Slight return

I start scanning early, hoping to resolve suitable sites for later ambushes. Our neighbouring class 3 w-space system is somewhat of an oddity today, though, holding nine anomalies but only one other signature. I suppose the occupants—as there is a tower in the system, but no ships currently—are more keen to mine than shoot. The sole signature is, of course, the static wormhole, leading, of course, to low-sec empire space. Checking the exit puts me three hops to high-sec space, eight to Jita, and seven from The Hub. That's fairly close, and maybe our third, recently joined member of the splinter group can bring more of her ships in that just a scanning boat. But, having exhausted exploration, I take a break.

There is no change on my return. The C3 occupants are still sleeping and there are no new connections to explore. Our new colleague is indeed bringing ships in to our home system, which leaves Fin and me free to shoot Sleepers in all the anomalies carelessly left unattended. We both board a Tengu strategic cruiser, load up on missiles, and head out. Combat is relatively relaxed, our Tengus more than capable in the class 3 system anomalies, and the only ships punctuating our checks of the directional scanner are those of our colleague. She eventually gets everything through the C3 and comes to join shooting Sleepers in her own strategic cruiser, a new Loki.

We are blasting through the anomalies, but I leave shortly after we enter the ninth, aware that enough time has passed for the wrecks in the first site to soon start disintegrating. I need to get salvaging. D-scan remains clear, more so being I am out of range of my colleagues. But the ninth and final anomaly in the system is cleared of Sleepers and two more salvaging boats come out to help recover the loot. We leave the class 3 system behind, taking everything with us that wasn't anchored, amounting to a little over four hundred million ISK. That's a pretty good haul, and now we can collapse the wormhole to look for more opportunity.

Collapsing our static wormhole is smooth this time, the connection being engulfed by the void on the schedule we set. I board my Buzzard covert operations boat and scan our home system for the newly spawned wormhole, replacing the one just killed. It is a simple matter to resolve the connection, and I warp to it and jump through to... No fucking way. I feel like I am in a Scooby Doo cartoon, walking out of the corridor through one door only to come in to the very same corridor from a different direction. There is no need to scan the class 3 system the new static wormhole connects us to, as I know there are no anomalies and only an exit to low-sec empire space to find. We need to collpase this wormhole too.

At least the wormhole collapse should be textbook material this time, with a pristine connection and only a couple of Buzzards pushed through it. But apparently the Sleepers built engineering tolerances in to wormhole construction, and we have a bit of mass left over, even when we think the final Orca trip through should have exceeded the wormhole's total mass limit by a hundred million kilogrammes. We can't push the industrial command ship through again, as the wormhole at least is critically destabilised now, but we also have no reason to keep the wormhole as it is.

We decide to send a puppet through the connection in a Bustard transport ship, which is a decent enough mass without being excessive. I ask for the Bustard to be filled with loot, so that if the ship gets isolated it can at least head to market and realise us our profit. But we can't even lose a billion ISK of accumulated loot, the wormhole collapsing on the Bustard's fourth jump, as it returns to our home system. At least now we can look for another new wormhole and, hopefully, a new class 3 system to explore. And we do, ending up in an unoccupied C3 with an off-line tower, fifteen anomalies, and six other signatures.

We aren't going to enter more anomalies for now, so instead all the signatures are checked. The only wormhole is the system's static connection, this one for some reason leading out to null-sec space. It must be because Fin found it and not me. The exit system is in the Tribute region and is unclaimed territory. But, more interestingly, there is only one other pilot in the system and a Rorqual on d-scan. I go looking for the capital industrial ship and find it in a tower with no defences, although the force field is active. It looks like the Rorqual is configuring the tower and installing defences.

I'm not the only one curious about the Rorqual. A new pilot enters the system and his Rifter frigate is soon dropping out of warp near the tower. The Rifter zooms around the edge of the shields where the Rorqual is sitting tantalisingly close, angling to bounce off the force field near the massive ship, like a beast unable to get to its prey behind a window. Fin comes to the null-sec system in a Pilgrim recon ship, remaining cloaked and landing near my position at the tower, but is too late to catch the Rifter, which has since given up and left the system. We watch the Rorqual a little, understanding that it won't leave the tower whilst there is any hint of other pilots in the system. We too turn around and leave it alone, jumping back to w-space and our own tower, where we get some sleep.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: bustard, buzzard, eve online, loki, mmorpg, null-sec, orca, penny ibramovic, pilgrim, rifter, rorqual, scanning, sleepers, tengu, w-space