Navigating some null-sec

Scanning today could be interesting. After yesterday's contretemps Fin and I were a little concerned about the other corporation coming in to our home system and stealing all the profit from our indigenous Sleeper population. It is a minor concern, and one that prompts us to gather that profit for ourselves at the next opportunity instead of leaving it for passing wanderers to claim, but I am still curious to see if we have lost any sites.

Launching probes and taking a quick look around shows no signs of missing anomalies, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I initiated the conflict and the other pilots didn't seem keen to follow us to our home ground, so the likelihood of them entering a hostile system to engage Sleepers is, in retrospect, rather slim. In fact, a couple of new sites have spawned, a new ladar mining site and anomaly now present in our system. And, yes, this is about as interesting as scanning gets.

I am happy to see the static wormhole sitting quite conspicuously away from my already referenced sites, and it is a simple matter to resolve the signature. Jumping in to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system finds nothing of interest, lacking any towers, ships, or pilots. I launch probes and scan once more, seeing a healthy sixteen anomalies waiting to be plundered, along with eight other signatures. I resolve a wormhole and leave it unvisited for now, but a second wormhole demands attention, having the possibility of leading deeper in to w-space. But the second connection turns out to be a K162 from null-sec space, making this C3 less interesting again.

The entrance from null-sec probably means that the system's static connection has already been opened, letting me pay it a visit too. What I actually find is another K162, this one from deadly class 6 w-space, and I am left to resolve a third wormhole here before moving on. The static wormhole leads out in to null-sec space as well, which isn't terribly interesting for a w-space dweller like myself, but I appreciate the chance to get more red dots of exploration. I pop out to null-sec and happily find myself near a couple of dead ends in the Malpais region. I head off to visit more systems, one direction being uneventful but the other sending me in to my first stargate surrounded by warp bubbles.

I have to say, I make a bit of a mess of navigating the bubbles, and although it's lucky there are no capsuleers present to see my clumsiness I am sure the rats on the gate nearly take advantage of me. I am a little taken aback by not being able to keep the stargate at range, which I can with wormholes, making me manually navigate initially. I move away and cloak safely enough, but aligning to the next stargate in my route only sends me flying back in to the stargate I just used, which decloaks me and has me all in a fluster trying to move away and cloak again before the rats lock my Buzzard covert operations boat. I decide to play it safe and just head directly out of the bubbles by the nearest route, which then lets me warp away.

What is more interesting is that the next gate is also bubbled, but not quite so thoroughly as to cover the stargate itself. Lots of large bubbles float around and look menacing, but my ship is able to warp to zero and land in activation range of the gate. The arrangement is a bit of a shambles, I'd say. But there is no one around to notice any of my movements and I am soon back in w-space, having visited seven more null-sec systems. The other exit to null-sec from the C3 also is near a dead-end system, one hop away in fact, making my visit here even briefer. And with my null-sec exploration over for today I warp to the K162 from the C6 and jump through to more w-space.

My directional scanner shows me one on-line tower and lots of big ships, including carriers, dreadnaughts, and strategic cruisers, and twenty curiously off-line towers, whose purpose I can only wonder at. And as I am wondering I hear the wormhole flare behind me, catching sight just in time of a Tengu strategic cruiser leaving the system. Rather than follow him I take a couple of minutes to find the tower in this C6, which then puts me in d-scan range of a second tower with some equally big ships, but the only other pilot I see in the system is in a Proteus strategic cruiser, and he's not moving.

By now, I think enough time has passed for the Tengu to have moved away from the wormhole in the C3 and I jump back, hoping that perhaps he is engaging Sleepers and that I will soon have a salvager to shoot at, but there is no sign of him in the system. There aren't even any scanning probes visible, to suggest some activity. So with little else to do for now I simply head home and take a break, after a mostly relaxing afternoon of exploration.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: buzzard, eve online, mmorpg, null-sec, penny ibramovic, proteus, scanning, tengu, w-space