Lagging behind
13th April 2011 – 5.51 pmOur neighbouring system is ripe for exploration. The static wormhole leading to the class 3 w-space system has been scanned and left unvisited, a bookmark pointing towards it copied in to our shared can. I take the opportunity to see what's waiting for us today, warping to the fresh wormhole and jumping through. My directional scanner shows me lots of ships, a tower, and no wrecks. I'll need to find the tower to see if there are any pilots in the strategic cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships. I see a planet is out of d-scan range of the rest of the system and I warp there to launch probes discreetly. A blanket scan of the system shows me six anomalies and a bunch of signatures, as well as giving me a general idea of where the tower is.
A Buzzard covert operations boat appears on d-scan, launches probes, but doesn't cloak. It looks like the pilot is sitting on a celestial body, perhaps even a planet, but warping to take a look finds no one. Yet the Buzzard remains on d-scan. Colleague Mick has followed through to this C3 now and has also seen the Buzzard, and prompts me to put my combat scanner probes to use. Normally it would take perhaps a little long to resolve such a small ship, but as the Buzzard appears to be only a little off-grid from the planet it should be easy to position a tight configuration of probes to find him in a single scan, and I get to work.
I cluster my combat scanning probes around the planet and hit scan, but am a little disappointed by the fuzzy result I get. When hurriedly repositioning the probes I realise that I somehow messed up the z-axis component, placing the probes sufficiently out of alignment to stymie getting a positive result. I move them downwards, scan a second time, and am in warp to the Buzzard whilst flinging my probes back out of the system. A single scan may have got the jump on the Buzzard, but a fluffed scan and second attempt looks to have alerted the pilot, as I drop out of warp in to empty space. Mick sees the Buzzard warp in to the tower, which he has located rather more efficiently than me, but never mind. I bookmark the Buzzard's safe spot, in case he uses it again, and warp close to Mick to get a bookmark near the tower.
There is a Tengu strategic cruiser, Buzzard, and Heron frigate all piloted at the tower, but small ships are warping in and out with some regularity. I'm guessing they are using the static exit to travel to and from empire space, and as they have already noticed us—my failed ambush being a bit of a clue that we're here—we may as well abandon keeping our probes hidden and scan the system. I resolve a wormhole in the approximate direction I saw a couple of the ships warp to, which turns out to be a K162 from low-sec empire space. Mick finds a second wormhole, the system's static connection, which again leads to low-sec and is more likely to be the exit the locals have been using, as it more closely matches the vector the pilots were taking.
It looks like we caught the tail-end of the activity in this C3. Only the Buzzard pilot is left at the tower, all the others departed or logged off, and although he swaps in to a Heron frigate and burns out of the tower to anchor a warp bubble we cannot get to him quickly enough. His Heron turns around and zooms back in to the safety of the shields, leaving us little to do but check the exits. One wormhole puts me in the Devoid region, the other in Genesis, neither of which are terribly convenient for much. There are no signs of NPC buyers of Sleeper loot either. With no activity and no targets, I head home to get some snacks.
I return to find the static wormhole collapsed by Mick and Fin and exploration through the new connection coming to a conclusion. Our new neighbouring system is unoccupied, for the first time in a while, and although there is a random outbound connection to class 4 w-space in the C3 the wormhole is at the end of its natural lifetime. The static wormhole leads to low-sec, unsurprisingly, and is of little interest. But there are nine good anomalies present, giving us more chance to recover the ISK spent on replacement strategic cruisers, as well as hopefully buy me a new ship soon. As long as we can get all the accumulated loot out safely at some point, that is.
Our Tengus chew through the anomalies, not even the Sleeper battleships able to put up much resistance against the three of us. Even as powerful as we are, we still don't have time to clear all nine anomalies of Sleepers, stopping at the sixth. A quick tidy with our Noctis salvagers recovers all the loot, and it's another sweet bounty. We get home safely with over four hundred million ISK in profit. I stuff my pillowcase with iskies and dream of my new ship, hoping we get a convenient connection to empire space soon.
4 Responses to “Lagging behind”
Oooh whatcha saving up for?
That would spoil the surprise, but I'll give you a clue. It starts with 'g' and ends with 'olem'.
What do you mean by "NPC buyers of Sleeper loot"? I thought those items can't be sold on the market.
If there are so, you make the profit calculus based on the "NPC buyers of Sleeper loot" prices?
Thanks!
PS:
Reading your blog is like watching very cool episodes from a science fiction movie. :)
The blue loot that Sleepers carry in their hold is bought by NPCs for flat prices. As each anomaly of the same name has the same number and type of ships, and each type of Sleeper carries the same bloot, it is quick and easy to work out profit per site.
Thanks for the comment.