Tackling Sleepers after miners

I'm late. My corporation colleagues have been shooting miners without me. A Hulk exhumer and Retriever mining barge are both destroyed, throwing their capsuleers' pods out in to the harshness of the vacuum, although the pods escape, as does an Orca industrial command ship. I may have missed the action, but it makes me tingle to think that ruthless brutality is carried out under the banner of the Wormhole Engineers even in my absence. And it may not quite be over.

An Iteron hauler is used to recover the ore the miners ripped from the asteroids, taking its merry time crawling around the rocks, trying hard to act as bait without looking like bait. I jump in to my Onyx heavy interdictor to join the Lachesis combat recon ship sitting on the other side of the wormhole to our baiteron. The HIC may have been originally designed to tackle capital and super-capital ships, with its infinite-strength warp scramble and hefty buffer tank, and I was a little concerned about its utility out in w-space, but it has found a vital use out here, that of preventing pods escaping.

A capsuleer's pod is tiny compared to any ship. Its size and agility makes it warp away from conflict almost instantly, all but ensuring the capsuleer's survival. Locking on to the pod and pointing it, i.e. preventing it from engaging its warp engine, takes immense reflexes and a ship with highly boosted sensors. A HIC, however, doesn't need to lock a target to prevent it from warping, the warp disruption field generator—its 'bubble'—creating a sphere of damped space. If a pilot is caught in the HIC's bubble when his ship explodes around him he still cannot warp away, making his pod a much bigger target than normal.

Without my HIC I wouldn't have any pod kills, making it some of the most valuable skill training I have completed for w-space PvP. And, as I have mentioned before, pod killing is perhaps more necessary in w-space than destroying the ships. With few capsuleers straying far from their home system, because of the fragility of the wormhole network and the near-impossibility of finding your way back home without being guided from inside, allowing a pod to escape only increases the chances of quick and heavier reinforcements. It is perhaps more likely that capsuleers will lose the one ship and not come back, but I don't want to take the risk of someone returning with battleships or strategic cruisers. Podding is a harsh reality of life in w-space.

The miners unsurprisingly don't return, leaving us to return to our home system with an Iteron full of ore. But we also have a fleet, letting us head to our neighbouring system to clear some anomalies. We change in to our PvE ships and jump through the wormhole to begin making profit from the destruction of an unknown alien race. 'Oh, I forgot', says our squad leader, 'there are no anomalies here'.

'So we've finished early?', I ask.

'Good job everyone', continues Fin, satisfied with our increased efficiency in clearing the system. We may have accidentally run out of anomalies, but we don't make much profit doing so. Determined to boost our wallets, we head back home to clear a couple of anomalies there instead. Everything runs smoothly enough, apart from the Abaddon suffering a power interruption by relying on batteries to recharge its hungry capacitor, and our Scorpion pilot complaining that his drones fail to obey any of his commands. It sounds like they are gaining a level of self-awareness and intelligence to me. Despite the drones' attitude, a couple of anomalies are cleared without fuss, and we sweep up the profit from the wrecks in to our hulls to finish the evening.

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Tags: abaddon, eve online, hulk, iteron, lachesis, mmorpg, onyx, orca, penny ibramovic, pvp, retriever, scorpion, sleepers, w-space

Shooing a Golem

A Golem is in our system, killing our Sleepers. The marauder, the Tech II version of the Raven battleship, is from the same alliance we should be friendly with, one of whose member corporations bombed our tower, and he's probably come from the w-space system that recently left me feeling stupid in a pod without an exit. The few bodies we can contact are called in, and suggestions are made as to what our plan should be. We could try to talk to the pilot and explain our supposed mutual standings, hoping he will back down gracefully; try a show of force to repel him from the system; or engage him in a direct fight. Personally, if the head of the alliance doesn't want us to appear friendly to them, and after the annoyances they've inflicted on us, I am up for a fight.

We have a man in a covert operations boat watching the Golem's progress as he fights the Sleepers, and we stay out of particularly sharp ships for now, trying not to make him suspicious whilst we formulate a response. And although I'd quite like to blow up the Golem, or explode trying, it looks like asking him politely to leave is becoming the preferred option. Well, maybe more 'forcefully' than 'politely'. We'll wait until he's just about finished clearing the anomaly of Sleepers, then jump in to combat ships, block his exit and chance of quick reinforcements, and then 'ask' him if he wouldn't mind leaving our system.

