Nattering with the neighbours

We may have had visitors. Fin is here and notes that the home system was active earlier, which means we are scanning for more than simply our static wormhole. Thankfully, the wormhole is in a nicely conspicuous location today, near the outer planet where there aren't many other signatures, and is easy to find. But we keep looking, resolving the second wormhole we're expecting to find, a K162. This wormhole connects in from a class 2 w-space system, and its opening indicates activity. I head in to the C2, whilst Fin goes the other direction and through our static connection to the C3.

Jumping through the K162 brings me to a C2 I was last in seven months ago. I noted a lack of occupancy back then, and only an off-line tower in the system shows no overall change, but there is activity. A scattering of scanning probes are visible on my directional scanner. I hope to take advantage of the scout's focus on scanning by launching my own probes undetected, but that's not a guarantee. Even so, a quick blanket scan of the system reveals seventeen anomalies and a bunch of signatures. I would say this C2 is not attended to much, but I imagine our system looks a lot worse at the moment.

As I scan I loiter on the wormhole connecting the C2 to our home system, and an occasional check of d-scan eventually shows the other scout's probes converging on its position. I call Fin back and she swaps to her Crow interceptor, placing it on the K162 in our system, looking to snare the scout as he continues onwards. And he does, a Cheetah covert operations boat soon jumping in to our system. I get ready in case he comes back, decloaking and getting my weapons systems hot, but he evades Fin and warps away. Cov-ops boats can be hard to catch. But I've been caught, at least on d-scan.

A pilot asks on the local channel how long I've been in the pulsar system. One of my first lessons when entering w-space is not to talk on the local channel, and I keep quiet for now. It may seem anti-social, but the general rule is that everyone is out to get you, and even a friendly hello could be the precursor to a heavy assault. I know that from experience. But that doesn't mean there are no genuinely friendly or helpful pilots around, and since we made an attempt to pop the Cheetah I don't think there's much risk in revealing our approach to unprovoked conflict.

The other pilot in the system seems interested in general w-space operations, and not in a way that could undermine our security. It seems she is looking for her own w-space system to occupy, and is currently based in this C2 looking for a decent C4, much like our pulsar system, making use of the static connection to find a new one each day. There are a few questions about how we ousted the previous occupants—about which I exaggerate our involvement somewhat—and what it's like having a static connection to a C3. I chat along, remaining a little wary, until this pilot says goodbye. Her Hurricane battlecruiser appears briefly on d-scan, but I think it's merely her cloak disengaging as she logs off, and I stop trying to scan for her ship.

Fin's Cheetah target talks too, perhaps a colleague of the Hurricane's in the C2, but doesn't go much beyond telling her it was a 'nice effort' at snaring him. We could try again, but we can't be sure if the Cheetah will return, or when, and we could be more productive in other ways. I return home, not expecting to find any more w-space connected to the C2, and through our static connection to the C3. I resolve the same four anomalies that Fin found, and two signatures. Both wormholes, of course. I ignore our K162 wormhole and scan for the C3's static connection, discovering it to be yet another exit to low-sec empire space.

The exit leads to a system one hop from high-sec, and thirteen from seemingly everywhere else. Checking my atlas shows that I am actually sitting in one of a ring of six low-sec systems, and make the short trip around the block for some more red dots of exploration. Back where I started I jump to return to the C3, finding it empty and quiet, and head home, where Fin reports the probes have gone. There's not much more to do, and it's too late to start shooting Sleepers, so we both get an early night.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Nattering with the neighbours
Tags: cheetah, crow, eve online, hurricane, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning

You're not the boss of me

Some hunter I am, I can't even find the way out of our system. Three new anomalies are easy enough to note and ignore, but the additional bookmarks are making it really difficult to spot the odd-signature-out that should be our static wormhole. I confuse another gravimetric site or ten for the wormhole before actually resolving it, letting me jump to what will no doubt be a better-kept system. What I notice first upon entering our neighbouring class 3 w-space system are the five scanning probes I can see using my directional scanner. There's a scout active here.

I launch my own probes, hoping the scout isn't watching d-san himself whilst engrossed with scanning, and move them out of d-scan range of the system. A blanket scan reveals two anomalies, a few signatures, and a ship. Warping around finds the ship, as well as a tower, both of them unsurprisingly in the same place. The Heron frigate is warping back to the tower as I arrive, although I don't know from where. Maybe the pilot has just resolved a wormhole and paid it a visit, maybe even our K162. I don't think I'll scan the system myself just yet, not until I know what the Heron will do.

I head home and swap to my Manticore stealth bomber, giving me more firepower should the Heron become vulnerable. And jumping back in to the C3 gives me opportunity to check the proximity of the scanner's probes, reducing the range of d-scan to determine that the probes are nowhere near our K162 at the moment. Thinking that the Heron won't be coming here soon, I warp back to the tower to monitor the pilot directly, hoping that he has yet to discover our K162 and that maybe I can catch him there.

I watch the pilot for a while, but he seems distracted, or slow. The probes are near the tower, and thus not near our K162, and I didn't think there were that many signatures in the system. Then again, he is in a Heron and not a Buzzard covert operations boat, which will slow him down. I wait a little longer, but then wonder if I should perhaps be more bold in my attempt to catch him. As the Heron cannot warp cloaked his arrival at the K162 will be obvious. Rather than try to follow him, I could simply plant an interceptor near the wormhole and zoom out to greet him, all launchers firing, should he blindly warp to examine the wormhole.

