Chasing Tech III

We have a convenient exit to high-sec space, close to the trade hub of Jita even! Well, it would be convenient if it weren't for the large warp disruption bubble placed on a connecting wormhole. Having to crawl haulers through the bubble would be dangerous, and doing so with loot to sell or goodies brought back in would be foolish. Let's shoot it. An unguarded bubble can act as a deterrent, but it can also act as target practice, and we aim to show that a bubble is only good if it is being watched. My colleagues get in to a Myrmidon and Drake, but I am unsure what ship to use. I choose my Manticore stealth bomber, if only because it fires battleship-class torpedoes, as I am still quite restricted in dealing damage otherwise. We head out to clear the path.

My Manticore offers me the benefits of stealth as well, which makes up for the flimsy frigate-based hull. Although I don't need to sneak up on a warp bubble, having a cloak lets me warp to the tower in the system and check that there is no activity, which I do. Given the all-clear, my colleagues start shooting the bubble as I warp to join them, loosing torpedo volleys once I get there. It doesn't take long to pop the bubble, freeing the wormhole and meaning shopping can begin. I need a few more bookmarks before I think about going anywhere, so I head back to the tower first.

A Loki strategic cruiser is spotted warping away from a wormhole on our route out, which adds a bit more danger to the journey. In a display of how far we have come, rather than halting operations and cowering we actually have the temerity to consider engaging the Tech III ship. My colleagues are happy to sacrifice their battlecruisers still, and I am again unsure what I could take to the battle. I may bring logistics and warfare links to battle against Sleepers, or the controlling bubble of a heavy interdictor, but I still lack anything particularly sharp. I decide to stay in my Manticore, which would at least let me scout ahead a little without risking losing anything more expensive than a battlecruiser.

We have no guarantee we'll find the Loki again, or that we won't bump in to friends of his when we do, but we head out full of spirit. Jumping in to the system where the Loki was spotted shows one each of the Legion and Proteus strategic cruisers, making us vastly underpowered even without the Loki as well. Core scanning probes are visible in the system as well. Oh, and there is a Tengu strategic cruiser to complete the racial set, as well as a Nemesis stealth bomber. Maybe we made a mistake coming out here. However, it would be prudent to find out where all these expensive and dangerous ships are from. I am the cloaky ship, so I stay in the system to scout whilst the others retreat a little to safety.

Checking the null-sec wormhole finds no ships, neither does the wormhole leading to a class 6 system have ships loitering around it. I return to the null-sec wormhole and jump, if only to get a new red dot on my star map for places visited, exiting to SN9-3Z. The corpse on the null-sec side of the wormhole catches my attention, as do the Thanatos and Chimera carriers showing on d-scan, along with wrecks of rat ships. There are no Tech III ships visible, though. For reasons I haven't analysed yet, I stuff the corpse in to my hold and head back to w-space. Then, like an idiot, I head in to the class 6 system, thankfully remembering to bookmark the wormhole on the other side before warping off, only to find an empty system. Unoccupied and no ships.

Jumping back, a Helios is now on d-scan. I ponder which wormhole to camp in my Manticore, but there are no probes visible so the Helios is probably only travelling. I make my way back home, checking the other systems on the route, but there are no signs of any ships, let alone strategic cruisers. They quietly slinked away somewhere, which is probably for the best for us. Picking a fight with a Loki may have been interesting, but jumping in to the middle of four of them would have been, well, comedic.

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Tags: chimera, drake, eve online, helios, legion, loki, manticore, mmorpg, myrmidon, nemesis, null-sec, penny ibramovic, proteus, tengu, w-space

An exit is also an entrance

It happens to the best of us. Our scan man ventures too deep in to the wormhole system and stumbles through one EOL wormhole too many. The wormhole collapses before he gets back to it, trapping him outside of our home system. At least he was out scanning at the time, so is in his Cheetah covert operations boat and can scan himself an exit to empire space. I am available to help get him back and although he wasn't able to return to our tower to drop off the bookmarks I can still be guided quickly to his last location.

Our method of creating bookmarks includes adding meaningful data to its tag, such as the direction of the jump relative to our home system, whether it is reaching the end of its natural lifetime, and its signature. Recording the signature is important because it allows bookmarked signatures to be ignored by other scanners, whether they look for sites instead of wormholes or are looking for mining sites and not combat. It is unfortunate that the signatures change after every daily galactic reboot, but living out in the ever-changing landscape of w-space avoids this being a significant problem. So when I head out to try to find a route to empire space ready for our isolated scanner to use to return, he can simply look at his list of bookmarks and guide me to the wormhole signatures directly. I still have to scan, but I can pluck the right signatures out of the list with no need to guess.

