Shooting Sleepers isn't boring

We've chased away a Loki and got ourselves a quiet w-space constellation again. Now it's time to make some iskies. Our neighbouring class 3 system has plenty of anomalies to plunder but I would prefer to eradicate the last of the Sleepers at home, a couple of anomalies sprouting up since the last intruders came through. Besides which, it puts us a further jump away from the shooed strategic cruiser, making us a little safer. Glorious leader Fin suggests collapsing our static wormhole first, to isolate us better, but I think that's unnecessary.

Actually, it's more that collapsing the wormhole will take time that I don't want to do it. I am feeling a little muddled and perhaps have enough energy to clear the anomalies or collapse the wormhole, but not both. And as collapsing the wormhole is not today an end in itself there seems little point doing so and then going off-line, so I'm happy to jump straight in to our Tengu strategic cruisers and warp towards the first of the two anomalies. Maybe I'm a little too muddled to even engage Sleepers, as I appear in the anomaly by myself, Fin asking which one I went to, and I don't know if I initiated an individual or squad warp command.

Fin catches up with me just in time, warping in to the anomaly as I am aligning out, my shields dropping below 10% as she activates her remote shield transfer module. My Tengu's defences come back up to full strength within a few cycles and now it's smooth sailing. The anomalies are familiar to us, we know the triggers for each wave of Sleepers, we know which Sleepers to shoot first, and we know how to avoid the worst of their EWAR and to mitigate enough of their missile damage to survive. It all gets to be much the same each time, and finds me distracting myself in our public communication channel.

And I am still distracted when the hostile fleet warps in to the anomaly. Only far later than I should have reacted do I try to warp both Fin and I out of the site, immensely pleased to see Fin warp clear, our current direction of travel in relation to the Sleepers putting us in close alignment towards our tower. I, however, am not so lucky, the warp bubble of the Onyx heavy interdictor activating and trapping me like an insect in amber, as the predators start to swarm towards me. I note with some chagrin that our acquaintance in the Loki is with them, having guided the fleet to our system, perhaps to mete out some vengeance for our earlier impertinence.

I am near the edge of the warp bubble, giving me hope that I can still get clear, and I burn as hard as my Sleeper Tengu can manage, but it's not enough. I get clear of the HIC's bubble but now have half-a-dozen other warp disruption effects preventing my engines from engaging, and I'm not going to be out-pacing the fast ships that have closed to within a couple of kilometres. I am a sitting duck, shields dropping fast, armour disintegrating as only a Caldari ship's armour can, and still I don't have the presence of mind to eject and prevent the skill point loss. I remain in the ship as Pengu, my first strategic cruiser and stalwart of Sleeper combat for a long time, explodes around me.

At least Pengu managed to get me out and stay out of the warp bubble. My ejected pod warps cleanly away from the hostile fleet, leaving behind the Onyx, Loki, three Tengus, Drake battlecruiser, and Scimitar logistics ship brought out here to teach us a lesson about how to catch a strategic cruiser. It's a good lesson too. I needed to learn it. The quiet summer period, with almost no one around, has made me complacent in my approach to w-space operations. Fin said we should collapse the wormhole, and we should have. Of course, maybe our big ships would have been intercepted on the wormhole, if the fleet had been fast enough, but at least we'd have been paying attention. I spent most of the Sleeper combat looking elsewhere.

Had I been refreshing my directional scanner more frequently I would have seen the ships warping in to the anomaly, giving us plenty of time to react. Instead I only started fleeing when the ships appeared on my overview, and even then I took a couple of seconds before I realised what was happening. An amusing aspect is that had we gone to the C3 to shoot Sleepers I would have been more paranoid, watching d-scan more intently, concerned that being out of the home system for some reason is inherently less safe. It is less safe, I suppose, but only because of the wormhole jump needed to get home, all the other risks and dangers are present regardless of the w-space system you're in.

Shooting Sleepers isn't boring. The actual combat may be, but there is plenty that needs paying attention to. The number of pilots I chastise for getting involved in an activity when a hostile ship has already been spotted keeps growing, and today I join their ranks. The Loki was a threat, and we should have mitigated that threat. I should have. Fin wanted to. I'm glad Fin got away, this wasn't her mistake. And I'm kind of glad I didn't, in a way. It is an expensive way to learn it, but I need this complacency purged from my system, even at the cost of losing Pengu. For now, both of us board our covert ships and hide, watching remotely as the fleet clears the anomaly, shoots the wrecks to deny us any loot, and leaves the system. Job's a good 'un.

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Tags: drake, eve online, loki, mmorpg, onyx, penny ibramovic, pvp, scimitar, sleepers, tengu, w-space

Strategic cruiser chase

My glorious leader is in our neighbouring system as I arrive. There's nothing to see in w-space at the moment, apparently, causing her to turn around and guide me to our static wormhole so that I can help scan. I pause only to note that some of the sites in the home system are starting to die, thanks to the now-corpse of czMulti, giving us less clutter to wade through to find wormholes, and I stop to scoop the last remnants of the fleet's ill-fated visit to our system, the sole Warrior drone spared by the Sleepers.

I am keen to find an exit today, as my skill training has hit a snag. When I went out to buy a couple of skill books recently I managed to get one for a skill I already know, not the advanced skill it leads to. That was a bit dumb and I should have been more careful, but it is a minor cost and hardly a cause for concern. But I will need to get the correct book at some point and there is no time like the present, so I join Fin to scan for wormholes. I last visited today's neighbouring class 3 w-space system three months ago, where I have nothing to note but the location of a tower and there being a static exit to low-sec empire space. Let's look for that exit.

Fin resolves the wormhole easily enough, using her returning skills in scanning, and whilst she reconnoitres it I let my probes get intimate with a suspicious-looking signature far from a planet on the outskirts of the system. It could be nothing else but a wormhole, which indeed it is, but warping to the scanned position lands me only in empty space, the connection collapsed before I could even catch sight of it. That's okay, as long as this third wormhole signature doesn't suffer the same fate as the second. Warping to the resolved signature indeed finds a wormhole waiting for me, a K162 from class 5 w-space. I'll poke my nose through here to look for threats, and targets, before heading off to get my skill book.