The interceptor idea sounds like fun, so I head home to swap ships again. I realise that I won't know at what range the frigate will warp in to the wormhole—on top of it, 100 km from it, or somewhere in-between—but the interceptor should be fast enough to catch it wherever it lands. Even so, I can optimise my chances by positioning my ship about thirty kilometres from the wormhole and aligned to the tower. I can zip forwards to catch the frigate landing short, or turn around and possibly follow it in to our home system without much delay.

It looks like my wait won't be too long, as the scanning probes start to converge on the K162's position. I start refreshing d-scan frequently so that I get an early warning of the Heron's arrival, but the probes move away again. And again the probes converge on my location, which at least shows the scanner is still active. And they disappear. Maybe the Heron is heading my way now. But all I see is a Rifter frigate, and not at the wormhole, only on d-scan. 'Piss off', the pilot says in the local channel, clearly unimpressed by my ambush attempt.

Hmm, were they core probes or combat probes? I thought core, and unable to detect ships, which is why I considered the interceptor the best option, but maybe they were combat probes and they didn't converge on the wormhole but on me. I need to pay more attention. But even though the pilot has spotted me he is not making a particularly convincing argument for leaving him alone. There may be no point in staying here in my interceptor, so I jump home, but I'm coming back in my Manticore. Of course, he will probably be watching my movements indirectly, and there are a couple of (definitely) combat probes on d-scan when I re-enter the C3, but if I am lucky with my timing maybe he won't see me.

'Again', the pilot says, noting my appearance and implying his stance on my pissing off hasn't changed. I'm still not persuaded to leave him alone. In fact, his attitude is encouraging me to lurk longer, if only to stop him from being free to continue about his business. Mind you, I'm unlikely to actually catch him, and I could be relaxing in a bubble bath right now. I could leave him and please myself, instead of annoying others. But as I turn my Manticore around he swaps in to a Drake battlecruiser, and a Nemesis stealth bomber warps in to the tower.

Judging from the Nemesis's vector he's just logged on and not been in the system the whole time. And, to confirm this, the Drake drops a jet-can which the Nemesis gobbles up, which I take to be the current bookmarks just scanned. The Nemesis warps off, apparently in the direction of our K162. Still, I was heading for a soak. Before I go, though, I may as well see how experienced the pilots are. I warp to our K162, dropping short, and crawl cloaked towards the wormhole. If the Nemesis has indeed warped here, and not changed his position, I should be able to decloak him and engage. But I get to within ten kilometres of the wormhole and no ships appear.

Maybe the Nemesis has jumped through to our home system and is waiting to launch a bomb at me. Again, inexperience may cause the pilot to launch a bomb whilst my session change cloak holds, so let's see what happens when I jump. Nothing. No sign of a bomb launch, and no sign of the Nemesis even when I move away from the wormhole and cloak. It's actually a little disappointing, given the attitude of the other pilot, as I was expecting more conflict. Never mind, I'll leave them alone for now and take a calming break.

I return later to hear that Fin took care of the Nemesis, popping the bomber after the Drake cleared a site of Sleepers in the C3. 'They were cocky and mouthy', she says of the pilots, which sounds about right. It's only a shame that I wasn't there to help, as it seems that the Drake would have been a valid target too.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on You're not the boss of me
Tags: drake, eve online, heron, magnate, malediction, manticore, mmorpg, nemesis, penny ibramovic, rifter, scanning, w-space

Sacrificial Badger

It's time to hunt. I resolve our static wormhole only to find it to be curiously a gravimetric mining site. A second new signature turns out to be a ladar gas harvesting site, further hampering my exploration beyond our home w-space system. But the third new signature is our static wormhole, letting me plunge cockpit-first in to our neighbouring class 3 system. Nothing shows up on my directional scanner in the C3, so I launch probes, move them out of d-scan range of the system, and warp away to explore.

A blanket scan of the system reveals three anomalies and seven signatures, but no ships. My exploration locates a tower, where obviously no one is home, as even a pod would show up on the blanket scan I performed with combat probes. The tower is surrounded by bubbles, though, making an approach from any direction awkward. I move above the bubbles until I am both sufficiently clear of them and close enough to the tower to observe directly any ships, should they appear, and I create a bookmark. I should now be able to warp to and from this point without being dragged in to the bubbles.

Scanning resolves a couple of wormholes, which could be interesting. But the first is the system's static exit to low-sec empire space, and is reaching the end of its natural lifetime, and the second is an inbound connection from null-sec. That only leaves gravimetric sites to find, which is no fun. As glorious leader Fin has arrived we decide between us to collapse our static wormhole to see what else we may be able to find. Our operation goes according to plan, my Widow black ops ship critically destabilising the wormhole on its way home, after two-and-a-half round trips from Fin's Orca industrial command ship, giving me time to make a quick scan of our home system before Fin returns, collapsing the wormhole as she does.

A subsequent scan, with all previous signatures ignored, lets me find and resolve the new static wormhole quickly and easily amongst the mess of our home system. Jumping out, I see that I have been in the class 3 system now connected to us before, almost a year ago. It was unoccupied back then, but much can change in a year and the system now has capsuleers claiming it as a home. None of them are around, though, despite there being seven ships in the system, as all of the ships are unpiloted in the local tower. But what I also notice is that the tower is woefully undefended. One medium gun battery and one torpedo battery are all that deters an assault, the tower not even protected by shield hardeners.

The tower is medium-sized, which I'm guessing is bigger than the small tower Fin and I put in to reinforced mode a little while back, but without hardeners it may be a softer target. Before we get carried away and bring in the big guns we ought to check the security of this system. Nine signatures amongst the fifteen anomalies won't take long to check, and it's good that we do as there is more than only the one wormhole in the system. Fin and I both scan a different one, and they merit visiting to see where they lead or come from. The wormhole I visit turns out to be an outbound connection to another C3 system, and as that probably makes Fin's choice the static connection—and leading out to null-sec in this case—she chooses to keep it closed.