I am able to get through our neighbouring class 4 system and in to the connected class 1 system with little fuss. The system is occupied but there are no ships around. I start to scan for wormholes. One is found quickly, but as it extends in to w-space and is EOL it would not be wise to enter it. Getting two members of the corporation stranded on the same afternoon would be careless. A few floating rocks hamper my exploration, but soon enough I get another wormhole, a high-sec exit that is stable. I jump through and, as luck would have it, find it to be only one jump from where my colleague has managed to scan himself out of w-space. That's jolly convenient. I sit on the wormhole as my colleague undocks and makes the hop to my system. I am cloaked, of course, even though I'm in high-sec space. Although I cannot be attacked without Concord intervention, I would rather not advertise to anyone watching that I am about to head in to lawless w-space.

An Iteron hauler warps in and jumps through the high-sec wormhole in to w-space as I sit cloaked nearby. He has no idea I am there, which is my intent, and it possibly allows me to ambush him. My colleague arrives and he has all the bookmarks home from the class 1 system the other side of this wormhole, he just needed this entrance. I dash back to our tower to swap in to my Manticore and head back to see if the Iteron makes a second run. It looks like I have some time before a fleet forms for Sleeper engagements. The Iteron doesn't return, though, which isn't surprising given the volume it can haul in one trip. But my proximity to the high-sec exit allows me to guide in some allies from empire space back to our system, where we swap in to the appropriate ships and find some Sleepers to attack for profit.

With delays caused by problems getting fittings right with no local access to hangars, and other logistical problems, we only manage to clear one local anomaly and one in our neighbouring system, but it's smooth sailing. At the end of the evening I pilot my stealth bomber back out to the high-sec exit, under the guise of checking the route out is clear for our allies to return to empire space, but I am really hoping to find a target to shoot. All is quiet, so they get back to a station safely, and I return home to our tower peacefully.

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Tags: cheetah, eve online, iteron, manticore, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, w-space

Stopping a Stabber

It's time to roam. I jump in my Manticore stealth bomber and prepare to scout the neighbouring w-space systems for targets. Even though, or maybe because, we pop and pod a Probe pilot earlier I am not expecting to find much, particularly as our connecting systems are unoccupied, but I won't know for sure without looking. I jump to our neighbouring system and find it empty. Checking the bookmarks made earlier I note that the two EOL wormholes have now collapsed, the lack of activity perhaps indicative that no new ones have opened in to this system. I warp and jump in to the class 1 system further along. A Stabber is on the directional scanner, with some Sleeper wrecks. I'm tingling.

I move stealthily away from the wormhole and activate my on-board system scanner, taking thirty seconds to find a couple of anomalies. I warp to the first and find no ship, neither is the Stabber in the second. By this time, a colleague has joined me in his Hound stealth bomber and he suggests the good plan of covering the two exit wormholes in the system. He heads to the wormhole leading to low-sec space, I go to the high-sec one. I find the Stabber as I drop out of warp but, sadly, there is no longer a wormhole at that location. Sadly for the Stabber, at least. With his exit gone I am free to lock him and start firing, engaging my warp disruption module to prevent him fleeing, having called for my colleague to warp to me.

I have to admit that I didn't know what a Stabber was when I saw it on d-scan, nor do I really have time to check a database to find out, so I fly in to the situation blind. Having a name like 'Stabber' is suitably threatening, particularly as I spot him on d-scan with some Sleeper wrecks. Not wanting to be stabbed, I try to maintain a healthy range whilst keeping him engaged. Unfortunately, I mis-gauge my warp disruption module's range and it deactivates, allowing the Stabber to warp off. But, as it had warped to the location of the now-gone high-sec exit, it probably hasn't got anywhere to go. My colleague in the Hound uses d-scan to re-locate the Stabber around the ninth moon of the fourth planet, and we warp in.

Not wanting to engage without being able to disrupt his warp drive, we remain cloaked until we can get in to range. However, the Stabber is faster than our cloaked stealth bombers, and we can't risk decloaking to use a reheat or micro-warp drive. The Hound warps away to try to warp in to a better position, but before he returns the Stabber warps off. He is no longer on d-scan, which possibly indicates he has logged off. But there is an outer planet that is out of range of d-scan from where we are. I warp to the outer planet to see if d-scan picks up the Stabber out there, and serendipitously drop on top of the Stabber. I decloak, lock, and disrupt his warp engines, this time making sure to keep in range. My colleague joins me and we make quick work in destroying the Stabber. The pilot's pod loiters for us to destroy too, perhaps in resignation of finding any other way out of w-space.

We loot and leave. Once we return to the tower, investigation shows that a Stabber is a basic Minmatar cruiser, not harmless but not particularly threatening either. We also learn that this Stabber was fitted for salvaging, having no weapons, which explains why it was alone in the system with wrecks, and why it didn't fire a single shot back at us. It turns out I didn't need to maintain a healthy distance in the first engagement, which led to my warp disruption module deactivating, although I wasn't to know. Also, the pilot of the Stabber is from the same corporation as the Probe pilot we caught earlier. Although the two engagements are hours apart, it is perhaps a little reckless to return to a w-space system where a pilot of yours has been podded. Then again, if the high-sec exit wormhole had not collapsed he would simply have jumped through and escaped. Our successful kill is only due to the circumstantial disappearance of a wormhole.

