Tackling a tourist

Finally, we and passing pillagers have succeeded in killing all the sites in the home system. A few anomalies remain but these are easily resolved and ignored in the first stage of scanning, leaving me with just one signature to find and resolve. This is so simple, I am jumping in to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system within a few scans and with the knowledge that no other wormholes connect in to our system. And, hullo, there are a bevy of ships to be seen in this C3. The Tempest battleship, Noctis salvager, Iteron hauler, Imicus frigate, Hulk exhumer, and Drake battlecruiser are a mixed bunch, and without any wrecks also visible on my directional scanner they are all probably sitting empty in a tower.

The tower is easy to find. This is my fourth visit to the C3, the last being but a month ago, and my notes list the tower's location. Sure enough, all the ships there are unpiloted, but the Drake is out and about and now I can see a couple of wrecks appearing somewhere in the system. A passive scan reveals three anomalies but the Drake isn't coincident with any of them, so maybe he's clearing a ladar or gravimetric site. I'll have to scan his position, at least at some point, I just need to decide whether to wait for the pilot to return to get a salvager or mining ship to be a softer target, or to go for the Drake directly. And as the wrecks start disappearing again, indicating the Drake is salvaging as it goes and is unlikely to be in a mining site, it looks like I'm scanning for the Drake's position.

I warp out of d-scan range and launch probes. I already got an approximate bearing and distance on the Drake from my position floating outside the tower, so I return there to continue refining my search, already knowing roughly which direction to look. I narrow down d-scan's beam and range until I am fairly confident I can position my probes, and arrange them in to a tight scanning pattern. I'm still not sure when to scan, as although the pilot's not going to return for a Noctis I don't know if he'll want to grab a hacking or analysing boat to recover the specialised Sleeper loot.

I don't think it really matters when I scan the Drake's position. I probably can't win an engagement by myself and no one else is around to help, and certainly not with Sleepers shooting me, and on top of that this C3 holds a pulsar phenomenon that will greatly enhance the Drake's passive shield tank. Probably the best I can do is spook him with my probes, sending him scuttling away without realising the full amount of profit available. So I send my probes in, hitting scan and waiting for the results. It's a good hit on the Drake, 100% on the first attempt, even if I only get a partial return on the magnetometric site itself. Sometimes it's better to scan a site when a ship's in it, particularly a site with a weak signature like this one.

I recall my probes and watch d-scan for the next few seconds, seeing how the pilot reacts. It seems like he saw my probes, bugging out of the site shortly after my scan. That's my excitement for the evening over. Or maybe not, as the Drake doesn't return to the tower. He may not be local, and as he warps back to the site it's possible he needed a break to recharge his shields against the Sleeper onslaught. As the Drake is back in the anomaly I warp in at range to take a look, bouncing out once to get a better spot to sit in watch. I interrogate the ship for information on the pilot, curious to see that she is in a state-owned corporation, so almost certainly isn't local to this C3. I'm getting antsy here.

The pilot isn't local, is probably a tourist from empire space, and perhaps is having trouble maintaining good shield integrity against the Sleepers. And if the Drake is configured to hack and analyse, possibly even scan and hack, then its shield tank will not be optimal. If it needs to warp away to recharge occasionally I may have a good chance of breaking its tank, even in a pulsar system, and as it's only recently returned from a short break to be shot by Sleepers again maybe I should strike soon. I can't bear the suspense any more! With one more Sleeper ship left in the wave I warp close to the Drake from my monitoring position and decloak, ready to fight.

I lock the Drake, disrupt its warp engines, and start firing my missile launchers. I am confident that the Drake probably doesn't have a point fitted itself, letting me engage on my own terms for now, which spurred-on my decision to attack. The Drake continues shooting the Sleeper, the Sleeper continues shooting the Drake, and the battlecruiser's shields, already at 50%, keep falling steadily. It looks like I'll have myself a decent kill, until the Drake launches its ECM drones. The drones start orbiting my ship and I keep shooting, but one of the drones works its mojo and my targeting systems drop the lock.

I'm not finished yet. I cycle my micro warp drive and burn towards the Drake, bumping it out of alignment, before moving away to do the same manoeuvre again. My web module also slowed the Drake down enough for it to have to accelerate hard to get up to warp speed, giving me more time to play with. And as one ECM drone's effect wears off the Drake is still here, giving me another chance to lock on and prevent its escape, but a second successful jam from the drones sees the Drake disappear. I have little else to do but warp back to my vantage point far from the action, still within the site, and watch the Sleeper cruiser pop the ECM drones and the Drake disappear from d-scan. It was a good effort, but no kill for me tonight.

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Tags: drake, eve online, hulk, imicus, iteron, mmorpg, noctis, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, tempest, w-space

Sticking it to a Skiff

Alone again. Maybe I should be hibernating. Or socialising! Yes, probably hibernating. I'm already kinda sleepy, but until I drop off I may as well scan my way out of the home w-space system. Hello there! Seven sites, all rocks and gas, have finally dispersed in to the ether, leaving only one bookmarked site for me to overlook. Even I can count as high as one reliably, and that final site should also be gone by tomorrow. Scanning the home system is now quick and efficient, the two signatures being the expected site and our static wormhole. It's simple to see we don't have errant visitors.

Jumping in to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system looks rather more dreary, with only a tower appearing on my directional scanner. Well, I suppose it looks just as dreary as the home system, but there's an asymmetrical expectation at work here. I'd rather have an empty home system and a bustling hive of activity through the static wormhole than vice versa. Launching probes and blanketing the C3 doesn't make the system look much better, with only four signatures, and although the nine anomalies look full of profit none of it can be realised by me without help.