In a way it's a shame the second wormhole is an outbound connection, as it was posing no threat before I warped to it and we could have spent another evening shooting a tower. But it also offers more opportunity to find moving targets, so maybe it's not all bad. It depends what, or who, is on the other side, so we jump through to find out. C3b, as I will refer to it, is quite a big system. Sitting at the wormhole I am only within d-scan range of one planet, which lets me launch probes discreetly again. A blanket scan shows five anomalies, eight signatures, and a bunch of ships. From that, I am able to warp around and use d-scan to find the tower, where all sorts of combat and utility ships sit inside the shields, a Drake battlecruiser even being piloted.

A second pilot warps in to the tower as I watch, turning up in his pod and staying that way for the time being. The Drake moves, its pilot swapping ships to a Badger hauler before warping out. I call for Fin to swap her scanning boat for a stealth bomber, and she zips back to our home system to do so. I try to follow the Badger, assuming he is collecting planet goo, but he's quick. Without seeing where he went I am reduced to flicking my d-scan around and trying to place him at a customs office, but that only shows where he is before I enter warp. By the time I get to that office he's moved on, and I have to start the process again. Fin gets her Manticore in to the system as I chase the Badger around but she too can only lag behind. I know I am on the right track when I catch sight of the Badger moments before he warps off, but the only time I see the ship stationary is when he's back at the tower, apparently finished with his rounds.

The pilot ejects from the Badger, and the second pilot boards it and warps off. I'm not quite sure of these tag-team tactics, but I am close enough to see the Badger head in the direction of the fourth planet. I assume once more that he's going to the customs office, so I bark a direction in to fleet communications and I am off, hoping Fin is close behind. I decloak in warp, fully aware I will be visible on d-scan, but want to avoid the sensor calibration delay that will prevent gaining a lock on the target for several seconds. The Badger's been ahead of me so far, I'm not letting it get away now that I'm right on its tail.

I land at the customs office to see the Badger already there. I lock on to the hauler, disrupt its warp engines, and start shooting. My single rocket launcher is doing a surprising amount of damage, but I am still relying on Fin to turn up with her superior firepower in the Manticore, which she does. But not before the capsuleer takes the surprisingly sensible option of ejecting from the hauler and warping his pod back to the tower. I see him eject but simply am not quick enough to lock on to the agile pod, so he gets away. We still have the Badger, but we're not going to destroy it just yet. We leave it floating near the customs office, as we move away and re-activate our cloaks.

It's not likely the pilots will come back to claim a rather cheap industrial ship, not with a hostile ship or two in the system, but they might. They could be really stupid and just think that a clear d-scan means a clear system. Or they could be smart and send in with the pod an escort ship capable of melting a Buzzard covert operations boat and Manticore without breaking a space sweat, and we need to bear this in mind. Seeing the first pilot back in his Drake is predictable, in that case, but I don't quite expect the second to board an Orca. Maybe they are stupidly smart, sending an escort with the Orca to scoop the Badger instead of risking a pod directly. The Orca would make a fatter and more expensive target than the Badger, making us consider options.

Fin's okay guarding the Badger, and making the autonomous decision whether to engage or not should another target warp in, so I head home to get a different ship. I think my best choice is my Falcon recon ship, fitted for ECM, which should let us get the kill on an industrial, Badger or Orca, and maybe a pod, if only by denying the Drake escort the chance of targeting us. I rush back, hoping that the pilots are still mulling over their actions, or perhaps refitting their ships, and send my Falcon to the tower only to see them both still sitting silently in the shields, not looking like they're going anywhere. We have time, though, particularly with the Orca as lure, so we wait.

And we wait. But after a little while it seems obvious that the pilots aren't that stupid, and are happy to sacrifice the Badger. So Fin makes sure it is a sacrifice, not a stranded ship they can maybe collect the next day, and sends a volley of torpedoes pounding in to the Badger's hull. Sifting through the wreckage only gets us a couple of expanded cargoholds, the Badger clearly having been emptied of planet goo before the earlier pilot swap occurred. That probably further explains why they were happy to leave the ship behind, as it was empty of any items of value too. It's not quite the kill we wanted, but at least it is a successful hunt and was rather more involved than shooting a tower.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Sacrificial Badger
Tags: badger, buzzard, drake, eve online, falcon, manticore, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, w-space, widow

Comedy of errors

Fin's out exploring, and with the bookmark to our static wormhole in our shared can I think I'll join her. There are two towers in our neighbouring class 3 w-space system today, and a couple of ships visible on our directional scanners. Fin has found one tower, making the Drake battlecruiser and Catalyst destroyer probably at the second. But only the Catalyst is there, the Drake being elsewhere in the system. I warp to a planet distant from the towers, dropping off d-scan to launch combat scanning probes. A blanket scan of the system, with a 64 AU range on the probes, reveals eighteen anomalies and nine signatures in the system. The Drake is probably in one of those anomalies.

The Drake is, in fact, back at the second tower, but not for long. He warps out again, and now a closer inspection of d-scan reveals a Sleeper wreck in the system, but just the one. I sweep d-scan around, passing it over each bookmarked anomaly until the wreck coincides with one of them. Warping in to that anomaly indeed finds the wreck, but no Drake. Perhaps the pilot is warping between towers looking for different fittings before he comes to continue this anomaly. I loiter here, whilst Fin returns home to refit both of our Tengu strategic cruisers. Normally used against Sleepers themselves, they need to be modified with a warp disruption module, at least, to engage another capsuleer.