I think the plan is quite clever, which is a good sign I didn't think of it. The last Sleeper is nearly killed and we pounce. I board my Onyx heavy interdictor, warp it to the connecting wormhole and jump through. As I am travelling, a conversation is started with the Golem pilot, our other pilots also getting in to combat ships in preparation. I get to the wormhole and jump through, holding my cloak for as long as possible. I am to raise my warp bubble on top of the wormhole, in case he gets hostile and calls for reinforcements. With my HIC's bubble up, any ships warping to the wormhole will bounce off the bubble potentially twenty kilometres from the wormhole, from where they will then have to crawl to the wormhole in order to jump. I'll jump back myself and, by the time they are in our system, will be long gone, warping to 100 km from the Golem's position, as dictated from corporation fleet members. I am then to raise my bubble again, so that the reinforcements bounce off me and don't get in to optimal range to help the Golem. It sounds like a good plan.

On the other side of the wormhole a Raven sits a little over 100 km away. I hold my position. When my cloak drops I raise my bubble, at which point the Raven targets me and launches missiles. He is slightly out of my targeting range, so I can't return lock and fire, but I can't be worried about a few missiles when I am protected by the mighty buffer tank of a HIC. I get a message that the Golem pilot is retreating gracefully, unaware of our connections with the alliance, which is decent of him. I disengage, jumping back through the wormhole and warping to our tower. The Raven pilot apparently apologises for firing on me, so I am told, but it wasn't a problem. The situation is defused. I would have preferred a more direct approach, but in this case the diplomatic one was probably best for all involved.

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

Always remember to bookmark the wormhole home

To shake my routine up a bit, I think I'll go scanning. Once my client stops crashing and the UI stops glitching, I may even make it out of our home w-space system. Chasing a signature around for five minutes for no reason, then having the probe range glitch happen is enough to make me want to give up for now. On the other hand, I'm getting in the right mood to find a Hulk to bomb, which gives me the motivation to finally find the static wormhole in our system. I also find our home system holds a second wormhole, and in my curiosity I warp to it and jump through, hoping to find a bored miner or two.

The system connecting to ours is occupied and has a couple of towers. The first tower sports a simple display of a Drake, Badger, and Badger Mark II, the second a more impressive array of a Zephyr, Heron, Drake, two Mammoths, a Maelstrom, Hulk, and even a Rorqual. I almost don't notice that, for reasons beyond my understanding, my Buzzard has decloaked. I have no idea what has caused me to decloak, and I have noticed other times that my cloak has dropped unexpectedly. I notice my cloak has dropped this time because the tower's defences are kind enough to highlight my vulnerability, by shooting the crap out of my Buzzard. I don't align and warp out in time, my covert operations boat sadly converted in to an elite frigate wreck, although I get my pod out safely.

Actually, I only get my pod away from the tower safely. I can't really make the claim that I get out, because I once again forgot to bookmark the location of the wormhole leading back home. Normally this is a minor frustration, as I simply scan the wormhole's position that is handily marked on the system map, but lacking a ship makes this rather more difficult. I have to wait for someone to rescue my idiot self. The evening is not going well. To add insult to injury, the towers in this system belong to the alliance that we are supposed to be allied to, and our mutual standings should be such that the tower shouldn't shoot me. I would be more surprised if it weren't the same alliance that failed for over a month to set standings with DGSE, making supposedly allied capsuleers shoot my brand new Onyx. And now their apathetic response has blown up my ship, albeit when I should have been cloaked in the first place.

I manage to attract the attention of a colleague, our scanning man, and he guides me back to the wormhole and safely home to our tower. I then get a squirt of lemon juice in the eye, to add injury to the insult on the injury, when he tells me he has scanned all of the systems already and the bookmarks are in the can. I should have checked that first, really. I am full of stupid tonight. At least there is a convenient exit to low-sec empire space, which lets me jump in to my Crane and head out to buy a new Buzzard quickly. After taking care to save my ship fittings, for times when I need to replace a ship, I find that I failed to save the Buzzard's fitting. Oh well, at least it's a pretty basic configuration, just needing a cloak, probe launcher, probes, a micro-warp drive, a couple of nanofibre hull modifications, and a capacitor recharger. There are a pair of rigs back at the tower ready to be fitted as well.

My Crane gets me to a high-sec station where Buzzards are reasonably priced and I can pick up most of the fittings. I take advantage of a gap in the market and cheap modules a couple of jumps away to relocate a chunk of the stock in the hope of making a small profit, then throw all my new purchases in the Crane's hold and fly back to w-space. I launch and fit my new Buzzard, ready for another day's scanning. It hasn't quite been the adventure I wanted this evening, but it wasn't boring.

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Tags: badger, buzzard, crane, drake, eve online, heron, hulk, maelstrom, mammoth, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, rorqual, scanning, w-space, zephyr

Opportunistic looting in w-space

Scan man goes out to scan, warping to our static wormhole. I've just turned up and am looking for adventure so ask if I can come along. 'I thought you'd want to'. I warp to his position and we both jump through to today's neighbouring system. Let's off-road! It looks like our arrival spooks a Proteus strategic cruiser too, seen on d-scan along with some Sleeper wrecks before it disappears. A tower is found in the system, its shields holding an Orca and Retriever, and a second tower just has a shuttle visible. The Proteus is elsewhere. With only two signatures to scan here it should be easy enough to trace.