Checking my notes puts me in this system around fifteen months ago, which is a long time in space years, and not even the husk of a tower is where I have one listed. Finding the new position of this system's tower is trivial and I sit there as I begin to think about scanning. I only think about scanning because an Anathema covert operations boat warps in to the force field as I start shuffling my still-distant probes around. Oh ho ho, and immediately the pilot swaps to a Skiff exhumer, baby sister to the more popular Hulk. Aww, it's so cute, I feel like I should insert a coin somewhere to start it rocking backwards and forwards to keep the pilot amused whilst the grownups take care of the real work.

A couple of the signatures are out of d-scan range of the tower, and I quickly start resolving them before the pilot in the Skiff heads out to mine some rocks. Naturally, the distant signatures are the system's static wormhole and a magnetometric site, neither suitable for the exhumer. The final signature is too close to the tower for me to resolve it covertly, so I leave it for now, even without the Skiff showing any more signs of life. I make a quick flyby of the static wormhole, finding it to lead out to low-sec empire space and being super-stable, probably because the local pilot is reluctant to open it when he plans to mine. Assuming he plans to mine, that is, which he'd better after jumping in to the Skiff, the little tease.

There is still no movement at the tower. The Skiff pilot is perhaps getting himself a stiff drink before he goes out shooting rocks, so I risk resolving the final signature in the system. After all, if it's not a gravimetric site I can be confident the Skiff won't be moving anywhere soon and I can be more productive elsewhere. But it is a gravimetric site, and I have it resolved and probes recalled before the Skiff moves. Of course, he may have accidentally slumped on to his d-scan button and seen my probes in the minute or so they were in range, making up his mind just to get drunker for the rest of the evening. The only way I'll know is by his actions.

Come on, Mr Skiff, do something! No, going off-line wasn't quite what I was hoping for, particularly as a newly arrived colleague had just warped to our static wormhole in an interceptor, ready to jump in and catch the pod flung from a burning Skiff. Oh well, the C3 is empty, except for Sleepers. We reconfigure our fleet to comprise a couple of Tengu strategic cruisers and return to the C3 to engage the Sleepers, starting with an easy anomaly to make sure all systems are working nominally. The site is cleared easily enough with no problems, and with a bookmark to the magnetometric site I think it's time to maximise our potential profit. I send our small squad in that direction.

The magnetometric site is cleared straightforwardly too, little confusion about which Sleepers trigger reinforcements and which cause additional drains on our systems above simple damage. Now we split our attention between salvaging and analysing, me collecting the Sleeper artefacts as my colleague, also with excellent skills, borrows a Noctis salvager to sweep up the wrecks, first in the despawned anomaly and then the magnetometric site. We aren't disturbed, and bring back over a hundred-and-fifty Miskies in Sleeper loot and salvage, as well as a bunch of artefacts that I still can't appraise. One last look for the return of the Skiff finds nothing and no one, so we head home for the night, happy instead of shooting his ship to steal a nice chunk of loot from his system. Take that, you stupid Skiff.

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Tags: anathema, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, skiff, sleepers, tengu, w-space

Only high-sec rats feel my wrath

If I don't find a better w-space constellation today I may just sulk. It all feels rather too quiet of late, but not too quiet enough for innocent haulers to frolic gaily around customs offices. Then again, the home system's getting quieter by the day, it seems, as all our radar sites have evaporated. I suspect they were activated in spite by some recent visitors. Or, seeing as how there aren't any other pilots around, the Sleepers got bored and wandered off. At least it gives me less to sift through when scanning, letting me find our static wormhole easily enough. I jump in to the neighbouring class 3 system to see on my directional scanner an Orca industrial command ship, Chimera carrier, and a tower, as well as plenty of canisters. Those are too many cans for simple storage requirements, I imagine there's a bubble trap around the tower.

Yep, that's a bubble trap accounting for the cans, which I avoid without having to try. And neither of the two ships is piloted. Scanning finds few signatures here, which isn't surprising for a C3 holding a carrier, and only one anomaly is present, probably only having spawned recently. But two of the signatures jump out at me as being wormholes, the static exit to low-sec empire space unfortunately accompanied by a rather dull K162 from null-sec k-space. A third wormhole is more interesting, being a K162 from a C2, and as the last signature is a magnetometric site—good for profit, if colleagues turn up—I jump through to the C2 to explore more w-space.

One very spiky tower is visible on d-scan, but no ships. My notes put me in this system six months ago, where I listed three towers in total. Warping around finds all three to be in the same places, two of the towers empty of ships and one holding three unpiloted Orcas and a piloted Jaguar assault ship. There doesn't seem to be much happening here, even when a Raven battleship warps in to the tower with the Jaguar. The Raven doesn't look like he's been out shooting other ships, with no wrecks visible on d-scan, and has probably just woken up. I'm going to press on and scan, if I can get far enough away from these pilots to launch probes covertly.

I warp to a far corner of the system and launch my scanning probes, blanketing the system to find only three signatures to resolve. There are no other surprises to see, just the ships I know about, although by the time I warp back to the tower the Raven has gone back to sleep. The Jaguar and its pilot remains, so I restrict my scanning to the two signatures out of d-scan range. One is the wormhole to the C3, which I entered the system through, the other a radar site. If I want to resolve the second static wormhole I'll need to risk the Jaguar seeing me. And as the pilot's probably not paying attention I think it's a risk I can easily take.

This C2's second static connection leads out to high-sec, which is almost interesting. I jump out to appear in the Duripant system—for when you need a long-lasting pant—in the Essence region. That doesn't mean much to me so I launch probes and scan, finding no extra signatures and only two anomalies. A Tristran frigate is shooting Serpentis rats in one of the anomalies, and I'm shooting Serpentis rats in the other. Times are slow when I can be found popping rats in high-sec. I clear the anomaly without a scratch to my shields and jump back to the C2 to see no change, continuing to the C3 where, oh, a Mammoth hauler is on d-scan! To the tower, quick quick!

