Sleepers and scanning

I'm back in the Tengu. I'm only upset about this because I couldn't work out how to fly the Loki, despite them both being strategic cruisers, in the same roles, and my having sufficient training in both. Well, skill training, I suppose, not actual flight time. I was kinda hoping to have the Loki a bit longer than a few days to get used to it, maybe use some industrialists for target practice, so returning to the comfort of the Tengu is disappointing in that I am not extending myself. But at least I know what I'm doing.

Scanning the home w-space system shows all is quiet, with just some new gas floating in, much like Fin does now. I resolve our static wormhole and keep it unvisited. We poked Sleepers in some anomalies yesterday but there are plenty more to pop for profit, and I think that having a ship costing over half-a-billion ISK explode around me, although exhilarating, probably warrants recovering a bit more of that loss. We board our Sleeper Tengus, scan the anomalies, and warp off to start pulling in the profit. Once we get used to the bloom of doom.

One benefit to flying the Loki is that losing a chunk of skill points from Minmatar subsystems doesn't gimp my effectiveness in the Sleeper Tengu. And, I suppose, vice versa. There are positive aspects to piloting different strategic cruiser hulls, it seems. And I may be about to convince myself to buy a replacement Loki. Concentrate on the Sleepers! Particularly these two, as the battleships in the final wave are awfully close together. They normally drift apart, but this pair are within a few kilometres of each other. Maybe they're gossiping, but Fin suggests it is 'Love in the Time of Talocan', right before we pop the two of them.

Salvaging pulls in another decent haul of loot, netting us a little under two hundred million ISK. Together with yesterday's profits we've pretty much paid for my Loki. The Loki that's already dead. But what are iskies for if not to spend? And now we get to roaming through the w-space constellation, looking for new ways to throw ISK down the drain. Jumping to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system doesn't look foreboding, though, with a tower and no ships visible on my directional scanner. Even four more planets out of range don't hold any obvious activity, so we are left launching probes and scanning.

Phew, what a mess! Twenty-seven anomalies and eighteen signatures creates a blur of green triangles and red dots under my probes. Sifting through the signatures reveals plenty of rocks and gas, as well as a magnetometric site and two radar sites, leaving the system's static wormhole to be found last. It will quite obviously lead to null-sec, given the strength of its signature, and it's the only wormhole in the system apart from our own K162. If we hadn't just tackled Sleepers at home this C3 would be an ideal opportunity to make ISK, not lose it.

But we have made ISK this evening, and not even breaking out my Golem marauder can persuade me to make some more. The only way is forward, even if it's to null-sec k-space, and I exit C3a through the wormhole. I appear in a system in Catch, which is neither empty nor quiet. There are rat wrecks aplenty, and two Apocalypse battleships on d-scan, one Navy Issue. A passive scan of the system locates the anomaly with the wrecks, but unsurprisingly not the battleships. I imagine they scuttled back to the safety of a tower's force field as soon as my strange face appeared in the local channel.

I look to see if I can launch probes covertly, although I'm not sure why. The capsuleers won't come back out to play until I've left the system, so what do I care if they see I'm in a Tengu? I don't suppose I do, and it's just perpetuating a w-space habit, but I'm okay with that. It doesn't look like I can get out of range of the tower with the Apocalypses, until I see that a stargate sitting far away by itself isn't in d-scan range. I warp across, plant myself off-grid, and launch probes without the battleships being any the wiser.

A blanket scan reveals two additional signatures in the null-sec system, so I eschew any pretence of staying hidden and whiz my probes around resolving them. I don't find any more wormholes, though, just a radar site and some rocks. I think that's it for tonight, in that case. It's been slightly less interesting than podding a battlecruiser and exploding in a rusty fireball, but I'll take profit and no death tonight. An occasional change of pace is good. I head home and hide for the night, Fin joining me after activating all of the sites in the C3. That'll tidy the place up a bit.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: apocalypse, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, sleepers, tengu, w-space