I see little in the C5. There is a tower visible on my directional scanner but no ships, as is often the case, but there is more of the system to uncover. I warp off to locate the tower as Fin heads in the other direction, having completed the scan of the C3 and exited to a low-sec system in the Placid region. Fin also has skill books she'd like to have handy soon and finds some for sale on the market, happy to fly off in that direction, kindly offering to pick up the book I'm after, whilst I search empty space. And it is empty space, the C5 holding nothing of interest, not even any further wormholes. Scanning reveals only 3 signatures, which are gas, rocks, and the static wormhole I already passed through.

I take my scanning self back to the C3 and out to low-sec, where I scan, naturally. Five extra signatures look promising, but only resolve to a magnetometric and ladar site, some dumb drones, more gas, and a second magnetometric site. The w-space constellation ends here. I almost miss taking far too long sketching and rendering my natty constellation drawings. I jump back to the C3 and reconnoitre both it and the C5 a second time, somehow finding no new activity despite at least ten minutes having passed since my last look. And suddenly the C5 is flooded with combat scanning probes. It looks like a new connection has opened in to the system, bringing a scout with it.

I sit on the wormhole out of the C5 to see what ship is scouting, holding long enough for a Loki to pass by and jump the C3. I'd rather not follow him and give my presence away, particularly as his covertly configured strategic cruiser could probably destroy mine. But two of ours would be victorious, and Fin's coming back from empire space with the skill books in her hold. She enters the C3, speeds across it to the wormhole home, and returns to our tower to prepare a Legion strategic cruiser for battle.

It takes a few minutes to ensure the Legion is fit and for us to discuss when and how to strike—and I use the limited time to find the fourth signature in the C5, indeed a new wormhole, a K162 from deadly class 6 w-space—but we're ready. Unfortunately, the Loki looks to have made it through the C3 and in to our home system. That's not too much of a problem in itself, as our home should still be a cul-de-sac for now, but, not previously mentioned because it wasn't important before, the C3 is over 100 AU in radius. I have a long flight to make if we are to catch the Loki exiting our home. I would prefer to catch the Loki running back through the C5, but we don't really have much guarantee that he won't slip out of the exit to low-sec in the C3 and not look back. Fin's ready and sitting on our K162, it looks like we're engaging there.

I jump to the C3 and start warping across the vast system, at about the same time as the Loki gets bored with our sparse C4 and jumps back to the C3 himself. Fin tries to catch him but is evaded by the cloaky Loki, who heads towards the wormhole to the C5. I tell Fin to give chase and hold him if possible, as I wait to land so that I can turn around and make the long warp back the way I came. We were hoping to have eyes on both sides of a wormhole, to prepare the other pilot for contact, letting them decloak and shed the recalibration delay in good time, but we've been hastened in to action. Now it's a chase.

I spin my Tengu around as soon as I land and surge right back towards the C5, another age spent in warp, as Fin approaches the K162 to the C5 a second behind the Loki. She pushes forwards and jumps to follow, a couple of seconds before I do the same. Fin has no reference beyond the K162 and cannot continue the chase, but my opportunistic scanning when the Loki was gone found the wormhole he came from and I push us both in to warp towards it. I am well aware of the numbers and ships that can be fielded by occupants of C6 w-space but am currently focussed on catching the Loki. I land on the wormhole and only think of jumping to try to catch him, trying not to think of what could be possibly waiting for me on the other side.

As it turns out, all I see in the C6 is the Loki entering warp. I am too late to stop him. But at least there is no one else waiting for me or Fin, nor does there seem to be anything close, d-scan being clear. I bookmark the wormhole I'm sitting on and warp around, confirming the system to be unoccupied and inactive, which is probably why there are twenty-two signatures that a blanket scan reveals. I don't care to sift through them for the next wormhole along the Loki's scanned route. He's gone, and as much as my curiosity extends I'm not keen to spend time searching for a route that leads either to waiting pilots or a solo pilot gone off-line. Instead, we have two good anomalies at home that can be plundered, and with the only other pilot so far seen out here chased away it looks like a good time to make some profit. Let's do it!

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Tags: eve online, legion, loki, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, tengu, w-space

Lucky escape

I'm returning home through empty w-space after a scanning expedition. I had to divert through low-sec empire space to continue the constellation, but finding an outbound connection to class 5 w-space only led to unoccupied and empty systems. The occupation I've come across tonight has been in spurs from our neighbouring C3, both through N968 wormholes to more class 3 w-space, but the only activity has been a few ship movements, all detected and none seen. I'm ready to call it a night and go off-line, but I'd be remiss if I didn't at least poke the nose of my covert Tengu strategic cruiser through the two outbound wormholes to look for changes.

Hello, four Drakes and a lot of drones certainly looks like a change in the first of the two systems I check. The battlecruisers would be a change in itself, the presence of drones suggests they are also shooting Sleepers, so although I can't handle four Drakes alone there may be a salvager to come that I could ambush. Unfortunately, the Drakes must be updating d-scan regularly as the drones disappear soon followed by the Drakes leaving the system, shortly after I move away from the wormhole and cloak. Oh well, at least I know they're not local.

I still have a slight advantage here. The number of Sleeper wrecks amount to several anomalies' worth of destruction, which means that a salvager hasn't been clearing up behind the fleet, and they are unlikely to want to leave so much unrealised profit behind. The fleet may even realise that having left the anomalies to despawn makes their locations impossible to find without using combat probes to scan a ship actually in the site, and they may feel safe enough to take the risk of sending in a salvager. My advantage is that I was here earlier and took the trouble of bookmarking all the anomalies, just for this kind of eventuality. All I have to do now is wait for the salvagers to appear.