There he is, a piloted Mammoth sitting inside the tower's shields. I hope I'm not late to the planet goo collection party but I may be, judging by the complete lack of movement from the hauler. I sit patiently just in case, and a new contact appears in a Cheetah covert operations boat. With any luck the Cheetah's just finished scanning the C3 and will drop some bookmarks for the Mammoth to use to fly to low-sec. I'd settle for that. Or maybe the Cheetah too has only just woken up, as he doesn't do anything either. A third contact appears, this pilot in an Anathema cov-ops, and as I shift my hopes towards this pilot to have been scanning he burns out of the tower's shields and launches scanning probes. It looks like these pilots' evening has only just begun.

I sit and wait patiently, knowing that there is little to find in the system, but still there is no other movement. Then again, what's this? The Mammoth pilot has swapped ships, hopping across to the Orca. Maybe the Anathema pilot has found the exit to low-sec and they don't like it, wanting to collapse the connection for better prospects. And maybe some anonymous benefactor will donate a Revelation to Penny's New Toys fund, both situations being just as likely to occur. Besides, even if the Orca is used to collapse the wormhole there are two pilots around to provide protection, and I know that even delayed protection is enough to get an Orca home safely.

I'd definitely still take a shot at the Orca if the opportunity presented itself. I don't think there are any surprise counter-ambushes waiting for me here, as the pilots have acted naturally and have little reason to think I've been watching them. And the opportunity may present itself, as the Cheetah poos out a canister that the Orca chomps, but even if he ingested a pile of steaming bookmarks he's still not moving. It looks like the Anathema has gone exploring the constellation, although there really isn't that much to find, leaving the other pilots here waiting for a report. I could wait for longer but I'd rather be entertained elsewhere, and simply head home for the night. Stupid pilots doing nothing stupid. At least I found other capsuleers tonight, giving me faith for future nights.

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Tags: anathema, cheetah, chimera, eve online, jaguar, mammoth, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, raven, scanning, tristan, w-space

Second system just like the first

Alone in an empty system, it's time to look for wormholes. It's getting busy in the home system, a whopping eleven sites scattered around, cluttering up my display with bookmark pins. And another site has spawned! I resolve the new ladar site and set the gas to self-destruct, which I've done with all the rest, although the clouds are tenaciously clinging together in the vacuum so far. I only find the single wormhole again today, giving us no new visitors or current threats from behind, so I jump in to explore our neighrbouring class 3 w-space system.

Two towers and no ships appear on my directional scanner. There is also nowhere to hide in this small system, and the presence of a mere three moons makes finding the two towers pretty easy. I launch probes and start a blanket scan as I warp off to the first of the towers, finding two crappy anomalies and eight other signatures present in the system. That's not much good for profit, and it doesn't offer much hope in the way of further exploration either.

I've found both towers, and warping between them blips a warp bubble on my overview. I think a bubble has to be on-grid for it to drag ships out of warp, although I'm not quite sure why the locals would want to stop anyone warping between the two towers anyway. For a start, unless there is someone monitoring the bubble a little delay will only be a frustration more than a danger. On reflection, considering that a few of the defences on the second tower are incapacitated, and as both towers are owned by the same corporation, the bubble may have been anchored there by a hostile force looking to cause trouble. Then again, I've also seen corporations inconvenience themselves with warp bubbles of their own. I ignore the ineffective warp bubble and concentrate as much attention as I can muster on scanning.

Two wormholes in this C3 are interesting, but that's all that is. The rest of the signatures are rocks and gas. And as the only anomalies left here are two low-quality ones I am guessing that along with an exit to empire space I'll find a K162 from w-space reaching the end of its natural lifetime, raiders having swept through here some hours before to leave the system bereft of profit. I'm only half-right, though, as the static exit to low-sec is accompanied by a K162 also from low-sec, and one that still has some life left. That's even more dreary than an EOL K162 from w-space.

It's time to collapse our static wormhole, and I am happy to have glorious leader Fin here to help. We can kill our wormhole and find riches to be plundered through a new connection! We use the collective mass of our Orca industrial command ship and Widow black ops ship to collapse the wormhole in short order, a couple of return trips each being all that it takes, and I effectively start the evening again. The new static wormhole is resolved and we jump through to explore the connecting class 3 system.

Two towers and no ships appear on my directional scanner. There is also nowhere to hide in this small system, and the presence of a mere three moons makes finding the two towers pretty easy. I launch probes and start a blanket scan as I warp off to look for the first of the towers, finding two crappy anomalies and five eight other signatures present in the system. That's not much good for profit, and it doesn't offer much hope in the way of further exploration either.

Two wormholes in this C3 are interesting, but that's all that is. The rest of the signatures are rocks and gas. And as the only anomalies left here are two low-quality ones I am guessing that along with an exit to empire space I'll find a K162 from w-space reaching the end of its natural lifetime, raiders having swept through here some hours before to leave the system bereft of profit. I'm right only half-right, though, as the static exit to high low-sec is accompanied by a K162 from class 4 w-space that is EOL also from low-sec, and one that still has some life left. That's not worth exploring through even more dreary than an EOL K162 from w-space.

