Early exploration
10th April 2011 – 3.41 pmI have a niggling feeling I've been neglecting our tower of late. I'm sure the last time we put fuel in it we topped it up completely, giving us plenty of time until it next needs attention, but I forget when that was. Taking a look at the fuel levels shows we have just over two weeks' worth of fuel left, across the board, and our storage hangar has more spare, so we are fine for the moment. Even so, I should not let such vital matters slip from my mind so easily, and every excursion out of our home w-space system should be seen as at least an opportunity to import fuel and equipment. And with that in mind I'll scan my way out to k-space and see what today brings.
I resolve a wormhole in our home system easily enough, the number of signatures being maintained at a reasonable level nowadays, and a quick check shows no signs of additional wormholes. I reload my launcher with combat probes, warp to the wormhole, and jump in to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system. Nothing interesting is visible on my directional scanner in the C3, although I cannot help but notice the black hole here. I'm sure I've used this description before, but I can't think of any more suitable metaphor for the visual of a black hole than that of a bloody sphincter, even though I try really hard, every time I see one. A black hole, that is.
I launch scanning probes and blanket the system, picking up five anomalies, six signatures, and two ships. The ships are interesting, even if they are likely to both be at a tower, and I warp off to find them. The Thanatos carrier and Arbitrator cruiser are indeed both inside the shields of a tower, neither ship piloted, making this system currently inactive. With no one around I can resolve the five unknown signatures, the sixth being the K162 heading home. I bookmark a gravimetric site, ladar site, really weak wormhole—bah, it's going to lead to null-sec—another ladar site, and finally a radar site to complete my scanning here.
Visiting the wormhole confirms it to be a static exit to null-sec k-space, and probably unlikely to be convenient for getting to and from a market hub. I poke my nose out anyway, to see if perhaps I am close to a border, but end up in a dead-end system in the Tenerifis region. I am the only pilot in the system and consider taking a little exploratory trip, but then decide that I could scan this null-sec system to look for more wormholes, perhaps letting this be a bridging system to a better exit. I launch probes again and take a look around, finding a huge number of anomalies, that I ignore, and only two unidentified signatures.
Resolving the two signatures in this null-sec system is disappointing, even when one of them is of the 'unknown' type. Thinking it would be a wormhole, as they always are in w-space, I instead find a site called simply 'Radiance'. The drones at the other end of the acceleration gate may make some scary noises but they are not terribly interesting at the moment, so I leave them alone. Resolving the other unidentified signature reveals a magnetometric site, which again isn't terribly interesting to me, if only because I don't know any better. I could scan an adjacent system but I would rather not have any stargates between me and whatever my destination is, and so I simply head back to w-space.
The class 3 w-space system hasn't changed since I left it a handful of minutes ago, and warping home finds no tell-tale signs of activity either. It's all quiet out here. But maybe I can make my own noise, launching my strategic cruiser to fight Sleepers in the C3. I need to refit to use heavy missiles, from heavy assault missiles, because of the reduction in missile range caused by the black hole, but that is a simple change to make. I jump in to the C3, point my Tengu in the right direction, and start shooting.
Sleeper combat goes a lot more quickly with more than one capsuleer, the battleships certainly taking a lot of shooting before they pop. It seems that it is taking more than twice as long to clear each anomaly when compared to having two Tengus here, too. But I am clearing them easily enough, and d-scan remains clear throughout combat. I stop after the second anomaly, though, which doesn't sound like much combat but it has taken long enough that I don't fancy a third. I jump home, swap strategic cruiser for salvager, and get my Noctis to work. Thankfully, no one has been stalking me and I salvage all the wrecks without being interrupted, getting home with just over a hundred million ISK in loot. That's a pretty good start to the day.
2 Responses to “Early exploration”
What size tower do you guys work out of?
I know buggerall about WH logistics, but I find your journal fascinating. Really nice work.
Thanks, and I'm not sure I know much about w-space logistics really. I merely surround myself with clever people.
Our tower is pretty big, which makes it more time-consuming to attack and gives us plenty of room to spread out if we need it.