I manage to choose the radar site to resolve, our scan man finding the system's static wormhole. I get a good enough scan to bookmark the radar site anyway whilst my colleague warps to the wormhole and jumps. The Proteus is in the next system somewhere. I go to the outwards wormhole myself and jump, and am rather more impressed by the Chimera carrier, Moros dreadnought, and Rorqual all on d-scan. And I would go looking for them if my cat hadn't just brought in a live mouse. Luckily, the mouse is cornered and I can scoop him up away from Panda-cat, returning him to his natural habitat of 'outside' where Panda will probably just hunt him again, but there's not much more I can do. So I begin my hunt for the capital ships, finding them at a tower protected by four large bubbles. There is a companion tower around the same planet, but no ships are present there.

There is still no sign of the Proteus, and my scanning colleague has moved in to two new systems whilst I've been dealing with cats and ogling capitals. He's quick. He also returns home, having mapped out the current connected systems and finding few opportunities for us to profit, particularly with the intimidating intermediate systems. On his way back to our tower he spots a Drake on the outside of our home wormhole, although it poses no problems for his getting back safely. I jump back and warp to range, spotting it too. The Drake is about thirty kilometres from the wormhole and circling it, which seems odd. Maybe it's acting as bait, but I don't know for what. The Proteus is in the system again, so perhaps the Drake is acting as an early warning system, monitoring ships coming through from our system.

The Drake probably doesn't know I am in the system, having seen our Cheetah return. I look for the Proteus. There are no anomalies in the system, so I can't rely on my on-board systems, but I have the radar site scanned and bookmarked from earlier, so there is no need to drop scanning probes and alert the ships of my presence. I warp to the radar site, holding my cloak, and find the Proteus taking quite a pounding from the Sleepers there. It looks like he is hacking in to the databanks whilst tanking the Sleeper damage, more interested in the data than the Sleepers themselves. It makes me wonder if I could steal some of the loot for myself. More importantly, if I can do it without dying. Whilst the idea appeals to me, the Proteus seems sufficiently close to the wrecks that I would be risking a lot to try to loot them, even if he has no warp scrambling systems fitted. I settle down to watch his progress for now.

A new wave of Sleeper ships arrives during a hacking attempt of the Proteus, and the three battleships, seven cruisers and five frigates are enough to chase the Proteus away, after which it drops off d-scan. The Drake disappears too. On reflection and discussion with my colleague, we probably could have engaged the Drake successfully, even if it would have called the Proteus in as reinforcements. We were just a bit trepidatious for some reason. Now the system is clear, it's just me and the Sleepers in the radar site. And some unlooted wrecks.

Like an idiot, I make a grab for one of the wrecks, warping off with some loot in my hold as all the Sleepers start flashing red as they lock on to my flimsy Buzzard. Like a bigger idiot, I go back for more. I am able to hold my cloak until I am in range to loot the wreck, at which point I initiate warp out of the site and quickly transfer the loot in to my hold as my drive engages. I manage to get the contents of three wrecks before deciding I am pushing my luck, the Sleeper frigates getting ever closer each time I decloak, and I return safely to our tower. The six million ISK of loot is probably not worth risking a ship that's worth over three times as much, but the thrill certainly is.

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Tags: buzzard, cheetah, chimera, drake, eve online, mmorpg, moros, orca, panda, penny ibramovic, proteus, retriever, rorqual, scanning, sleepers

Taking care not to be caught unawares

Our wallets need bolstering, so we head to today's neighbouring w-space system to plunder some Sleeper wrecks. Radar sites are a little too fiddly for tonight's schedule, so we'll stick to clearing basic anomalies. And as if to enforce our time limit for the evening our static wormhole begins its end-of-life decay just before we start, giving us maybe two or three hours before it implodes. Of course, the last time a wormhole was meant to last a couple of hours I end up stranded in high-sec space for a while. At least if the worst happens we have a route to empire space and scanning characters located at our tower to guide us back in through a new path.

The system we are plundering is occupied but quiet, so we'll need to be vigilant about monitoring the directional scanner for signs of activity. There has been no sign of activity all day, but that could simply make it more likely that the occupants will wake up now. To avoid complications of leaving wrecks behind us, and because we have no dedicated salvager pilot at the moment, the salvaging Ishtar heavy assault ship, or 'salvatar', is once again brought in to the field. We plunge in to some anomalous Sleeper combat, and it starts nice and smoothly. The pilot of the Scorpion ECM battleship has to leave for a short while, which turns out to be okay for the last wave of the anomaly but we probably need it back before facing a wave of four Sleeper battleships. To compensate, a Rook is swapped in to the fleet as we move to start the second anomaly.

