Ship watching
15th January 2013 – 5.45 pmAre these three extra signatures in the home system Sleeper-borne or capsuleer intrusions? A bit of both. Some new rocks, with some Sleepers not good enough to be part of an anomaly's fleet, have floated in as a couple of K162s connect to us. Both wormholes come from class 2 w-space too, which is neat. I jump through the wormhole I finish next to after warping around, and, as it's the second of the two systems, I find myself jumping to C2b first.
Two towers, no ships, five anomalies. That's a fairly bland result from both my directional and passive scanners. Launching probes and scanning with intent reveals ten more sigantures, and although an obvious K162 sticks out from the chaff it only comes from high-sec. But that will do, as the C2's second static connection will also only lead to k-space, and there are no other K162s that I can find easily. I pop out to high-sec to get the exit, appearing in Gallente space a few hops from Dodixie, but that's about as close as I'll get to the market hub for now. It's back to w-space with me.
I get myself home and in to C2a, where, good grief, eight towers mess up d-scan, along with bubble traps and a territorial control unit. My notes aren't much help either, despite having been here five weeks ago, where instead of tower locations I have occupation listed simply as 'yes'. That actually rings a bell, as I came to the system nearing the end of an evening and couldn't be bothered to look for all the towers. Thanks, past Penny, you're a real help. Then again, present Penny pretty much feels the same way, so I empathise.
Ah-ha! Locating the towers isn't anywhere near as onerous a task as it looks at first glance. Opening the system map shows that, sure, there are nine planets, but also only nine moons, and they are neatly spread out too. It just goes to show that it doesn't hurt to look. Waving d-scan at each planet in turn finds the sole moon without a tower, making it trivial to determine where the other towers are anchored, as well as where the ships are. The three covert operations boats—a Helios, Buzzard, and Cheetah all being in the system—don't interest me, but the Impel transport ship does.
Warping to the tower holding the Impel finds the transport piloted. But is he active? Not at the moment, although the Cheetah is swapped for a Wolf assault frigate before disappearing, as seen using d-scan. And still the Impel doesn't move. I've watched him not move for a little too long for my liking, and again I don't care to scan for the system's link to k-space, so take myself home. There's another system to explore, after all, through our static wormhole, and I jump to the class 3 w-space system in the hopes of finding activity.
I don't think I'll find anything happening when I'm spat in to the system over seven kilometres from the wormhole and on its deadspace signature. I've been wrong before, and a pair of mining drones on d-scan hint at something having happened, but not today. A blanket scan of the system may show one anomaly, three signatures, and seven ships, but all the ships float unpiloted inside the force field of a distant tower. Scanning first shows that mining drones are chubby fellows—resolving them to 100% using combat drones set to a range of 4 AU—which is good to know, and then that there are two wormholes in the system. That's also good to know.
What isn't good to find out is that the static exit to low-sec is joined only by a K162 from high-sec, terminating the w-space connection. I suppose that's only to be expected, though, given the nature of class 3 w-space, and there are two empire space systems to scan for more connections. The low-sec system, in the Solitude region, indeed holds a wormhole, this one a K162 from more class 3 w-space. Not only do I find more w-space, but pilots in that system. Two towers hold a Prorator transport, Legion strategic cruiser, and a Buzzard, but it occurs to me that I'm back to watching ships do nothing. I could have watched the Impel and saved myself the effort of scanning. There must be better activities to entertain me, so I head home and go off-line to find one of them to do.
4 Responses to “Ship watching”
I have to admit at first when looking at the blog I was like holy hell she types alot, But wow I admit I love your posts.
Just have a question from reading a bunch of your posts. It seems to be pretty lonely in a Wormhole or do more people pass through then I think?
Thanks, Jezza.
One reason for my daily posting is to show how quiet it can be sometimes. It would be possible to post only the fights and interesting hunts, and make w-space seem totally awesome, but I wanted to better reflect the reality of logging in to a w-space system belonging to a moderately sized corporation. Some days you chase and get chased, and some days you scan empty system after empty system.
You never can tell until you look, though. And even then, sometimes you don't see who's watching you. Not until it's too late, anyway.
While I enjoy the PvP aspect of EvE, Being in a system all by your self cant be all that bad if you are into the whole PvE. Seems like it would be a nice break from PvP from time to time.
Either way I been wanting to get in to wormholes for a while now. But my corp is focusing on FW at the moment then looking to re expand back out to 0.0 at some point, So here is to hoping that I can con some of them to take a break from FW for a week or two.
And whether you watch it or not. Props for playing EvE and watching Top Gear...? XD
The issue with PvE in a wormhole is that while you are often alone or isolated, you cannot keep others from coming in. And generally anyone who does come is looking for something to shoot.
You can take steps to mitigate the presence of others, like vigilant attention to the direction scan, keeping the system well probed, closing unwanted wormholes and other situational awareness activities.