Overlooking the obvious
11th June 2010 – 5.19 pmEarlier scanning by scouts has found a route to empire space. The journey leads from home through the static C4 system to a C3, and from there to low-sec space. A class 6 w-space connection is also found in the C3, but all systems seem quiet. Fin goes looking for trouble in a null-sec system also linking in to the C3 but when I go to help I see that the wormhole is reaching the end of its natural lifetime. There is no activity in the null-sec system anyway and in quiet desperation I check the low-sec system only to find I am the only person in the system. There is one place left to look for action, the C6 system.
So far in my travels class 6 w-space systems have either been unoccupied or full of dangerous capsuleers with ships bigger than our tower, and heading in to one of these systems to look for action seems to be a mistake in itself. I see there is a tower in the system but with only small ships visible on the directional scanner. Locating the tower makes this more interesting, as the Hurricane battlecruiser, Osprey cruiser, Moa cruiser, and shuttle are not just the only ships in the shields but the only ships available to the corp, as there is no ship hangar. The tower itself is a small variant and there are no weapons protecting it. A bit of research shows the tower to be owned by a corporation with only three members. I have no idea how he survives out here.
I scan for the C6 system's static wormhole, soon finding an incoming connection from a class 2 system. That class 2 system must be a dangerous system to inhabit too. More scanning reveals the system's static wormhole, leading to a class 4 system, but it is EOL and I don't risk passing through. Luckily, some activity has been seen in the C3 behind me and I head back to see what's happening. A Buzzard has been spotted passing through the low-sec exit. I check the C3 system's tower and find an Imperial Navy Slicer frigate now sitting piloted but passive inside the shields. There are also four wrecks of Sleeper ships on d-scan but no combat ship to accompany them. It is suggested that the small number of wrecks could be from a miner who was spooked and left the site to swap in to a combat ship. If that's true, finding the mining site now may be beneficial for later, when the miner has settled down again. I launch probes and start scanning for ladar and gravimetric sites.
I resolve a ladar site and warp to it, finding no wrecks. Two more ladar sites are scanned, both being empty of Sleeper wrecks, which leaves only one more mining site to go. Again, no Sleeper wrecks are found. But they must be somewhere, so I resolve the final signature and find it to be a radar site. Simply wanting to find these wrecks now I warp to the radar site, taking care to enter the site at range to prevent warping in to danger. Unfortunately, I enter the site from the wrong direction, where warping to the cosmic signature at my chosen range actually drops me out of warp directly on top of a Sleeper databank. The databank decloaks me and I try to clear it to re-activate my cloak, but the Sleepers lock on to my Buzzard too quickly. Trying to warp out doesn't help now either, as the frigates have disrupted my warp engines. My fragile covert operations boat doesn't last long under Sleeper fire and I flee the site in my bare pod.
It is about this time that a colleague says he has found the wrecks. They are in an anomaly, the only one in range of the outer planet, which could be found with the most basic of scans. I am feeling suitably stupid right now. I take the wormhole exit to low-sec and buy and fit a new Buzzard, moping from stargate jump to stargate jump as I reflect on my impetuous nature clouding my thinking again. The most troublesome aspect of buying a new ship is in thinking of a new name. I quite liked wut? as a ship name and the best I can think of for my new Buzzard is Magnate, and that's only because I couldn't remember the name of the Amarr covert operations frigate. I take my new ship back through the low-sec wormhole to w-space and return home, where plans are afoot to collapse our static wormhole to look for better prospects. Let's hope the operation goes smoothly.
6 Responses to “Overlooking the obvious”
With allot of experience and living in WH space it's easily for you on a scan and finding the system WH to determine if it's a Incoming or Outgoing WH as well Static or not connection.
I'm far fr being that experienced as yet, though reading your blog I learn a tremendous amount. But how exactly does a inexperience player like me tell the difference upon encountering a unknown WH exactly whether it's a Static, incoming or outgoing WH?
staticmapper.com, of course.
While I'm working on an explanatory post, here's tl:dr
Incoming WHs are called k162, outgoing are called something else. As far as static, I'd go with staticmapper, unless the WH is the only outgoing WH, in which case it's the static.
All without moving my fingers!
Thanks for the question, Galo, and thanks for answering, miningzen.
Thanks for the feedback.
According to this: http://www.eve-search.com/thread/1174002/page/1
All non-K162 WHs inside W-space are statics. Non-K162s in K-space are NOT statics. K162 are, of course, never statics.
As Tau Cabalander notes in that thread, there exist some non-static, arbitrarily appearing wormholes in w-space. I know that with my corporation I have found a system that had three separate non-K162 wormholes, and it is quite unlikely that all three were static.