Scouting scouting boats

Fin's here, but is she really here? Judging by bookmarks pointing to a K162 from class 4 w-space and the originating side of that wormhole, I'm guessing not. 'I was not going to do anything stupid', my glorious leader says on seeing my coming on-line. Yeah, she's probably in the C4. Need a hand? But actually Fin's in our home system, and is simply planning on crashing the connection, after establishing C4a as being unoccupied. Seems almost sensible to me.

I warp to the wormhole in my cloaky Loki strategic cruiser in anticipation of jumping through, in time to see Fin shove an Orca industrial command ship through it. Maybe I should get the Widow black ops ship instead, a pairing of ships we've found to be quite suitable for wormhole collapsing. But, of course, other ships have come and gone, the wormhole diminishing to half mass on my trip out of the system. I'd better pause for a minute and do some maths.

Yep, I think we can collapse the wormhole safely, it will just need Widow trips from now on. Fin goes out and back, I go out—and notice the black hole, perhaps the reason no one lives here—pushing the wormhole to critical levels. Jumping home again has the wormhole implode. Maths! Now to explore without leaving a back door open.

Back in our scanning boats. Fin resolves our static wormhole and jumps ahead of me, seeing a tower but no ships on her directional scanner. That sounds about right. As she starts to scan I follow behind, exploring to locate the tower instead of tripping over Fin's probes. Towers, in fact. Two more crop up at the edge of the system, as well as a Hurricane popping on d-scan.

The same Hurricane drops on to C3a's static wormhole that Fin has resolved and jumps to low-sec, presumably having seen our probes. That's a shame. A Navy Vexor cruiser now becomes visible on d-scan at the outer towers, and warping across to get eyes on it sees it drop to a pod and warp towards the U210. Another local pilot exits to low-sec Verge Vendor.

C3a may be a bust, but Fin's resolving plenty of wormholes. Along with the static connection she finds a K162 from null-sec, a K162 from class 5 w-space, a dying C5 K162, and an outbound wormhole to class 2 w-space. Meanwhile, a Helios covert operations boat appears at the tower I'm loitering near, dropping to a pod, back to the Helios, down to a pod, and warping to the low-sec exit.

What can be so interesting in Verge Vendor? As Fin explores in to C2a, I head that way to find out, appearing in Hevrice, a system whose name seems familiar for the wrong reasons. No oranges are amongst the couple of dozen pilots, though. There are no other signatures in the system either. I could explore elsewhere, but I'm feeling lazy. I lurk by the wormhole hoping the oranges bring back a ship we can tackle.

An orange appears in the local communications channel of Hevrice. I wait to see if he gets past the inevitable gate-camp, and he does, but only to jump a Cheetah cov-ops in to w-space. That's barely worth chasing without a more suitable ship, and although we could probably get one it seems a bit late now. 'Both warped', says Fin. Both? 'Cheetah and Helios.' That's peculiar, because only the Cheetah jumped past me. And because the Helios must have decloaked to warp. 'They are scanning now.'

A new orange appears in Hevrice, but again it's just a cov-ops, the Helios jumping past me to C3a. Still small fry, still too agile for me to try to catch. It's all a bit boring so far, but I suppose we can't expect much more if the locals suspect activity in their home system. Still, it's boring enough for Fin to call it a night. I'm leaning that way too, particularly when an unaffiliated pilot exits C3a to low-sec, warping away in yet another cov-ops. There's really not much to catch.

Fin has the right idea. I jump back to w-space and, not quite wanting to give up just yet, bounce off the far tower to see if anything has changed. And it has. I see a Navy Omen cruiser, Navy Vexor cruiser, and Astero frigate floating piloted inside the force field. But maybe they see me, as the Vexor swaps to a Cheetah and the Astero warps away, towards the C2 wormhole, dropping off d-scan when I follow. I suppose he's gone in to scan the system, and even if he's not and will come back polarised I've had experience of trying to catch these. Not in a Loki. I've had enough of watching cov-ops, it's time to go home.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: astero, cheetah, eve online, helios, hurricane, loki, mmorpg, omen, orca, penny ibramovic, scanning, vexor, w-space, widow