Circumstances change when the wreck I am looking at decays in the void. The Sleeper ship was destroyed two hours earlier, not recently. I check the two towers in the system and the Drake is not at either of them, yet still on d-scan. I sweep d-scan around again and locate the Drake in another anomaly, which I warp to and confirm he's in combat. Now there is a new wreck, which I bookmark for a reference point close to his ship, and he promptly loots and salvages whilst continuing to shoot the other Sleepers. The salvaging as he fights is probably what has made it difficult to ascertain his actions so far, the lack of wrecks on d-scan being deceptive. But now we have our target.

I warp back to our K162 wormhole home. Fin can jump in and I can fling her towards the Drake, jump home for my Tengu, and return to help finish off the battlecruiser. We get as far as step two before the plan goes awry, as the Drake warps out. It looks like he was vigiliant with his own checks of d-scan and bugged out when the Tengu appeared. We're not giving up just yet, not without firm proof that he's seen us, and Fin warps her Tengu to the planet out of d-scan range of the towers and the anomaly, lurking quietly in the outer reaches of the system as I return not in my Tengu but still in my Buzzard covert operations boat for further reconnaissance.

My first destination is one of the local towers, where the Drake is now sitting. He looks spooked, as there is now a Magnate scanning frigate piloted and the Drake pilot is activating a refinery. But maybe I am making an assumption, as the Drake warps out again, and not to a celestial object as a relatively safe means of quickly checking d-scan, but to the anomaly. We're on again. Fin doesn't have a bookmark to the anomaly, having warped in and out rather quickly, so I warp to her position and slingshot her Drakewards a second time. But, again, the Drake is not in the anomaly by the time she gets there. And, again, she warps back to the safe planet whilst we work out what to do. This time, Fin makes sure to create a bookmark for a more rapid entrance the next time.

I warp around to find where the Drake is and what he's up to. He's not at either tower, but still visible on d-scan. I check the anomaly and he's there—again! He has drones out and is happily shooting Sleepers. I don't believe he has actually seen Fin's Tengu yet, as no one would be so casual about warping in and out of Sleeper combat whilst hunted. And the light dawns on me. The first anomaly I entered was the one with the single Sleeper wreck. Thinking it to be the active anomaly, where the Drake would return, I made a bookmark to the anomaly's cosmic signature, the wreck, and a safe spot away from the signature and structures. When the wreck decayed and a second anomaly was seen to be active I made a couple more bookmarks, of a new wreck and a safe spot in the anomaly. I thought my labelling was clear which ones were for which anomaly, but apparently I managed to confuse myself. Now I am also confusing Fin.

I call Fin in to the anomaly where the Drake continues shooting Sleepers. But I merely say 'warp in'. Knowing that I inadvertently sent her to the wrong anomaly before, and believing that her bookmark would be to that anomaly—which it probably is—Fin warps to my position. I, on the other hand, have made the assumption that my first slingshot sent Fin to the wrong anomaly but the second was good, which means her bookmark is good, and I am assuming that's where she will land. It only takes a couple of seconds to realise we are both making assumptions, and that Fin will land not at a bookmarked location but ten kilometres from my Buzzard, which is unfortunate, as I am a good hundred kilometres from our target Drake. Even a rather slow recall of drones and retreat, during which Fin closes the gap to seventy kilometres, sees the Drake escape unharmed.

Now the pilot definitely is spooked. He returns to his tower and logs off, making it clear that he really didn't spot us earlier. It's not surprising, given my rather amateur guidance. We should have got a relatively easy Drake kill in our Tengus, as the opportunity was obvious, but my carelessness with naming bookmarks and poor communications fluffs the hunt. I should have made sure the bookmarks for the inactive anomaly were kept separate from the relevant ones, or labelled more clearly. I also should have been clear with my directive for Fin to warp in, as the confusion could have been cleared up before she entered warp. Our mistakes now will only make us more effective in future, though, and the hunt itself was exciting.

Posted in Gaming | 4 Comments »
Tags: buzzard, catalyst, drake, eve online, magnate, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, tengu, w-space

Admiral Akbar wants a word

Targets don't come much juicier than an Orca. A Tengu visible on d-scan makes me think the strategic cruiser is acting as an escort for the industrial command ship, but the Tengu disappears and the Orca remains. Maybe something else is happening here. I sweep d-scan around and it looks like the Orca is at a K162 wormhole, the one coming from a class 5 w-space system, where Fin and I bombed a Crow interceptor earlier. After our first engagement we didn't really show ourselves, so maybe the capsuleers think we took our opportunistic shot and moved on, making them comfortable in moving an Orca through the system to one of the exits available. I hope so, anyway, as I lurk here in my Manticore stealth bomber.

I warp to the wormhole, dropping short enough to be in decent bombing range, and I see the Orca lazily sitting on the wormhole. There is no sign of an escort, not even the Crow from earlier, and the bulky and expensive Orca is too tempting a target. I decloak, launch a bomb, and lock the Orca so that I can light it up with a target painter and pummel it with torpedoes. A split-second after my bomb launch a Loki strategic cruiser decloaks and locks my tiny Manticore. I have a couple of seconds to wonder how the Loki's sensors were able to recalibrate so quickly after decloaking, but only a couple, as then my focus shifts to warping my pod away to safety, leaving behind the smouldering wreckage that used to be my ship.

