Ratting is tedious, however efficient
16th March 2012 – 5.39 pmA patch has been released, so I'm applying it to my ships and hoping for the best. I'm not convinced the patch will help, as it is to reduce instability when jumping through stargates, whereas my ship crashes have occurred arbitrarily in space, but I can hope. At least I am back in space. I choose an early hour to test my systems, letting me explore and do some preliminary scouting whilst hopefully not risking too much should my problem not be fixed. The alternative is to revert my ships to their factory defaults, and I don't quite want to go down that route if I don't have to.
All is clear at home, giving me a smooth start, and I resolve our static connection and jump through to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system, where I see on my directional scanner an Orca industrial command ship and a tower. Opening my system map for a broader look around shows me that the C3 has seven planets, only three of which hold moons, and the entire system to be too small for me to warp away in order to drop off d-scan and launch probes. I'd best find the tower first. But with it being the only ship visible it's no surprise to find the Orca's in the tower and unpiloted, letting me launch scanning probes without being noticed anyway.
There's not much here. Four signatures plus the Orca show up under my combat probes, which includes our K162 wormhole. Resolving a ladar site and two wormholes takes no time at all, giving me a nifty N968 connection to more class 3 w-space and the system's static exit to low-sec empire space. I pop out to bookmark the low-sec side of the wormhole, as a safety precaution, finding myself in the Black Rise region. That's about as much as I care to note at the moment, as I'm rather more keen to see what lies in C3b. I jump back to w-space and warp across C3a so I can take a look.
C3b is much like C3a, holding a tower and no ships. I suppose that's only to be expected at such an early hour, and the lack of activity is why I'm here. Scanning could bag me some good ambush points for later too, so I launch probes, bookmark the eleven anomalies, and resolve the five signatures present. Gas, wormhole, magnetometric site, wormhole. I have another static connection to low-sec, and a K162 that would be more interesting were it not coming from null-sec k-space. Even so, I pop out to null-sec to see what's there, appearing in Goonswarm space in the Deklein region.
There is one pilot in the null-sec system with me, deterring me from ratting, but checking my atlas shows me that I have exited w-space to be in a rather convenient pocket of null-sec. This system and four others form a kind of double-pyramid shape of space, all interconnected so that travelling around this pocket of null-sec will keep me within one jump of all the other systems at any time. I think I should at least hop around and see if I can find an empty adjacent system or two for some ratting.
My first jump gets me results. A rat battleship sits on the other side of the stargate in an empty system. It's not the safest place to pop a rat but the populated local channel and activation of the gate should give me enough reaction time to flee if another pilot happens to come by. I grasp this opportunity and pop the battleship, uninterrupted, and move on to the next system. I'm alone again, and without a rat sitting on the gate as a welcoming party I'll have to warp around the asteroid belts looking for trouble. It's easily found, and I pop another battleship for some more gain in security status before moving on again. Shooting the rats is pretty quick, too, now that I have a selection of ammunition in my hold after the previous aborted attempt at taking down a Guristas battleship in null-sec.
My crash troubles aren't resolved, it seems. I try to loot a wreck of a popped rat only to get confused when nothing happens. It takes me a few too many seconds to realise that, in fact, none of my systems are responding and that I need to reboot my Tengu. Thankfully, when I get my ship back on-line I am still alone in the null-sec system and haven't managed to lose a second strategic cruiser to ill-fortune. I'll need to perform a factory reset when it's convenient, which it never is. For now, I complete my circuit of this double-pyramid of systems, ratting as I go. I am not alone in a couple of systems but get good battleship kills when I am. And as the expedition is going well, I extend my circuit to include some more distant systems, although I turn around rather sharply when I hit a well-populated dead-end system.
I start a second circuit of the null-sec systems when I see the security status I'm raking in, but stop when it looks like more pilots are waking up. I also remind myself that this is more of a chore than actual enjoyment. I like that I am getting some good gains in my status but it is false pleasure. I don't actually want to be doing this, and wouldn't need to if I wasn't so harshly punished for daring to shoot ships in low-sec in the first place. I'm not going to make an afternoon out of ratting just because I can. I'll enjoy my time better elsewhere. At least I got some of my security status back and, unfortunately, realised that my crashes have not been fixed by the patch. I head home through empty w-space to the home system, where I hide myself away and contemplate having to reconfigure all my settings again.
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