There is a slight snag as we warp as a fleet to the anomaly, the second Guardian getting stuck on the Sleeper structure in the first site. Even after getting clear her ship bounces back in to the structure, the route to the second anomaly being almost directly along the structure's z-axis, but on a third attempt she gets in to warp. By this time we are cheering for the ECM in the fleet. There was some initial damage from the Sleepers, punching through our minimal shields easily enough, but then the jammers disrupt the Sleepers' systems and the only ordinance doing any damage now is coming from our ships. As a reward, our Rook pilot gets to look like a comet as he flies around with ten maintenance drones trailing behind him.

A Cheetah appears on d-scan. The question is asked if we break off. Bah, a Cheetah can't do anything. 'I'm sure the people we hit thought the same', comes the reply, and he makes a good point. I suppose it may depend on where the Cheetah has come from. If it has come from this system's tower then we may be okay, being able to spot any new ships on d-scan easily enough, but if the Cheetah has come from an external system it could be looking for targets. There are no probes out scanning the system, but it's pointed out that we are at an anomaly and no probes are needed to find anomalies, only the on-board scanner. If the covert operations pilot is smart or experienced he'll know this, and with Sleeper wrecks on d-scan it should be obvious we are in a site of some kind. As we know, and I have found out, locating ships running anomalies is really easy in a cov-ops boat.

The Cheetah is spotted on d-scan again, and then he's gone. We don't know his motives, if he is a solo scanner happy to ignore this system because the anomalies are already being cleared, or part of a larger operation looking for targets to ambush. We decide to be cautious and head home. We clear the anomaly we are in first, the Ishtar grabbing as much loot and salvage as it can, before warping out the moment the last of the Sleepers is destroyed. We leave some wrecks behind rather than trying to get all the loot, as after all any assailants may well wait until the Sleepers are gone and the capsuleers are relaxing, 'like those WHEN pirates did'. Warping back, the end-of-life wormhole is still there, which is maybe a good result of the Cheetah spooking us, and we jump and return to our tower safely with a fair haul of profitable loot. We clear one more anomaly in our home system to complete the evening.

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Tags: cheetah, eve online, guardian, ishtar, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, rook, scorpion, sleepers, w-space

Scanning for targets

The galaxy has been reset and is ripe for scanning. It looks like the irrepressible Fin has been here before the reset and has scanned the neighbouring systems, leaving some handy bookmarks for me to copy. Instead of looking mostly for wormholes I can instead go out scouting for activity, whilst enjoying a chocolate muffin. What a pleasant start to the afternoon.

I am informed by my ship's systems that the 'wormhole exit is stabilising', indicating a system devoid of activity and occupants since the reset, which is not a good start to my scouting. I wait the few seconds for the wormhole to stabilise and jump through, finding the system to be occupied even if there is no one currently awake. I locate the tower for reference, with its cloak-breaking containers scattered around a warp bubble, and find a Mammoth hauler in the shields. I make a quick scan of the system, in case these chaps become active later, and any bookmarked sites will let me find them quickly. Before I spend a while hunting signatures, I may as well check for any activity in the next system across. This wormhole is also stabilising, so I can stay here and scan without missing any exciting opportunities.

I grab as many signatures as I can bear to stand and, with no signs of activity at the tower in this system, head over to the next system. There is a tower in the new system, with a Harbinger, Drake and Buzzard sitting in its shields, all unmanned, and nothing else showing up on the directional scanner. I take a quick scan and find few signatures in the system, which may be enough to let me be thorough here. And thoroughness pays off, as the final signature turns out to be another wormhole, unmapped from earlier. The current system's tower remains boringly quiet, so I jump onwards.

There are loads of anomalies in this new system, but with two occupied intermediate systems between here and home it is unlikely we'll attempt any PvE with the Sleepers. There is also a tower with an unmanned Raven sitting idly inside its shields. I scan, looking for wormholes, employing my 'most likely percentage' method. With an initial probe range of 16 AU I look for signatures with a strength of around 4%—which must be noted is a value based on experience of my ship, its rigs, and my skill training—and find a wormhole on my first attempt! It leads further in to w-space and is at the end of its lifetime, so I keep scanning the current system. FUN sounds like a good signature, but it lies as leads to gas mining, but it points me to the JKK signature which turns out to be a static wormhole leading to low-sec space. I keep looking.