The wormhole's collapse makes it less likely for new visitors to show up, and being the mean aggressors we feel comfortable heading in to clear some of the sites of specific Sleeper interest in the class 1 system. We clear two magnetometric sites, the second holding a deserted Talocan frigate, the little sister to the cruiser, before moving on to a radar site. Blasting through the Sleepers lets us clear the two remaining anomalies in the system as well. The profit from the class 1 system is minor compared to what we are used to from more dangerous systems, but it has been good for us today. The system has offered us exploration, capsuleer hunting, and Sleeper slaying, making it a varied and interesting day.

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Tags: eve online, hound, manticore, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, stabber, w-space

Factory Floor, Fuck Buttons at Koko

I am not entirely sure what to expect of tonight. I don't go to see much live electronic music and hope that I am not going to be surrounded by cool kids dancing, as I will feel entirely out of place. Luckily, it's just another gig, with the standard mix of people out for a night of live music. The support band, Factory Floor, even have real instruments. A live drummer bangs away in the background, either on his kit or producing sounds from a sequencer, and between singing wispy, echoed vocals the guitarist either taps out a beat with a drum stick on her guitar or violates the strings with a violin bow. All of this on top of an electronic groove that gets me bobbing my head and tapping my foot, as much dancing as I normally get involved with.

Instead of lurking near the back of the venue, as an interested observer of the genre, Factory Floor have me thoroughly engrossed and wandering close to the stage. The whole performance comes together in a hypnotic way. Too soon they leave the stage. I go to the lobby immediately to check for any releases on sale, in case they run out after the main act, but there is only a 10" vinyl record and DVD of their recent art installation available. I will be definitely looking out for more from Factory Floor.

Fuck Buttons have a big table full of electronics, which still needs a sound check, but it is not a long wait before the duo are on stage and, well, noise happens. The bass doesn't so much boom out of the speakers as reach out and shake my head. I appreciate loud music, having been to gigs for years, but there is a limit. When the resonant vibrations completely swamp any coincident sounds the volume is too loud. I only half-hear the bass notes, the other half of the time I just feel my nose vibrate and hear the air around me bump in to itself. Perhaps I am standing a bit too close to the speakers, after getting excited about the support act.

Moving to a different position doesn't help matters. The sound levels are horrendous. It's like standing in the middle of an earthquake with an occasional blast of a synthesiser heard, amidst lots of flashy coloured lights. But I am not here to see a light show, and it really doesn't impress me. I want to hear the music. There are occasional glimpses of the genius of Fuck Buttons, but I am continually straining to hear the patterns and beats amongst the vibrations and white noise. It's awful. I move around some more, but it simply seems like the sound engineer wants us to remember the night for being deafened wherever we stand.

Other people are moving around too, and they aren't dancing. For the music that apparently is being played it seems odd that there isn't more head bobbing or dancing, but when you can't hear the music there is not much to dance to. Eventually, I find somewhere not too noisy, but this turns out to be in the lobby of the venue, and I am wondering what to do. If I go where I can see the band I cannot hear what they are playing, and if I stay where I can hear the music I cannot see the band. I would be better served listening to the CD. I leave early, seeing no point in staying. It is so very disappointing, as I love Fuck Buttons, but there is nothing to enjoy at Koko tonight. At least, not after Factory Floor leave the stage.

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Tags: factory floor, fuck buttons, gig, koko

Poking a Probe

A new day, a new neighbourhood. I head out in my Buzzard to double-team our scanning effort with our scan man. As usual, finding the static wormhole in our home system is easy, as we are dry of other signatures. Our neighbouring system is rich, though, and on my first attempt I am able to pluck a wormhole from the thirty-odd signatures. The wormhole turns out to be incoming (K162) and EOL, so I keep looking. I get rocks, gas, rocks, and the scan man gets the same. At least we can ignore signatures twice as quickly with two pilots scanning.

With so many signatures I take a more systematic approach to scanning, creating a cluster of probes with 4 AU strengths and centring them on each planet in turn. This lets me find and resolve or ignore signatures more quickly, even if it means disregarding most of the system with each scan. Concentrating my scan around a single planetary body makes resetting the probe configuration much quicker after each successful scan resolution, which speeds up the process enough to be significant. I find another wormhole, which turns out to be another EOL K162, so the system's static wormhole remains unfound so far. The scan man finds it, though, and for completeness we finish ignoring a bunch more signatures in the system before jumping through to the class 1 w-space system beyond the static wormhole.