I keep a close watch on d-scan as I reconnoitre each despawned anomaly and make better bookmarks. D-scan may have alerted the fleet of my presence but it works both ways, and I can see what the fleet is bringing in to counter my Tengu. I hope it's only a flimsy stealth bomber, but all I see to start with are a Punisher frigate and Thrasher destroyer. I find it hard to believe that the pilots are having the destroyer salvage whilst protected by a puny frigate, and thankfully my faith in all pilots not being complete idiots is restored when a Falcon recon ship blips on d-scan before cloaking. Now the first two ships warp in to a despawned anomaly, no doubt relying on the ECM of the Falcon to let them escape should I attack. Despite the protection employed, I won't disappoint them.

Continuing to monitor d-scan for further ships I warp in to the despawned anomaly to get a better look at what's happening, seeing both the Thrasher and Punisher salvaging, albeit rather slowly compared to a Noctis. The dedicated salvager is also rather bulky and can take a relatively long time to flee, when compared to these smaller hulls, which perhaps explains the choice of ships. If I have a shot, it will be brief one way or another, and probably interrupted by the Falcon, but I'm going to give it a go. For my first target I pick the Punisher, for no other reason than I hope to pop it pretty quickly. I warp in, drop my cloak, and target the frigate as soon as my sensor systems finish recalibrating themselves.

The Punisher burns away from me, a bit faster than my Tengu can manage, but it doesn't matter. The Falcon decloaks about thirty kilometres away and locks on to my ship, jamming my targeting systems almost immediately. I'm not surprised, either by the recon ship's appearance or its successful ECM, and I simply turn my Tengu around and warp back to my vantage point a couple of hundred kilometres away, recloaking as soon as I enter warp. Both salvaging boats have fled, the Falcon disappearing again soon after I'm out of sight, and it looks like the ships leave the system. Not much happens for a few minutes, so I take advantage of my disrupting influence to start looting wrecks in a different anomaly to earn some iskies for my efforts, but I only empty three wrecks before a Cormorant destroyer appears on d-scan.

I hide again and try to locate the new destroyer, feeling sure that he is only back to help spring a trap. Sure enough, here is a Hurricane battlecruiser on d-scan. Instead of merely keeping their pilots safe, the fleet wants its loot and the wreck of my Tengu. Then again, the Cormorant is back in the anomaly where I was shooed by the Falcon and the Hurricane is in a different anomaly. Maybe the battlecruiser is just another salvaging ship. And even if he isn't, I must have a good few missile volleys in me before he can come to the aid of the Cormorant. Today's a good day to die, I'm going in again.

I warp to the Cormorant's position, decloak, and gain a positive target lock. The destroyer starts burning away from me much as the Punisher did, but I can just about match his speed, if not agility, which would mean more if I had reacted more quickly. I am concerned about the Hurricane warping in and don't want to be caught blindly chasing the Cormorant to my doom. But my hesitance means the destroyer pulls out of my heavy assault missile range, and only just breaks free of my warp disruptor as I match and perhaps start to exceed its speed. Thankfully, this works to my benefit, as the Falcon reappears flanked by a second recon ship, a Pilgrim.

Of course, the fleet is more prepared now and acting aggressively, not just defensively. But their bait isn't actually bait, it was a salvaging destroyer, and his successful attempt to break free lets me escape too. The Cormorant just out-ranges my warp disruptor and activates his warp drives to flee, which drops his reciprocal target lock on my Tengu. And when his lock drops from my ship I am free to cloak, which I am able to do as I chased the destroyer away from any wrecks that may have interfered. Safely cloaked I head at best speed to the wormhole leading homewards, the Hurricane warping in to join his colleagues as my ship is still making its turn.

The hostile ships can do nothing once I cloak. There is nothing for their sensors to lock on to, and they are too far away to try to interfere physically. I shouldn't have taken the second shot, as I already know I should never go back, and it is only luck that lets me escape. Had the ships appeared a few seconds earlier, or the Cormorant not have entered warp for another couple of seconds, I might have been toast. As it is, I am glad that inexperience was working on both sides of the engagement, mine for attacking a second time and theirs for not being willing to sacrifice a mere destroyer for a strategic cruiser. My beeline to the wormhole sees no ships waiting to intercept me, and it is a simple trip across one more w-space system before I am home, where I get myself safe and go off-line. No kill today, but no stupid death either.

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Tags: cormorant, drake, eve online, falcon, hurricane, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pilgrim, punisher, pvp, scanning, tengu, thrasher, w-space

Musings for a milestone

I'm slowly but steadily reaching a milestone with the chronicling of my adventures in New Eden and beyond. I long ago passed having written one thousand posts, not even noticing as the number of posts published reached four digits. However, I am yet to reach one thousand posts tagged with EVE Online, and even though it is still over a month away I am getting closer to that milestone with almost every day.

I wasn't really going to celebrate having written a thousand posts about EVE Online, merely mention it in passing. A short, self-congrulatory post seems to cheapen what should be a relatively impressive feat for an amateur blogger with a full-time job and in part-time education, as well as having the effect of artificially inflating the post-count, even if only by one.

Not that I think all of my posts have been magnificent epics, in scope and scale. Far from it. And, yes, I realise this minor post will count towards the target. Yet I like to think that, at least once I hit my stride, they have all been relevant, entertaining, or informative, and not simple preening. By the same measure, I like to think that I have had some adventures that have stood out from the others, or I have written some particularly exciting or entertaining pieces that have found their way to these pages over the years.

I also like to think that there are people out there reading my adventures. I certainly get the occasional comment, or an in-game mail, all of them appreciated, some of them even not from my glorious leader or her legion of alts. And so I come to the point. Rather than trawl through my archives alone to find some of what I think are my better tales, to create a retrospective of my various adventures, it would be lovely to learn which stories my readers have found most entertaing, for any reason, and to share them with me and anyone else reading.