I find another wormhole leading to w-space, and then another, and I think that's it for wormholes in here, which admittedly is already plenty. I jump onwards, picking one of the two stable wormholes I have found that lead further in to w-space. I quickly find two towers in the system, sitting on adjacent moons of a single planet, but with no ships in them. A bit of warping to cover the system finds a third tower, and I notice that a Bestower industrial and Occator transport ship are somewhere in the system. Those are viable targets. I manage to find a wormhole exit leading to high-sec space and warping to it reveals the Occator sitting on the wormhole. The Occator jumps to the high-sec side, then the Bestower jumps through to this side and warps off to what looks like planet ten, where I found the third tower. Haulers taking loot to sell in high-sec, or bringing back goods from the market, these are juicy targets. I rush back home to jump in to my Manticore stealth bomber.

Home is several systems away now, and despite being in agile ships it still takes a little while to traverse the wormholes, change ships, and set myself up to bomb the promising high-sec exit. It is quite possible I have missed my chance at an opportunistic strike, even if the haulers were making more than one run. I could have caught just the tail-end of their operation and I wouldn't know. There are no ships visible on d-scan, which could as soon mean they have logged off as are out in high-sec and likely to return. I wait for a while but it doesn't look like the haulers are still active. At least, not within my current level of patience. With a couple of new systems mapped and some sites bookmarked for reference I head back to the tower for a rest.

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Tags: bestower, buzzard, drake, eve online, harbinger, mammoth, manticore, mmorpg, occator, penny ibramovic, raven, scanning, w-space

Flying through a hostile bubble

An exit to empire space has been found. Even better, it is only three jumps from Jita. Jita may be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it has good shops. And as it is the market capital of Caldari space, I should be able to get a good price on a new Manticore. There is a slight complication of a warp bubble encompassing one of the wormholes, but I'm not too worried about passing through unmonitored bubbles. I jump in to my trusty Crane transport ship and head off. Indeed, there are no hostile ships around the warp bubble—no one on the directional scanner even—and a quick blast of my micro-warp drive sees me clear and warping off cloaked to high-sec space.

As luck would have it, I managed to save my fitting for the Manticore, which makes it easy to view it and buy replacements without having to guess or reconstruct the fitting from basic principles. I really ought to save more fittings, as it makes losing ships rather less awkward, and I need to admit that I will be losing ships. Unsurprisingly, a single station in Jita has everything I need to replace my Manticore, and once it is all loaded in to Tigress III's hold I am off. But whilst I am in Caldari space, I may as well show my face at my much-neglected manufacturing base. I deliver some month-old production jobs and send them to market, and install a couple more jobs that will no doubt gather dust. I would install more but my mineral supplies are running low, and I don't fancy making the trips required to replace them just now. I really should make some time at some point, as even though the income from my industrial arm is relatively minor it is still reassuring to have a profitable trickle of ISK coming in to my wallet every day.

I make sure I remember to re-store my stealth bomber and fittings in to my Crane's hold, after making room for modules to be taken to extra-system markets, and head back to w-space. Once back at the tower I jettison the Manticore and, like a fancy umbrella, it flooms in to full form. I swap Crane for Manticore, and Hold This is born. I grab all my modules and start fitting the bomber, and this is when I realise that my saved fitting, whilst a really good idea, would have been better had it been the most recent version. I ended up fitting different launchers in the old Manticore because of the power grid needs to fit some interesting modules in the mid slots that could actually be brought on-line, and I need to get more of those launchers or face the same grid issues. Oh well, the wormholes are still around, I may as well head back to Jita. The trip will only take five minutes.

Warp bubbles become rather more dangerous when a hostile ship is lurking around them. In this case, I bump in to a Harbinger battlecruiser on the inbound side of the bubbled wormhole, the side without the bubble. This would be really bad, but luckily a colleague is there before me, keeping the Harbinger's attention. The three of us jump through the wormhole in close succession, where I power my Crane through the warp bubble whilst the hostile Harbinger locks me as a target. He gets no shots off and I am able to warp away when I am clear of the wormhole, as I suspect my colleague is pounding the Harbinger's armour with weapon fire. If I were more alert, I would probably have turned around to get a more pointy ship from the tower but, to be honest, I was caught a little unawares and my mind decided that sticking to my plan was best. So it is that I am out in Jita when all the action occurs.

The hostile Harbinger is destroyed, corporation colleagues turning up in sharp ships to send his pod packing. Another kill for our new corporation! Unfortunately, friends of the Harbinger pilot's turn up and my colleagues are caught loitering in the kill-zone for too long. A Rifter frigate, Devoter heavy interdictor, and Sacrilege and Vagabond heavy assault ships bring their firepower down on our ships, destroying and podding a colleague. I am relayed all of this information through the corporation channel, and it makes me a little nervous about coming back through w-space. I wait a little while but don't want to be stuck in high-sec, so start to make a move, hoping to be able to scout the path home before flying headlong in to trouble. I am told that our neighbouring system is clear, so that just leaves the system with the bubble on the wormhole.

