Distracted by low-sec relic sites
27th November 2013 – 5.51 pmWhat's out there today? Cosmic anomalies and signatures in the home system are soon reduced to gas, relics, and a single wormhole, which will be our static connection and my only current opportunity to explore further afield. I'll be going to class 3 w-space, where my directional scanner almost-inevitably shows me a tower and no ships in the system. My notes perk me up a little, as my last visit had Fin and I pop a very expensive Tengu indeed, the strategic cruiser and pod costing its pilot over three billion ISK in in losses.
That was a really good day back then, maybe one of our best. All looks quiet this evening, although the tower in the system is the in the same place and owned by the same corporation. Our buddy from the Tengu is even their point-of-contact. Maybe he warns potential new recruits away from w-space, who knows. No one is around at the moment, so I launch probes to scan the twelve anomalies and eight signatures.
One signature is too many AU outside the reach of the furthest planet to be anything but a wormhole, and so it resolves to be just that. It's too obvious a hiding place, I'm afraid. Then my probes find gas, a second wormhole, more gas, even more gas, a third wormhole, and a data site. The result looks good from the scanning interface, but the connections are pretty poor. One is a dying K162 from high-sec Domain, the static exit to low-sec is healthy, and the third is, huh, empty space. It couldn't have been much closer to the end of its life when I scanned it.
Once more one way to go, and jumping to low-sec takes me to a system in Sinq Laison with one other pilot and four extra signatures. There's hope for this evening yet, ignoring the low-sec pilot and launching probes to scan. Hello, two wormholes appear to be almost on top of each other. I'll believe that when I see it with my own overview, and, sure enough, the first one looks to be an echo, as my Loki strategic cruiser drops out of warp in empty space for the second time this evening.
The second wormhole exists, but barely. The K162 from null-sec is wobbling away at the end of its life and not worth exploring through, which just leaves me two relic sites in low-sec. Maybe I'm fated for a quiet evening again. It's just me and some random Brutor Tribe capsuleer in low-sec, with no one else having passed through, and the relic sites would pass the time. But I won't hack the relics in my Loki, not when I have a Buzzard covert operations boat built precisely for this task back at our tower. Let me get it.
Through still-quiet C3a, home, swap ships, and back out to low-sec. Nothing has changed except the ship I'm flying, and so I warp to the first relic site, cargo scanner fitted, feeling like a boss. Of course, being equipped to see what's in the containers to be hacked only really makes a difference if you act on the results of the scans. When you see that it's pretty much standard salvage items and decide to punish yourself by enduring the hacking mini-game anyway, the scanner loses much of its glitz.
Still, using my hacking Buzzard for the first time is mildly entertaining, when I hit speeds above two kilometres per second between relics and still have the hacking strength and cargo space of the Loki. I don't even risk losing my relatively cheap ship whilst mindlessly clicking on mostly arbitrary nodes, as the other pilot I've so far been sharing the system with disappears. I can hack in peace.
The first site is cleared and, yep, it's just salvage. My scanner was right, who'd have thought? Moving on to the second site and scanning again, because why not, shows that one of the relics has a blueprint copy of something-or-other, maybe a rig that no one fits to their ships. I make a note, grab the data containers as they spew from that relic, and otherwise stick to the materials and parts containers for the others. Again, it's just salvage parts that are worth anything, although I manage to snag the BPC for my troubles.
Two sites cleared, maybe fifteen million ISK made. It's not much of a gain, and it wasn't terribly engaging to hack open the relics. But it was a distraction and has kept me busy for long enough to convince me that nothing else is going to happen tonight. That is, unless C3a or our home system has changed whilst I've been in low-sec. Nope. C3a is still empty of ships and contains the same signatures as earlier, and the home system is just as I left it. Time for a sammich, I would say.
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