Looking to pop bubbles

All ships are home and safe, it's time to see if we can rattle some cages. Or, indeed, if there are any cages to rattle, w-space looking fairly quiet so far today. I take my Manticore stealth bomber out for a prowl, passing straight through the inactive class 3 w-space system to head for the K162 coming from the C4. I find the corpse I spotted on my directional scanner earlier, some twenty kilometres from the K162 in the C3. His distance from the wormhole, and that he was in a scanning boat, makes me think he was a bit careless in being caught, but we all have our moments.

I jump in to the class 4 system, hoping to see signs of what caught and killed the other pilot, perhaps to hunt them in return. What I find is three large bubbles newly planted over the wormhole leading back in to the class 3 system, blocking my free movement in all directions for tens of kilometres. I could cloak and crawl through the bubbles easily enough, but if I engage and need to flee the system quickly the bubbles could potentially get me killed. I don't consider the risk worthwhile, particularly as there still remains no ships on d-scan, and simply jump back and go home.

Fin, however, would like to shoot something, and is interested to see if we could provoke a reaction even by merely attempting to destroy one of the bubbles. I'm happy to give it a go, and help to formulate a plan. We jump in to the C3 and warp to the K162, sending a puppet Apocalypse battleship in to the C4 to shoot the bubbles. I sit on the K162 with Fin, me in a Sacrilege heavy assault ship and Fin a Pilgrim recon ship. If the Apocalypse gets a response he can jump back and we engage whatever follows, potentially chasing them back in to the C4 if they look overwhelmed, where their own bubbles may trap them.

What we don't expect is for the puppet to report three strategic cruisers in the class 4 system, a Tengu and two Lokis clearly visible on d-scan. Abort, abort! We may have been able to put up a good fight against one or two strategic cruisers, but all three could probably pop us pretty quickly if they are even mildly coordinated. Discretion is the better part of valour, and the Apocalypse simply jumps back again and we all return home. Getting some sleep sounds like a good idea.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: apocalypse, eve online, loki, manticore, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pilgrim, sacrilege, tengu, w-space