Stealing Sleepers from the neighbours
19th September 2011 – 5.32 pmI'm back to find glorious leader Fin copying in to her nav-comp the twenty-three bookmarks I made earlier. That should keep her busy for half-an-hour, I may as well take my stealth bomber out for a roam. I'll probably be able to see the constellation remains quiet by the time Fin's copied the bookmarks, at which point we can collapse our wormhole and delete them all. Such is the way of w-space. And indeed our neighbouring class 3 system shows no signs of activity, which isn't surprising given that the locals dropped a can of bookmarks for all their sites for me, and jumping in to low-sec empire space and then to another C3 connected from there also finds nothing of interest.
As the other w-space systems I explored earlier were unoccupied to start with I don't think I'll bother even looking in them now. But I can use one of the wormholes to our advantage, the K162 from high-sec connecting to the low-sec system being a neat bridge that lets me bypass any dangerous stargates. I stow my Manticore back at the tower and head to high-sec in my Tengu, refitting one of the subsystems to match that of Fin's strategic cruiser so that we can start making profit again by shooting Sleepers. To get back in to the swing of Sleeper combat one of the bookmarks indirectly given to me is for a magnetometric site, and there are also some anomalies to clear in the C3. If the locals are happy for us to clear the combat sites, maybe only wanting the mining sites for themselves, it would be rude not to do so.
Tengu and Tengu jump in to the C3, and we aim first for our favoured anomaly type. It's been a while since we ran Sleeper operations, we probably ought to limber up to start with. Before entering warp, though, I spot on my directional scanner the Prorator transport ship I saw earlier, and it appears to be at the local tower. That's okay, I think we can ignore it. We warp to the anomaly and start shooting Sleepers only for the Prorator to be replaced on d-scan by a Nemesis stealth bomber, which promptly disappears. Maybe the bookmarks weren't left for me by a local, but by an external scout seeding discord between our two systems. That's fine, I suppose, and a lone stealth bomber shouldn't cause too much trouble for us. Except, I suppose, when we try to salvage.
We finish the anomaly but decide not to continue in to the magnetometric site. We have plenty of anomalies at home to plunder, there's no point adding unnecessary risk to our operations. There are still the wrecks to loot and salvage, as it would be silly to leave them behind, but we can be smart about how we collect it. Fin refits a Noctis salvager to be resistant to the Nemesis, and plans to stay at long range and aligned to our wormhole. I jump back in my Manticore and loiter cloaked in the despawned site, hoping the Nemesis will reveal himself so I can spring a counter-attack. But nothing happens. Fin loots and salvages, and warps home safely, all with no sign of the Nemesis.
Now we can collapse our wormhole to isolate ourselves, so we can continue raking in the profit. One trip with Orca and Widow puts us a little ahead of schedule, the wormhole destabilising on my way out, and Fin recalculates the maths. Rather than both doing a second trip only Fin's industrial command ship heads out, leaving my black ops ship sitting on the wormhole defensively. Fin returns and the wormhole becomes critically unstable, but doesn't die. It can get a bit tricky judging the state of wormholes in critical condition but a cunningly fit heavy interdictor can mitigate the risks of giving the wormhole a final push.
Fin takes an Onyx for a spin, making a couple of trips to try to kill the connection but without seeing it collapse. Rather than try further we accept the wormhole's fragile state and get back to shooting Sleepers. We have plenty of anomalies in our home system, and we clear two of them in good time and with little drama. The loot from our higher-class sites is much better than from the C3 too, although the time-to-ISK ratio is similar. In all, we bring back three hundred million iskies of sleeper loot and salvage to our tower, including that from the lone C3 anomaly, which should keep us stocked with fuel and running in w-space for a bit longer. We need to make more ISK, though, as there are always new and replacment toys to buy.
2 Responses to “Stealing Sleepers from the neighbours”
Keep up the accounts of your travels - it's fascinating stuff, especially for a nullsec new like me.
Thanks, Lachyrmus. Fly safe in null-sec, and don't let them drag you down to their level.