An exit becomes an entrance

It's been a few days, and in that time we've made some ISK and lost some ISK. Glorious leader Fin found a battlecruiser engaging Sleepers, but could only get in position in time to catch the pilot salvaging in a frigate. A fair bit of loot survived the exploding Heron, which maybe covers a tenth of the cost of the Loki strategic cruiser Fin then lost, when idling in the home system, because of a defective cloak. I bet it was Gallente made. That was then, so what's happening now? Nothing at home, so I resolve our static wormhole and jump to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system.

The J-number of C3a sounds familiar, but the names of the hangars visible on my directional scanner don't, even though they are distinctive enough that I should probably remember them. Sure enough, it's my fourth visit to the system, and the previous visit six months ago had no occupation. The tower and hangars are new. It's just a shame there are no ships to go with them currently. Curiously, although the system is quite small, a mere 21 AU across, and there are options for anchoring the tower where d-scan would provide full coverage, the locals have decided instead to plant themselves on the most distant planet, giving themselves a blind spot. Whatever, weirdos.

I warp across the system to launch probes, out of d-scan range of the tower, and bump in to a Helios. Not literally, as space is pretty big, but I see the covert operations boat on d-scan. Now he's gone, so the cov-ops is piloted and not abandoned. It's possible the ship is local and has returned through their static wormhole, particularly as I saw no probes when entering the system and see none now. And with no probes and no ships on d-scan, I think now's a good time to launch my own probes.

Probes in space and performing a blanket scan of C3a, I warp back to the local tower to see if the Helios has indeed come back. He has not. I imagine there are more wormholes to find, in that case, and start sifting through the two anomalies and fourteen signatures. A bit of gas gets in the way first, then I resole a wormhole. I would say that it's in the general area where I saw the Helios, but that would be disingenuous considering that the volume of space the Helios was in covers the entire system except for the planet with the tower. As if to prove that point, I find a second wormhole, and a third, and a fourth and fifth, all in range of where I detected the Helios.

Warping around gives me a K162 from class 2 w-space, a K162 from low-sec empire space, a second K162 from class 2 w-space, and the static exit to low-sec, which I land on so exit through on reflex. I appear in a faction warfare system in the Placid region, and rapidly leave it again, making my way across C3a to the fifth wormhole, a K162 from high-sec. That's a good find, as it seems both Fin and Aii are currently locked out, and jumping through makes it even better. I appear in a system in The Citadel, which sounds convenient. I imagine my colleagues will be coming back this way.

Despite being a convenient entrance to w-space, I don't really care for the high-sec connection, so return to C3a and, ignoring core scanning probes now on d-scan, check the other wormholes. The K162 from low-sec comes from the Khanid region, which I only transit for reference, and, continuing to ignore the probes, whose source—system or ship—I don't know, pick a class 2 wormhole to poke through. C2a sounds like an obvious first choice.

An Orca industrial command ship, Iteron hauler, and Occator transport appear on d-scan, along with a pair of towers. My notes from seven months ago have two towers listed, although only one has a full planet/moon reference. Luckily, the two ships likely to be piloted are both at the tower with the full reference, letting me warp directly to it so that I can experience disappointment more quickly at seeing the hauler and transport empty. Well, I may as well find that second tower this time. My notes say it is around the fourth planet, but has a question mark for the moon. But, silly Penny, opening the system map shows that the fourth planet only has one moon. It's not hard to guess.

Naturally, the Orca at the hard-to-find tower is also empty, and as I have another C2 system to explore I don't bother launching probes to scan. I jump back to C3a and on to C2b, where four bubbles are all that d-scan cares to show me. Warping to explore deflates me, as the next-nearest planet to the wormhole is full of towers. Towers with silos. Well, nearly full, with nine towers around ten moons. I suppose that at least makes listing them all relatively easy, as I only need to find the moon without a tower, although I dread to think how many more towers the other planets have. But before I wander off in the direction of the inner system, I am keen to see what the Orca, Nighthawk command ship, and Noctis salvager are doing out here.

A lack of wrecks could mean nothing is happening, or that the Noctis is being efficient and, perhaps, the Nighthawk has been guarding it. Sadly, though, all three ships are simply sitting inside a couple of towers, even if they are actually piloted. That's not to say nothing's happening, so before I forget I warp back out of d-scan range to launch probes, and perform a blanket scan of the system. My combat probes reveal two anomalies, six signatures, and four ships, so something else is waiting to be found, if not much. I return to the clump of towers, if only because I saw the Orca moving, and watch as the industrial command ship merely warps between towers around the same planet, followed by the Noctis. I imagine the pilots are just updating silo jobs.

I'm curious to see what the other ship my probes revealed is. I warp to the inner system, expecting to bump in to a mess of more towers, but thankfully find just the one other tower. I suppose I got (un)lucky with the first planet I warped to. The other ship turns out to be a Rorqual capital industrial ship floating unpiloted inside this tower's force field, so that's everything accounted for. And I think I'm going home. There's a high-sec exit to find in this C2, from my notes, but as Fin is happy with the connection in The Citadel, and indeed has nearly reached it, there's little point in scanning for a different one. I turn around and head home, through a class 3 system where the probes have vanished and not been replaced by ships. It's all quiet.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, helios, iteron, mmorpg, nighthawk, noctis, occator, orca, penny ibramovic, rorqual, scanning, w-space