quite as satisfying or devastating as torpedoes, but the damage is decent, the range projection is stupidly good, and not having to gauge micro jumps certainly saves some aggravation. One wave goes down, just select a new battleship as a target from the new wave and continue shooting.

It's almost relaxing, like fishing in space. Simple target selection, my picking off the battleships as Fin's Tengu works on the smaller ships, and checking the discovery and directional scanners. No moving required, no following, just sitting and shooting. The lack of messing around gives me time to once again ponder on the relative squishiness of the first wave of battleships. Whether there is a reduction in mutual remote repairs between the Sleepers, or they are a kind of bait to lure us in to the stronger second wave, I can't say. Either way, it's an easy pair of kills.

Three anomalies cleared already. This is going smoothly and efficiently, I have to say. I'm glad I've experienced the torpedo Golem too, but sticking the marauder in bastion mode far out of the site does seem a more sensible option, one that requires the range of cruise missiles. Four, five, and we even have time for a sixth, pretty much clearing our system of profit. Well, nearly.

Swapping the combat ships for Noctis salvagers does the clearing up, leaving behind them a much tidier system to bring back a healthy collection of loot and salvage. Once we get all of this out to empire space to sell it will all pad our wallet with another half-a-billion ISK. That's a good result of a quiet evening, and should help fund some future foolish adventures.

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Tags: eve online, golem, mmorpg, noctis, penny ibramovic, sleepers, tengu, w-space

Falling foul of a standard fitting

A super-simple start to this evening. My glorious leader has left a trail of bookmarks for me to follow, in to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system and out to empire space. No scanning required. So, what's out there? Nothing is on our K162 in C3a, or on my directional scanner, but only one planet is in range. It may be worth sweeping the system, just in case of changes, and I launch probes and perform a blanket scan as I warp to where a tower was ten weeks earlier.

The tower remains, no ships or pilots are to be seen. There's nothing else of interest beyond the two bookmarked wormholes either. Checking the static exit to low-sec first sends me to a system in Derelik, where the presence of plenty of pilots is probably explained by the pair of cynosural beacons. The lack of obviously hostile activity and five extra signatures in the system looks welcoming to me, and I launch probes to scan.

Three wormholes, two gas sites. That's a decent result. Two of the wormholes are disappointing outbound connections to class 3 w-space, but one is a K162 from class 3 w-space and my best bet for finding activity. Jumping to C3b sees a tower and no ships on d-scan, with nothing out of range, but that may just mean I have more wormholes to scan for amongst the sixteen anomalies and four signatures. Like, for example, that one signature floating far from any planet, almost obviously a wormhole. It is, a K162 from class 2 w-space. That looks good to me.

D-scan is clear from the wormhole in C2a, with plenty of space out there to explore. A blanket scan reveals three anomalies, eight signatures, and no ships, with a cluster of structures around the furthest planet. Warping in that direction finds the expected tower, and sifting through the signatures resolves only one other wormhole, the second static connection leading out to high-sec Kador. That's pretty dull, more so than exploring through outbound wormholes. Back through C3b to low-sec, and out through one of the X702s.

C3c has an Orca industrial command ship and Epithal hauler visible on d-scan, along with a clutch of six towers that will make finding the ships a little awkward. On top of that minor frustration, the discovery scanner is clearly blinking just the two signatures in the whole system, so my presence can be obviously inferred by any active paying attention. Never mind, I'll look for the Epithal anyway, because why not compound the frustration of one oversight made to the w-space environment by trying to hunt a second?

Looking for the towers with d-scan doesn't find the one with the Epithal. Thankfully, I make a sanity check early on and realise that this is because the Epithal is no longer around. Or maybe the hauler's no longer in range. Two planets are too distant to be covered by d-scan, so I pick one and warp to its customs office in case I catch the Epithal at large. I don't, but instead find two more towers holding a couple more ships, a Buzzard covert operations boat and Tayra hauler.