My pod gets away, back to our wormhole, and I jump home and warp to our tower. I think I'll file this experience under 'what was I thinking?' The Orca was sitting passively on an active wormhole that saw a bombing earlier, what could it have possibly been but bait. Sure, capsuleers can be stupid at times, but stupidity flows both ways. I was suckered in to an obvious trap, and lose my ship as a result. Oh well, I'd better see if I can replace my ship. I have a choice of exits, a couple of them leading directly to high-sec empire space. I think my best choice is to pass through the C3 to use the K162 to C2 w-space and use that system's other static connection, as it appears that the C5 occupants are using the connection to high-sec in the C3 and I probably ought not bump in to them again, particularly shipless.

I get out to empire space safely, the high-sec system being a convenient enough link from where I can buy a new Manticore and fittings. My only trouble is accidentally buying some fittings in a low-sec system, and I don't quite fancy getting ganked outside a station when not being entirely sure of the laws and mechanics. But I also don't want to lose millions of iskies on the sale, and with a nearly fully fitted Manticore, already with a cloak and with some loaded launchers, I decide to risk the low-sec docking. A Megathron battleship appears to be waiting for naive capsuleers like me, but either he's fallen asleep in his pod or his systems aren't as freakishly quick at locking my stealth bomber as the Loki, and I get in and out of the station unmolested.

From low-sec it is a short trip home again. I enter the C2, jump through to the C3, and warp to our K162. I wonder if there will be an ambush waiting for me somewhere, but perhaps the high number of connections—at least five in this C3, and another three in the C2—makes determining my route home too uncertain for the C5 pilots to care about. They hit my ship and gave me my comeuppance, that seems good enough. I get home and back to our tower without incident, where I park yet another new stealth bomber before settling down to sleep.

Posted in Gaming | 4 Comments »
Tags: eve online, loki, low-sec, manticore, megathron, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, pvp, tengu, w-space

Crows look like black monster shapes

It feels like ages since someone foolishly threw themselves in front of my missiles. Let's see if I cross such a capsuleer's path today. Scanning our system finds the static wormhole directly beneath our home planet, which provides some glorious views of the ringed gas giant when warping to and from the connection, but it's the wealth of scanning probes in our neighbouring class 3 w-space system that interests me more. There must be two scouts active, because of the number of probes visible on my directional scanner, and Fin suggests getting a HICceptor pair on our side of the wormhole to try to snare them.

An interceptor can be quick enough to bump a covert operations scanning boat and decloak it, but the boat could align quickly enough that it would still warp away before its engines can be disrupted. A heavy interdictor and its encompassing warp bubble will prevent the cov-ops from entering warp, but is too slow to have a hope of bumping a cloaked boat. Pair the two together, though, and you have a winning combination. Fin gets her Crow interceptor on the wormhole and waits for me to return, as I make a quick reconnoitre of the C3, finding an on-line tower but no ships. I add my own probes to those already in the system and perform a blanket scan, seeing five anomalies and fifteen signatures in total. Content that we may not have too long to wait before our wormhole is discovered I jump home, swap to my Onyx HIC, and join Fin.

And we wait. Fifteen signatures are not that many to disregard when they are mostly rocks and gas, and scanning should be relatively swift. But I suppose there is a time-dilation effect occurring, where being actively engaged in an activity will let time pass more quickly, and sitting doing nothing makes time drag. Still no one jumps through our wormhole, so Fin pokes her Crow through the connection and checks d-scan for continued activity. Half the probes are gone and a Buzzard cov-ops is visible, shortly followed by all probes disappearing and a second Buzzard decloaking. Maybe they are coming to us. Fin jumps back and we prepare for a possible incursion.

Of course, the appearance of the cov-ops ships on d-scan should mean they are either back in the local tower or are jumping through a wormhole, as Buzzards can warp whilst cloaked. That they weren't jumping through our wormhole whilst being visible on d-scan indicates that they aren't coming our way. I wish I could process information this quickly in the field, though. We wait a bit longer and still no ships come, and Fin goes back to the C3 for another look. This time, a Crow is on d-scan, the ship bearing the J-number of a w-space system as a name, but not that of the C3 itself. The interceptor is some 7 AU almost directly above our K162, most likely putting it on a wormhole itself.

I swap ships back to my Buzzard and go to the class 3 system to locate the Crow. Knowing roughly where he is to start with makes resolving his position easier, and I am soon staring at the Crow sitting on a K162 from a class 5 w-space system. The pilot is from a different corporation than the locals, so is more likely to be keeping pilots out than in. It makes sense. He could probably catch a few unsuspecting scouts if he sat on the other side of the wormhole, but by showing himself on this side he is telling pilots not to jump, if they know what's good for them. The deterrent factor is working on me. But it doesn't mean we can't engage him.

Fin and I swap to our Manticore stealth bombers. I doubt that we'll pop the Crow, unless he's not paying attention, as he can simply jump back through the wormhole to avoid a bomb's explosion. And we are more at risk from losing our ship than he is, realistically, because of the speed of the interceptor. But we can mitigate our risks and see what happens. I think I just want to shoot another ship. Our best bet is to launch a coordinated bomb attack and flee, not wanting to get close enough for warp disruption effects letting us modify our normal operation.

I think our best chance of a successful strike, and clean escape, would be to launch bombs at a range of around forty kilometres. The bombs' explosion will still catch the interceptor, and if he burns towards as at full speed, micro-warp drive on, he will have both further to reach us and more explosion to pass through before he does. Alternatively, to avoid the explosion he'd have to move away from us, letting us flee safely. It sounds like a good plan, at least.

Fin and I warp to the wormhole from different directions to line up our approaches without decloaking each other, and I run over the handy guide to stealth bombing for just such a situation. Align with the target, select a distant celestial object, decloak, launch, align out, and hit the warp button. The bomb will head towards the target, your ship will warp clear. I make sure Fin and I are in the position and aligned, at approximately the same distance from the target, and give the command. We decloak, launch, and cheese it.