It would be interesting to see what makes a post memorable, and to be reminded myself about adventures perhaps lost in my memory. So please comment, either below or in e-mail, with a link to one or more stories you have particularly enjoyed and I will see if I can make a better celebratory post from the results. Maybe you have questions about what happened that I can answer, or I can try to provide a meta-commentary, or maybe you have general questions about this journal you haven't got around to asking. I'm not quite sure what shape it will take yet. But I know I'd like to see this journal from the eyes of my readers.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg

Ships passing in the night

An empty home system makes for a relaxing start to the evening. Scanning finds three new signatures, a magnetometric site I make a note of, a ladar site I activate, and the static wormhole to class 3 w-space. Home system map updated, I jump out to explore. My directional scanner is mostly clear in the C3 from the wormhole, with no towers and no ships, but there are some Sleeper wrecks. Activity, of a sort. I move away from the wormhole and cloak, starting a passive scan. Cor, thirty-five anomalies are in this system, which may make locating the wrecks time-consuming, but I want to see if I can find any active ships first. I warp away from the wormhole so that d-scan can cover the rest of the system.

Dropping out of warp at a distant planet, and still seeing no ships, I launch scanning probes and blanket the system. With so many anomalies present I am supposing there is no occupation, but the system must be enticing to any capsuleers looking to make a profit. Sadly, my probes reveal no ships in the system, and returning to look for the wrecks shows them not to be in an active site. If I am going to find them I'll need to wait for a salvager to turn up, and a Noctis is so efficient that I doubt I can scan its position before it finishes clearing up. There is still a chance the fleet, or single pilot, will return and continue shooting Sleepers, and when a ship blips on to my combat probes I pay close attention.

Swapping from my probes to d-scan I see the newly appeared ship to be a Buzzard covert operations boat, which soon drops from my sensors. An Anathema cov-ops appears too, and when a Drake battlecruiser arrives I start thinking that maybe Sleeper combat will continue, but the Drake disappears just as the cov-ops did. Maybe the ships are merely passing through this C3 to exit to empire space, or they could be returning home after buying a replacement Drake, the cov-ops scouting the route for the new ship. I can't tell without scanning, and as combat is obviously over and I am going nowhere until I find more wormholes I start sifting through the signatures.

I'm assuming that there will be two wormholes within d-scan range of the K162 home, because of the way the cov-ops boats appeared twice in the system. The first time would be when they move away from the entrance wormhole, the second when they move to jump through the exit wormhole. But I only find one wormhole in range, which is the system's static exit to low-sec. I'd be surprised if the battlecruiser and cov-ops were enough to collapse the wormhole, or if they were moving through it so close to the end of its natural lifetime, but as the only other wormholes I find are both N968 outbound connections to class 3 w-space the origin of the ships will remain a mystery for now.

I don't know where the boats came from but I have more systems to explore. One of the C3s has some big ships on d-scan along with a tower, big enough that I am entirely unsurprised to see them all unpiloted inside the tower. And the system is small enough for there to be nowhere to hide, so I don't bother scanning for any new connections and head to the third C3 instead. This time I see a tower with no ships, although that gives the system the same number of pilots present. I have also visited this C3 before, so I know there is only a static exit to null-sec k-space to find, but as there are no further systems to explore just yet I launch probes here and look for additional wormholes.

C3c has nothing of interest to find. How dull. I head back to C3a, where I note the disappearance of the Sleeper wrecks, suggesting that whatever combat happened here happened a long while back, and check the exit to low-sec empire space. I jump through the wormhole to appear in Tash-Murkon, back in a triangular dead end of low-sec systems, where scanning reveals some Sansha rats, a wormhole, a magnetometric site, and a second wormhole. The wormholes are a K162 from class 5 w-space and a K162 from null-sec. The K162 from null-sec is mildly interesting for its lacking a w-space connection, but I'll stick with w-space for exploration and head to the class 5 system. It's only when I drop out of warp with the intention of jumping through that I realise it isn't a K162 but an N432, an outbound connection. That's rather more exciting, giving me the opportunity to catch some capsuleers unawares. In I go!

I could catch capsuleers unawares if there were any in the system. The C5 is empty and inactive, only an off-line tower showing any sign of other pilots having passed through here before. Scanning has me looking through fifteen signatures for the static wormhole, which I finally find to be an H296 to more class 5 w-space. Jumping out further puts me in another unoccupied and empty system, making my grand adventure through dangerous w-space rather bland. I scan again, whittling down the dozen signatures until I resolve the static wormhole, again an H296. This wormhole, though, is at the end of its life, and I am not about to isolate myself from home for no good reason. I hold in this second C5.

That the static wormhole has been opened in C5b means there should be a K162 in here, beyond the one I used, as wormholes can only be opened from the originating side. But if there is one it must surely be as old if not as wobbly as the static connection, and probably not worth finding. I recall my probes and turn around, jumping back through empty system after empty system, only seeing signs of other pilots in low-sec, where the local channel is populated with a couple of other faces. Despite early promise, it looks like tonight will be quiet.

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Tags: anathema, buzzard, drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space

Looking for a ladar site

I'm alone at home today, with one extra signature to keep me company. Or maybe I'm not entirely alone, as the signature turns out to be a K162 from class 3 w-space. I also resolve our static wormhole and bookmark its position, but my first jump will be through the K162 to explore C3b. It's my third visit to the system, according to my notes, the last one being six months earlier. I have the location of a tower in the system but it's not in range of the wormhole for my directional scanner to detect it, which means anyone at the tower cannot detect me using d-scan either. I launch probes and blanket the system before warping off to see if the tower is still there.

My blanket scan shows me four signatures and a lone anomaly as I drop out of warp outside the still-present tower. There are no ships and no pilots at the tower, unsurprisingly, given none showed up on my combat probes, but as I arrange my probes to start resolving the few signatures here a Manticore stealth bomber warps in. I belay my scanning and throw the probes back out of the system, but it may be too late. I wonder if the stealth bomber was monitoring the wormhole when I entered the system, only choosing not to engage because he didn't think he could do much by himself to a strategic cruiser. His swapping the Manticore for an Osprey cruiser and warping out of the tower makes me think not, though. I may have a target.

