Scanning and salvaging

Early scanning sees me chasing the static wormhole around our system. Or, at least, its signature. I'm used to having the occasional cosmic signature be elusive but it is a new experience to need several scans to resolve the wormhole from a probabilistic ring to a single point to scan. I wouldn't mind so much but the class 4 system the connection today leads to is rather bland, an unpopulated system I last visited about a month ago. But the initial chase is echoed here, as I need to ignore rocks, gas, gas, and rocks as I sift through the many signatures looking for a wormhole.

In desperation, having exhausted all the signatures likely to be a wormhole, I purposely pick the weakest return signal to resolve. Normally, the weakest signals will be the magnetometric sites but I have already started to find and ignore them in this system, so I'll work backwards and see what happens. Lo, the weakest signal in the system turns out to be a wormhole, a static connection to a C5. I jump through and, noting the presence of a tower but no ships, begin a fresh scan. There are only three signatures in the system and I pick the weakest of them to resolve first, feeling rather contrary now. And, looky, it's another wormhole, leading to a C3 system. I may need to see if my probes have been sabotaged before my next expedition.

Only celestial objects appear on scan next to the K162 in the C3, and I launch probes to begin scanning. Warping around reveals the system to be unoccupied and my scan returns many anomalies that are good for plundering and a bunch of signatures to resolve. I trip over a wormhole this time, a secondary signal showing the 'unknown' type whilst the signature I picked turns out to be a gravimetric mining site. Resolving and warping to the wormhole brings me to a low-sec exit to empire space, the connection also reaching the end of its natural lifetime. It looks like another quiet day unless there are more wormholes, but I can find no others and head home to the tower.

I spy a Manticore stealth bomber in the home system. I don't recognise its name and it soon disappears from the directional scanner, but whether it has cloaked or jumped I cannot tell. I haven't seen any activity during my exploration and it could be possible I missed a second wormhole in the home system, leading in to us instead of out. I launch probes and take a look but find nothing new. The ship may have come from a different wormhole elsewhere that I failed to scan, or maybe it belongs to the tower in the C5. I take a quick look back through the systems for any traces of the ship but find nothing. I can't really worry about it at the moment and return to our tower to rest.

A little later, my colleague with the Tengu strategic cruiser turns up again. And again we have a C3 system waiting to be exploited. I have taken a second look around the w-space neighbourhood. The C5 occupants are nowhere to be seen and the EOL low-sec exit has collapsed. I haven't bothered to scan for the new static wormhole in that system, partly because it offers no direct gain to do so and partly because keeping it closed prevents low-sec tourists from invading the C3. My colleague fires up his Tengu and heads out to the C3 to engage Sleepers in anomalies, I sit in a salvaging Catalyst destroyer at the tower and wait until the first anomaly he tackles is almost clear.

Again I head out in a salvaging vessel to clear an unprotected site of wrecks, knowing that we've had our fun picking on capsuleers just like me recently. The C5 remains quiet, the previous low-sec exit has disappeared and the new one not found yet, and there is no sign of the Manticore from earlier. As long as I remain vigilant I should be okay, and the first site is looted and salvaged cleanly.

Another colleague turns up and wants a path to Jita, my communication skills obviously failing me. I try to explain several times that the exit to empire space was EOL and has collapsed since scanning it, which is why there is no bookmark to the wormhole. It doesn't exist. Eventually the message gets across and the new static connection to low-sec is scanned and found, whilst the Tengu finishes clearing a second anomaly, now with the help of another colleague in a Legion strategic cruiser. It looks like our ship hangar array is getting deadlier.

I warp in to loot and salvage the second anomaly, still no threats appearing to shoot me. A third anomaly is cleared by the Tech III duo and I sweep through the wrecks in that one too. Whilst combat is probably more glamorous there is something about the efficiency in good salvaging that really appeals to me. The C3 remains quiet, apart from our own antics, the C5 occupants are still nowhere to be seen, and we all get back to the tower safely. I transfer the loot in to temporary storage and calculate that I've brought back over a hundred and fifty million ISK in loot. Shared three ways, it's a nice haul for a few anomalies. I would have made a good target by the end of my salvaging.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: catalyst, eve online, jita, legion, manticore, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, salvage, scanning, tengu, w-space