Locating the Tayra finds it empty, but now two Buzzards and a Retriever mining barge are floating alongside it inside one of the towers' force fields. It smells like bait is being readied, what with the scanning ships piloted and the discovery scanner hardly being coy with announcing new signatures. One of the Buzzards warps away and launches probes, suggesting they're not quite sure what's out there, making me more interested in whether the Epithal is still active.

I would say the Epithal is active, given that the ship is back on d-scan, but on d-scan by this distant tower and not where I first saw it. Of course, it could be in the second tower around this planet, but I'm already warping my cloaky Loki strategic cruiser to the local customs office. No time for d-scan. The Epithal is here, currently stationary, but thirty kilometres from me, having warped in from the opposite direction. I've only recently been in the same situation, so I know what to do.

I crawl cloaked to get in to a decent range from which to pounce, and today decide that twenty kilometres is good enough. I decloak, burn towards the Epithal, and activate my sensor booster. Gaining a positive lock I start shooting but have to try my warp scrambler twice, still not quite in range the first time, but only by a kilometre or so. Now I have him—perhaps. I keep burning towards the hauler, overheating my guns just in case I need to, and try to bump him out of alignment. The customs office gets in my way a little, but I give the hauler a nudge anyway. It's not enough.

I turn to try to shunt the Epithal properly, but only succeed in watching the hauler warp clear from my super-advanced death-machine, guns delivering 110%, expensive faction warp scrambler the best ISK can buy. It's disappointing how a basic, tin-can hauler can be easily and cheaply fit to survive and evade a dedicated combat vessel without even needing to compromise its hauling capacity or ability.

There's nothing wrong with giving a hauler a dedicated cargo bay or the concept of warp core stabilisers by themselves. But ignoring that the low fitting slots used to force a choice and compromise on haulers between warp core strength and expanded cargo space apparently was completely ignored in the redesign, which is compounded by the drawbacks inherent in the warp core stabiliser module have no real impact on a hauler's role. Slap them on, carry as much as usual, and suffer no negative effects during your normal routine that might make you compromise your fit. Add some extra tank to that, and you can survive a couple of nudges as you align to warp clear.

Needless to say, my positive attitude has been somewhat deflated. Previously, if a hauler escaped my clutches by using warp core stabilisers I would shrug it off, given that the pilot must obviously be continually frustrating his own efforts for the occasional times he's ambushed. I'd also get a shot at another ship sooner or later, one whose structural integrity was compromised by expanded cargoholds. But now it's just too cheap and easy, there is almost no risk in hauling in a w-space system. There's no point in my staying in this system, and I've lost the desire to see what's through the other X702. I'm just going home.

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Tags: buzzard, epithal, eve online, loki, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, pvp, retriever, scanning, tayra, w-space

Static hauler

Okay, I will scan. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I first resolve a wormhole that is near to this class 5 w-space system's static connection, which leads to our home system, but it's just a K162 from null-sec Feythabolis, judging by the winged sprite nebula colours visible. Two more wormholes crop up as I continue scanning: a second K162 from null-sec, this one at the end of its life; and a K162 from class 4 w-space, which looks a little more interesting.

Exits are generally a good idea to have, though, so I dip out to null-sec a couple of times before exploring deeper w-space. Leaving through the dying wormhole takes me to a system in Great Wildlands, and shows me a corpse floating nearby. Maybe the C5 locals did indeed find a target and corpsified him, explaining their heading off-line soon after returning. Or it could have been earlier, and their recent expedition came up empty handed. Don't ask me, man, I'm just speculating.

Back to w-space, and in to C4a. I still doubt I'll find anything happening, because surely the C5 pilots would have found it before me, but I often just like a look around for myself. My directional scanner is showing me occupation, at least, albeit without any ships to hint at activity. There's also a ghost site in the system, which is awfully tempting to want to exploit, but definitely not with potential pilots around. I will still deny anyone else the opportunity to benefit, though. I am nothing if not an arse.