I enter w-space and warp to the next wormhole at range. Predictably, I am pulled in to the warp bubble. With several hostile ships still in the bubble I turn to warp away, but before even the agile Crane can enter warp the bubble disappears. It has been unanchored. With my cloak holding and the bubble gone, my anxiety subsides and I cut the warp engines, instead moving away from the wormhole and hostiles under normal power. I identify a Wolf assault ship—a Tech II variant of the Rifter—as well as the Sacrilege and Devoter ships on the wormhole, which makes me a little nervous but it looks like they have had their fun and are leaving. It is clearly not a good idea to dwell in a kill-zone for too long. The warp disruptor module is picked up, and the ships warp off, leaving a clear route home. I make it back to the tower safely.

My new launchers are fitted to the Manticore and I have a suitably fitted stealth bomber again. I take the opportunity to save the revised fitting for future reference, and then jump in to my other ships to save their fittings too. Being able to recall the saved fitting is too convenient a feature to ignore, particularly when living out in w-space where ships go pop every day.

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Tags: crane, devoter, eve online, harbinger, jita, manticore, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, rifter, sacrilege, vagabond, w-space, wolf

Armour tanking in a pulsar system

Scanning has a purpose! I need to get myself a new Manticore after the old one exploded, and to do that I have to dock in empire space to buy one from the market. There is a slight complication in that our current static wormhole has been deemed inappropriate for some reason, and an operation is in progress to close it. However, the benefit is that a new wormhole will soon be open and there are people around to help with scanning, which will make the process quicker. Once the wormhole is collapsed the new one is found, and two of us jump through for some co-operative scanning.

The neighbouring system is unoccupied and full of juicy signatures to resolve. Actually, the anomalies don't need to be resolved, as any ship's on-board scanner can find them reliably, and anomalies are the bread-and-butter w-space PvE. The signatures are gas, gas, rocks, and gas, predictably enough, although a couple of radar and magnetometric sites are also found. And the occasional wormhole, which my colleague finds. My calculations at quickly finding wormholes based on their initial signature strengths still needs more data to be reliable. Another colleague turns up for three-capsuleer scanning as we jump in to the next system, one we visited about five weeks ago. It is still uninhabited, and I find a wormhole out of here on my second attempt, hitting gas initially.

Our third system of the night is inhabited, and contains an exit to low-sec space. I hope that the BYE signature will spit us out somewhere convenient, but it only leads to more gas. With all of this gas, I am wondering just how much of a vacuum it really is out there, not that I am keen to leave my pod to find out, though. The low-sec exit turns out to be good enough to bring in a couple of allied pilots who are happy to shoot Sleepers with us, and as they dash to join us in a fleet I find I don't have time to shop for a new stealth bomber. I head back to the tower and swap in to my Guardian logistics ship in preparation for combat. The neighbouring system contains a pulsar, which boosts shields, and we are nominally an armour-based fleet. Our lack of fitness for a pulsar system and the extra pilots in the fleet should shake us Guardian pilots out of our rut steady groove.

Our allied friends turn up. We lend them a couple of ships to use and we are soon enough jumped in to the neighbouring system and have two cleared anomalies behind us, initial combat causing few real problems. Another Wormhole Engineer turns up and, after having to scan for the static wormhole from all of us forgetting to drop a bookmark in the can, joins us to shoot Sleepers. All these ships certainly are a lot to take care of, even when my drone bay is loaded with armour repair drones and I have no need to target the Sleepers themselves. One energy transfer is permanently targeted on the other Guardian, the other is on either the Megathron or Abaddon, as they suck their own capacitors dry pretty quickly otherwise. And the greater number of ships gives the Sleepers more targets, so we need to be more alert to incoming damage. It is not as simple as making sure our punching bag of a Scorpion pilot is kept safe. Besides which, the Scorpion doesn't have its normal pilot this evening.

This sized fleet means our current squad leader has to promote me to wing commander in order to preserve a legitimate fleet, to grant fleet bonuses. I am pleased that my training in the leadership skills helps the fleet. On top of that, some of the core skills I've been focussing on recently look to be helping indirectly, allowing a greater number of reppers to be run off a single incoming energy transfer array for much longer, whilst using the second array to transfer enery to a battleship at the same time. It's good to see positive results from utilitarian skill training. I also quite enjoy being wing commander, even if I should not be put in charge of a fleet, but it has the drawback of not being included in squad movements, and I find myself loitering in a cleared anomaly as everyone else warps to the next. I probably should have mentioned something. It's not a problem to catch up shortly, as all ships have tended to survive ten seconds or so alone in a Sleeper anomaly.

