Nothing to see here

The culling of the indigenous Sleeper population trudges on, alongside the continued the growth of the indigenous Sleeper population. One of us should perhaps take the hint. Despite the handful of signatures dotted around the home w-space system I am still left with only the static wormhole for me to explore beyond, so I resolve the connection and jump through to our neighbouring class 3 system. C3a looks bleak from our K162, with only a moonless planet within range of my directional scanner. The system map shows I'll have to spread my attention far and wide too, as the system is over 120 AU across.

My notes on this system from my last visit may not help with my exploration, as they are fifteen months old. Even so, they remind me of the day Mick and I helped protect Fin's Orca from a Proteus, as we successfully pod the strategic cruiser to get the industrial command ship home. But rather than reminiscing I can look for current activity, so launch probes, spread them thinly, and perform a blanket scan of the system. Ten anomalies and twelves signatures can wait for now, as I change my filter to also show structures. What I see doesn't point towards the tower listed in my notes, and I warp towards where a tower now looks to be, which could save me a couple of minutes warping.

Locating the tower is straightforward enough once I know which planet it's around. I naturally find it empty as my combat probes detected no ships, and I settle down to sift through the signatures. I hop my probes from planet to planet to see 3 radar sites, a wormhole, two gravimetric sites, two magnetometric sites, a ladar site, a lovely second wormhole, and a final gravimetric site to have worked through all the signatures. I recall my probes as I warp to the first wormhole, which is a static exit to low-sec and reaching the end of its life. I poke out to appear in Domain, bookmark the other end of the wormhole for reference, and return to C3a. The second wormhole is splendid indeed, being a fresh N968 connection to more class 3 w-space. I can continue roaming.

A tower and no ships on d-scan from the K162 is fairly standard result, but a lack of anomalies in range from a passive scan is uncommon. A lack of sites doesn't bode well for finding activity, but maybe C3b can bridge me to a better system. I launch probes and scan, to realise that finding a better system here is unlikely. A scant two signatures are all my probes return, which must be the K162 I came through and the static wormhole. It looks like I'll be relying on low-sec to provide opportunity now, as I'm not expecting any locals to come on-line to an entirely bare system. I resolve the other wormhole and jump out to more low-sec space, this time in the Sinq Laison region. I'm not by myself, as it looks like a Legion is ratting, but I ignore the strategic cruiser and scan for wormholes.

This low-sec system is almost as clean as the C3 I exited, with a paltry one extra signature that resolves to be some dumb drones. It's all a bit quiet tonight. Even so, the lack of exploration means the evening is still early, so rather than head home and hide I think I'll collapse our static wormhole to give me a fresh start. At the very least I'll get to scan one more system, for kicks and giggles, but I'll be optimistic and hope to find some activity. First, I need to get rid of the wormhole and end up on the right side once its gone.

I get home and start pushing an Orca through our static connection, stressing the mass limit of the wormhole, pausing only for polarisation effects to dissipate and to make a return trip in a Widow black ops ship. I would say the process goes smoothly but my final trip in the Orca gets home with the wormhole obstinately refusing to die. I need to convince the wormhole it's no longer needed with a connection-collapsing heavy interdictor. I activate the HIC's bubbles to exit lighter than a pod and return home burning an oversized propulsion module to significantly increase my mass, at which point the wormhole gives up and implodes. And hopefully that's the last sucking noise I'll create tonight.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, legion, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space, widow