Another unoccupied system, there are again lots of signatures to resolve. We both grab the system's static with our first choice, seeing it lead to low-sec empire space. We keep looking for any other connections, but my scanning goes off the boil as I get only gas and rocks. Scan man gets another wormhole, inbound from high-sec space, although checking both empire connections reveals no convenient locations. Two unoccupied w-space systems makes for good Sleeper profits for us, but doesn't give any capsuleer targets, so when in low-sec I take time to continue scanning. I get interested when I see an 'unknown' cosmic signature returned, but it turns out to be a Serpentis outpost. Empire space is wacky.

Undeterred, I keep scanning the low-sec system we drop out to, finding two more wormholes. Scan man heads in to one, finding a tower bearing a Cheetah and Nemesis, and I jump through the other to find a tower belonging to our supposed allies in a system empty of signatures. There isn't much happening at all, so I start to head back to our tower. Maybe the wormholes reaching the end of their natural lifetime will expire and collapse, creating new connections to bring potential targets to the outer systems. Just as I ponder this, jumping back from low-sec space to the class 1 w-space system reveals a Probe frigate on the directional scanner. I check again and it's still there, with scanner probes launched. I warp to the next wormhole heading home and check again, the Probe is still on d-scan. It's not cloaked. How lovely!

I tell our scan man about the uncloaked Probe and he comes back to see if he can locate it. I am heading back to our tower to change in to my Onyx, the ship that leaves no pod behind. I am in the heavy interdictor sitting on the other side of the wormhole to the system the Probe is in when scan man finds the Probe. He's sitting on the second planet. Scan man returns to the tower to board his Hound stealth bomber, fitted with a warp disruptor. I am patiently waiting on the wormhole still when the Hound passes me and jumps in to the next system. The Probe is still there, which isn't surprising considering the number of signatures he has to sift through, which helps explain my patience in this case. Our Hound warps to planet two, gets in to position, and calls for me to jump and warp. I am not one to disobey such an order and, with the Hound locked and disrupting the Probe's warp engines, soon land on top of the hapless pilot.

My HIC's bubble goes up, the Probe disintegrates, and the capsuleer is sent back to empire space podless. We loot and clear the pocket, returning to our tower. Checking the details, the Probe was rigged for scanning but had no cloak, and the character is only a month old. It seems odd that the ship would have specific rigs but not a cloak, and I cannot decide if we killed a new capsuleer or an alt. It is possible that he is a high-sec scanner that took a risk coming in to w-space. But there are differences between w-space and high-sec empire space that mean you always cloak when scanning. If you cannot cloak, you make yourself safe in other ways, either by moving back to your tower's shields or by making a safe spot or two. It is irresponsible to sit uncloaked on top of a celestial body in w-space, because it means you can be found without any overt indication that someone is looking for you.

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Tags: buzzard, cheetah, eve online, hound, mmorpg, nemesis, onyx, penny ibramovic, probe, pvp, scanning, w-space

Avoiding another ambush

Stuck in empire space, I return to the reassuring information that our scan man is out on his regular reconnoitre of w-space. He is currently in the system neighbouring our own, which is unoccupied and holds a couple of dozen signatures, so scanning could take a while. With what I imagine is more skill than luck he finds a wormhole on his first attempt, and then he blasts through some other systems to find a high-sec exit. Giddy-up, it's only five jumps from where I am docked! As I haven't changed stations since getting stuck out here, I'm quite glad I didn't try to accomplish anything whilst in k-space now.

I hit vacuum and make the few hops to the system holding the wormhole, meeting my colleague sitting outside it. He jettisons a can of bookmarks and I start the journey home. One class 3 and three class 4 systems later—the last one curiously named J1226-0—and I am home again. Another wayward colleague is ushered in through the same route, bringing us all back together again. But we still don't have quite enough present to tackle Sleeper combat sites. Instead, the other two pop in to our neighbouring system to mine some gas and I swap in to my Drake battlecruiser to pop the minor Sleeper presence in several gravimetric sites also next door.

My Drake's fitting has been modified, highlighting yet another ship I failed to save the fitting for, and I am having trouble refitting it to how I think it once was. After a bit of frustration I give up, realising that for the frigates and flimsy cruisers—the only Sleeper ships I am planning to engage—the target painter, micro-warp drive, and salvager are probably ideal for the task. The target painter will make my heavy missiles more effective against the smaller ships, the salvager will make me self-sufficient in clearing up the wrecks, and moving quickly between them with the MWD negates the need for a tractor beam.

My Drake clears four gravimetric sites of Sleepers quickly, and a fifth is started when core scanner probes are noticed on the directional scanner. Although only probes are visible at the moment we all know the potential threat probes can mean. It could just imply the presence of a scanning boat in the system looking for wormholes, or it could signal the imminent arrival of a nasty fleet. We have been on both sides enough times to realise this, and the gas miners and myself bug out, warping to our wormhole and jumping home as a precaution. In case it is simply a sole scanning boat, I swap in to my Onyx heavy interdictor and inflate its bubble on the K162 side of our wormhole, in the other system. He may carelessly warp to the wormhole after scanning it and get a surprise. But when combat scanning probes come out I reconsider his intentions.