If w-space can simply give me essentially the same system to explore twice I don't see why I can't recycle too. Fin points out that we still have time to collapse the wormhole a second time, and whilst that's true I'm not sure how much time we'll have after that to make use of what we find. I doubt we'll get lucky and pop a careless planet goo collector, and if all we can manage is to clear two crappy anomalies then maybe we should just shoot the Sleepers we have in our current neighbouring system. But, ultimately, empty space has worn me down tonight. I'm going to hit the sack and hope for a better day tomorrow.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space, widow

Swapping Sansha for Sleepers

I'm back! And still all by myself! I know what I have to do: grab a stealth bomber and roam the empty w-space constellation. I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself, though, as the constellation was only empty earlier. It could be bustling with haulers collecting planet goo, or salvagers scooping wrecks in anomalies, or even a magical ponies with wings soaring across space. I'll take my Manticore out for a look anyway.

The empty neighbouring class 3 system is empty, unsurprisingly, and jumping through the outbound connection to the occupied class 4 system sees no ships on my directional scanner, much like earlier. Continuing across the C4 and in to the empty C1 finds that empty too, and I begin to sense a theme here. I jump back to the neighbouring C3 and try my last current option, the other outbound wormhole here connecting to more class 3 w-space. Again, there are no ships, despite there being three on-line towers.

I've not got much else to do, except scan further. I left C3b unexplored earlier because of it probably only leading out to k-space, and I still have the unvisited and suspected exit to null-sec to investigate in C3a. I take the Manticore home, swap to my covert Tengu strategic cruiser, and head out to scan some more space. I first confirm the unvisited wormhole in C3a indeed leads to null-sec k-space, jumping out to the Paragon Soul region, where there are plenty of Sansha sites but no other signatures to resolve, sending me back to scan C3b instead.

I didn't even launch probes in this C3 earlier, turning tail as soon as d-scan denied the presence of any ships. Now a blanket scan reveals eight signatures to sift through, the eighteen anomalies nice to see but currently worthless to me. A chubby signature turning out to be a wormhole is a good start, making me think I've found a K162 leading to activity, but it turns out to be the system's static exit to low-sec empire space. And it's the only wormhole in this system too. What a disappointment.

I jump to low-sec from C3b to find myself in the Placid region, where it's just me and one other pilot. No, it's just me. I apparently have a repellent effect at the moment. I scan the low-sec system to reveal a promising five signatures, but amongst the drones, gas, and radar site is a mere one wormhole, and one reaching the end of its natural lifetime too. It is a K162 from class 1 w-space, though, which is tempting enough for me to jump in whilst the wormhole lives, straight in to a bubble.

The warp bubble covering the wormhole in the C1 is a minor surprise, until I realise that it doesn't really cover the wormhole much at all. Moving out of the bubble to warp clear is straightforward, obviously made easier by there being no one monitoring the bubbled connection, and I start looking for the tower and two terribly exciting ships visible on d-scan. Locating the planet the tower's around shows that the bubble is more effective than I first thought, as it will easily drag anyone travelling from the tower out of warp far from the wormhole, making me wonder who anchored the bubble here. I wouldn't think the occupants would want to make life difficult for themselves, but I've seen some startling inappropriate use of warp bubbles before.

The tower is new here. I was in this system around fifteen months ago when it was unoccupied, although I still managed to pop and pod a couple of pilots, which I apparently did in two different ships. Good job, Penny. Warping to the newly installed tower finds two Drake battlecruisers piloted inside the tower's shields, but they are doing nothing. A passive scan of the system perhaps shows why, as there are no anomalies present. I'm not going to scan here, not when there's no guarantee of any K162s and my convenient route home may collapse at any moment. I jump back out to low-sec and start heading home. I'm going to grab a Drake of my own, head out to that null-sec system bristling with Sansha, and shoot some rats.

Before I can put my dreary plan in to action glorious leader Fin turns up to rescue the evening! That's excellent timing. I update Fin about the state of our constellation—dull—and that we have a neighbouring system with some profit waiting to be realised. We both board our Sleeper Tengus, jump to the C3, and shoot Sleepers instead of Sansha. This is a much more productive use of my time. We clear the three favoured anomalies that are in this C3 and return in Noctis salvagers to recover our loot. We bring back to our tower just under two hundred million ISK in Sleeper loot and salvage, which is a pretty good haul. Another few weeks of evenings like this and I can buy myself a new Golem.

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

Scanning through sleepy w-space

There must be someone out there! After all, they keep passing through our system and stealing our Sleeper loot. I'm going to see if I can find them today, and then shoot them. First I'd better resolve the four unexpected signatures in the home system, which just turn out to be gas, gas, gas, and rocks. Stupid rocks. All new sites activated, I warp to the static wormhole and jump to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system, where I find nothing. This C3 was unoccupied nine months ago and it's unoccupied now, maybe because it has a static exit to null-sec k-space. My prospects don't look good, but I'll scan anyway.

Eleven anomalies and nineteen signatures sounds about right for an unoccupied w-space system that gets the occasional visitor, although the first wormhole I find feels a bit chubby to exit to null-sec. The second wormhole resolved is suitably weak, and I provisionally label my bookmark to suggest it is the static connection, before going on to find a third wormhole. Maybe I'll have something to do after all. Checking the two errant connections gives me outbound connections to class 3 and class 4 w-space, which is pretty nifty. There may be no guarantee of life on the other side, which a K162 generally offers, but more space to explore is more space to explore.

I choose to visit the second class 3 system first, expecting it only to lead to k-space and being quicker to explore to exhaustion. Indeed, jumping in has me turning around immediately, seeing only three towers on my directional scanner and no sign of any ships. Rather than scan for the a wormhole leading out of w-space I jump back to the first C3 and warp across the system to investigate the C4, but that too is rather bland. Again, a tower and no ships are on d-scan, but at least there will be a wormhole leading to more w-space, so I launch probes and begin scanning.