I try to follow the Osprey as it leaves the tower, pointing my Tengu towards a customs office initially. The tower is right on the edge of quite a large system, making it difficult to gauge a destination, as it only takes tiny differences in a ship's vector to result in a large change some 50 AU away. And it seems I guessed incorrectly, dropping out of warp near the customs tower with the Osprey nowhere to be seen, although the cruiser still appears on d-scan. I sweep my scanner around looking for the ship, finding him to be in apparently empty space, which could mean a gravimetric or ladar site, or maybe a wormhole. Because he's not sat on the wormhole heading homewards I will need to find hime using my probes.

I have already estimated the cruiser's distance from my position near the planet and noted that another planet would put me several AU closer. I warp across to that planet to continue my search, knowing that being closer reduces errors, and start sweeping d-scan around until I get the cruiser in a five-degree beam. I make a new estimate of the range and start moving my probes around where I think the cruiser is doing whatever he's doing. There is still no sign of a jet-can, but the cruiser isn't moving either. I'll find out soon enough, as I'm just about ready for a scan. But a final check of d-scan has the Osprey gone.

This actually sounds like the best time to scan for the ship. It's likely that he's harvesting gas and choosing to warp back to dump each load at the tower, instead of jettisoning it in to a canister for later collection by a hauler. With him out of the site, and out of d-scan range at the tower, I can call in my probes, scan the site, and recall them with no risk of them being seen. I have a window of maybe thirty seconds, if he drops his cargo and turns around immediately, which is enough time for a couple of scans, so I get to it. My probes come in, scan, and get no results. No results? I can understand not finding the ship but to completely miss the site is a big error, and without even a blip on my probes I can hardly correct the error and try again quickly. I throw my probes out of the system and warp off to the tower, scratching my head.

I suppose the cruiser could have sucked up all of the gas in to its hold, particularly if it had simply finished harvesting that it started earlier. But getting back to the tower sees no sign of the Osprey, and warping back to my previous position has it once again out in space, and looking to be in the same spot. Either he's not harvesting gas and is sitting in empty space, or my first attempt was really poor. At least I can try again. I narrow down his position on d-scan, get his range, and arrange my probes. And I think I see what I did wrong. In converting astronomical units to kilometres I confused myself a little, pushing the central 'anchor' probe in the wrong direction in relation to the ship. I should have brought it closer to me by half-an-AU, not further out. That introduced the error which I am now correcting.

It's lucky the Osprey warped out when it did. Lucky for me, that is. He didn't see my probes completely miss his position, giving me this second shot. I think I've got him now and scan again, getting a 100% hit on both the ship and the ladar site. That's better. I recall my probes and wait and watch, wondering if the Osprey has noticed. I'm also working out what to do. I could warp in to the site, getting in to a good observational position from where I can jump quickly, but I have had bad luck with warping through clouds and getting decloaked too early. But the main reason for warping to the site is to get a better fix on the ship, whereas I have the ship's position down to a kilometre or so, thanks to my combat probes. I will throw caution to the wind and warp directly to the Osprey, which is my target after all.

The only risk with warping directly to my target is if he is in the midst of warping out when I land and decloak, but that risk is slight. Besides, d-scan still puts the Osprey in the ladar site and if he was going to warp away because of seeing my probes he would have done it by now. I engage my engines to send me on top of the target and, decloaking through one of the clouds, almost ram the Osprey as I drop out of warp. I lock the cruiser and disrupt its warp engines, my launchers spewing missiles that start chewing through the target's shields. Some drones are launched, which I ignore initially as far from threatening, until I see they are more damned ECM drones. I wait for them to lock on and work their mojo on me, ready for another victim to warp away free.

The ECM drone swarm around me and lock on, but, like most Caldari ships, once the Osprey's shields are gone the ship's armour and hull are ripped apart like a finger going through wet toilet paper. The ECM drones don't spare the ship this time, launched a little too late to make a difference, but they save his pod. Indirectly, at least. The pod is ejected from the exploding ship and I gain a positive lock, my warp disruptor already selected so that it activates on the next locked target. But I forget about the reciprocal locks made on the ECM drones buzzing around me, my automatic acquisition systems already having selected one of them as my next target. Instead of disrupting and shooting the pod my weapons systems activate on a dumb drone, and by the time I cancel the first module cycle the pod has warped away, losing me the kill. I hate ECM drones.

I should have paid more attention to the accidental threat of the drones, but I was more concerned about them breaking my lock on the Osprey than the effect they'd have when going for the pod. Even so, I should develop the situational awareness that lets me recognise these circumstances and adapt to them. Rather than accept the Osprey as escaped and think about what I'll have as a midnight snack I should be considering the effects of the drones and cancelling my ship's target lock on them, just in case the ship explodes and the pod flies in to my sights. I can work on this. For now, I loot and shoot the wreck of the Osprey and scoop what remains of his flight of ECM drones in to my hold, before warping back to the tower to see what happens next.

I get an insult for my efforts! I think it's an insult, anyway. Apart from that, the pilot regains his modesty by boarding a Buzzard covert operations boat. It looks like he will scan for the wormhole that brought me here, although he probably won't find anything new, my having jumped through a K162. I could scan too, but I'm not that interested in finding a static exit to low-sec, and there is still a second class 3 system connected to our home. I leave this pilot alone, jump home, and explore beyond our static wormhole. I find another occupied system and a couple of pilots in Tengu strategic cruisers, but they are floating motionless inside the force field of a tower. I make a note of all the anomalies here, in case the pair of Tengus do anything, but a while of monitoring sees no change. I'm a busy capsuleer, I could be doing something else, so I head home and go off-line.

