At the end of its life
22nd October 2013 – 5.17 pmWill there be ships or wormholes for me tonight? Well, I can't see any ships at home, so I'll stick to wormholes for now. And, what luck, there are three of them for me to resolve. I had a hunch one would be our static connection to class 3 w-space, so the other two are the more interesting. They are both K162s, one from class 2 w-space and one from class 3 w-space. Sadly, the C2 connection is wobbling away at the end of its life, so instead of risking isolation from the home system I'll jump through the other K162 to C3b.
On the other side of the wormhole I can see a territorial control unit, tower, and lack of ships, and all of them are in different directions. Well, you know what I mean; my directional scanner shows the tower is not in the same direction as the TCU on my overview, the lack of ships is a generality. A lack of activity has never stopped me before, and it won't stop me today, so I warp away from the wormhole to launch probes and start scanning. Or, at least, that's the plan, hindered somewhat by bumping in to a second tower, this one with ships.
Two Tengu strategic cruisers and a Drake battlecruiser are inside the force field of the second tower, all three ships pilot. There's activity too, if not Sleeper combat that I could interrupt. Both Tengus swap in to Buzzard covert operations boats and warp away, before I've managed to orientate myself and so to a place in space unknown, leaving the poor Drake alone and unloved. No probes are launched, though, so I don't know what's happening. Maybe I should wait a minute before doing anything.
Hmm, what I didn't do before, but do now that I've seen pilots, is check the system for wrecks. Flipping my d-scan settings shows me some, all of Sleepers, but there are no ships with the wrecks and no obvious sign that either combat is continuing or salvaging is about to start. It's possible I was spotted entering the system and combat was halted as a reaction. In fact, considering the reaction I saw with the Tengus, I think that's quite likely.
There is only one site of wrecks visible in the whole system. If the site is an anomaly it has despawned, and if it's a relic site there are not enough wrecks for it to have been cleared. And still the Buzzards remain hidden. So be it. I warp as far across the system as I can, launch combat scanning probes, and perform a blanket scan. Six anomalies and seven signatures are revealed by my probes, and there's not much I can do about anything without having ships to aim for.
Ah, sod it. I'm not wasting my time sitting around waiting for nothing, I'll scan. I start poking around near the wrecks, and near is as close as I can get. I resolve a relic site in the general direction of the Sleeper wrecks but it's clearly not where the wrecks are. The site is obviously a despawned anomaly, and I really can do nothing about it unless a ship re-enters the site. Never mind, I'll scan the rest of the signatures. It's just gas, a data site, and what must be a static exit to high-sec.
The Drake goes off-line, having me kill the system without any explosions. How sad. Checking the high-sec exit sends me to The Citadel, and although it's a mere four hops to Jita and all looks quiet I don't really trust C3b. But it's an exit, which gives me a way home should, say, a certain wormhole collapse behind me. It's time to take a peek in to C2a.
The first test is passed, with the dying wormhole still present in our home system. Let's hope it stays there a little longer. I jump through, update d-scan, and see two towers, two Iteron V haulers. Notes of w-space, don't fail me now. Excellent, I have a previous visit, only four weeks earlier, giving me the location of both towers. Only one Iteron V is there, according to d-scan, so where's the other?
I spy the itinerant Iteron V at a planet, most likely at its customs office, which means there is planet goo being collected! I won't catch him there, of course, but maybe I can get ahead of him. I warp to a customs office hopefully next on the Iteron V's path only to check d-scan to see the hauler back at the tower. Well, no problem, I know where that is, and if I can follow him I have a much better chance of catching him. I send my cloaky Loki strategic cruiser to the tower.
Well, to a tower, as there are two, and I don't know which tower the Iteron Vs are at. Not this one, apparently, and as I turn my ship around I make what I think is a prudent decision to point d-scan at the other tower. The Iteron V is out again. Hilariously, he's gone to the customs office I was just waiting at. Good one, Penny. I rush across but, of course, the hauler has gone by the time I get there, so I head back towards the tower in the hopes that I can catch up with him somewhere.
Wrong tower. Again. I was just here! How can I not remember? But now is not the time to feel stupid. I have plenty of time for that later. I turn around, warp to the right tower, and, finally, see the Iteron V. Actually, I see both of them, as as this is my first time at the right tower and seeing the gooer I have no idea which is active and which is idle. Well, I say 'no idea', but I don't think I'm making too big a deductive leap to say the one actually near a hangar is more likely to be dropping off planet goo. I'll focus on that one.
Sure enough, the hauler that hints at being active is being active. Seconds after I've got my bearings does the Iteron V spin on its axis and start accelerating for another run. I can see its destination too, so align my Loki and, what the hell, enter warp before the hauler. I'm confident I've already caught him. Indeed, I'm at the customs office in plenty of time to see the Iteron V decelerate out of warp, letting me shed my cloak and get my sensor booster active before the hauler even has a chance of fleeing.
I gain a positive lock on the target, disrupt its warp engines, and start shooting. I burn towards the hauler and give it a shunt out of escape alignment, backing off slightly in preparation for a second shunt, but one is enough. The Iteron V explodes in a pretty fireball. I nearly catch the pod, but off he goes, damn him. That leaves me a with a wreck to loot of shield modules and a couple of expanded cargoholds, before I shoot that too to leave no trace of my piracy. I follow the pod back to the tower but the dying wormhole pings my memory. I got a nice and simple kill, I'm out of here.
8 Responses to “At the end of its life”
I love reading your daily adventures as I also roam solo in a cloaked loki across the shadows of wormhole space. Nice catch btw keep up the good work.
Thanks, 7ube. Maybe see you out there one day!
It pains me that people are still using Itty Vs for PI. OTOH, a good kill cheers me up.
To be fair, this happened weeks ago. I have no idea when the Epithal that unintentionally made gooing stupidly safe was introduced in relation to this event.
Epithals were introduced with Odyssey 1.1, on September 2nd. Your kill was on Sept. 12. I guess a lot of players are not connected to EVE info online and maybe did not know about it. But I sure did.
As for the intention... well, it's hard for me to believe that CCP Rise does not know what people would do with a PI bay of 49000+ and four unused low slots.
Not yet having an Epithal could be a combination initial lack of awareness, casual play not having him on-line too often, and not having made it through a good connection to empire to pick up the new ships.
It would be surprising if CCP Rise didn't realise the scope of the changes. But a common problem is changing the design a component without regard for the system. In a complex system, there can be many unintended consequences, and all aspects of the change need to be tested, not just whether the component still meets its primary objective.
If you focus on making a good PI hauler, then sometimes you make a good PI hauler without fully exploring how other ships would interact with it.
The Epithal makes for a great POCO pickup vessel but I almost always bring cargo back. It's a lot more challenging to gank the new 3x warp stab ships than the prior 5x cargo expanded, that challenge I applaud them for!
I dunno. I'm not averse to a challenge, but it seems that before the hauler iteration it was up to the industrialist to make compromises: fit for survivability, or fit for capacity. On top of that was the choice of ship, with T1 variants cheap but liable to explode; or opting for the sturdier, cloakable, and inherently safer T2 transports at the cost of two orders of magnitude more ISK.
Now there is no compromise to be made. Have a vast bay, a tank, and warp core stability, all in a ship that is cheap enough to be disposable anyway. Where's the risk?