Road to nowhere
22nd June 2011 – 5.19 pmI feel relaxed enough to start the evening updating my bookmarks for all the sites in our home w-space system. We really don't have many to keep track of, and any gravimetric or ladar mining sites are activated upon discovery, leaving only anomalies and, as of today, a handful of radar sites. It's really easy to keep the location of anomalies up to date, not requiring any more than a single scan to reference, but the radar sites take a bit of resolving. At least if they are lingering sites I already have the bookmark and can assume they are in the same place, it is only new signatures I need to resolve fully, and despawned sites that I have to delete. Scanning doesn't take long to complete and before long I am jumping in to our neighbouring class 3 system.
Core scanning probes are visible on my directional scanner, along with a Retriever mining barge and tower. I jump home and swap the Buzzard covert operations boat for my Malediction interceptor, sticking it on our wormhole to wait for the scout. But, silly me, I didn't look before I leapt, failing to take in to account the distance of the probes to our K162. I am likely to be waiting a while, and more probably until I get bored and find no one is coming. At least I have some papers to read, so I catch up on my research as I wait. And eventually I get bored enough to jump back to the C3 to check on the scout, where I find no probes and only the Retriever on d-scan. I really should learn my lesson one day.
I get back in to my Buzzard to explore the C3 properly. The Retriever is unsurprisingly found unpiloted inside the tower's shields and a blanket scan shows the system to be empty and inactive. I sift through the fifteen signatures for wormholes, finding one straight away, but it feels like it's going to lead out to null-sec k-space. Indeed it does, the weak signature being the static exit to lawless New Eden. There are more wormholes to find, though. A second is an outbound connection to class 5 w-space, a third is a K162 coming from more null-sec space, and a fourth is a second outbound connection to a C5. The K162 is a bit concerning, as it has been opened from null-sec space and holds the possibility of a small fleet coming in to cause mischief, and as I check the activity in the C5s glorious leader Fin starts to collapse our static wormhole.
The first class 5 w-space system looks empty from the wormhole, a blanket scan revealing no anomalies, seven signatures, and no ships. There is a tower somewhere and warping to find it has my Buzzard somehow threading the needle through a neat bubble trap, narrowly avoiding the containers scattered around. But with no one home and our wormhole being collapsed I don't bother scanning any deeper here, heading back to the C3 and in to the second C5, where the most I find is an off-line tower amongst the many anomalies and signatures. It looks like time to head home and kill our wormhole. One last push with Fin's Orca industrial command ship and my Widow black ops ship collapses our connection, and we're back to scanning again.
Jumping through the new wormhole to the class 3 system beyond sees only an off-line tower and a few piddly drones on d-scan. Further exploration finds two on-line towers that are far from active, and five signatures to resolve. Thankfully there are four wormholes in those five signatures, one being our own K162. The system's static exit leads out to low-sec empire space this time, and the other two wormholes are both connections to class 2 w-space, although one is reaching the end of its natural lifetime. The final signature is a gravimetric site, which I bookmark in case the locals wake up and have a burning desire to shoot rocks to ease themselves in to the day.
Fin jumps in to the first C2 as I finish resolving the gravimetric site and check the exit. The low-sec system is mostly empty, although scanning finds a K162 from more class 2 w-space, and jumping in sees scanning probes in the system. Having not quite learnt my lession yet I burn home to get my interceptor on the wormhole in low-sec, not knowing if the scout has already headed this way or has any intention of exiting w-space. An Iteron hauler appearing on d-scan in the low-sec system excites me briefly, but it doesn't warp to the K162 I'm sitting on and checking the C3 after the ship disappears from d-scan sees nothing there either. We're not finding much happening today, the first C2 that Fin explores holding no ships and no other connections of interest.
Getting bored of scanning for nothing we both head homewards and jump in to combat ships to clear the lone anomaly in our neighbouring system. I get to feel the might of warhead upgrades V boosting the damage of my torpedoes, which makes shooting Sleepers a whopping 2% quicker than before, and we are rewarded with around fifty million ISK of loot to take home. It's a fair result for one site. We dump the loot and hit the sack, the evening at least ending on a productive and profitable note. Maybe we'll have some targets to find tomorrow.
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