Bugged by a bug

My glorious leader is keen today. Fin's not only escaped our home w-space system but w-space entirely, having jumped out of our neighbouring class 3 system through its static connection to null-sec. I think she's kindly looking for more rats for me to pop, so that I can delay my inevitable slide to being a recognised pirate in the eyes of Concord. Even so, having mapped our neighbouring system Fin informs me that there are more wormholes to explore, leading to low-sec empire space, and class 2 and class 4 w-space systems. That should keep us going for a short while.

I make use of the corporate bookmarks and warp across home to jump through our static wormhole. I don't even pause in C3a on my way to C2a, having adequate time during warp to update my notes about the system now being down to one tower, although I come up abruptly against the wormhole when I see it is reaching the end of its natural lifetime. I ask Fin if the wormhole was EOL when she found it but she can't honestly remember. If it wasn't then I have plenty of time to explore, but if it was it could collapse at any moment. I'm not a good judge of the wobbliness of wormholes, and I am going to trust that Fin would have noticed the wormhole looking sickly and assume it has a few hours of life left, jumping through to see what I can find.

There are plenty of hangars and arrays in this C2, with what looks to be only one force field to keep them all safe. It's my third visit to the system, my previous time here being a mere six weeks ago letting me warp directly to where I listed the tower. There certainly is just the one force field protecting all the visible assets in the system, leaving me to wonder what big and expensive ships could be stowed away, particularly as none are left lying around. And with no one home I warp out, launch probes, and start scanning. I found static connections to class 3 w-space and high-sec empire space on my last visit, and Fin is keen to pick up a new array for our tower, which a connection to high-sec would help with.

I stutter before launching probes. I warp back to the wormhole to do so, a hundred kilometres from it being a relatively safe place to sit in this small system, where I see an Anathema covert operations boat enter behind me from C3a. He pauses, turns around, and jumps right back to the C3. He didn't see my ship, my covert Tengu strategic cruiser staying covert, so perhaps he was simply looking for opportunity through a dying wormhole. I note the capsuleer's name and corporation but ignore him for now, getting down to scanning instead. Ten signatures don't take long to sort through, and exiting w-space even puts me in The Forge. But despite being in the same region as the centre of all New Eden commerce I am in a distant corner from Jita, and Fin considers the journey a little too far to risk the EOL connection.

I return to w-space, hop across C2a and C3a, and explore through a K162 in to class 4 w-space. My directional scanner is clear from the wormhole in C4a but I don't launch probes from the wormhole. As it was opened from this side of space I don't consider it safe to do so, instead warping to a nearby planet so that it isn't immediately obvious what I'm up to. Opening the system map shows that I should be fairly safe from casual observation. The planet closest to the wormhole is 15 AU from the next nearest planet, and 142 AU to the furthest planet. That's going to take a deep breath from the ship's capacitor to warp across, and stretches my scanning probes almost to their limits to cover adequately. I think it's safe to say this system's pretty spacious.

Even at full stretch my combat probes pick up four ships, eight signatures, and fourteen anomalies. It's the ships I'm interested in. I warp off to find the Anathema, Tengu, and two Viator transport ships all sitting piloted inside the active force field of a local tower. The Anathema pilot is familiar, being the same who flashed me in the C2 not long ago. He's not the only active pilot here either, as the two Viator pilots strip down to their pods as I sit and watch voyeuristically. They may even sense I'm here, as the two bare pods tease me further by swapping ships. Back in the Viator and down to a pod. Now in a Hulk exhumer, back to the pod. In to a Covetor mining barge, and out again. And in again, and out again. I'm almost tingling with expectation.

One of the pods boards a Buzzard cov-ops, but does he really board a Buzzard? I can see the pod's gone and the ship appear, but the pilot's name is not associated with the ship like it should be. My updates to Fin try to reflect this but now they are not getting through. Great, I know what's happened, my ship has suffered a systems crash again. This is getting tedious. Not only do I miss a chance of ambushing a high-value salvager recently because of the same fault but now these potential targets will know my Tengu has been watching them. But there's nothing I can do. I have to reboot.

Coming back on-line is almost wasted time, as the local pilots won't want to make themselves vulnerable now, but I have to at least get myself home. And that is the least I do. I can't be bothered to spend my time scouting and stalking if a random event will ruin an evening's fun. I'm heading home to go off-line.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: anathema, buzzard, covetor, eve online, hulk, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, tengu, viator, w-space