I have fifteen signatures to sort through, but spotting the wormhole is easy. There it lurks on the outskirts of the system, hoping no one will notice it. But I'm wise to you, Mr Wormhole, I know that you are often repelled by celestial bodies. I warp across to discover a static connection to class 1 w-space, which is soft and squidgy and really quite appealing, just as my combat scanning probes detect a contact in this C4! I rush back to the tower in time to see the pilot of a Tengu strategic cruiser update his skill queue and go back to sleep, which is terribly exciting. I'll explore the C1 now, I think.

The class 1 system looks dull when viewed by d-scan from the K162. No ships, no tower, no nothing. And opening the system map shows there is also nowhere to hide, everything in the system within d-scan range of me. I scan the system, finding only rocks and gas, and the static wormhole leading out to null-sec. I press on, exiting to the Pure Blind region whre there are no more wormholes to discover, so I shoot a few Gurista rats for a bit of pocket ISK and a negligible increase in security status until my shield buffer starts complaining. It's time to take a break. I head home, checking the systems as I go, but all remains deathly silent. I'll grab a sammich and hope that more is happening later.

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

Not much to find

I have no big plan for today. I'll look next door, see if there's anyone to shoot, and then go to bed. Or maybe I won't even get that far, as my directional scanner shows me two sets of scanning probes visible in our home system. It looks like we have company, and I'd rather not alert them to my presence just yet.

It's not long before the probes disappear—we don't have many sites here, after all—and the scouts probably move on, but they don't come back quickly and I'm not seeing combat ships move in to steal our Sleeper loot from anomalies, and without a salvager to sneakily hit I don't feel like chasing behind other ships. I'll snuggle up in my cloaked ship and let space swallow me today.

So I did nothing yesterday, let's see if today can be more productive. I get as far as launching scanning probes, at least, and I see more than the four expected signatures in our home system. I'll have to find out what's appeared. Naturally, it's just rocks and gas, which I activate immediately upon resolution, and just after I got rid of the last lot too. I also resolve our static wormhole, which I visit and, uh, okay, maybe I won't jump through it.

Our static connection is reaching the end of its natural lifetime, so we've had visitors pass through here in the past twelve-to-sixteen hours. That explains the missing anomalies. Maybe I won't be that productive tonight either, as I may have four hours to wait until this wormhole collapses and is replaced by a new connection. I wander off to keep myself entertained.

I'm suspecting the pillagers passed through here almost exactly sixteen hours ago. I'm barely through drumming along to Nirvana's Lithium when the wormhole has disappeared from my overview. That's nice, but I'm drumming a little longer, I need my practice. At least when I have had my fill I'll have some exploration to do.

Putting down my drum sticks has me soon finding the new static connection to class 3 w-space, and I jump through to see lots of ships but no wrecks littering the system. I suspect the ships are all at the local tower, also present on d-scan, and indeed they are. Sadly, there is also nowhere to hide in this compact system, so there is nothing new to find with a blanket scan and I settle for scanning normally straight away.

Twelve anomalies tease me, but without assistance I am left sorting through the thirteen signatures here. My first hit is a wormhole and I leave it unvisited for now, keeping it closed in case it is the only one and Fin turns up for some Sleeper combat. And it is the sole connection in the C3, but unfortunately there is no sign of Fin so far. I warp to the wormhole to give me something to do, exiting to low-sec empire space to continue scanning. All I find are a couple of Sansha sites out here in the Devoid region, no other wormholes, and although I could pop a few Sansha for fun I don't like the look of the locals.

I return to the C3 but there is still no sign of activity. It's another quiet evening for me, simple exploration ending as abruptly as possible and little option to go farther afield. I'll just head home and get some rest.

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

Supplies, skills, and a stealth bomber

My cloaking device is playing up again. I move away from the K162 in our neighbouring class 3 w-space system and supposedly am cloaked, but I can still see my ship. And, for giggles, the universe has me run over the now-invisible cosmic signature for the wormhole and remove all doubt that anyone paying attention can see me. Luckily, the only ship in the system is a Badger hauler floating unpiloted inside the local tower's shields, so my bumbling around for a minute or so has gone unwitnessed. My incompetence is safe, I can keep it to myself so that no one will ever find out.

Of course, the only ship here being an empty ship makes hunting rather more awkward, and as I am still all alone I am not inclined to shoot Sleepers. It takes a bit too long by myself to be worthwhile. The Badger isn't the only presence in this C3, though, as there is a flight or two of ECM drones somewhere around. I resolve the position of the drones, warp in, and approach carefully in case it's a trap, but end up simply scooping them in to my cargo hold for later use. They could come in handy. I keep my scanning probes whizzing around the system to resolve two wormholes too.

The first connection I visit is a K162 from class 6 w-space, which if it weren't deadly enough already the wormhole is also reaching the end of its natural lifetime and critically unstable. The only way it would look less attractive to jump through would be if the wormhole had teeth. I warp to the second wormhole I resolve to see a much more benign sight, a static exit to high-sec empire space, and one that is super-stable. Maybe the C6 dwellers killed the previous one, and their own static connection, running logistics through a convenient link to high-sec.

The new exit to high-sec dumps me out to Lonetrek, cosy Caldari space, and although the system is a dead end I am a mere four hops from Jita, the most bustling system in the galaxy. I scan the system, almost as a reflex, and find no signatures. But maybe that's okay, it gives me impetus to visit the trade hub to buy some fuel, keeping our tower nicely stocked. And the C3, even though occupied by pilots red to our corporation, is inactive enough to encourage me to eschew my usual choice of Crane to pilot its larger partner, the Bustard transport ship.

