There and back again

Rocks and gas are gone from the home system. Bye bye, rocks and gas. As are most of our anomalies. Bye bye, Sleeper loot. But say hello to two new signatures, gas and his brother, gas. That leaves no intruders to chase out, or any incoming wormholes to chase the non-existent intruders through, so I'll go to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system instead. Or as usual, I suppose.

A tower appears on my directional scanner in C3a, and the lack of visible ships to accompany the tower makes this system suitably hum-drum. My last visit wasn't, as I aimed higher than a salvaging destroyer to take on a Tengu, only to be chased away by the salvager swapping to a Blackbird cruiser and saving the strategic cruiser with ECM. That was five months ago, though, so I should take time to see what's changed.

Two towers remain in the same positions as before, although one other tower has been torn down, and the locals seem less inclined to engage Sleepers now. A blanket scan of the system reveals twenty-seven anomalies but only seven signatures, suggesting industrialist occupants, which would be great if only they were on-line and industrialising. As it is, I am scanning for wormholes. One gas pocket and two rock fields mingle with a single magnetometric and radar site each, leaving just the static wormhole to low-sec to empire space.

The static exit is my only option, so out I go to a system in Everyshore, where scanning shows four anomalies and two additional signatures. A magnetometric site isn't terribly interesting, and the weak second signature is not going to be a K162 wormhole. I resolve it anyway, out of a sense of completeness, already thinking that I'll need to collapse our static connection to keep moving forwards, only to be greeted with a wormhole after all. It's an outbound connection to class 2 w-space. How lovely.

Two towers are immediately obvious in C2a, but still no ships appear on d-scan. I still like this C2, though, as the dual static wormholes will give me more w-space to explore. At least, that's the plan. Seeing from my notes that the two static connections lead to class 5 w-space and null-sec k-space doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings, but they can keep me heading forwards and will do. Or would, but the wormhole to C5a is at the end of its life and could collapse at any moment, and even resolving a third wormhole in the system only offers a K162 connection from high-sec space.

Looking on the bright side, C2a's static exit to null-sec is in pristine condition, indicating that it's only just been opened. That could give me a fresh system to explore, and exiting w-space for an empty system in Tenerifis gets my hopes up again. I can not only scan, but rat and scan. Actually, no, I can rat, because scanning is pointless with no signatures in the system beyond the K162 I came through. And even ratting is proving difficult to achieve, as it looks like someone has been through here recently culling belt bandits.

Okay, here's a rat battleship, freshly warping in. Pew pew, pop pop. Done. And with an empty system and a little triangle of connected systems I may as well hop through a stargate and continue ratting and scanning. Or ratting, as still no signatures turn up, and a second stargate hop puts me in a system with enough other pilots to deter me from either activity. It's time to go back to w-space. C2a is still empty, the static wormhole to C5a is still there and wobbly, and crossing low-sec to C3a sees no change there either. Noodling in null-sec has taken its time too, so I won't bother collapsing our wormhole to start afresh.

But just as I am about to hide in a corner of our system and cause an intentional Penny crash, I spy a wreck on d-scan. It's not a Sleeper wreck either, but that of a Gallente rookie frigate. That's most peculiar. I wonder what it's doing at home, to which TG replies 'chilling'. That's a pretty good answer, and after launching probes and seeing no new signatures I can't offer a better explanation. Locating the wreck is straightforward enough, it being in an anomaly, and it must be recent because wrecks decay after two hours, but I have no idea how it got there or why.

The most I can find out is that its owner is a week-old capsuleer still in a state corporation. As the wreck is not on a wormhole, even a dead one, the pilot wasn't caught by other capsuleers. Perhaps he mistakenly thought Sleepers don't fire on rookie frigates, and came through a now-collapsed wormhole to see one of our sites. I dunno. And because the wreck's appearance is inscrutable I pay it no mind, and go back to my plan of getting some sleep. It'll be gone long before the morning gets here, and I'll have forgotten all about it.

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