Scouting in my colleague's wake
22nd April 2012 – 3.41 pmScanning when there are only one or two signatures in the system is pretty easy. Scanning when your glorious leader has been here an hour earlier and bookmarked all there is to find is even easier. I'm not going to fall in to the trap of assuming that nothing's changed in the hour since the corporate bookmarks were created, though. W-space can shifty like that, but thankfully not today. Launching probes finds the expected number of signatures, and it seems that the only change to be seen is that the K162 coming in from class 2 w-space is now in its death throes.
I'm assuming the C2 K162 being EOL is a change. I've occasionally caught myself noting that a wormhole is particularly wobbly and soon to collapse, yet failing to incorporate that information in to the bookmark itself. It may not be necessary information to include, but it's helpful. If a wormhole has collapsed, it can be useful to know if it was forced closed or died of old age. And knowing that a wormhole was EOL or not when the bookmark was created gives a better sense of impending doom. In this case, assuming that Fin didn't see a wobbly wormhole, the K162 should last another couple of hours at least. That's enough time to poke my nose through.
Even if the K162 wormhole was EOL earlier I'm not too concerned about getting isolated. Fin's scanning has been through our static connection too and resolved an exit to empire space, so if the K162 collapses I can resolve an exit here and make my way home otherwise unaided. And maybe it is worth the look in this class 2 system, as my directional scanner is showing me ships. An Orca industrial command ship, Drake battlecruiser, and Machariel battleship are all somewhere in the system, as is a corpse.
A corpse is a good sign of activity. Well, more a positive sign of activity than a good one, as it's a pretty reliable indicator that I've missed the action. The ships I see aren't likely to be in empty space either, not with five active towers scattered around, one potentially marked by a territorial control unit for whatever purpose. Even so, scanning probes in the system are a sign that at least one capsuleer is out and about. Assuming, that is, that the probes don't belong to the now-corpse. And with no wrecks on d-scan, more towers than ships, and what ships that are visible being unviable targets by myself, I think I'll have better luck leaving the dying connection behind me to scout in the other direction.
There's almost nothing to see from the wormhole in our neighbouring class 3 system, with only a lone secure container floating somewhere in empty space. I move away from the wormhole and cloak, opening the system map to decide in which direction to explore, when I see a bookmark already exists pointing towards a tower. That's handy. I warp to the bookmarked location but see no hangars or arrays, which is only explained when I look up from d-scan to see that the tower is off-line. There is an active tower nearby, though, and I locate it so I can keep an eye on it should I need to. I don't right now, not with a lack of ships in the system, but maybe someone will wake up.
I haven't quite run out of options yet. I warp to the static wormhole in C3a and jump out to the grey nebula of low-sec Lonetrek, where another scout is busy scanning away. I warp out, launch probes, and join him. It's all a bit dull here, though, with just the one other signature, which turns out to be a radar site that I don't much care for at the moment. The other scout decides the same and leaves the low-sec system, and not through the K162 to C3a, which is where I return. The class 3 system remains unsurprisingly quiet after my five-minute hiatus from it, so I head home.
I check the K162 in our home system and see it still alive, and with little else to do I take a second look through it. The Machariel is now joined by two Tengu strategic cruisers, which could offer a possibility that some Sleeper combat will occur shortly, and maybe give me a salvager to shoot. But performing a passive scan of the system shows it to be bereft of anomalies, giving them nothing to shoot but wayward visitors. I suspect the system is just as empty of other signatures too, being so populated with towers, which discourages me from scanning here. Besides, d-scan places the ships at one of the towers, and I quickly lose interest.
In a last, desperate bid to find something of interest this evening I return to C3a and launch scanning probes. Maybe a new signature has popped up since Fin scanned earlier. I hope so. I discard the nine anomalies from my initial blanket scan so that I can concentrate on the six signatures, two of which I already know about. And, this is exciting, I find a new wormhole! Or it would be exciting if I weren't about to resolve the static exit to low-sec again. There are two signatures I already know about; pay attention, Penny. Instead, all I find are rocks, gas, gas, and a radar site. Nope, nothing here. I think I have to accept that nothing's happening tonight, so head home to go off-line.
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