Fitted for cargo, and stuffed with giant secure containers, the Bustard can carry around five times as much as the Crane. I can make a single, relatively safe trip to bring back far more fuel than even several trips in the Crane, even if it means rejigging my calculations a little. And so I do, taking the Bustard to Jita, cramming every type of required fuel in to the cans, and bringing it all back safely. I even make a short diversion to sell some of Sleeper loot, so that our wallet doesn't run out of iskies. The dead end system leading to the C3 is populated but no one seems to care to scan for the wormhole, and the C3 itself remains quiet. Quiet enough to make a second run to Jita.

I don't go out for more fuel, but rather to get a replacement ship. We've had a few accidents recently which has left us with a single Manticore in our hangar, reducing our options for combined bombing runs somewhat. I'm heading out to get a new stealth bomber that Fin can use. Great idea, Penny! Buying and fitting a ship identical to one in service should be straightforward, but the shortsighted changes to the fittings service throws a spanner in the works. I can no longer save my fittings with abandon every time I make a tweak, now that we are limited to only fifty fittings each, so have to be picky as to what to keep and what to assume or remember. My saved Manticore fitting looks okay, but it's not quite right. I have to look up what the current fitting is when I get to Jita, so I don't create a ship sub-optimal for our use.

I'm not quite sure what restricting the number of saved fittings achieves. The amount of data required per fitting can't be big, and there are far more types of ships than saved slots, and each ship can have more than one type of fitting, particularly strategic cruisers. Having to save the file externally and pick-and-choose what I have loaded at any one time is remarkably fiddly and prone to error. I am discouraged from saving tweaks to my fittings as I make them because of this, which ends up meaning I don't save the final result, out of habit rather than forgetfulness. This is why my preferred Manticore fit is not currently saved for easy reference.

Niggles aside, I buy and fit a Manticore for Fin and bring it home safely. I need to board my own ship to see what specific propulsion module I have fitted so that I don't run out of CPU or powergrid, swap back to Fin's new ship to make the change, then save the fitting so that it is current, remembering to delete the old fitting so that I don't run out of slots, before stowing the Manticore for later use. Fiddly.

To make up for mucking around with fittings I made another diversion when in high-sec and bought a couple of new skill books, so that I can eventually pilot a new ship and forget its fittings too. I inject the skills and train them to a minimal level before reverting to the long pre-requisite skill. I still have maybe six weeks before I am adequately prepared just to plant my pod in the ship, but I have my eyes on the goal. And after a night of simple but successful logistics I settle down at the tower and get some rest.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Supplies, skills, and a stealth bomber
Tags: badger, bustard, crane, eve online, manticore, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space

Patience for podding

Yesterday was a bust. Exploring the constellation found a K162 connection in the neighbouring class 3 w-space system, red-occupied too, and although there was a pilot wandering around in an Anathema covert operations boat there was not much for me to do. And even less, once my cloaking device went a bit wonky. It didn't turn on when moving away from a wormhole, except that it did and trying to turn it on a second time actually turned it off instead. Activating it after the five-second cool-down delay seemed to work, the module pulsing green to show it functioning, yet my Tengu was still visible. Unsure whether I was cloaked or not I had to de-activate the device and re-activate it again, making me obvious for far longer than necessary to anyone watching. I'm sure the Anathema pilot was confused. Rather than try to shadow him further I decided any element of surprise was ruined and went home for an early night.

Today is a new day, but it doesn't look much more promising. The static wormhole appears to be in the same spot as yesterday's, which I realise only moments after deleting all of my old bookmarks, so I hope that it connects to a different C3. And it does, the wormhole healthy and stable, and I see on my directional scanner an Orca industrial command ship and a couple of Drake battlecruisers. There are no wrecks, though, and locating the tower unsurprisingly finds all the ships unpiloted. I launch probes and scan, pausing briefly as a Helios cov-ops appears on my probes, but as he's not at the tower and perhaps not local I continue scanning, looking for the additional wormhole that he's probably come through. Besides, the seventeen signatures here will keep us both busy for a while.

I resolve a chubby wormhole in the approximate direction I saw the Helios, but it only turns out to be a K162 from null-sec k-space and not terribly exciting. Continued scanning reveals three more wormholes, the second a rather standard exit to low-sec space, the third another boring K162 from null-sec, and all sense of excitement is lost when the fourth turns out to be the dreariest of the lot, a K162 from low-sec that is reaching the end of its natural lifetime and has been bubbled. I notice from a lack of probes in this C3 that the Helios has already got bored and wandered off, and although I may not have any more w-space connections in here I'm going to keep on looking, jumping through the static exit to low-sec and scanning.

I'm far from everything in the Heimatar region, except more low-sec systems, but there are three signatures to offer the potential for more adventure. The first signature is a good result, being a wor— nope, it's just an Angel base with the 'unknown' signature type. Stupid empire space. The other signature, besides the K162 to the C3, is also 'unknown' and I purposely don't get my hopes up so that I can trick fate and resolve an actual, bona fide wormhole. Take that, fate! It's an outbound connection too, taking me in to class 1 w-space. Very nice. There are even a couple of combat scanning probes on scan when jumping in to the system, but no ships or towers. I warp out to the one planet out of d-scan range to find a whole bunch of ships floating inside a tower's shields, a Harbinger battlecruiser and Cormorant destroyer the only two piloted.

A passive scan of the C1 finds five anomalies, but the piloted ships aren't looking particularly active. And I see that the corporation has a mere seven pilots recruited, despite twice as many ships littering their tower. I suppose that's for intimidation purposes, to make them look bigger and scarier than they really are. And a third pilot warps back to the tower in his Anathema, showing me almost half of the corporation at once before promptly disappearing. I should have been paying more attention, because I didn't see if he logged off or not. I check the wormhole I came through and see nothing, and heading back to the tower has the Harbinger and Cormorant pilots gone now too. I suppose my presence killed the system again. At least I can scan unnoticed now.

