Slaughtering Sleepers for a change

Another strategic cruiser is lost by the corporation. Mick's Loki is attacked by another Loki and, as victim of the ambush, is on the back foot. At least he put up a good fight instead of helplessly ejecting when crippled by a tower with a bad attitude. But it also means that our neighbours may be a little on edge because of the fight. I copy the bookmarks currently available and make my way out to see how aggressively our w-space constellation is being monitored. Jumping in to the class 4 system next door sees a clear wormhole, with a Moa crusier and Buzzard covert operations boat on my directional scanner.

I have a bookmark to the local tower, where I find only the Buzzard piloted and the Moa suspiciously missing. Consulting my notes shows I was here only two months ago, when I found four towers in total, confirmed by a closer inspection of d-scan, and warping around finds the Moa piloted in a different tower. There doesn't appear to be anything particularly threatening or overtly hostile here, and launching scanning probes reveals only two signatures and two ships, so I have seen it all. I warp over to the other signature, the system's static connection to more class 4 w-space, and jump through the wormhole.

This second C4 is unoccupied and empty, and quite uninteresting. I pass straight through it to the next C4 in our constellation, Mick warning me to be careful, as 'it's where I died'. He makes jumping in to an empty system seem exciting. The ambushing Loki has cleared the pocket, apparently not one to linger in wait for a larger retaliatory fleet to come looking for him. But I am being misleading, as the system isn't entirely empty, just the space around the wormhole. Even so, I suspect that the Archon carrier, Thanatos carrier, and Rorqual capital industrial ship are all unpiloted in a tower somewhere, and those are the only ships on d-scan. I don't bother looking for the big ships, heading home instead as our wormhole is being collapsed for better prospects.

Everyone stays on the right side of the wormhole when it is strained beyond its limits, and we scan again and jump in to our new neighbouring class 4 w-space system. D-scan is clear, and launching probes and performing a blanket scan shows the entire system to be devoid of ships. The system remains unoccupied since my last visit three months ago, making Sleeper combat a good possibility. We scan for wormholes and magnetometric sites, skipping over rocks, gas, and an occasional radar site to find one of each. There are no other connections leading in to this system and none of us visit the static connection, hopefully keeping it closed. We return home to swap in to a Tengu-RR each, although the 'RR' stands for 'remote repair', sadly not making them the Fireblades of strategic cruisers.

Look at me making iskies! I think I made some recently but it has been a long time since I routinely engaged in such profit-making excursions. I could probably get used to it again, particularly if it means I can buy more expensive ships. Mind you, getting webbed, neuted, and scrammed by four Sleeper Safeguard battleships is a cause for concern, but thankfully we all survive and whittle down the ships to more manageable levels before getting back to the comfortable slaughter of indigenous life. We end up clearing one anomaly and the magnetometric site, which doesn't sound like much but the loot, salvage, and artefacts from the two of them adds up to a little over half-a-billion ISK in profit. We get home safely, stuff the loot in to our hangar, and head off to bed.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: archon, buzzard, eve online, loki, mmorpg, moa, penny ibramovic, rorqual, sleepers, tengu, thanatos