Welcoming tourists to w-space
25th June 2010 – 5.40 pmMy Manticore roams local w-space looking for activity. The stealth bomber is small and agile, yet can pack quite a punch. It mostly suffers when attacking ships that can fight back, as its small hull doesn't withstand much damage, and as I am flying solo I need to limit what I can engage. I spot a Rook recon ship in a class 4 w-space system, finding it sitting inside the shields of a tower. I monitor its movements for a while, watching it access a can marked 'route' before the pilot changing ships to a Falcon recon ship and warping off. I suspect the pilot changes from Rook to Falcon to gain a cloaking device for covert travel. He zooms off directly downwards from the tower, not relating to any bookmark I have, but I couldn't realistically engage either ship in my Manticore anyway. I move on.
I reach the end of my route and all the systems I have bookmarked are still quiet. Heading back spots a Devoter heavy interdictor somewhere in the class 2 system, which quickly disappears, and then I notice an Anathema covert operations boat on the directional scanner. He doesn't seem to be cloaking either. I take a guess that the pilot has found and come in from the high-sec exit in the system, and warp to the wormhole. The ship is indeed sitting on the wormhole and I take the opportunity to decloak, lock my weapons systems, and start firing. The warning sirens in the Anathema's pod wake the pilot up and he jumps through to high-sec as his armour drops to half. I loiter for a while but he doesn't come back, his bravado not quite matching the aggressive profile he has written.
Engaging ships on a high-sec wormhole is mostly futile, as the ship can simply jump back to the relative safety of Concord-protected space. It is pointless to attempt a serious ambush directly on top of such a wormhole, but I am merely being opportunistic. A pilot is unlikely to get distracted and go AFK shortly after jumping through in to w-space, but it must occasionally happen. Sending the Anthema to high-sec makes w-space quiet again and I head home. I change ships at our tower to pick up some ore being mined by alliance members and swap a bit of banter before getting itchy feet and hopping back in to the Manticore. I go back out to see if anyone else is poking around the connected systems.
An Imicus frigate is in the C2. Initially, it looks like the ship has sensibly parked himself in a safe-spot as he scans but I consider the possibility that he has instead come in through a new wormhole connection. I jump back home and return in my Buzzard covert operations scanning boat to check this intuition. I got a reasonable bearing on the position of the Imicus before swapping ships and so concentrate my scan on that area. There is indeed a new wormhole, resolving it and warping to its location revealing it to be a K162 coming in from high-sec space. The Imicus is sitting on the wormhole, as suspected. The ship cloaks but appears to be coming and going. Perhaps he has made a newbie error and parked a little too close to the cosmic signature, not realising that the signature is a separate entity to the wormhole and having it decloak him occasionally. Whether that's the case or not, it's time to bring my Manticore here.
Normally, I wouldn't waste a bomb on such a small and inexpensive ship as the Imicus, but it being cloaked makes it impossible for me to target normally. I am hoping that bombing the wormhole will damage and decloak the Imicus and let me continue with a barrage of torpedoes. I launch a bomb and prepare my systems but the Imicus does not take damage from the explosion. Never the less, it soon appears and makes a dash for the wormhole, jumping to high-sec before I can do any damage. I wait for a while and, when the Imicus doesn't return, check the destination of the high-sec connection. I now have eighteen active wormholes currently bookmarked, which is an awful lot of w-space covered in a day.
I push my Manticore off to check all these other systems. With so many connections and occupied systems it is rather disappointing to see nothing happening in all of them. The only further activity I see on my roam is when I am again returning home and having the same Imicus sitting on the high-sec wormhole. He's not cloaked so I get in close and start launching torpedoes at him, but he's awake and gets back to empire space with only minor armour damage. There is no more activity and no corporation fleet. So many systems and all I have done is take pot-shots at high-sec tourists. At least I did some damage. I get back home to the tower and settle down for the night.
2 Responses to “Welcoming tourists to w-space”
Quite an amusing read with the Tourist. Though thinking of it, it can seem a bit new and confusing if its a new person jumping though a WH for the first time.
Yesterday I made my fist trip through a WH that was in our system after scanning down 2 K162 that was there in my Magnate. It turned out to be a C2 that seems low on any activity though it has 1 station. On jumping through. It took a few seconds to just gain some orientation since it was the first time jumping through a WH. It was a bit tricky trying to move away from the WH it seems as I was really close and every time i tried to move directional wise it seem i kept moving closer to it. I guess that can be tricky for a new person the first few times.
Eventually i moved away from the WH but then i got puzzled when looking around in every random direction trying to figure out what was there I kept seeing the WH in every direction. Wasn't sure what to make of it since it was my first time though it did look smaller the further away I went. Eventually i just warped to a Celestial to get my bearings away from the WH. Eventually dropped some probes and found lots of sigs much more than seen before in high sec. I picked a low detection sign and scanned it down which turned out to be a C3. Jumped through and looked around for maybe 30 mins cloaked with some activity there. Didn't stay to dig deeper to finding another WH.
But for my first time going through a WH it was a bit disorienting being next to one and while close to one seeing it in every direction i looked.
It may help to zoom your view out when you are close to a wormhole, so that it doesn't fill your view. Making use of the tactical overlay can also help to show your ship's relative position to the wormhole.
There is a duality in EVE Online where you can either see the ship you are piloting in detail, or you can see what's going on around you. Unfortunately, you cannot easily do both. For the most part, it helps to have your view zoomed out a fair distance, at least to get your bearings.
It's good to hear you ventured in to w-space. Try not to get shot.