I don't see only one or two combat probes, but all four. This indicates that they are all within scanning range of me, and I have a strong suspicion that the scanner is looking for me specifically. It won't take long for the scanner to find my Onyx HIC sitting on the wormhole. Either he has resolved the wormhole's position already, and is only looking for confirmation that my signal intersects that of the wormhole, or he was initially looking for the sites that my colleagues and I recently vacated and needs to scan me completely. Either way, I keep a vigilant eye on d-scan. And I am right to do so.

Several ships suddenly appear on d-scan. I am ready to move before I even analyse the results to determine what ships they are, jumping back home through the wormhole as they begin to drop out of warp right on top of me. I warp back to the tower immediately on return to the home system, at which point I check the d-scan return more thoroughly. An Abaddon, Maelstrom, Pilgrim, Scorpion, and Zealot were all bearing down on me, no doubt with hostile intentions. Interestingly enough, they are from the same corporation that were recently depriving us of profit from local anomalies, getting a kill on a colleague's Nemesis as well.

My experience once again saves me from danger, albeit danger that I get myself in to. After all, it's not the first time I narrowly escape the Onyx being a sitting duck on a wormhole. We halt operations when first noticing scanner probes until we can prove there is no threat, but realise the threat is real when combat probes are then seen. Planting my Onyx on the wormhole was perhaps risky, but it reveals the size and strength of the hostile fleet. And as I had the HIC's bubble up when the attackers warp in, they bounce off it out of warp too far from the wormhole to jump through immediately. This gave me the time to jump and warp back to the tower. We can't counter their threat directly, but our operations were drawing to a close anyway. Suffering no losses to a skilled and well-equipped fleet is a good result for the evening.

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Tags: abaddon, drake, eve online, maelstrom, mmorpg, onyx, penny ibramovic, pilgrim, scanning, scorpion, sleepers, w-space, zealot

Losing the way home

No one from the corporation is around, our system is empty of intruders, I suppose I'll scan. The three signatures in our home system are a gravimetric site that we've yet to strip, and two wormholes. One is the system's static wormhole, the other an inbound wormhole that is reaching the end of its lifetime (EOL). I'm curious to see who is connecting to us, so I poke my nose through the EOL wormhole for a little look before it collapses.

The system leading to our own is occupied. I find the tower using the directional scanner and on warping to it see that the four medium bubbles also visible on d-scan are strategically placed around the tower. There is nothing else in the system and no activity, so with my curiosity sated I warp back to the wormhole to return home and head through our own static wormhole. Even though I spend all of five minutes in this system, and can see it as I decelerate out of warp, the wormhole collapses before I can jump through. That's either bad luck or karma.

The only good news it that this current system should now have a new static wormhole and that I am in the right boat to find it. I drop probes and start to scan, my only option now to get out to empire space and hope someone later can find a route in to our home system that I can follow. Having only used d-scan so far in here my first scan presents me with a whole host of anomalies, but thankfully only a handful of signatures. The first signature I pick to resolve is a wormhole, which is good, and turns out to be an exit to low-sec empire space. Finding this is comforting, knowing that I can at least get to k-space easily enough, but I keep looking in case I can find a different exit.

I resolve another wormhole and, warping to it, discover it to be a high-sec exit, although EOL. This is likely a better option than the low-sec exit, unless it leads to a high-sec island deep in low-sec and the low-sec exit is one hop from high-sec safety. I check the other signatures in the system and find no more wormholes. The greater likelihood of exiting to a convenient location sees me choose to check the other side of the high-sec wormhole first, hoping that I'll reach this one before it collapses. The wormhole pops me out in to Amarr space, with low-sec systems either side of me but not in an island. The region and location is convenient enough—not that any one system can be considered more convenient than another when the route back in to our home w-space system could come out anywhere—but I am out here with only my Buzzard.

I could travel a dozen jumps to our old corporation headquarters and slowly haul some minerals to my manufacturing base, or make twenty-odd jumps to a mission-running ship and shoot some rats, but I think for now I'll simply dock and relax, hoping a colleague will turn up at some point and map a route home. What I should have done earlier was scan my way through relatively stable wormholes until I found an exit, and only then adventured through EOL connections. If I had taken that approach I could now warp my way to the exit already scanned and make my own way home. It is something to remember for future scanning expeditions.

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

Early scanning for an exit

I get an early start today. I move out of the tower's shields in my Buzzard and start scanning in the hopes of finding an exit that will make amends for my incompetence of yesterday, which indirectly led to colleagues getting stuck outside of w-space. Our home system's static wormhole is in a new location, and thus leads to a different system and will be stable for hours, which is good. I resolve its position, warp and jump through.