Posted in Gaming | 3 Comments »
Tags: buzzard, eve online, mmorpg, osprey, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, tengu, w-space

Wild corpse chase

The Apocalypse is gone, the K162 from class 2 w-space is gone. I think I can salvage the wrecks in that cleared anomaly now, the ones the Noctis barely touched before it was blown to smithereens. I jump in my own Noctis and warp out to... empty space, it seems. My first thought is that the fleet was remarkably slow in clearing the Sleepers from the anomaly, the wrecks perishing in the vacuum of space naturally, but I instead realise now what the Apocalypse was doing whilst I was assuming she was waiting patiently on the wormhole to the C3. She was being utterly vindictive and, before warping around to activate all our sites, shooting each one of the wrecks so that I can't claim the loot.

That does it. I'm recovering her corpse so that I can mutilate it in the most horrible ways. That it just happens to be floating in the middle of space, undetectable by scanning probes, over 3 AU from any celesital object, is no bigger obstacle to my determination than a grain of sand is to my feet. My first task is to find out which two points the pilot used to create the safe spot she chose as her space grave. It looks simple enough, one point obviously being the collapsed wormhole, which, not being stupid, I still have a bookmark for, and a planet on the other side of the system. I check the range to the corpse and start bouncing between the two points, creating bookmarks either side of the corpse so that, with a bit of luck and patience, the bookmarks will get asymptotically close.

I falter a little near the start. I need to make sure I remain the known side of the corpse so that I continue to bounce between the correct points. One check shows that my bearing is a little off, and I realise the capsuleer didn't use the planet as the second point but the despawned anomaly. That's okay, I retained that bookmark too. I delete my current points and start the process again. At least she has created only a rudimentary safe spot, which makes her corpse not so much easy to find as not impossible. And initial progress is slow. From the collapsed wormhole the corpse is about 8 AU away, the despwaned anomaly some 36 AU. But I close the distance down soon enough, although ten million kilometres is still much too far to travel under normal means.

Bounce, bounce, bounce. The closer I get, the less time I spend in warp, until I am no longer reaching full speed, making the increments smaller. One million kilometres, thirty thousand kilometres, six thousand kilometres. I can get no closer using my warp engines, the two final points being only two thousand kilometres apart and the corpse no longer floating between them. I switch out of the system map and spin d-scan around, looking for the corpse as I would a Hulk mining in a gravimetric site, hoping for the same result of a fresh corpse in my hold. I get a decent bearing on the corpse and surge my interceptor towards it. I chose the ship for its speed, it being easily the fastest I own, but even so I calculate it will take me a several minutes at full burn to get to the corpse. That's if I can find it flying by instruments alone.

The kilometres count down. I keep track of them on d-scan, making sure I continue to get closer. If the range increases I am heading away from the corpse and need a course correction. I keep d-scan on a narrow angle too, to assure me I'm going in the right general direction. I am a little concerned about more intruders happening upon my mission of folly, as I won't detect scanning probes looking for me when I have my d-scan range set to three thousand kilometres and falling, but brush those concerns aside when I realise that anyone scanning my position will warp in only to find me a hundreds of kilometres away. One-and-a-half thousand kilometres, one thousand kilometres... gone. I need to make a course correction, but keep surging forwards as I desperately make minor corrections to d-scan to try to pick up the corpse again when—there!—I get on-grid with the makeshift grave.

I have found my prize. Getting within overview range of the wreck and corpse, nicely nestled together, lets me warp directly to them, covering the final few hundred kilometres accurately and quickly. I scoop the corpse, dumping it unceremoniously and quite harshly in my hold, and loot and shoot the battleship wreck. I suppose I could have salvaged it, but I rather felt like shooting something after that big waste of time. I said I'd get her, and I got her.

Posted in Gaming | 8 Comments »
Tags: eve online, malediction, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, w-space

Apocalypse now

It's the Apocalypse. At least, that is my assumption, because the wormhole collapses moments after flaring. It looks like the pilots from the class 2 w-space system made the wrong choice of ship. They were forcing the early collapse of a wormhole connecting their system to ours, after I had the temerity to pop and pod a Noctis of theirs, and I sat and watched as the mass of the wormhole continued to be stressed. When the wormhole was critical I was wondering if they'd have the nerve to push another battleship through, and it seems they did. But now I feel like I'm in the wrong ship.

I was watching the collapse of the wormhole in my covert Tengu strategic cruiser, which may be enough to take on a single battleship but I have better ships available. If only I'd thought through the options more clearly, I would be in better position by now. I could simply sit threateningly near the wormhole in my Legion strategic cruiser, my ship killer, and the locals probably wouldn't dare engage as they couldn't guarantee getting enough firepower back through the critically unstable wormhole without isolating anyone. Even better, I could have made a bookmark two hundred kilometres from the wormhole and sat in my Legion there, ready to warp in to engage a stranded ship without them being able to warp to me.

As it is, I feel sluggish and unprepared. Never the less, I spin my Tengu around and rush back to our tower, swapping for the Legion, and now having to make assumptions on sensor readings rather than rely on first-hand knowledge. The pilots pushed another battleship through the wormhole, which they are unlikely to have done without an escape route. I have the position of our static wormhole bookmarked, so on the assumption that the Apocalypse, now confirmed by d-scan, is heading that way to get back to empire space I make that my first destination. The battleship drops off d-scan before I get to the wormhole. My best option must be to jump in to the C3 and intercept it before it warps to the next wormhole, as I have not scanned that far myself, but jumping through the wormhole sees empty space and a clear directional scanner.

I wait on the K162 in the C3. Maybe the Apocalypse is trying to throw me off the scent, holding her session change cloak for as long as possible, hoping I'll see and sense nothing and jump home, at which point she's free to leave. Or maybe she saw my Legion leave the system and is sat on the other side of the wormhole, waiting for me to return before she jumps, giving her at least the period of the session change timer to make a run for it, or more time if I am polarised. I feel I have little option but to wait for polarisation effects not to be a concern before jumping back. After all, if she's not coming this way she's not going anywhere.