I warp in to the ghost site, checking the overall integrity of my cloaked ship, wary of the impending explosion. I only need to appear in the site to panic the empire rats in to destroying the site, but I'm going to stick around to make sure they do it. Cloaked, of course, once I've shown myself. That reduces my ship's overall strength, not being able to run my damage control unit, but hopefully that won't be an issue. It isn't, not at this range. The rats warp in, the site explodes, and the rats warp out. My Loki strategic cruiser is unharmed.

Job done, I get back to scouting, locating the local tower and scanning the system for further wormholes. My probes pick up nine signatures, six of them chubsters, whittled down to one wormhole amongst the gas. It's a K162 from class 2 w-space. Neat. Jumping through and updating d-scan sees towers and a ship this time, an Epithal. I'd quite like to find that hauler, in case it's piloted and active, knowing full well that its short-sighted redesign has made the glorified space van almost impossible for my military-spec death machine to catch. You never know, I may get lucky.

The task of locating the ship is eased somewhat by my notes, my last visit to the system being three months ago. That was when I podded an Iteron V hauler on a high-sec wormhole, and scared off its two escort ships. Good times, but I need to concentrate on today, and pointing a narrow-beamed d-scan at noted tower locations finds one holding the Epithal, letting me get my Loki in to warp in the right direction. Or so I think. The hauler isn't actually in the tower. So where is he?

My first, best choice to look is the nearest customs office, which I can do with d-scan. The Epithal does indeed seem to be there, maybe was there when I looked this way from the wormhole. I warp there as fast as I can, hoping to at least see where he goes next, and drop out of warp to see the Epithal just sitting near the customs office. The hauler is stationary, and must have been there a while, as he's twenty kilometres from me. The ship must have warped to the customs office from a different direction.

Can I get close enough to get in to the range of my faction scrambler? Will the three points of warp disruption be enough against this silly ship? I start crawling forwards to find out, paying close attention to the integrity of my cloaking device, in case I get too close to the customs office, and watching for movement from the Epithal. I should be able to see where he goes if he does warp, I suppose, but once I am fifteen kilometres from my target I decide that's close enough.

I decloak, surge forwards using my micro warp drive, and activate my sensor booster. I gain a positive lock with no movement yet from the Epithal, and disrupt his warp drives—or try to—and start shooting. Woah, the ship pretty much implodes. I aim to bump the hauler with my Loki, knock it out of warp-alignment, but my strategic cruiser simply sails through an exploding cloud of debris.

Reacting to the destruction of the Epithal, I manage to grab the ejected pod of the pilot too. Perhaps he got distracted by something, making this rather easier than expected. Whatever, I make a new corpse for my trophy cabinet and blow up the wreck containing a large chunk of collected metals that I have no desire in trying to haul back home. As it turns out, the ship was cheap and pretty much unfitted, which is why it was so squishy, but the pilot's head was worth fifty million ISK. That's something.

Launching probes whilst reloading my guns lets me take a quick poke around the system. Four anomalies, three signatures, and a single ship are revealed, the ship just a Nemesis stealth bomber piloted but inert in the force field of another tower on the edge of the system. The signatures give me gas and the static exit to high-sec, showing the devil man of Heimatar, through which I find nothing of interest. Returning to C2a has the Nemesis disappeared, and I'm sensing that I should return home before the whole universe disappears with it.

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Tags: epithal, eve online, loki, mmorpg, nemesis, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, w-space

To scan or not to scan

Our old sites have died. Viva the new sites! I'm tempted to call the abundance of new sites a result of a signature explosion, but there being only four of them doesn't sound too explosiony. Then again, we only occasionally see even a couple of new signatures appear overnight in the home system, and with four being almost unheard of I'm going to throw my normally stoic nature to the wind and go ahead and exaggerate for effect. Hell, I'll even abbreviate it. There's been a sigplosion!

