Making back the ISK

I'm feeling like a burden on the corporation wallet at the moment. My extravagant purchase of the Golem marauder, its deadspace shield booster almost doubling the cost of the ship, and yesterday's loss of my Legion strategic cruiser are weighing on me. I have been contributing to filling the wallet up again by converting Sleepers in to profits, and the Golem has certainly made us more efficient, but I may have been taking more than my fair share recently. With any luck we can find more Sleepers to shoot today, at least to ease my conscience a little. Fin's scanning when I turn up, the final signature in the system resolving to be our static wormhole, and I follow her in jumping in to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system.

I've been in this system before, twice in fact. The previous time had me looking for an exit a couple of months back, which was after bungling an ambush on a gas mining Thorax cruiser. There are no ships visible on the directional scanner now, and exploring the C3 even finds the tower to be absent. It seems the occupants moved out, maybe after depleting their local resources. There are only three anomalies and three signatures here, two ladar gas mining sites and the static exit to low-sec empire space. I briefly consider trying to sell the system, as we haven't encountered unoccupied C3s much lately, but both my interested contacts are off-line and I'm not too keen to get bogged-down dealing with other capsuleers.

There's not much to do in our neighbouring system, the anomalies not even being our preferred type, so we collapse our static wormhole and start the evening again. The collapse is smooth, the new static wormhole is easily resolved, and glorious leader Fin and I jump in to more class 3 w-space. D-scan is clear and a quick check shows that none of the system is out of range, making it another unoccupied C3. This one, however, is rather more unkempt than the previous, Sleepers running wild in twenty-nine anomalies. There are also seven signatures present, which I think we ought to check for other wormholes before we bring our expensive ships in to engage Sleepers, and I start sifting through them.

Ladar, ladar, ladar, wormhole—which I keep unvisited for now—magnetometric... It's a 'go for Sleeper pew', says Fin, except the last signature in the system is a second wormhole. The weak strength of the signature made it look like it was going to be something different, but now I'm supposing it's the static exit, no doubt leading out to null-sec k-space, and that the fatter wormhole resolved earlier is actually a K162. We need to help ensure we won't be interrupted in combat, so I visit the fatter wormhole, finding it is indeed a K162, and jump through to the class 4 w-space system to look for activity.

The connection to the C3 is a C247 and likely to be the static wormhole, maybe making this system the start of the chain. I warp to a celestial object to launch scanning probes, not wanting to make myself a target on the wormhole, where a blanket scan finds a couple of towers and four ships near the outskirts of the system. Warping there finds the ships all to be unpiloted, and there are no overt signs of activity in the system. It looks safe to clear anomalies in the C3. It's odd, though, because there are no anomalies at all in this C4, making me think that the occupants would jump at a chance to profit from the proliferation of Sleepers in the C3. I suppose it's possible that they already have, and there were far more than twenty-nine anomalies earlier. Either way, if we are vigilant with d-scan we should hopefully notice any pilots from the C4 waking up and joining us in the C3.

Fin and I get home to swap our scanning boats for combat ships, Fin in her Tengu strategic cruiser and me in the Golem. This should be nice and smooth, as we can stick to our preferred anomaly without running out, bouncing from site to site efficiently. I've taken Mick's suggestion to run two salvager modules and one tractor beam, as it seemed that I was waiting on successful salvaging more than wrecks being pulled towards me, and it looks like a positive change. Although I still have to lag behind in the anomaly whilst I salvage the final wreck, at least it is generally only the one wreck and it is quickly recovered instead of having several wrecks scattered around my marauder waiting for attention. And in the quiet moments of tractoring the final wreck Fin warps ahead to the next anomaly, engaging the first wave of Sleepers and getting closer so that when I warp in I am already in torpedo range. It all works quite well.

The only problem encountered in clearing the anomalies is the burden of having too much to do. I'm getting used to the shoot, paint, loot, and salvage shuffle, even whilst punching d-scan regularly to check for hostile ships, but I'm still not used to having to pulse my shield booster. I have plenty of capacitor juice to do so, just not enough to run it permanently, like on the Tengu. This isn't really too much of a problem, as the Gist B-type x-large booster gets my shields back to full in quick time, but I really need to notice sooner to keep my heart-rate down. There is an alarm that sounds when shields hit 30% strength, which is fine for PvP when you expect to come close to dying, but in less-threatening situations it would be nice to have it sound at 50%. Less of an alarm and more of a warning, letting me know that I'm not paying enough attention. You'd think the white bar rapidly changing to red would catch my attention, but apparently not.

We don't get in to any real trouble being shot by Sleepers, and sweep through six anomalies before the hour gets late. All loot and salvage is collected as we go, negating the need to bring the Noctis salvagers in and probably affording us the time to complete an extra anomaly because of the time saving. The recovered salvage was light to start with but picks up in later anomalies to be almost respectable. Our profit for the evening is a little over three hundred million ISK, which is fair and makes me feel productive. A quick check of the C4 before hitting the sack sees no change, the system still inactive, and poking my nose out of the exit to null-sec in the C3 finds a Sansha incursion in progress. It all looks rather exciting, but I doubt I can do much by myself, judging by reports from other capsuleers, so I simply head home for the night.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, golem, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, sleepers, tengu, w-space