Only three signatures are in the C1, the wormhole I came through, the static exit that leads to more low-sec, and a magnetometric site. I jump out to low-sec to the Khanid region, even further from everything than Heimatar was and the two exits fifty-five jumps apart, and another three signatures to check. Again I get lucky, one of the signatures being an outbound connection to w-space, this one to a class 3 system. I continue tonight's odyssey and jump in to see core probes and nothing else on d-scan. A blanket scan of the system shows three ships somewhere, which I find to be a Probe frigate, Broadsword heavy interdictor, and Drake all sitting inside a tower's shields. The Probe and Broadsword are piloted but inactive, although I am keen to see if the Probe will investigate the new wormhole I opened. The frigate cannot warp cloaked, so if he investigates the wormhole I may be able to catch him. Or maybe the Cheetah cov-ops freshly warped in to the tower was the scanning boat and I'm wasting my time here.

I was scanning the inner system as I waited fruitlessly for the Probe to move, and have resolved a wormhole. As the Cheetah looks to deny me any action I warp to the wormhole to look for better opportunity, and may have found it in the form of a K162 from class 2 w-space. I leave this C3 behind me for now. Jumping in to the C2 has two towers but no ships on d-scan, a blanket scan revealing one ship that apparently has now warped in to the tower. The towers are easy to find, both sitting around a planet with two moons, and I warp to the one with the Drake to see it soon joined by two more Drakes. They don't look like they are about to do anything, maybe just having woken up and needing some corn flakes to get started, which gives me a chance to check the location of a third tower.

I was last in this class 2 w-space system three months ago and these two towers I've found are new. The one I have listed in my notes should be on the outskirts of the system, but warping out there finds it successfully sieged and off-line. Hullo, d-scan also shows me some Sleeper wrecks in this part of the system, so the Drakes have been active. I warp back to their tower to keep an eye on them, waiting for a salvager to come out. The youngest of the three pilots starts moving his Drake to a hangar and I urge him voicelessly to grab a Noctis and salvage the wrecks, but maybe he just reloads some ammunition in to his battlecruiser's launchers. A previously unseen Purifier stealth bomber appearing at the tower is interesting, even before the pilot swaps in to an Abaddon battleship. It seems likely that the locals had the bomber sitting on the connection to the C3, looking for jumps, and so they aren't about to send a vulnerable salvager out to his doom when my Tengu is lurking here. That's a shame.

The Abaddon warps out of the tower in the direction of the completed anomaly, which I managed to scan before it despawned. I follow behind, wondering if he will act as guard to a salvager, but all I see is the battleship wander aimlessly in the space amongst the wrecks. Or maybe it isn't aimless wandering, as the Abaddon finally reaches one of the wrecks and loots it, changing his vector to head for the next nearest wreck. That seems like a truly inefficient method to recover Sleeper loot. With four pilots and combat ships available it would make more sense to refit a Drake with salvager modules and keep the other ships around for protection. They should be able to fend off a single Tengu, and if they are worried about more ships appearing they should have kept their scout sitting on the wormhole.

I wonder if maybe it's worth attacking the Abaddon, and Mick is available for support, although he's several unscanned jumps away. I haven't been back to make a copy of the bookmarks yet. Still, our previous attack on an Abaddon took a while to complete and although the battleship only scratched us the threat of three Drakes coming in as well is enough to deter too brazen an assault. Besides, even if the Abaddon is looting the Sleeper wrecks that still leaves empty wrecks to be salvaged. I warp back to the tower, where my still-active combat probes are showing two new contacts, to keep an eye on movements there and possible salvaging boats. The two new contacts become three, and I see an Iteron hauler, Jaguar assault ship, and Merlin frigate. The Jaguar is a concern for me, probably able to keep my ship tackled in time for reinforcements to come and pop me, but the Iteron is interesting and I keep my eye on it.

Sure enough, the Iteron is the ship to watch, as it warps out to a customs tower, the one around the nearest planet even. That makes it easy to spot, and I follow behind. I am dumbstruck that the locals are circumspect enough not to have a Noctis salvage, even under guard, yet don't warn a new pilot about collecting planet goo in an even more vulnerable hauler. In fact, I wonder if this is a trap, the names of the pilots of the Jaguar and Iteron being close enough that I'm expecting the assault ship to be flying escort. But I drop out of warp at the customs tower to see the Iteron alone. Alone with me. I shed my cloak and get my systems hot, waiting for the interminable recalibration time to end before pummelling the Iteron with missiles, shredding the industrial ship in short order. With some sense of urgency I try to lock the pod, both happy and wary when I manage to catch it and stop it from warping clear.

I may have another corpse to scoop soon, but the pod will get a reciprocal lock on my Tengu which will prevent me from cloaking. If an assault ship is on its way and I can't align out quickly enough I could be toast, just for a simple pod kill. I pound the pod with more missiles, watching its tiny structure mitigate most of the explosion damage, but eventually spitting a fresh corpsicle in to space. I start to approach the corpse and wreck, to scoop, loot, and shoot, having kept some distance so far in case I needed to cloak quickly, but change my mind as a Drake warps in. I cloak and pulse my micro warp drive, sending me far enough away from the focus of destruction to make me almost impossible to find, and I lurk to see what happens next.

The other two Drakes arrive at the scene of my piracy, as does the Abaddon. It's good to show solidarity in the face of an attack, chaps, but it's all a bit too late. All they are stopping me from doing is scooping another trophy and getting myself a bunch of robotics that the Iteron was collecting. The combat ships loiter for a bit, realise that there is nothing for them to do, and warp off one-by-one. I suppose they are either apologising to the Iteron pilot's new clone about not telling him the system was unsafe, or telling him a firm 'we told you so'. Either way, I'll leave them to it. I jumped out of w-space twice and scanned my way back in twice to find some activity, and then waited patiently for someone to make a mistake, so I am quite pleased with this kill. It also encourages me to keep looking, which is a timely reminder in these quiet periods. For now, I head back through empty or inactive systems, crossing low-sec twice, to get home safely for the night.

