Scanning and sites in empire space
18th November 2010 – 5.18 pmI spend a quiet night moving ships. Two wormholes led to two systems, luckily only six stargate passages apart, and my ships get split between two stardocks. It isn't far to collect the ships, although it takes some time to do so, and my thoughts of training for a Charon freighter to help haul the ships around are perhaps a little audacious for the task. It would only take a few hours extra skill training, but half-a-billion ISK for the freighter, and its ponderous aligning and warp times, won't really save me much effort in this case. I get five ships moved over individually anyway, mostly combat ships that would be handy to have near to any discovered w-space, leaving six more to collect another time.
The next day I have another look for wormholes in high-sec, hoping to find a suitable home system in w-space. I launch my Buzzard covert operations boat from dock and start scanning in the base system again. As one wormhole spat us out here I am inclined to see how likely it is for other wormholes to spawn in this system. My scanning finds two anomalies, a magnetometric site, and three wormholes, making me wonder if I'm sitting on a wormhole nexus of some kind. All three wormholes are type K162, opened from w-space in to this high-sec system, two from class 2 systems, one from a class 3, but one of the C2 wormholes reaching the end of its natural lifetime. All of the wormholes lead to 'unknown parts of space' but it is easy to distinguish the class of w-space from the colour seeping through.
I leave the EOL wormhole alone and investigate the C2 system with the healthy wormhole first, as the system will have a second connection, where a class 3 w-space system may only have the exit connection that I have essentially already found. As I am looking for a deeper w-space system I need to rely on further connections to get me anywhere interesting. I jump in to the C2 to see a tower on my directional scanner, with no ships, no defences, and some silos. Warping around finds a second tower, and then two more on an outer planet. It's a fairly big system, and holds many silos for reactions but is otherwise unsurprisingly inactive. The system is kept fairly clean of signatures, though, and scanning isn't a chore, the second static wormhole resolved and found to be a connection to a class 4 system. This is promising.
Sadly, the C4 is occupied, the tower holding a Rorqual capital industrial ship, Chimera carrier, and two Iteron haulers, but no pilots. Scanning finds a static connection to a class 3 system which makes this C4 look quite attractive, but I doubt we'd be able to displace the current corporation with its big ships. Scanning also finds a signature I don't think I've seen before, being unrecognised even when fully resolved. A line of question marks is all my systems can show me and, interest piqued, I warp to see what awaits. Empty space, apparently. A second similar signature is the same, and maybe I'm looking at w-space echoes. Whatever the cause, I already look at enough empty space, and jump onwards in to the C3 system.
The class 3 w-space system is rather dull, holding an off-line tower, another scout scanning, and an exit to null-sec space. My expedition ends quickly again and I head back to my high-sec base system. I may as well go through the K162 to the C3 system, just to see if there is a deeper connection available, but all I find are two towers around the only two moons in the system and a couple of gravimetric mining sites. I jump back to high-sec and dock my Buzzard, ending this evening's exploration and instead taking out my Tengu strategic cruiser to enter the anomalies and magnetometric site in empire space.
I'm not quite sure what to expect, but I'll be amazed—and rather distressed—if my Tengu isn't able to best whatever rats lurk in the scanned sites. The first anomaly is rather easy, consisting only of wrecks, their yellow colour indicating that a capsuleer of a different corporation destroyed the former ships, and I move to the second anomaly. My Tengu makes short work of what turn out to be rather puny rats found in high-sec empire space, pop pop popping each one whilst barely taking any damage. The magnetometric site is even easier, only a few frigates standing between me and the cans, making combat rather anticlimactic. I may as well analyse the cans to get what's inside.
I dock the Tengu to change for my Damnation command ship. It isn't really an analyser boat but as I have used it as one in the past I have a fitting already established, and I want to get back to the magnetometric site in case it despawns as quickly as the ones in w-space. My Damnation reaches the site soon enough and I move to the first can to analyse it, only to be told that I need a salvager module to access the contents. Okay, then, I dock the Damnation and get my salvaging Cormorant destroyer out to the site, where I recover some basic salvaging parts, which I hardly think befits a magnetometric site. And moving to the other two cans frustrates me further, as these two need an analyser to open.
I dock again, switch ships back, and warp to the site. I get the dialogue box for the magnetometric site, letting me know it is still active, but by the time I am out of warp it has gone, taking the cans with it and leaving only the wrecks. I get no good loot for my troubles. I swap ships again and salvage all the wrecks. But empire space is beginning to weird me out, I need to get back in to w-space where everything makes sense.
6 Responses to “Scanning and sites in empire space”
An idea might be to leave your new scanning alt in a c2 with a static c4 and then log them on every day to check out the new c4, you might have some luck finding an unoccupied c4 that way.
Yeah well... As you've experienced, running anomalies in high sec makes absolutely no sense. Only case where it does, is if you've either got lucky timing or manage to run it first right after downtime, where you'll get a chance to get a low level frig sized deadspace item from the analysis cans. Running low sec anomalies makes even less sense, as the rewards aren't all too much better (cruiser sized deadspace items), but you will simultanously run the constant risk of getting super ganked by oppotunistic roamers. Running null sec complexes makes a lot of sense though, as you could find one in a zero traffic system and the rewards are potentially insane (high level deadspace and officer drops and the like).
I hadn't expected high-sec anomalies to be quite so dull. Thanks for the information, Besbin, it may be worth my investigating any null-sec connections I find, rather than just using them for extra dots on my star map.
That's some clever thinking, Aelith, I wish I had thought of it. I would have had to stay in the w-space system myself, though. I don't trust the ultimate protection of a few billion ISK of assets to a rather vulnerable Heron. My scanning alt will eventually be flying a Buzzard with a cov-ops cloak, even if it means quite a bit more skill training to achieve this, so she's not quite ready yet.
Yeah high sec anomalies are just as Besbin said, rather dull unless you can get lucky and maybe find a Radar site however overall dull. Just one the reasons i don't explore as much in high sec as before.
Agree with Aelith that one the best way to go about fnding the C4 you looking for is placing a alt in a WH and just leave him/her there where can move from hole to hole and keep scanning to find what your looking for.
I would think one the greatest asset you have is from all your exploration in WH space having a catalog of all the WH systems you have previously investigated logging the unoccupation/occupation of each system. That to somewhat know a systems status and if you happen on that system again to have previous data on that system especially if it was empty before and still is.
As for the ???? on WH Signatures only 2 times i have come across such a signature and both times the WH was never there. I asked about it but no one seem to know what it meant. Still haven't a clue. WH echoes maybe just as you said.
It's surprisingly difficult to encounter the same w-space system again, unless you don't want to. My list of visited systems is mostly for my own interest, although it comes in handy every so often.