Scanning through the neighbourhood

The fresh static connection we open yesterday must be gone by now. I check the bookmark can floating nearby and find three new bookmarks, copying them across to my systems. Two of the bookmarks obviously mark our static wormhole and its K162 companion in the connecting system, but the third has a tag indicating that it is 'inactive'. It suggests that the scanner did not visit the wormhole and would prefer it to remain unopened for now. Taking a look in the C4 reveals an unoccupied system with two dozen anomalies waiting to be plundered of profit. Without any other incoming connections and the static wormhole left inactive, it looks to be an excellent system to engage in Sleeper combat and loot recovery. I leave the wormhole unvisited and return to the tower, taking a break in the hopes of a fleet forming later.

It takes a while but a minimal fleet eventually forms, just enough capsuleers available to cover the normal roles in our standard Sleeper fleet. Unfortunately, the fleet is fleeting, the convergence of capsuleers and available time intersecting only briefly before we are once again restricted in our endeavours. But with no Sleeper combat looking likely the bookmark to the inactive wormhole in our neighbouring C4 can be visited and further systems explored. Logistic ships are swapped for covert operations scanning boats and we dart out of the tower's shield to the wormhole like probes themselves.

The first hop is simple and we warp to the waiting wormhole. We pause briefly to create a more accurate bookmark for the C4's static connection, as a bookmark created from the scanning interface references the cosmic signature of the wormhole, which is separate from the phenomenon itself and can be several kilometres distinct, before jumping through to the class 5 w-space system beyond. The C5 is a pulsar system, occupied but with no ships apparently active according to the directional scanner. I find a tower with a Chimera carrier unpiloted inside its shields before realising there is also a second tower. The other tower is around an adjacent moon and is quiet too.

Two wormholes are found, an EOL K162 coming in from a class 5 system and the system's static wormhole leading in to another class 5 system. I jump through the static connection to see two Sleeper wrecks visible on d-scan but no ships. A tower is located with some small ships sitting inside the shields but nothing piloted. Two more wormholes are found, again a K162 from a C5 and the static connection leading to a C5. One colleague jumps through the K162 and reports 'nothing but a can' on d-scan, whilst the C5 through the static connection gives us a bunch of signatures to resolve.

There are no signatures that look obviously like wormholes and myself and our scan man chase down every last one, the final choice being the system's static wormhole. The signature looked least likely to be a wormhole because it turns out to be 5 AU away from the outermost planet and off the orbital plane, giving a comparatively really weak return signal. We warp to the wormhole and find we are being led in to a C3 for a change.

Our scan man jumps through to the C3 and finds an off-line tower, launching probes to also scan an exit to high-sec empire space. But there is no activity. We keep ourselves isolated in the hopes that we can plunder a system with little fear of interruption only to find a string of systems with not much happening. There isn't much to do but head back to the tower and rest for the night.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: chimera, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space