And with the anomalies being cleared so quickly and smoothly, and with a fair-sized fleet, we head in to magnetometric sites to grab some Sleeper artefacts for greater profits. The first magnetometric site even has a deserted Talocan cruiser to be salvaged. My fabulous Damnation is refitted with an analyser module to enable it to provoke the secondary waves of Sleepers with little risk of exploding, although I am not the lucky one to be pilotting it today. The Damnation is swapped for a specialised analysing Kestrel once the Sleepers are cleared from the site and we leave it to grab all the artefacts whilst we move on to a second site, again with a deserted Talocan cruiser. I can almost feel all the iskies flooding in to my wallet. But we need an analyser to alert the second wave of Sleepers in this second magnetometric site.

The Kestrel warps in to our site, after one of the fleet warps in to the previous site to prevent it from despawning in the meantime, and starts to analyse the artefacts, hoping to provoke a Sleeper response. But nothing occurs when the first artefact is recovered. She continues, and on the third artefact the Sleepers appear. The poor Kestrel gets targeted and fired upon quickly, but it is expected and the ship is primed to warp out quickly. I note that the Sleepers' missiles keep homing in on the Kestrel even as it warps away, making a sharp diversion and getting a big boost in speed as the frigate's warp drive engages. Nothing strikes the fragile ship, though, our pilot getting away cleanly. The second magnetometric site is then cleared of Sleeper activity before the Kestrel returns to grab all the loot. But it is a little challenging, as the pulsar detrimentally affects our systems enough that when four Sleeper Safeguard battleships concentrate fire on the Scorpion it takes all we have to prevent it imploding. And that was after our Ishtar pilot didn't want to wait to see if we could maintain his hull integrity, wisely warping out with minimal armour left after the Sleepers' alpha strike hit him.

But we cope. The second Talocan cruiser even turns out to be only a malfunctioning hull, the second tier of salvage, where we normally get wrecked hulls. It's been quite an interesting evening. Flying with a larger fleet has kept me actively engaged in keeping all ships in a fit state. The faster micro-warp drive-boosted battleships easily fly twice as fast as my Guardian, the slower ECM Scorpion less than half my speed, and with Sleepers appearing over twice my effective module range apart it has been challenging to maintain suitable ranges for my systems to be effective on all ships. It has been a fun and enjoyable evening of plundering sites of specific Sleeper interest.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Armour tanking in a pulsar system
Tags: abaddon, damnation, eve online, guardian, ishtar, kestrel, megathron, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, scorpion, sleepers, w-space

Ambushing Sleeper combat

I have a few idle minutes, so I wake myself up at the w-space tower to see how everyone is doing. It turns out to be a most opportune moment. Our scanning man is a couple of systems away monitoring two Abaddon battleships and a Hurricane battlecruiser clearing Sleeper sites, judging by the wrecks showing up on the directional scanner. The question about what to do is put forwards. Scan man finds the anomaly where they are and warps in to take a closer look.

The Sleeper killers don't appear to have any remote repair capabilities running, nor are they going to be flying with buffer tanks against Sleepers, so they must have on-board repair systems. As a Brutix battlecruiser joins the fray with them, the Hurricane is seen to clear the wrecks as they go, looting and salvaging. Regardless of our ultimate plan, we form a nasty, pointy fleet just in case we decide to attack. I get in my Onyx heavy interdictor, joining with a Lachesis combat recon ship, Zealot heavy assault ship, and Hound stealth bomber.

The Hound jumps to the system two across, returning to keep track of the targets. The rest of the fleet jumps in to our neighbouring system and warps to the connecting wormhole, holding on the other side from the targets. We don't jump through because there is a Helios covert operations boat also in the system, whose affiliation is unknown. Although we will be far out of range of the targets' directional scanners, we don't want our presence to be detected early.

There is some uncertainty about whether the ships will fight if we engage them. Personally, I remember all the times when we have been threatened by a fleet of Tech II ships when running Sleeper sites, and we have invariably run, if only because we are not prepared or have ships fitted for PvP. And as our targets are salvaging as they fight, their configurations must be compromised from pure combat. I think we'll be fine, as long as we don't panic.

Our targets finish the anomaly and move to a new site, so we hold on the other side of the wormhole. Our Hound follows and moves in to a good position. The pilot is our scanning man and he is pretty smart. He positions his stealth bomber to be about 30 km from the primary target, the Hurricane, on a line with but on the opposite side from the wormhole. He does this so that when we jump we can warp to him at various ranges and either drop on top of the targets, land on the Hound, or be at the optimal range of our weapons. And whilst we are in warp, the Hound will launch his bomb, giving an alpha strike that won't harm our fleet.