Looking only for an exit, I use my modified method of scanning for wormholes. The wormhole home is bookmarked, so I know its position, then I make a rough scan of the wormhole using probes, noting the wormhole's identifying signature but not resolving it to 100%. Then, when I make my first rough scan of the whole system, I can find the wormhole's signature and relative signal strength. The known wormhole signature's scan strength can be compared directly to the unresolved signatures in the system, on the assumption that all wormholes will have similar return signals.

Although I can get similar results by noting general signal strengths for wormholes found against scan probe ranges, being able to compare a known wormhole directly against other signatures is more convenient and relies less on intuition. That ladar and occasional gravimetric sites have similar signal strengths to wormholes is no greater a hindrance than relying on other methods to find wormholes. In this case, I find a gravimetric site first, then my second choice results in finding a wormhole. There is another likely wormhole signature in the system, and I resolve that for reference, finding more rocks in space, before moving on.

The next system across shows a tower on the directional scanner but no force field, which is curious. I drop probes and begin scanning whilst I investigate this tower. My search finds a ladar site, then gravimetric, then a wormhole, whilst warping around reveals the off-line but anchored tower sitting lonely in orbit around a moon. There is nothing I can do with this tower, and no signs of activity on d-scan, so I leave it alone and warp to the wormhole. What a lovely sight the wormhole is, an exit leading out to high-sec space. I jump through and find myself in Gallente space, which doesn't seem particularly inviting to me, but a high-sec exit that passes through two unoccupied systems is an excellent route home. I hope it redeems me slightly.

I visit a local station and contract the bookmarks to a stranded colleague, before heading back to the tower and copying the bookmarks in to our can for general use. The still-early hour and convenient exit tempts me in to my Crane and I head out to hit the market, not entirely sure what I want to buy but confident I'll find something. I manage to pick up a few skill books, some new warfare links for once the skills are trained, a few modules and ammunition, and even a new ship. I can't quite fly the ship yet, but it seems like a good opportunity to buy it. I pilot my Crane a few systems around to pick up everything I buy and head back home to w-space safely. It has been a quiet morning, but productive.

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

Poking the wasp nest

The evening starts promisingly. There are lots of bookmarks waiting in the can, tempting me to go roaming in my Manticore stealth bomber again. But warping to our static wormhole reveals that the bookmarks are a day stale, so instead I swap in to my Buzzard scanning boat and start looking for signatures instead of targets. Along with our new static wormhole I find a second wormhole. Thankfully, this incoming wormhole is EOL and won't last long, making it less likely for intruders to use it aggressively against us. I jump through our static wormhole instead, in to an occupied system.

I find our neighbouring system's tower using the directional scanner, seeing a Skiff exhumer and Bustard transport ship sitting motionless inside the shield. I warp around the system to see if there is any activity occurring off d-scan, as the system is large enough for the scanner not to cover everything, and notice that the Bustard is still visible. As the tower is no longer showing on d-scan the Bustard must be in flight. I quickly check the tower again for confirmation that the Bustard has flown the coop before dropping probes and scanning in the likely area he was heading. If he went out, he is likely to be coming back.

The system's static wormhole reveals itself to me soon enough, and whilst I have been scanning I have also formed a fleet with colleagues who turn up. I bookmark the wormhole's location from the scanner, knowing that it will be approximate but not wanting to waste time warping there to get a more accurate position, and warp back to our tower. My Onyx heavy interdictor is launched and ready for me, thanks to the fleet, although I am disappointed to see that this doesn't prevent the HIC's shields being below 20% when boarding, but at least I don't need to scour over all the ships in the hangar to find it. We warp out and jump to the neighbouring system. Unfortunately, the Bustard immediately appears on d-scan, which places it closer to the tower than the outwards wormhole. But maybe it is making multiple trips. I warp the fleet to the other wormhole anyway.

Having the wormhole out of range of the tower on d-scan is an advantage, as we can sit on top of it without being easily noticed. Our reconnaissance man sees the Bustard pilot swap to a Buzzard, though, and that means we'll be noticed and our ambush will fail. But we can still wait on the other side of the wormhole and hope to snare the small ship, so I call for everyone to jump. Two ships falter and don't jump, which will ensure the Buzzard pilot will see them, but I can turn this to our advantage. I send the two that haven't jumped home to our tower. The Buzzard will see them warp off in a different direction, hopefully without knowing that my Onyx and colleague's Nighthawk are waiting on the other side of his exit. And it looks like the plan works.

