Why am I scanning?

There's bountiful gas for Aii to harvest, my colleague coming on-line shortly after I do. But the one other signature that requires checking in the home system resolves to be a second wormhole, which isn't good. Well, it isn't good for Aii, who may not want to suck gas in an insecure system, but it's—oh, actually, it's not good for me either. The K162 from class 2 w-space is wobbling away at the end of its life.

So we're in an insecure system, and without any assurance that our own static wormhole remains closed. In fact, not only has it definitely been opened, but it too is sitting at the end of its life, limiting our options in both directions and in staying home. It's not the best start to an evening we've had of late. Maybe I'll just take the night off.

No, let's try to kill our static wormhole. It should be safe enough. Aii boards an Orca industrial command ship, I get the Widow black ops ship out of the hangar, and we both make a round trip through the wormhole. I pause for long enough to take note of the system designation and to check my directional scanner, but it all looks rather ordinary. Nothing in my notes, nothing on d-scan.

Returning home in our massive ships doesn't drop the wormhole to its half-mass state, making the final pair of trips easy and relatively safe. Aii goes out and comes back in the Orca, we swap boats, and I make the same trip in the same Orca. The wormhole collapses behind me on my return. Job's a good 'un. Even better, Aii is happy to wait for the C2 K162 to die of old age whilst I go exploring. Okay then.

I resolve the replacement wormhole, and jumping through finds this second class 3 w-space system as uninspiring as the first. A blanket scan doesn't even make it look better, with five anomalies, six signatures, and no ships. My notes suggest red occupation under a year ago but warping to where the tower should be finds them gone. No stalking hatred enemies of ours tonight. I'll be scanning for wormholes.

Gas, data, gas, wormhole, and a nice little surprise at the end with a second wormhole. The static exit to low-sec takes me to The Bleak Lands, where faction warfare putters on and extra signatures beckon me to scan them. Maybe in a bit, extra signatures, I have a second wormhole in C3a. And it looks welcoming too, being a K162 from class 4 w-space. But it's welcoming facade is only visible from this side.

Jumping to C4a has my mourning the mystery of w-space again. D-scan shows me three towers and no ships, and the idiot scanner reveals just the one signature in the system, the wormhole I'm sitting on, without my even having to launch probes. Fine, have it your way, I'll look elsewhere.

Back through C3a to low-sec and launching probes to scan the seven extra signatures. The first is a combat site, it doesn't take probes to identify the fool in the local communications channel, then back to scanning another combat site, data site, relic site, combat site, data site, and a final combat site. If only someone had warned me I was wasting my time in scanning.

That's my options exhausted. It's time to go home. Rather than hide and go off-line immediately, it's only polite to help Aii collapse our wormhole a second time. The process goes as smoothly as the first time, leaving us both in the home system and the wormhole gone, and by the time we finish the C2 K162 has withered in to oblivion too. That's good. Aii can huff gas in peace, and I can get some downtime.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, low-sec, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space, widow