My assumptions are all based on the pilot and her corporation being at least somewhat prepared for the collapse going awry. As it turns out, I find on my return to our home system that the battleship has gone nowhere. The fleet did not scan past our system, giving the pilot no way of returning to empire space except by self-destructing. I would rather help her out with that, but I am having trouble finding the Apocalypse. I look in the obvious places but d-scan isn't helping me, until I finally locate the pilot's pod sitting outside our tower. I think it is there forlornly, but maybe the capsuleer is making a mental note of our corporation to transmit to her soon-to-be new clone.

I try to close with the pod, to give it the killing blow and add a new corpse to my collection, but she sees my ponderous Legion coming and warps off. Warps off to apparently empty space too, which is disconcerting for trying to chase her. Seeing that her Apocalypse is now a wreck and no threat I swap the Legion for my Malediction interceptor, which is rather faster and quicker at gaining target locks. It doesn't help me locate the pod any better, though. And now the pilot lets me know what she's been doing, telling me that I need to profit from all the sites in our system soon or they'll despawn.

An empty system sounds good to me! It makes scanning so much simpler, although anomalies are working out to be surprisingly good bait. And she's being rather unsporting by hiding. It would be tricky to reach her position and lock on to and destroy her pod in nineteen seconds even if I had a positive location for her. Without one I have no chance. Soon enough, d-scan no longer shows a pod but a corpse. That corpse should be mine, dammit! Still, I claim the moral victory here, getting a second wreck and podding as a result of my ambush of the Noctis earlier. Not only that, but I caused the death of my prime target. Let this be a lesson to all others. Our system is hostile. Enter it and die.

Posted in Gaming | 6 Comments »
Tags: apocalypse, eve online, legion, malediction, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, tengu, w-space

Keeping home clear

Ok, let's see what's out there today! Intruders, apparently, once again pillaging our sites of specific Sleeper interest. I only notice when my combat scanning probes pick up more ships than I expect, plus some drones, at which point I switch to my directional scanner to see an Apocalypse and two Tengu strategic cruisers trying to steal our loot. I remain undetected for now, thanks to my security precautions, which also let me launch my probes and blanket the system before I even knew there was a threat present. I think this gives me the upper hand.

It is a simple matter to locate the anomaly the hostile fleet is in. Warping in at range to reconnoitre the site sees a familiar name, one I'm sure I've encountered only recently. It turns out she was the pilot who evaded Shev's and my attempts to ambush a battleship or two of hers, although I still manage to pop a colleague in a hauler collecting planet goo, but I only find this out later by scanning through my records. I have no time for such errands now, I have strategic positions to make. But, just to be clear, I'll get you this time, Gadget.

My growing network of safe spots in the home system has one close and below the anomaly, which let me warp in safely to begin with, and now I bounce off it again to reach a more convenient spot in the site. Floating over a hundred and fifty kilometres away from every wreck lets me warp to any of them individually, just right for ambushing a salvager, and much better than warping from outside visual range. And the fleet has finished the site and is warping away at the same time as a Noctis salvager appears on d-scan. No long wait for Penny today.

The Noctis drops out of warp near to the cosmic signature and a bunch of Sleeper wrecks. This gives me a perfect beacon to warp to, and now is the perfect time to strike. The fleet is probably still in warp to their destination and will take time to react and turn around, and the earlier I hit the Noctis the less loot will be accidentally destroyed. I'm already thinking about salvaging this site for myself. I warp in close to the Noctis, decloaking naturally as a couple of wrecks bounce off my hull, not concerned today about the risk of doing so. The salvager has only just arrived, he won't be thinking about escape just yet.

I wait for the recalibration delay to end and gain a positive lock on the Noctis. Missiles rip through his shields and armour, not as quickly as I'd like but satisfying enough. I keep updating d-scan to look for his colleagues' return but see no ships coming my way, and my missiles chew through the hull of the salvager. A blue explosion heralds the release of the pilot's pod, which I manage to lock on to before he can flee. I even remember to re-activate my warp disruptor for the new target in time to snare him, and a few more missiles give me a new corpse to scoop. I loot and shoot the wreck, as there are still no ships appear on d-scan or in the site, which is good because in my haste I forgot to bookmark my scouting position, giving me no quick and easy escape route. I burn away from the wrecks and cloak, hiding once more, but still no one comes.

The Noctis had looted and salvaged nothing, leaving a few wrecks tractored close to his ship but the site otherwise unchanged. And now that I am cloaked and safe I turn back to my combat scanning probes, still monitoring the system, an updated scan showing the hostile fleet to have left the system. I keep updating them and checking d-scan but no ships return for a while. It looks like they've been scared off. I said I'd get my target, but it looks like I'll have to settle for another of her colleagues.

With no one returning and my own probes already launched I think it's safe to scan now. In the pause after the ambush I confirm my knowledge of the pilot and find the recent encounter we had, so I assume I'm looking for a K162 from class 5 w-space. And that looks like it, the K162 quite easy to spot amongst the five signatures in the home system. Or maybe I'm just being a bit smug about scanning now as that's our static connection to class 3 w-space. And that is a new gravimetric site, which I activate. This third signature is the K162, although it's not coming from a C5 but class 2 w-space. I suppose that makes sense, the pilot I saw was moving ships out last time, and it looks like they made a splinter group.

I'll take a look in the C2, it's probably safe. I jump in to see three towers and some ships on d-scan, including the Apocalypse and one of the Tengus. My previous visit has occupation confirmed but no tower locations listed, and as I check this my friend in her Apocalypse warps to the wormhole. I doubt she's looking for me, sensing or suspecting my appearance, and I am clear of the wormhole, making it safe to watch as she jumps to our home system. A Raven battleship warps in behind and follows through the wormhole, which strikes me as odd. Surely they aren't starting again, not after their salvager was podded. Of course they're not, they're pushing battleships through the connection to collapse it, confirmed as the Apocalypse returns a minute later.

