Return to the shattered planet

A burst of signature activity occurred overnight. Or, as it turns out, capsuleer activity. Three new signatures combine with the static connection to give a gas site and three wormholes. But even three wormholes doesn't offer much new, not when the static connection to class 3 w-space is always there, and a K162 from class 3 w-space is reaching the end of its life. I suppose I'll be diving through the K162 from class 4 w-space to look for activity.

A Probe frigate, Cheetah covert operations boat, and a tower all appear on my directional scanner in C4a, with no overt signs of actual activity. Locating the tower finds the two ships to be empty, which is no surprise. Scanning, however, gives me a little start. I launch probes and blanket the system, thinking there may be a K162 leading further back, and the seven anomalies are joined by a whopping forty-nine signatures! The messy gets. That's a lot to dig through, but I can narrow down the likely suspects easily enough.

Nom nom nom, fat signatures and good scanning skills eliminate twenty rock and gas sites in one go, and the few other chubby signatures are soon easily discounted too. So there are no K162s here, which takes me back home and on to C3a, where a clear d-scan doesn't mean much when the farthest planet is 93 AU away. Luckily, my notes help me explore passively, as I was last here ten or so weeks ago, when a Mackinaw exhumer pulled me in to an ambush that I narrowly escaped from. The ambushers weren't local, but I have a tower listed. A tower that now sits off-line and stripped, so my notes don't help me at all. Stupid notes.

A new tower has been erected, this one with a Buzzard sitting piloted inside its force field, but the cov-ops is stationary. Oh, and this w-space system holds the shattered planet, which I happen upon when warping around looking for new towers. Of course I remember this system. I should have remembered this nugget of information sooner too, as my notes have 'shattered planet system' written down. The shattered planet offers an almost-unique sight in w-space, and is quite pretty.

Blanketing the system reveals nine anomalies and eleven signatures, with a static exit to high-sec to find. That's not particularly exciting, neither is sifting through radar and ladar sites, although a second wormhole intrigues me. At least, it does until I drop out of warp next to a K162 from null-sec. And the wormhole to high-sec is at the end of its life, and doesn't offer exploration possibilities. So out to null-sec I go, where I appear in a system in the Kalevala Expanse. Is this region droney? A passive scan picking up three drone anomalies suggests it is, and a waste of my time to go ratting. I scan still scan. Maybe another unlucky corporation has connected in to this system.

Six extra signatures in the null-sec system seem lucky, and the first signature being weak and 'unknown' makes me think I'm luckier still and have found an outbound connection. Sadly, the signature resolves to be a Hierarchy site, full of drones. And, after rocks and some more rocks, another unknown type is Hierarchy's ugly brother, Radiance. No wonder there's no one in this system. The final signature is another Hierarchy, which is null-sec's way of flicking me the Vs. I can take the hint.

I return to w-space and C3a, where still nothing's happening, and head home and through to C4a, to see a system remaining devoid of activity. Nothing's happening tonight, and although I could feasibly kill our static wormhole and scan a new constellation the K162s at home deter me from trying. W-space is sleepy tonight, and it's making me sleepy. I'll just hide in a quiet corner of the home system and look forward to a better result tomorrow.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: buzzard, cheetah, eve online, mmorpg, null-sec, penny ibramovic, probe, scanning, w-space