That's my minor excitement for the evening over. Or is it? The four signatures hold a mere three pockets of gas, the last been an extra wormhole to explore through. K162s are generally more interesting than outbound connections, and this one from class 5 w-space is probably no exception. I jump through to take a look, updating my directional scanner on the origin-side of the wormhole to see a tower, Flycatcher interdictor, and some ECM drones somewhere in space.

I doubt the Flycatcher is going to do much by itself in C5 w-space, and d-scan places it at the easily located tower, making it simple to check for a pilot and to tag the corporation. And I suppose the interdictor is piloted, given that it's no longer at the tower when I get there. The ship remains on d-scan for a minute before disappearing. Where did he go? Through a wormhole, most likely. More importantly, why did he go there?

There's nothing more exciting than warping in to trouble, so I should probably scan for that wormhole to see what's happening. I warp out, launch probes, and start looking for a connection, stopping almost immediately when the Flycatcher is back. That was quick. The interdictor doesn't appear to be on a wormhole either, so I hide my probes again as the ship warps in to the tower, now joined by a Brutix, the battlecruiser slipping under my probes.

The Flycatcher is swapped for a Buzzard covert operations boat. That could be a response to my probes being visible, or, because the cov-ops is named 'Hack' and Brutix is renamed to 'Blap', maybe the pair are getting ready to hit a relic site. Not here, obviously, so I'll need to scan at some point, but when the ships have gone to wherever they are going to go.

There they go. The Buzzard goes first, the Brutix afterwards, and once off d-scan I call in my probes once more. And send them right back out of the system immediately, as the first scan detects the Buzzard's return. The cov-ops comes in to the tower, the Brutix behind it. You know, I don't think they actually did any hacking or blapping, as much as I did any scanning. Now I'm back to sitting and watching. Doing nothing, in other words.

Brutix is swapped for Flycatcher, Buzzard warps out of the tower and disappears, Flycatcher goes off-line. That is probably it for activity in this system. I give it a minute anyway, just in case someone else turns up, perhaps to collect planet goo before getting some rest, but all I see is the Buzzard decloaking some two hundred kilometres from the tower. Dunno what he's doing out there, or why, but he's still around. Maybe I should scan.

Or should I scan? If the ships hit a K162 they either found nothing of interest or a fleet the two of them couldn't handle. I doubt I could do much better in either case. Then again, no fleet appeared under my probes or on d-scan when the local ships returned, so it couldn't have been too threatening. That just leaves the 'found nothing' option, which isn't any better.

But that was nothing then, and even if that then was five minutes ago w-space circumstances can change quickly. There could be something now. Or maybe there was something now, a pilot or two that stopped the pair collecting space relics. That would actually be a good reason to scan, having someone to shadow. Dammit, I don't know what to do!

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Tags: brutix, buzzard, eve online, flycatcher, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space

Scanning gas

The Helios pilot swaps the covert operations boat for a battlecruiser and disappears. The pod of the pilot whose Epithal hauler I just destroyed is plonked in to a Viator transport, but even I can't be that lucky, even after catching an Epithal, and the pilot doesn't try to finish collecting his planet goo. That's fine, as it gives me a little time to bask in the glory of the kill of an over-designed hauler.

Basking complete, and nothing else happening in this class 3 w-space system, I wonder what's happening in the other systems connected from here. Probably not much through our K162; I'm not expecting the T405 outbound link to class 4 w-space to offer anything, what with the discovery scanner active; and the three I have yet to visit are a K162 from low-sec, the static exit to low-sec and, bah, a dying K162 coming in also from low-sec.

Low-sec is probably my best option. How disappointing. Almost as disappointing as jumping out to a faction warfare system in Sinq-Laison with just the one extra signature. That's not enough to make me launch probes. The three extra signatures through a K162 from low-sec would be, but this is through the dying wormhole and I'm not going to risk it collapsing behind me. The healthy K162 from low-sec doesn't have any signatures beyond the wormhole I'm sitting on, which leaves me little option. I'll go through the T405.