Posted in Gaming | 2 Comments »
Tags: abaddon, anathema, broadsword, cheetah, cormorant, drake, eve online, harbinger, helios, iteron, jaguar, merlin, mmorpg, noctis, orca, penny ibramovic, probe, purifier, pvp, scanning, tengu, w-space

Me and my Widow

I'm hoping that scanning early will catch some capsuleers off-guard. There must be pilots out there somewhere, as a whole bunch of the anomalies in our home w-space system have gone missing, I just need to find out where they are all hiding. The pilots are not in our neighbouring class 3 system, though, unless the Orca industrial command ship and Pheonix dreadnought visible on my directional scanner are uncharacteristically the only ships active here. And indeed they are not, both floating empty in the local tower, which remains bristling with defences right where I found it five months ago.

The second tower I have listed in this system is out of range of d-scan. Warping across shows it has been stripped bare, only the tower itself remaining anchored in space, and that the system is inactive. I launch probes and scan, finding the static exit to low-sec empire space in no time, thanks to it being the only other signature here beyond the K162 home. The four anomalies also present could be pillaged for Sleeper loot, but I am still by myself and don't fancy the amount of time it takes a single Tengu strategic cruiser to clear the sites. Jumping out to low-sec puts me in the Kor-Azor region, not too close to high-sec, and there are no other wormholes to find here. I'll have to wait for colleagues to arrive to do something, either shoot Sleepers or collapse the wormhole. I head home and kick back, grabbing a sammich for now.

I'm back, and still by myself. A cursory scan of the home system finds no new signatures and the neighbouring C3 remains just as quiet. I could take another break but it's likely that the lull in activity will see no one turn up. I think I'll collapse the wormhole by myself, using just my Widow. The black ops ship will take more trips than using an Orca, the polarisation time for each return journey adding up, but two weeks of training otherwise useless mining skills is still discouraging me from piloting an industrial command ship, despite all the other useless skills I've spent more time training. Besides, the Widow is more massive than a standard battleship and makes collapsing our static wormhole more attractive anyway. I think I trained useless skills for at least a month to pilot it too. It was worth it.

I start the jumps through our wormhole, keeping a watchful eye on d-scan on both sides as I do, and keeping myself entertained in other ways as I wait for each polarisation effect to dissipate. Out, in, out, in, out, in, uh, out? I can't remember how many jumps I've made. I scribbled down some notes about estimated mass on each pair of jumps and thought I'd crossed off each of the jumps as I made them, but I've lost count. I was also cross-referencing with the elapsed time, but distracting myself has hindered my normally reliable ability to count up to five. Was that the fifth return jump, or just the fourth? The wormhole's still here, but wobbly, and I don't know if it is a bit light and I have my last trip to make, or a bit chubby and I should push a wormhole-collapsing HIC through now. Oh, I'm sure I'll be fine. Out I go.

Okay, that was my sixth trip, the one I shouldn't have made in the Widow, as highlighted by the wormhole collapsing behind me. Sitting in w-space in my half-billion ISK ship not fitted with scanning probes makes me glad I scanned the exit to this system earlier. I'm even more glad to see that wormhole still present, letting me exit to k-space, even if it's low-sec. I make my way to high-sec and think about waking up Constance when glorious leader Fin arrives. My saviour! Fin is happy to scan the new static wormhole and look for a way to get me home, as I stand uncomfortably in a station feeling I should be doing something more than marvelling at my legs.

Fin resolves the new wormhole and jumps in to the connecting C3, happy to learn that the Onyx heavy interdictor, Nighthawk command ship, Tengu, and two Orcas are all empty in a tower. But scanning the system finds a whopping fourty-one signatures to sift through, which makes finding the exit a rather daunting task. Thankfully it only takes resolving thirteen signatures for Fin to find the system's static exit to low-sec, jumping out to put her thirty jumps away from me. But it's not an onerous journey, the whole trip possible through high-sec until reaching the final, dead-end low-sec system. That's a pretty good result, really.

I'm happy Fin didn't have to scan many more signatures before finding the wormhole, particularly as she made a mistake. There aren't fourty-one signatures in the C3, there are forty-one signatures within 8 AU of the star in the C3. More lay hidden beyond the reaches of her default scanning range. Still, that's not really a mistake, not like failing to keep track of such high numbers like a whole five jumps, and getting isolated from the home system. As a result, tonight now involves me making thirty jumps to get home instead of shooting Sleepers to make a profit. I suppose I shouldn't feel guilty as such. After all, we've all been isolated through errors or oversights in the past, and scanning a colleague home is part of w-space life. The time spent warping across systems just feels like wasted opportunity.

The journey through high-sec is unsurprisingly uneventful, warping point-to-point between stargates and activating each in turn. The only possibly troublesome jump is the last, in to low-sec, but the system remains clear of pilots and Fin is keeping an eye on the stargate. She gets Mick home, who also turned up and was only a convenient four hops from returning to w-space, and collects me from my jaunt around empire space in my Widow. I get my expensive ship and stupid self back home, low-sec and the C3 staying empty, but only in time to park and get some rest. There may have been no shooting involved, or much sign of other pilots, but it feels like I've had another adventure.

Posted in Gaming | 9 Comments »
Tags: eve online, low-sec, mmorpg, nighthawk, onyx, orca, penny ibramovic, phoenix, scanning, tengu, w-space, widow