The wormhole flares, and it is not caused by a friendly ship. Again, there is a pause as what we assume to be the Buzzard's pilot weighs his options. Our systems are hot and waiting for a ship appear to target. His cloak drops and we pounce! But a split-second later and there is nothing to lock on to. This Buzzard pilot is no fool, he has turned his ship away from us and activated his cloak at the same time, probably not even turning on a micro-warp drive to avoid the increased signature radius penalty of using it. He knows he can crawl cloaked out of my HIC's bubble and be safe. Without a fast ship to try to decloak him our ambush fails. Now we ponder our own options.

I wonder if a bomb launched at the wormhole would help decloak the Buzzard when coming home, so Onyx and Nighthawk jump back and a Nemesis stealth bomber is recruited to help us. I have no doubt that my HIC can survive a bomb, and the Nighthawk should be fine. Another flare! A bomb is launched, but in vain, as it turns out our Nighthawk pilot accidentally jumped through the wormhole instead of approaching it. The bomb knocks my shields down to 98%, which is a good test at least. It doesn't look the Buzzard will come back soon, and as we have bungled the operation a little we head back to the tower to relax.

Meanwhile, our scanning man has headed onwards and found an exit to high-sec space, offering the opportunity to buy and sell fuel and modules. A hauler is loaded up and sent out, but a hostile Onyx is spotted in our neighbouring system when it jumps. Our Iteron pilot holds steady with his cloak engaged, a Crane transport ship braving the route to high-sec first, finding it to be clear. Both ships make it out safely.

A little later, I want to see what's occurring, so I take my Manticore in to the next system to loiter on the wormhole heading outwards. A pod jumps in, but is unsurprisingly too agile to be trapped by my Manticore's systems. Maybe I should have realised this and not even tried, hoping for a more enticing target to head my way. Then again, the Crane that comes back is also too agile and evades me, as it goes out and then returns through the wormhole before warping off. I don't want to be caught unawares, so I follow it back to the tower. I see the Crane and Onyx, and a short while later they both warp off. I don't much like the look of provoking an Onyx to loiter on a wormhole my colleagues will want to use soon.

I cautiously warp back to the wormhole where I see the Crane jump back in to this system, but the Onyx is nowhere to be seen. And the wormhole collapses. It is no consolation to think that their Onyx is trapped elsewhere when our own shopping trip is now scuppered. A scanning boat goes out to find the new static wormhole in our neighbouring system, but no new route to empire space is found this late in the evening, leaving our colleagues trapped outside. With any luck this is only a minor delay, but I probably should have left the other capsuleers alone. Or at least been more successful at hunting them.

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Tags: bustard, buzzard, crane, eve online, iteron, manticore, mmorpg, nemesis, nighthawk, onyx, penny ibramovic, scanning, skiff, w-space

In the communal ship array

As others have done, please allow me to share with you the ships I have put in the communal hangar in w-space, and like to call my own.

Drake—Non-sentient Ship

The passive shield tanked battlecruiser has been my staple combat ship for longer than I can remember. As soon as I was able to afford one I bought and fit a Drake. Although as a mission runner I aspired to progress to pilot a Raven battleship I never did quite earn the ISK at the time, and now I find myself more in a supporting role than DPS. The Drake still gets used occasionally, for clearing minor Sleeper presences in mining sites, but I tend to fly ships with more specific roles at the moment. The name comes from wanting to incite the alien Sleepers.

Crane—Tigress III

A relatively early training goal of mine when moving in to industry was to get my pod in to a Crane transport ship. The ability to fit a cloak—although I didn't train to use covert operation cloaks until months afterwards—and the highly agile nature of the ship makes it ideal to blast through the more dangerous systems where the pedestrian Badger would get caught. And the Kaalakiota hulls are simply beautiful. I was hoping to make use of the lesser-used low-sec research centres, but the Crane has remained my general-purpose hauler for relatively safe and quick passage through w-space. The original Tigress met an untimely destruction in a green cloud of impending doom, and her replacement was ambushed during a w-space mining operation.

Retriever—Fido

Oh, right, I have a Retriever. When there was little else to do in w-space I used to mine, preferably with good company. Now in the same circumstances we camp wormholes, or I roam in my Manticore. It's called Fido because I didn't know what else a Retriever would be called.

Guardian—You Cowards!

On my way to training for the Damnation field command ship I found I could also pilot a Guardian logistics ship, which turns out to be more useful for fleet operations than the Damnation. Or, rather, our limited fleet numbers means I find myself in the Guardian more often than not, but I certainly enjoy the level of involvement of the logistics role in a fleet. Paired with a second Guardian, the ship can effect more armour repairs and feed capacitor-hungry battleships than should be physically possible, making our fleet a more adaptable force than by adding more DPS ships. The name is due to the pairing with Fin's Guardian called Stop Dying, and is a reference to Futurama.