The wormhole between our two systems is currently healthy, I have time to look around a bit as the pilots are distracted. I am most keen to find out if the Badger hauler I've seen on d-scan is piloted and foolishly collecting planet goo, as I would find it quite amusing to pop another of their industrialists under their noses. I find two of the towers easily enough, and have a rough direction to the third, but the Badger is unpiloted. I may as well head home, as I have our neighbouring C3 still to explore. I have to navigate past the Raven, still sat on the wormhole, to get home, but I don't mind that. I jump as the Raven jumps, which is just a coincidence, and the wormhole destabilises to its half-mass state.

The Raven doesn't try to chase me, which is understandable. I think he's more scared of me than I am of it. He simply holds his session change cloak until he can return to his C2 home. I sit patiently on the wormhole watching the slow demise of the connection, which isn't terribly interesting by itself but, I have to be honest, I am really hoping it goes awry and strands one of the pilots. And, a little later, when the Raven makes his return jump and the wormhole critically destabilises I am honestly intrigued to see what happens next. Will the pilots be tempted to push another battleship through, potentially losing it, or will they swap to cruiser hulls? I can't wait to find out.

Posted in Gaming | 5 Comments »
Tags: apocalypse, badger, eve online, mmorpg, noctis, penny ibramovic, pvp, raven, tengu, w-space

Wormhole types

After compiling my collection of wormhole colours I realised I was perhaps missing an important component, that of the wormhole's designation. The letter and number combination is used to identify crucial information, mostly used to determine whether a wormhole is safe to pass through or help in the calculations for collapsing a wormhole. I didn't include the designation in my original posting partly because it was outside the remit of what I was trying to achieve, which was to identify w-space class by colour, and partly because it would have significantly delayed the post, as I only needed to find one wormhole to get a pair of images but would have needed to find two distinct wormholes to get the respective designations.

Not only would gathering the designations have taken a lot more time and scanning but the information is freely available on various other sites, easily found by a simple search on any of the designations. I saw no reason to duplicate the effort or information, particularly as the other sites have a complete list of wormhole designations, accompanied by durations and mass limits of wormholes. Kudos to the compilers of these lists for taking the time to research and format the information and, most importantly, knowing where to look. Never the less, I started creating my own table of designations because I believe the lists are missing one important detail.

Each list I have found detailing wormhole types has information about the designation, single-jump mass limit, overall mass limit, wormhole duration, and w-space class or k-space security level of the destination system. What the lists don't provide is the origin system of the wormhole. It may not seem initially important to give that information, as you must after all be in the origin system in order to see the specific designation and not the K162 signifying an exit, but this quote from the EVE University site has spurred me to compile my local data in to this post:

The k162 will give more approximate information about the entrance system by using 'show info', but it's impossible to determine original mass/time limits.

I do not mean to pick on EVE University, as all lists imply the same, but know your wormhole colours and understand that the designation determines the origin system as well as the destination system, and you can infer the mass and time limits of the wormhole. It is only 'impossible to determine' the limits if there is no way to link the origin system to the designation, and it just so happens that the currently available lists do not provide this information.

[Edit: I note that the EVE University guide to wormholes actually has a misleading error in the table for wormhole names by destination. It has rows for 'intra-k-space wormholes', based on security status, but even though the wormholes connect to k-space most of those listed actually originate in w-space. This is only really a labelling problem, but it highlights the misinformation I aim to correct with my own table.]

Experience and my own colour guide can help you determine the class of w-space is on the other side of the wormhole, and now, with the following table, you will also be able to determine the mass and time limits of the wormhole, all without having to jump through. At least, when cross-referencing the wormhole type determined here with a site detailing information on that type, which I have linked to but am not duplicating. I am not intending this to be the definitive guide, as others have far more information, simply showing that there is an important extra column needed in the other guides so that it will no longer be considered impossible to tell what wormhole you are looking at when confronted with a K162.

The rows indicate the originating system, the columns the destination. Determining the wormhole type from looking at a K162 can feel a little backwards using the table, but it should be clear with a little thought. For example, if you are in a class 4 system and drop out of warp to see a K162 that, from its colour, you recognise comes from a class 3 system, you can determine from looking at which wormhole connects from a C3 to a C4 that the wormhole is of type T405. This now gives you the information required to find the wormhole's mass and time limits as normal.

I have read comments that question the utility of my matrix of wormhole colours, and no doubt the same comments will feel applicable to the above table. The comments generally ask why there is a need to rely on memorising colours when normally used sources of information will tell you where the wormhole leads, and jumping through a K162 will tell you exactly what system lies on the other side. It's a good question, particularly when understood that many pilots refer to more complete databases when exploring, letting them know the system class, the effects of any phenomenon there, how many jumps have been recorded, along with Sleeper kills and capsuleer ship kills.

Personally, I prefer to explore using my wits and information I can gather myself. It is perhaps a naive way to live in w-space but I feel it connects me more to the events around me than getting a website to tell me everything. But even if that weren't the case, there is a lot to be said for gathering as much information as possible without putting yourself in harm's way, and there is no simpler way to avoid a threat than by not jumping through every wormhole you find. If you can drop out of warp far from a wormhole and determine all of its statistics without having to jump then surely that is safer than having to jump through just to get its designation. You may need to jump through anyway, in order to scout thoroughly, but getting as much information as possible before the jump should be a goal of any competent scout.

The table is, naturally, incomplete and will likely remain that way for a while to come. There is also some duplication, notably when known space connects with w-space, but not ambiguously so, as each type has the same characteristics regardless of where it appears. There may be the possibility of two different types leading from the same class to a different class of w-space, but I have yet to encounter this situation. There may even be an error or two. As with the matrix of wormhole colours I will update the above table as and when I uncover new information along my travels.

Posted in Gaming | 26 Comments »
Tags: eve online, mmorpg, w-space