Both bombs hit the wormhole, but not the Crow. The interceptor jumped back to the C5 a second before the explosion, which may well have saved his ship. I'm happy with the result, though, as we shooed the Crow and are both still alive. Fin warps back to the wormhole to see the Crow reappear, warp away, and return. I coincidentally managed to warp away from the wormhole to the local tower, somehow selecting a moon from my display, where there appears to be some minor activity, and my curiosity holds me at the tower for a short while. But it looks like the activity is winding down and there is nothing more to see. The Crow's reappearance, meanwhile, certainly suggests he is acting as a scout or deterrent to entering the C5, which is as good as confirmed when a Prowler transport ship jumps in to the C3 from the C5 and warps away.

I return home and board my Buzzard again, this time to scan the C3 more thoroughly. As I start my scan a new Buzzard appears on d-scan, and a few quick adjustments narrow down his general location, letting me find the wormhole he's on. I warp there to see a K162 from null-sec k-space, and the Buzzard jump through it. That may well be a newly discovered wormhole and the Buzzard was just taking a quick look in here. My continued scanning resolves four more wormholes here—the static connection to low-sec empire space, an EOL K162 from low-sec, a K162 from a class 2 w-space system, and a K162 from high-sec—before I stop looking. Perhaps the earlier laggardly scouting from Buzzards was because they were investigating all the connections. All but our own, it seems.

The connection to class 2 w-space is most interesting, offering more opportunities for hunting and exploration, and I jump through to take a look. A Probe frigate appears to be scanning, doing so sensibly from the safety of his tower, as there are probes on d-scan, but nothing else of interest. I scan the system myself, finding only four signatures, which are the two static connections, a ladar gas mining site, and another wormhole. It's a busy night tonight. The two static connections lead out to the C3 and high-sec empire space, the K162 comes from low-sec.

I seem to finish scanning at the same time as the Probe, watching him head off to the wormhole to high-sec. I follow, picking a distance to land from the wormhole that hopefully will let me engage, but he lands at zero and jumps out before I am even out of warp. Never mind, I have plenty of scanning complete. I'll head back home, get back in my stealth bomber, and see if my roaming can catch a juicy target.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Crows look like black monster shapes
Tags: buzzard, crow, eve online, manticore, mmorpg, onyx, penny ibramovic, prowler, pvp, scanning, w-space

Quiet and refined

The designation of this class 3 w-space system looks awfully familiar. That happens a lot, though, strings of numbers jumping out at me and making me think I've seen them before. After all, maybe I have, it was just when I was ordering a takeaway and not jumping through a wormhole in to our neighbouring system. But today the recognition isn't false, my records showing I've been here on four previous occasions. Before I consult my notes further I check my directional scanner. Seeing a tower, two Hurricane battlecruisers, a Manticore stealth bomber, a Bestower hauler, and a Viator transport ship, I move away from the wormhole and cloak without launching scanning probes. A second punch of d-scan now reveals a Tengu strategic cruiser, so at least one pilot is active.

My notes remind me that I was last here only three weeks ago, when a failed attempt at popping a Noctis salvager results in a successful counter-ambush, and me and Fin needing new ships. That's pretty cool, as it means we may get another fight. I assume the tower remains in the same place, and warp to the appropriate moon to see the Tengu piloted, of course, but that none of the other ships are. The tower's refinery is running too. A strategic cruiser is an ostentatious ship to use to work a refinery, even if it's not out of the realms of possibility, so I am hoping to see more action than ore being turned to minerals.

I warp out of d-scan range of the tower to launch combat scanning probes, sending them out of the system. I like to increase their range to 16 AU and align the bottom edge of the resultant sphere with the system's ecliptic plane, which puts the probes out of d-scan range of the planets and moons. I then increase the range of the probes to their maximum of 64 AU and position them to blanket the system, allowing me to scan the whole system for signatures without the probes being visible to d-scan. Doing so in this C3 reveals one anomaly and six signatures. I already know of all the ships in the system, having seen them in the tower and performed my own check with d-scan, if only to ensure that no one would see me launching the probes.

Returning to the tower sees the situation unchanged. The Tengu is stationary and the refinery running, thirty minutes until completion. I assume the Tengu pilot has noted the time and is busying himself with other matters until there are minerals to collect, which makes it the ideal time to scan the system thoroughly. He won't notice my probes and I can bookmark every site of interest. Except there aren't many sites, as such, my first hit being a wormhole, as well as the second, third, and fourth. The final signature is the only site beyond the anomaly, and is a gravimetric mining site. I resolve all the wormholes and the gravimetric site, bookmarking approximate positions now so that I can complete scanning more quickly, and recall my probes as soon as possible.

Scanning complete, I can check all four wormholes. The first is the system's static connection, leading out to high-sec empire space, and has a warp bubble surrounding it. The second is a K162 wormhole coming from null-sec k-space, and is also bubbled. The third is another K162, this time from low-sec empire space, bubbled. The fourth is... missing from my notes. And bubbled. The last time I was here the locals anchored a warp bubble over the K162 of our static wormhole as I was heading home in my newly bought Manticore, so I am not surprised by all the bubbles and admire their diligence. Maybe they need to be diligent, if they get so many regular connecting wormholes. At least it looks like they remember where they anchor their bubbles and collect them later, when no longer needed, as there don't seem to be any others littering the system.

