Looking for a better exit

The collapse of our static wormhole is imminent. I have the luxury of being able to scan the home system and ignore all signatures, which will let me isolate the next wormhole easily. The Orca industrial command ship comes home, the connection closes, and I start scanning for the one new signature. Instead I find four. I scratch my head for a while, wondering how it is possible for four new sites or wormholes to appear in the space of a minute, until I realise my mistake. My probes were spread thinly, to cover the entire system, and three signatures were only resolved to spheres, not being picked up by enough scanning probes. Instead of selecting all the signatures in order to ignore them I simply assumed that they were all automatically selected, leading to the few left behind. It is trivial to work out which are bookmarked sites and which is the wormhole, though, and I am soon jumping in to another neighbouring class 3 w-space system.

This is interesting. I am seeing some Sleeper wrecks on my directional scanner in the C3, but no ships. Maybe the anomaly has been cleared and a salvager is due to warp in. I start a passive scan of my surroundings, not wanting to launch probes in case a ship warps in and sees them, whilst spinning d-scan around to find the approximate location of the wrecks. My scanner finds a few anomalies, but none of them contain wrecks. Checking my notes quickly puts me in this system a month ago, and I have the location of a tower but not the status of the static wormole. Warping to the tower finds nothing, though, and exploring the system thoroughly finds no towers and no ships, which is curious. Some pilot must have caused the Sleeper wrecks.

I launch probes and begin to scan, picking up seventeen anomalies in total, along with a bunch of signatures. None of the anomalies hold wrecks, and there is still no sign of ships. It looks like someone may have been chased out of their Sleeper combat. I resolve a wormhole, a K162 from class 4 w-space perhaps explaining how the wrecks were made, but I have more to find in this C3. A second wormhole is a second K162, this one from a C3. I suppose one fleet came from the C4, a second from the C3, and one interrupted the other. But I still haven't found this system's static wormhole, and still don't when the third wormhole found is a T405 outbound connection to class 4 w-space. Dammit, I'm looking for a way out, I don't have time to explore!

The fourth wormhole I resolve in the C3 is a rather weak signature, making me think that it will be a static exit to null-sec space, and it is. That doesn't really help with getting Fin home in a fuel-filled Orca industrial command ship, but at least there is a second C3 to explore, which itself will have an exit to find. Jumping through the K162 in to the C3 sees core scanning probes and an off-line tower on d-scan. I ignore the minor activity and focus on scanning an exit, launching probes and blanketing the system. Two anomalies, six signatures, and one ship are returned on the first scan, and my notes have me here only two weeks ago. This is the system of my failed assault on a gas harvesting Thorax, and although the locals may not be too pleased to see me again it doesn't look like any are around to care. The single ship is an unpiloted Iteron hauler at the tower, making it quiet here apart from the inferred presence of the other scout.

I resolve a wormhole quickly, and even though it is a K162 it comes from low-sec empire space and at least gives another option. A second wormhole is a K162 from null-sec space, and not useful. The third wormhole I find is the system's static exit to low-sec, but the link is reaching the end of its natural lifetime, making it unreliable. At least there is one stable exit to empire space, and jumping out even puts me in Caldari space, six hops from Jita no less. It's a shame, then, that Fin became stranded on the other side of the galaxy. The journey is too far to travel at this late hour, and it looks like Fin will spend another night in a space station instead of floating in space.

It's time for me to get some shut-eye too, but my curiosity compels me to at least poke my nose through the other resolved wormholes. The T405 leads me to another system I've visited before, the occupants having moved out at some point in the last eight months, leaving the C4 empty and inactive. Back to the C3 and through the K162 to the other C4 finds a tower but no ships, although the tower isn't where I expect it to be. This is my third time here, a system I apparently visit at six month intervals, and I take a moment to note the location of the new occupants' tower and see the previous tower where I expect it to be, still anchored but off-line. It's good in a way that no one is around. Without thinking I am missing an opportunity to hunt I head home and get some sleep.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, iteron, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space