Swapping Sansha for Sleepers
1st October 2011 – 3.34 pmI'm back! And still all by myself! I know what I have to do: grab a stealth bomber and roam the empty w-space constellation. I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself, though, as the constellation was only empty earlier. It could be bustling with haulers collecting planet goo, or salvagers scooping wrecks in anomalies, or even a magical ponies with wings soaring across space. I'll take my Manticore out for a look anyway.
The empty neighbouring class 3 system is empty, unsurprisingly, and jumping through the outbound connection to the occupied class 4 system sees no ships on my directional scanner, much like earlier. Continuing across the C4 and in to the empty C1 finds that empty too, and I begin to sense a theme here. I jump back to the neighbouring C3 and try my last current option, the other outbound wormhole here connecting to more class 3 w-space. Again, there are no ships, despite there being three on-line towers.
I've not got much else to do, except scan further. I left C3b unexplored earlier because of it probably only leading out to k-space, and I still have the unvisited and suspected exit to null-sec to investigate in C3a. I take the Manticore home, swap to my covert Tengu strategic cruiser, and head out to scan some more space. I first confirm the unvisited wormhole in C3a indeed leads to null-sec k-space, jumping out to the Paragon Soul region, where there are plenty of Sansha sites but no other signatures to resolve, sending me back to scan C3b instead.
I didn't even launch probes in this C3 earlier, turning tail as soon as d-scan denied the presence of any ships. Now a blanket scan reveals eight signatures to sift through, the eighteen anomalies nice to see but currently worthless to me. A chubby signature turning out to be a wormhole is a good start, making me think I've found a K162 leading to activity, but it turns out to be the system's static exit to low-sec empire space. And it's the only wormhole in this system too. What a disappointment.
I jump to low-sec from C3b to find myself in the Placid region, where it's just me and one other pilot. No, it's just me. I apparently have a repellent effect at the moment. I scan the low-sec system to reveal a promising five signatures, but amongst the drones, gas, and radar site is a mere one wormhole, and one reaching the end of its natural lifetime too. It is a K162 from class 1 w-space, though, which is tempting enough for me to jump in whilst the wormhole lives, straight in to a bubble.
The warp bubble covering the wormhole in the C1 is a minor surprise, until I realise that it doesn't really cover the wormhole much at all. Moving out of the bubble to warp clear is straightforward, obviously made easier by there being no one monitoring the bubbled connection, and I start looking for the tower and two terribly exciting ships visible on d-scan. Locating the planet the tower's around shows that the bubble is more effective than I first thought, as it will easily drag anyone travelling from the tower out of warp far from the wormhole, making me wonder who anchored the bubble here. I wouldn't think the occupants would want to make life difficult for themselves, but I've seen some startling inappropriate use of warp bubbles before.
The tower is new here. I was in this system around fifteen months ago when it was unoccupied, although I still managed to pop and pod a couple of pilots, which I apparently did in two different ships. Good job, Penny. Warping to the newly installed tower finds two Drake battlecruisers piloted inside the tower's shields, but they are doing nothing. A passive scan of the system perhaps shows why, as there are no anomalies present. I'm not going to scan here, not when there's no guarantee of any K162s and my convenient route home may collapse at any moment. I jump back out to low-sec and start heading home. I'm going to grab a Drake of my own, head out to that null-sec system bristling with Sansha, and shoot some rats.
Before I can put my dreary plan in to action glorious leader Fin turns up to rescue the evening! That's excellent timing. I update Fin about the state of our constellation—dull—and that we have a neighbouring system with some profit waiting to be realised. We both board our Sleeper Tengus, jump to the C3, and shoot Sleepers instead of Sansha. This is a much more productive use of my time. We clear the three favoured anomalies that are in this C3 and return in Noctis salvagers to recover our loot. We bring back to our tower just under two hundred million ISK in Sleeper loot and salvage, which is a pretty good haul. Another few weeks of evenings like this and I can buy myself a new Golem.
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