Back at the tower the Tengu does nothing and the refinery rumbles on, spewing the occasional flame to show it's working, in much the same way I do. I pop home, though our unbubbled wormhole, and swap the Buzzard covert operations boat for my Manticore stealth bomber, returning to monitor the C3 tower as the refinery finally finishes its job. After a couple more minutes the Tengu pilot notices the lack of processing and moves to the refinery. A second job is started, the Tengu moving to a hangar to presumably drop off the newly refined minerals, and promptly logs off. No action for me, it seems. I can at least check the destination of the exit to high-sec.

I navigate the warp bubble, jump to the Metropolis region, see I am far from anywhere, and jump back to w-space. I am tempted to swap to a bigger ship and pop this warp bubble whilst no one's around, but I don't want to arouse any suspicions, particularly as I have no desire to use this connection. Instead I simply head home and take a break, wondering how long it will be before our static wormhole's K162 side has its own bubble.

A return a little later shows there is still no bubble on the other side of our static wormhole, but neither is there any activity in the C3. The same unpiloted ships remain floating inertly at the tower. There are a couple of planets out of d-scan range, which I used to let me launch probes covertly earlier, and I warp to the sole anomaly in the system in the hopes of finding some action. I am not expecting to find any activity, and spite is tainting my actions a little. Even if no one is in the anomaly, and no one is, warping in to it will cause it to despawn on its own, perhaps denying the locals a little profit. So I warp to the gravimetric site too. And then I head home again, to get an early night.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Quiet and refined
Tags: bestower, buzzard, eve online, hurricane, manticore, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, tengu, viator, w-space

An evening for Sleeper profit

Today's scanning finds me a new ladar signature and a new wormhole. I resolve them both, but jump through only one. There must be more than a single planet and its moons in this class 3 w-space system, so I bookmark the wormhole, launch scanning probes, and warp away to explore. A blanket scan of the system with combat scanning probes, set to their maximum range, sees a ship somewhere in the system. I soon find the Crane transport ship unpiloted and snuggled inside the shields of a tower. With no local activity and fifteen anomalies dotted around Fin thinks that this system 'sounds like a runner'.

Fin refits both of our Tengu strategic cruisers with heavy missile launchers. The shorter-ranged heavy assault launchers are swapped out because of the black hole in this class 3 system, reducing missile ranges and making the HAMs less appealing. In the meantime, I reload and launch core scanning probes and start sifting through the ten signatures present, spotting two wormholes pretty quickly. One wormhole is a K162 from null-sec k-space, the other the system's static exit leading out to low-sec. Neither are particularly interesting at the moment. Fin jumps in to the C3 in her Tengu and I slingshot her in to an anomaly whilst I complete my scan.

Five ladar, two gravimetric, and one magnetometric site resolved and I am jumping home to board my own Tengu, returning to the C3 to join Fin. I have to jiggle my fitting slightly, swapping a ballistic control system for an extra overdrive module to reduce my CPU needs, vowing to complete my training in the Tengu electronic subsystem at the earliest opportunity. I don't quite have the firepower of Fin's Tengu but I am having a super time zipping around at 1,135 m/s, the black hole also adding to ship velocity. And, turning up late to the first anomaly, I ask whether the Preserver is the trigger, not wanting to bring another wave of ships in early. 'Yeah', replies Fin, 'its destruction ends the last wave early'. Oh right, never mind.

We're motoring through these anomalies, clearing four of them of Sleepers with no troubles and barely a pause. I think it's worth trying the magnetometric site, to see what extra loot we could get from the additional Sleepers and what we can plunder from the artefacts scattered around. It's a little disappointing to encounter only the one Sleeper battleship in the magnetometric site, until a fourth wave of Sleepers turns up with two more. And we get those extra ships early, only expecting the usual three waves we get in anomalies. Two waves at once isn't a problem, though, and we take care to pop the repping Preservers first, to save us any wasted effort.

It's time to analyse the artefacts. Fin remains in the magnetometric site to keep it 'alive', the artefacts acting as part of the structure, unlike the wrecks, and prone to despawning once all Sleeper and capsuleer ships leave. I jump home and commission an analyser boat, not having needed one since moving in to our C4 pulsar home. I refit one of the stolen ships, modifying a salvaging Cormorant to be fit for basic analysing, and head back to the class 3 system. I warp to Fin's Tengu, now thoughfully positioned near one of the artefacts, and start collecting, as Fin returns home to get her Noctis salvager and sweep up the rest of the profit in to its hull.

Most of the artefacts I recover are wrecked, although a few are only malfunctioning. It's a long way from finding intact artefacts in class 5 w-space systems, but still worth collecting. With all the artefacts recovered I swap to my own Noctis and help Fin with the salvaging, both of us ripping through the wrecks with wonderful efficiency. We bring home all the loot safely, ending up with a fairly decent haul. The loot and salvage adds up to a little under two hundred million iskies, although I don't know the going rate for the artefacts. All this time the C3 remains quiet, so all that's left to do is get some sleep.

Posted in Gaming | 6 Comments »
Tags: cormorant, crane, eve online, mmorpg, noctis, penny ibramovic, scanning, sleepers, tengu, w-space

Refuelling in Hek

I scan, Fin calculates fuel requirements. I didn't scan for our first static wormhole of the day, so am surprised to see so many new anomalies. Six more have cropped up overnight. I resolve the new wormhole quickly enough and, rather than jumping through immediately, I bookmark its location and copy the bookmark to our shared can, so that Fin can warp directly to the wormhole when she's ready.

Jumping in to the class 3 w-space system beyond gives me little to see on my directional scanner. An off-line tower litters the system but nothing else is visible. I launch probes, a blanket scan revealing eleven anomalies and eighteen signatures, and I start sifting through the sites to find the exit. Resolving a wormhole on my first choice of signature is a good start, although a K162 from a class 5 system is perhaps not terribly welcoming for capsuleers who just want to travel through this C3 in peace. I keep looking.

