Checking the gas is still on

Back to standard scouting. The Venture mining frigate has disappeared, leaving the gas site moments after simultaneously sucking up the last of the gas and having my probes resolve his position. I need to look elsewhere for adventure, but perhaps after I find the towers in this system. One is easy to find, being around a planet with just one moon, the other I have to look for, and when I do I see that the Tengu strategic cruiser inside the force field is actually piloted.

The present capsuleer is a little surprising, given the Venture was gassing and is no longer in the system. But maybe all it means is that the Venture pilot is local, and has gone off-line now that his task is complete. It also kinda means that when I launched probes earlier, to hunt the Venture, the Tengu pilot was in a position to see me do it via the directional scanner. That assumes he's paying attention, though, and it really looks like he isn't. I'll use that to my benefit, given that I want to re-launch my probes and can't get out of d-scan range of the ship.

Hold on. Before I launch probes I want to check something. On a hunch, I warp to the gas site, the one where it looked like the Venture cleared, the one that my probes still picked up on the scan. Sure enough, the site remains, the clouds are there and not completely harvested. Of course it's still there. The Venture didn't finish harvesting the gas, my warping to empty space was caused by warping to the Venture's scanned position. And that was empty space because the Venture was in warp away from the site as my scan finished.

Did the Tengu see me and warn the Venture? Did the discovery scanner finally update and ping our K162 to the gasser? Or was he so primed to detect probes that he got clear before the scan finished? That would be impressive. But, whatever. I'll scan. Twenty anomalies and eight signatures are distilled down to two chubby wormholes, one skinny wormhole, two data sites, and another gas site, all as the Tengu continues its slumber. The first chubby wormhole is a dying K162 from null-sec, which isn't quite as interesting as the Venture reappearing on d-scan.

The Venture isn't in the gas site, not that I expect him to return there, but in the second tower in the system. He is local after all. That's interesting but now insignificant. I warp to the second chubby wormhole. It's another dying null-sec K162. That just leaves me the skinny wormhole, the system's static exit to null-sec, but at least this one's healthy and offers an option for further exploration.

The K346 looks like it's going to Feythabolis, but the destination region is actually Omist. In my defence, the two regions look awfully similar when viewed through a wormhole. And in the system I see one other pilot, and the discovery scanner scuppers any interest I have by immediately showing me a single signature, the K162 I'm sitting on. It's not really exploring, is it.

I could try gate hopping, but I've lost my mojo for exploration tonight. Circumstances looked good initially, I even got the opportunity to hunt a ship. But ultimately I'm not being drawn to looking for more signatures, more systems to explore, because it can still feel like passively announcing new signatures in w-space suppresses the activity I'm hoping to stumble across. I'm going home.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, tengu, venture, w-space