Fighting over Sleeper wrecks
28th July 2010 – 5.06 pmI missed an ambush. Luckily, so did my colleagues, as it was aimed at them. A Tengu strategic cruiser, Onyx heavy interdictor, and Curse recon ship came close to catching some corporation members engaging Sleepers, but a close eye on the directional scanner and some agile warping got everyone out of danger. Now there are plans to strike back with the hopes of hitting the salvaging Cormorant destroyer of these interlopers. I am enlisted and asked to pilot my Manticore stealth bomber, which I do, warping to our static wormhole to jump in to the neighbouring class 4 w-space system where all the action is occurring.
I bump in to a hostile Drake sitting on the wormhole in our system. I cannot drop out of warp early and to avoid its attentions all I can do is jump quickly through the wormhole. But it has seen me and my stealth bomber jump in to the adjacent system, no doubt reporting the intelligence to the rest of his fleet. It seems that I was not meant to enter the adjoining C4 just yet but although my presence alerts the hostile fleet I honestly don't think my error matters. Even if we flew as a prepared fleet to the wormhole and jumped through as one the intelligence that we were doing so would move faster than our warp engines, giving the other fleet plenty of time to intercede against any threat on their salvager.
New options are suggested, including assaulting the Drake, now in the same system as the rest of his fleet on the K162 of our static connection. To swap ships and prepare for an attack a friendly Pilgrim recon ship warps back to our wormhole but manages to land on top of a Buzzard covert operations boat. Both ships are decloaked and the Pilgrim engages the smaller ship, hoping for an easy kill before the Drake can respond. But a hostile Falcon recon ship decloaks twenty kilometres off the wormhole and targets the Pilgrim, no doubt about to start jamming our colleague, and three Tengu cruisers and a Curse warp in to help defend their fleet. Our man in the Pilgrim takes the wise option of jumping through the wormhole home to safety.
The Falcon and Buzzard cloak as their Onyx comes to join the party. The HIC settles on the K162 wormhole and activates its warp bubble, making the wormhole more difficult to use safely. My level of personal survival looks to be dropping significantly, still sitting some distance away from the K162 and surveying all the hostile ships and seeing their quick response time to threats. But, as we discuss more options for dispersing the threat, the Onyx's bubble disappears and all the hostile ships warp away from the wormhole. Reports come in that their ships have finished salvaging the Sleeper wrecks, confirmed by the directional scanner showing no more wrecks in the system, and it looks like the hostile fleet is happy to take home some profit without any capsuleer kills.
Only the Curse recon ship remains on d-scan. And then it too is gone. The few of our pilots left in our neighbouring system are able to jump home safely through the wormhole and return to our tower. With a hostile fleet a couple of jumps away and an unsafe intermediate system discussion turns to collapsing our static wormhole and hoping for a better connection.
The operation to collapse our wormhole begins. The number of jumps through the wormhole and by which ships is uncertain—the information needed to determine the amount of mass the wormhole can still pass through it before collapsing—so we take the less risky option of jumping battleships through until the wormhole's status changes. Once the wormhole's mass allowance drops below half, as indicated by the wormhole physically shrinking, an Orca industrial command ship is jumped through to speed up the process. Other pilots have combat ships at the wormhole in case of an incursion and I join in by bringing my Tengu to act as a threat, refitted with heavy missiles for greater range.
Oops, a miscommunication occurs and the Orca makes a jump when it wasn't meant to. The wormhole collapses after the jump, leaving empty space. Fortunately, the Orca was returning to our home system and is safe. Unfortunately, the Falcon sent through to the neighbouring C4 is still there. At least the Falcon has a probe launcher so that it can scan its way to an exit, and a cloaking device to keep it safe whilst it scans. The operation could have been smoother but it also could have been a lot worse. Now it is time to scan. The Falcon needs to find a way out to empire space, we need to find a way to get the Falcon back in from empire space, and hopefully the new route will be more benign.
2 Responses to “Fighting over Sleeper wrecks”
The Falcon is fully dedicated to ECM, and for combat situation.
Now is my scanning ability not the fastest in a Buzzard. But when you scan in the falcon, I really started to appriciate my little covert ops.
Yes, a rigged ship with bonuses makes scanning much easier. But at least we didn't lose a ship without probes and any bookmarked route out to empire space.
And we got you back eventually.