Damnation—Bad Badtz Maru

My training in leadership skills to fit a warfare link on a Drake, and the buxom appeal of the Amarr field command ship, led me to be convinced that spending over two months training for the Damnation would be worthwhile. It is a gorgeous beast, the Khanid Innovation hulls equalling the looks of those from Kaalakiota. Slow and bulky, but determined and almost impenetrable, the Damnation can significantly boost the entire fleet with its warfare links. It can maintain a long range and provide covering missile fire, but is not overly vulnerable if caught in close combat. I need more excuses to take it out of the hangar. Its name comes from the character in Hello Kitty, because the ship looks somewhat like a crow to me.

Buzzard—wut?

It is impossible to survive in w-space without a scanning boat, at least not without going stir crazy sitting at a tower unable to go anywhere. I think I borrowed a basic frigate for a while until I trained for covert operations boats, and then I borrowed Fin's Buzzard after that. I eventually realised that I ought to rely on my own boat if I want to go out exploring regularly, and bought a Buzzard for myself. My first Buzzard was called Negotiations and was destroyed by a tower that should have been allied to our corporation. wut? is my second, and shows that I struggle to come up with decent ship names. The name is a friendly poke at the dialect of a colleague. Although wut? was fitted with a standard scanning boat fit initially, the discovery that it has a launcher hardpoint made me add a rocket launcher, web, and warp disruptor to it, to more quickly attack lone targets I may find without needing to swap to my Manticore or Onyx.

Manticore—Hold This

Training in covert operation boats opened up the opportunity to pilot stealth bombers. A little more training in the use of bombs made the Manticore an attractive purchase to sate my bloodlust against innocent miners. Being able to move around undetected with a several launchers of heavy firepower is thrilling, and stalking wormholes and gravimetric sites waiting for the right opportunity is quite addictive. It takes a while to get used to sighting bombs and engaging different classes of targets, but the Manticore is my ideal ship for solo roams, particularly when the navigational systems have plenty of sites bookmarked from a previous Buzzard scanning trip. My first Manticore was named Shhhhhh, although I forget—strictly, I never knew—how many Hs I added, because I couldn't think of anything better. It was destroyed after blowing up a Nighthawk, which sadly had nothing to do with me, and replaced by Hold This, a better name that was chosen by someone else.

Onyx—Ro-Jaws

I'm not quite sure what motivated me to train for heavy interdictors. I know our w-space presence was moving slowly towards engaging hostile ships more than retreating and that we needed to be able to remove their control of the battlespace, but I forget precisely why I wanted an Onyx. It is possible that my training for another ship put me only a few days away from learning heavy interdictors, but I don't honestly remember. However, it has been the best training I have completed and the best ship I own for w-space PvP, and all in a Kaalakiota hull. The HIC's warp bubble can capture any ship within a 20 km sphere and prevent them from warping, including the pods ejected from destroyed ships. There is no need to gain a lock, or a limit to the number of ships it can disrupt. Drop the Onyx in to the middle of a cluster of miners and they are all at our mercy. Sit on a wormhole with my bubble up and anything coming through has to negotiate with me, diplomatically or with weapons. And the Onyx can be an effective defensive measure, preventing ships from warping directly to a wormhole, or simply acting as an effective deterrent against smaller gangs. Although I still cannot deliver much damage, and I can't be stealthy, I feel most powerful when in Ro-Jaws, named after the ABC Warrior.

Malediction—unnamed

My latest skill training is about to put me in to an interceptor. I took time to complete my training in Amarr frigates so that I could pilot a Malediction instead of a Caldari equivalent. The Crow uses missiles but has no bonuses to warp scrambling modules, whereas the Raptor gets the scrambling bonus but uses guns. It was quicker to train for the Amarr interceptor that reverses these attributes than radically improve my gunnery skills. The Malediction also looks really mean, being a Khanid Innovations design. I will have to learn how to pilot interceptors to get the most out of them and am likely to lose a few before I get the hang of the role. And although the interceptor is still more of a controlling ship than DPS, the addition of a new class will hopefully make our fleet more adaptable. I have yet to think of a name for my first interceptor.

Catalyst—I Lost It

Even though I get a perverse satisfaction out of salvaging, I don't have a dedicated salvager boat out in w-space. Instead, I borrow a colleague's Catalyst as much as possible. In my more innocent days, I curiously trained in Gallente ships as my third racial choice instead of Minmatar, which allows me to use the Catalyst, but whether it is the ship's style or the just the fact that it has salvaging rigs I have grown quite fond of I Lost It. This is the only ship I still need to borrow occasionally.

I have other ships, all docked in stations in k-space, including a couple of Drakes, several Badgers, probably some Caracals, and numerous frigates, but my pod hasn't been near them for months. I also find it interesting that nearly all of my ships I pilot are Tech II. Where I once thought I'd struggle to afford a Crane, now I appreciate the specialisation that comes with Tech II hardware.

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Tags: buzzard, catalyst, crane, damnation, drake, eve online, guardian, malediction, manticore, meme, mmorpg, onyx, penny ibramovic, retriever