A second wormhole turns out to be an outbound connection to a C4, although it is reaching the end of its natural lifetime. Perhaps the dying wormhole indicates the C5 denizens were active much earlier and are unlikely to return to this class 3 system now, which bodes well for us. The third wormhole I find is the system's static connection, naturally leading out to low-sec empire space, and it's quite healthy. A cursory look at the few remaining signatures finds nothing looking like a wormhole, so I ignore them and check our exit.

I can't quite fulfil Fin's desire of an exit 'about one jump from, say, Amarr?', but it's pretty good. The initial glance at my atlas shows little but low-sec surrounding our exit, but there is also a region boundary three hops away, one that connects to high-sec. No doubt we'll be using Crane transport ships for our fuel run. Fin takes her Crane out to start buying fuel, and I take mine to help haul it back. As Fin buys, I sell, bringing our Sleeper loot out to plump up our wallets.

The exit is only seven hops from Hek, which is a decent enough market to buy fuel from. I need to travel a little further to find an NPC who pays the going rate for Sleeper loot, but it's not far. And, once sold and the ISK shared, my wallet passes six billion ISK. It's taken a long time to get here from the previous billion marker, but ISK is not a motivating factor at the moment, and I have spent a fair bit of ISK on expensive ships and skill books since reaching five billion. At least I am still getting richer, and not throwing iskies down the drain.

Three Crane trips in total sees our fuel supply once again adequately replenished. We have no trouble moving between high-sec, low-sec, and w-space systems, although it is fun to see a small gang hanging around a stargate looking for trouble. The wreck of an elite frigate suggests they found some too, but our Cranes avoid the attention of the interceptor and heavy assault ship. I also see scanning probes in our neighbouring C3 as I return home the second time, but I pay them little mind. Our journeys to and from the market take up our time, as did the earlier scanning and collapsing of the wormhole. Whoever it is can have fun in the C3, I'm going to bed.

Posted in Gaming | 5 Comments »
Tags: crane, eve online, low-sec, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space

Not quite according to plan

Didn't I just refuel this tower? Okay, maybe it was a while back, but levels are dropping enough to catch my attention. There is enough fuel for a couple of weeks of continued operation, but it's best to think about getting more now rather than with only a few days in hand, particularly when a convenient exit can't be guaranteed. Glorious leader Fin has started looking for an exit already, the bookmark to our static wormhole in the can, and I go out to help.

I've been in our neighbouring class 3 w-space system before, but much can change in four months. The system is now occupied and, with two piloted ships at the tower, looks active. There is at least one scanning probe in the system that isn't Fin's, and neither of us can be sure where it came from. There is not much we can do about it, though, so we continue looking for the exit wormhole, Fin finding it first. The wormhole leads out to null-sec k-space, hardly good for a visit to the market by itself, and is at the end of its natural lifetime. We'll get nothing done here, so we decide to collapse our static wormhole and hope for a better connection.

As Fin readies the Orca industrial command ship to start destabilising the wormhole, I monitor the tower in the C3. One pilot is now sitting in a Crane transport ship, the other has gone, or is cloaked. Cloaked, it seems, as an Anathema appears at the K162-side of our wormhole as Fin makes her first jump in the Orca. The Anathema jumps through to our class 4 home system, Fin remaining cloaked in the Orca in the C3. It's uncertain if the Anathema pilot saw the Orca at all, and we'd prefer to keep it hidden. Shortly after leaving, the Anathema returns to the C3, moves away from the wormhole, and cloaks. We can't tell if he's warped away or not, but we continue our operation and Fin returns the Orca home, no doubt appearing briefly in space and on any active directional scanner.

I continue to lurk in the C3, where the Anathema decloaks and launches a scanning probe, which I see indirectly from d-scan. I imagine he's waiting for the exit to null-sec to pop and be replaced by a new wormhole. The locals may not be entirely passive, though, as the pilot at the tower swaps the Crane for a Manticore stealth bomber, before disappearing from d-scan. Before the Manticore can reach our wormhole, if indeed he's heading this way, I jump home myself. Fin has another jump to make with the Orca and I want to make sure it is unmolested, so I board my Malediction interceptor and warp back to the wormhole. If the Manticore wants to throw a bomb at the Orca, or even follow it home, I will catch him and make him regret it.

Thankfully, the Orca jumps out and returns without an engagement, and the wormhole now sits below half-mass, right on schedule. One more pair of jumps should see it collapse, with Fin once more in the Orca and me in my Widow black ops ship. This time, we're not worried about an engagement, as we'll simply jump home and have the connection disappear behind us, and any ship small enough to come back with us—and get trapped—will get eaten by drones or torpedoes. Fin's polarisation effect ends, her Orca warps to the wormhole, and I jump my Widow through in preparation. But when Fin jumps in to the C3 we get a scare, the wormhole becoming critically destabilised too early.

It looks like only one of our two ships will make it back home before the wormhole collapses. I volunteer to guide my black ops ship through null-sec, which seems a sensible option, but Fin orders me home. After a bit of discussion I agree to get home and scan a new exit, sending my Widow through the wormhole. I keep my reheat inactive, not thinking the lack of extra mass will make a difference this time but wanting to give us any possible chance of getting both ships home, and the wormhole remains! Quick, jump before it changes its mind! Fin jumps, bringing the Orca home and collapsing the wormhole, not quite according to plan but we have our desired result. Now we can scan for the newly spawned static wormhole, and start all over again.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Not quite according to plan
Tags: anathema, crane, eve online, malediction, manticore, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space, widow