The anomaly is cleared, the command given to jump and warp! The fleet pops through the wormhole and warps at optimal range to the Hound, which for me is 30 km so that I can activate my warp bubble on top of the primary target. This is the moment of uncertainty. We have 70 AU to cover through warp, and the Helios may spot us at any time, the targets in the last 14 AU. And I just realise that in my haste I forgot to bookmark this side of the wormhole. Oh well, that can wait for now. The Hurricane is moving, still salvaging, but the Hound decloaks and launches its bomb. The targets must be surprised but perhaps not too worried about a single stealth bomber in their midst. But that's before the rest of us drop out of warp.

My warp bubble is activated, trapping the Hurricane and the nearby Brutix, although the Hurricane is quickly moving out of range. I move to follow him and activate my scripted warp disruption field generator, with its greater range than my bubble, just to hold him for long enough for the fleet to pop him. I see his ship disintegrating and capsule warp off, and turn my Onyx around to ensure the Brutix stays well within my bubble. The two Abaddons are long gone by now, neither initially caught in my bubble and happy to flee. The Brutix is not as lucky and has no chance of escape now, and being ensconced within my HIC's bubble his pod suffers the same fate as his ship.

A careful watch is kept on the directional scanner in case reinforcements arrive, but it seems unlikely from these targets caught unawares. The loot from the ships is gathered, hitting a minor jackpot with the Hurricane dropping a small bounty of Sleeper loot and salvage. Noting from the kill records that the Hurricane must have been quite an old ship, having had large rigs fitted, makes it a shame to have popped it in some ways, but it also works as a trophy. A few of us linger in the pocket for a bit longer than is ideal, as a fleet member warps back to the wormhole to give the more excitable of us who didn't bookmark the way home a point of reference out of the system, and the previously detected Helios warps in to the cleared anomaly at range before running away quickly.

The fleet warps out, the Hound remaining to monitor any activity for a while. The Helios is spotted again but too far away for the Hound to engage, otherwise the site staying quiet. We all get home safely with one pod and two ship kills fresh in our logs. One scampish colleague notes that the targets 'lost the escalation spawn', referring to the additional wave of Wormhole Engineers the anomaly boasted. We're certainly adapting to life out in w-space, and it feels better to engage combat ships than miners, even if it is entirely on our own terms.

Posted in Gaming | 5 Comments »
Tags: abaddon, brutix, eve online, helios, hound, hurricane, lachesis, mmorpg, onyx, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, w-space, zealot

Switching to repper drones

It's time for some more action. A minimal fleet is available to engage some Sleepers in an anomaly or two. We jump to today's neighbouring system and the squad leader warps the fleet in to the first anomaly. There is some confusion, however, as despite the whole wing apparently being in the system when warp is initiated the second Guardian ship remains at the wormhole. The pilot is understandably confused at the complete lack of action, whilst the rest of us are wondering where our last ship is.

As is predictable in such cases, the missing ship warps in to the anomaly under its own steam as we warp out to the wormhole to find it. It's not a big problem, as the fleet turns around at the wormhole and flies right back in to the anomaly to recover as gracefully as possible. And it's actually not such a bad situation for me, as once again I forget to bookmark the location of the wormhole home. I silently make the bookmark as the fleet warps out and in.

Clearing the anomaly is handled smoothly but slowly. The two DPS ships are both missing their drones for some reason, and Sleeper frigates are rather more resilient to big weapons because of their low signature radius. Normally, my Guardian's drones would help attack the smaller Sleeper ships, but I have swapped out my scout drones for maintenance ones, copying my more experienced twinned pilot. These new drones repair armour in much the same way as a remote armour repair module, but without being reliant on my ship's capacitor. They are almost as effective as an extra remote repper, which is quite useful in the more challenging sites.

The maintenance drones are straightforward enough to use, simply needing the pilot to target a ship and setting the drones to 'engage' the target as normal. It sounds rather more hostile than it is, and I think a flexible interface would be more suitable, one where the available commands change dependent on the function of the units. If some wag were to exchange my maintenance drones for scout drones, for example, I would be more inclined to notice them lacking a 'repair target' option, were one normally available, and as a result not send them to engage a friendly target with their weapons instead of reppers. As it is, the 'light armour maintenance bot' name is luckily lengthy enough to catch my eye and prevent this kind of mistake, but a better UI is preferable.

The anomaly is cleared without further problems, and I gleefully come back in a salvaging destroyer to clear up our mess. But there is a minor squabble brewing back home. Someone has borrowed the Lachesis combat recon ship of one of our more sensitive pilots without having the skills to operate the guns, causing them to be off-line when he now boards it. A challenge of a two-on-two duel is quickly made, to restore, um, actually, I'm unclear what the motives are, but it's okay. Everyone loses interest or falls asleep before the situation gets too drastic. And so ends another day in w-space.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Switching to repper drones
Tags: eve online, guardian, lachesis, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, sleepers, w-space