Third time lucky
18th September 2010 – 3.40 pmThe neighbouring class 4 w-space system has been visited, but no further exploration performed. A colleague and I follow our earlier scout's visit to see what awaits through our static connection. The presence of some Sleeper wrecks on the directional scanner is interesting and I locate them as being within the only anomaly left in the system. Warping in reveals the anomaly to still be active, Sleeper ships milling around the wrecks waiting for their aggressors to return. I have seen no ships on d-scanner since arriving and it seems more likely that our earlier scout spooked whichever capsuleers were shooting the Sleepers. More evidence for this comes as the wrecks deteriorate in space, knowing both that this deterioration happens after about two hours and our connection to this system was opened around two hours ago. There is unlikely to be any continued activity here.
A K162 wormhole is found that is coming in from another C4, probably the home of the earlier active capsuleers. Jumping through finds the system is indeed occupied but there is no one to be seen, either at the tower or elsewhere in the system. As there is unlikely to be another wormhole in this system, the static connection leading in to the previous C4, I head back. My colleague has found our neighbouring C4's static wormhole and has jumped in to the system beyond. I follow him in to an occupied C5 where there are pilots around, but perhaps not active, a Scorpion battleship, Badger industrial ship, Cormorant destroyer, and Imicus frigate all inertly floating at the system's tower. The system itself is fairly empty too, holding little promise for anything to do. We return home and confidently collapse our static wormhole in the hopes of finding a better system through a new connection.
The new static wormhole is found and jumped through, landing us in a familiar system. I was last here three weeks ago where my ambush of some gas miners ends with a bit of a scrap and the loss of my Onyx. My notes have the locations of the towers in the system but are already out of date, a third tower now anchored and one of the other two moved to a different moon. I also find a Nightmare battleship, Drake battlecruiser, and Hulk exhumer inside the shields of one tower, the two combat ships piloted. Along with probes visible on d-scan we are unlikely to get any Sleeper combat done in this system either and head home to swap for more massive ships to collapse our wormhole a second time.
Our co-ordinator muses that if he had two pilots available for the Orca industrial command ships the collapsing of wormholes would be much smoother than it is when having to use battleships. The main problem is the polarisation effects that affect a ship, preventing more than two jumps through a wormhole every few minutes. I consider getting our Orca pilot to swap one Orca for the other to negate hull polarisation effects but dismiss the idea just as readily as it occurs. I am sure I have been in a rush to swap ships and head back through our static wormhole yet still fallen foul of polarisation effects. Maybe the polarisation affects all of the ship down to the capsuleer's pod such that even slotting the pod in to a different ship cannot dissipate the effect entirely. Either way, we are stuck with using battleships and the single Orca for now, collapsing the wormhole smoothly again.
And again I go out scanning, jumping in to the third neighbouring class 4 system for the day. It is another system familiar to me, having last visited here about four months ago when it was occupied. All that is left now are two off-line faction towers floating coldly around a couple of moons. But the lack of occupancy and activity is good for making ISK, the system bulging with anomalies waiting to be plundered. Our exploration is halted, the system's static wormhole left unvisited and inactive, and we swap the scanning boats for strategic cruisers. Our choice of C4 for Sleeper engagements is again holding a magnetar phenomenon, which will speed up combat nicely, and just as we set out a colleague appears, as if by magic, conveniently volunteering to salvage.
We warp to each anomaly aiming to arrive one hundred kilometres from its cosmic signature, instead of aiming directly for the beacon. This either puts us closer to the initial wave of Sleepers than at the signature, or further enough away to allow us to then warp to a structure to be on top of the Sleepers. Along with the increased damage from the magnetar phenomenon we save a fair amount of time being able to engage the Sleepers sooner and we leave anomaly after anomaly behind us in a trail of carnage. I clear five anomalies with the fleet before returning home to get some rest, 120M ISK richer, whilst others continue pillaging Sleeper sites.
2 Responses to “Third time lucky”
Polorisation effect is down to the pod and happens regardless of the ship you swap to, however you can eject and someone else can jump through immediately with the ship you just "polarised". So with your orca example they could jump, then someone else can take the orca back through while the polarisation clears on the first pilot.
I think we need to reprogram our flight software to give a better description of the polarisation effect, as it currently indicates that the hull is suffering and not the pod.
I'm sure you're right about the effects, too. What we need, then, is another Orca pilot, rather than a second Orca.