Jumping in to C4a and updating my directional scanner sees nothing. That's about right. Two planets sit out of range, in opposite directions, so I launch probes, perform a blanket scan, and warp to one of the distant planets. My probes reveal twelve anomalies, four signatures, and three ships at the planet I'm not currently heading to. I chose poorly. Once I stop moving I turn my Loki strategic cruiser around to investigate these ships, which d-scan shows me are an Anathema cov-ops, Buzzard cov-ops, and Tayra hauler, probably all in the tower also on d-scan.

Naturally, it's the two cov-ops that are piloted, the hauler empty, giving me nothing to shoot at. At least, not until the Buzzard pilot swaps for a Venture mining frigate and warps out of the tower. He can't be using the ship as a shuttle, surely, and there doesn't appear to be any hint that the locals are trying to bait me. I may actually have a hunt on my hands. I don't know why. Checking my logs, I first visited the T405 around forty minutes ago, so the pilots must be aware of it by now. Maybe the pilot of the Venture thinks he can escape in time. Maybe he can.

The Venture has warped right across the system, to be near the other distant planet, and appears to be staying there, according to my combat scanning probes. I go to the planet to get closer and start using d-scan to gauge where the frigate is. I narrow down my search until I have the ship in a five-degree beam, and adjust the range gate to determine that he's around 1·8 AU away. That's pretty close, making it relatively easy to cluster my probes around the estimated position. I'm confident enough that I use an almost-minimal range for my probes. That should pick up the small ship's signature.

Checking d-scan one last time shows that the Venture is still in the same place, my probes nicely surrounding him. I warp back to the K162 from C3a where my glorious leader waits, calling Fin to jump in to the system. The Venture probably could evade my slow-locking Loki, which is why we've got Fin in a Flycatcher interdictor. Dropping a warp bubble over the top of the Venture should surprise it.

The K162 is out of range of both the planet with the tower, and the site of the Venture. This lets us align towards its position in readiness of warp without being directly detected. We're ready. I call my probes in to scan. Perfect. 100% hit on the Venture and the site. I recall my probes, warp us towards the Venture's position, and bookmark both hits for reference. Let's see how much attention the pilot is paying.

I was hoping Fin's interdictor would accelerate faster than this, but we are a fleet and our fastest speed is governed by our slowest ship. That's me. As I needed to scan the Venture's position and warp immediately I don't think I can change this, but hopefully we'll still be fast enough. I update d-scan on my way in, looking for the Venture, but not seeing it. That's odd, because we are definitely in range. But, sure enough, we drop in to a gas site with no one sucking on the gas. The pilot must have been paying plenty of attention to d-scan.

Back to the wormhole with us, not wanting to remain vulnerable in a known site, and I re-launch my probes to take a full look around. Four ships are now in the tower, and warping there sees the empty Tayra now accompanied by a Zealot battlecruiser, Thorax cruiser, and one more ship that warps out before I can identify it. I tell Fin to get clear, but she has other ideas and jumps back to C3a and drops a bubble on the wormhole. That's a cool move. Sadly, it doesn't catch anything.

The combat ships in the tower look more like an idle threat than a response, although, to be fair, there isn't any obvious threat to respond to any more. They could warp to the gas site, but no one's there. Or at the K162. The locals revert to scouting mode, with Zealot swapped to Anathema cov-ops and the Thorax to a pod. That's not so bad, not with an interdictor on our side. Maybe we can actually catch a cov-ops today. Probably not if they don't explore through the K162, though. And why would they? It looks like the locals are sensibly just monitoring their system, and our fun is over. It's time to call it a night.

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Tags: anathema, buzzard, eve online, flycatcher, loki, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, tayra, thorax, venture, viator, w-space, zealot