Looking for a Loki
20th May 2014 – 5.28 pmOur ore anomalies have disappeared. This makes me sad. Oh well, I'll get over it. A new signature in the home system is a K162 from class 3 w-space. I know this, because my glorious leader knows this. Specifically, Fin's in C3b taking a look around. 'I have not been to C3a yet.' Then I shall head that way myself!
Jumping through our static wormhole and updating my directional scanner sees a tower, Orca industrial command ship, and Loki strategic cruiser. I also see some drones, but without any Sleeper wrecks visible I doubt they are significant. Oh, and there's the canister we mischievously dropped off-grid from a wormhole a few Christmas Eves ago.
The Orca is at the tower, according to a tight d-scan beam, but not the Loki. The strategic cruiser isn't in one of the ten anomalies either. Maybe he's at one of the four signatures. I'll have to hunt his position with scanning probes, which is made somewhat problematic by the system being tiny. I have nowhere to hide from d-scan. Never mind. I decloak, launch and throw probes out of the system, and re-cloak, not waiting for the launcher to reload.
Now to pinpoint the Loki's position. It's not easy, the Loki being high above the ecliptic plane, but I get the ship within a five-degree d-scan beam. I gauge his range at 2·9 AU or so, and start arranging my probes around his position when the Loki disappears. Cloaked or jumped?
Jumped, probably. He's back, and in the same position. If he jumped he will even be polarised, so I make a quick final check of my probes—they look good—and call them in for a scan. The Loki is on a wormhole, probably the static exit to null-sec judging by its weak signature. I warp to get close, and although the wormhole appears in front of me the Loki is gone.
Gone, but not out of the system. The ship is still on d-scan. Now he's gone, which probably means another wormhole. I reload my launcher, relaunch my probes, and scan more roughly. I resolve a wormhole, a K162 from null-sec. That other signature could also be a wormhole, and as it is quite chubby it won't take long to check. Yep, a third connection. I'll ignore that for now and poke through this K162 to look for the Loki.
The K162 takes me to a system in Fountain, where one pilot is in the local channel and a Tengu is on d-scan. And off d-scan. This isn't the strategic cruiser I'm looking for. Back to C3a and across to the other wormhole. Bah, a T405, leading out to class 4 w-space. It would be peculiar if the Loki originated through that connection. Still, either he came this way or went off-line. Or, I suppose, hopped a stargate in Fountain.
I poke the K346 in C3a for information, landing in a system in Branch with two pilots somewhere but no ships in d-scan range. Time to check C4a. Jumping through the T405 and updating d-scan sees nothing, and opening the system map shows just the one planet in range. Launching probes and blanketing the system reveals twelve anomalies, twelve signatures, no ships, and exploring locates a single tower. The Loki has gone, so it's back to normal-mode, scanning for wormholes.
My probes pick up a wormhole. It's not a strong signature, so it won't be a K162 but the static connection. A second wormhole must therefore be a K162, given that C4 w-space doesn't have wandering wormholes, but it's only a dying K162 from class 5 w-space. That it's at the end of its life isn't good for exploration, or for finding activity. Or, indeed, for the health of C4a's static wormhole, a P060 to class 1 w-space.
The static wormhole is also at the end of its life, no doubt opened by the C5 scouts, and perhaps liked by them too, as the connection is also stressed to half mass. That's nice, but that makes it pretty much useless to me. It looks like I've hit a soft dead end, and it's late enough that I'll just turn around and head home. There's one last task to perform, though. With Fin's help, we move a ship from a construction bay to our hangar, ready to be fitted.
6 Responses to “Looking for a Loki”
Congrats. You got a long web/tp ship worked up to fly with it? It's gonna have issues hitting sleeper BS's without one.
I'm sure we can work something out.
Don't Sleeper battleships approach/retreat to a certain range and stay there, in general? What makes them hard to hit?
Just the fact that you're shooting waaay too big guns :P
And bses do orbit, you don't usually see it in a Tengu but they do.
In practice with enough tracking mods you can hit them just barely at 80km (or maybe bit closer, depends) but to hit reliably at <50km you'll want to triple web + painters.
Altho, in a c4 there's some chance you can blap em before they get too close, especially if you get good warp in for all the waves to be at good range. It'll that they aren't the escalation kind with 200k ehp each so they won't live long.
Also dps is low enough that a single capital armor rep (without any resist mods) will suffice.
So you can fit 4 damage, tracking mods and some sebos.
You'll still want a webber, possibly a local tanked Loki? (no clue what works for c4, i assume you won't have anything to remote rep it)
Cool, thanks for the info, chaps.
Yip what Mick said. You could also run the Golem next to it, using those bonused TP's to help the XL guns hit while the Golem focuses on the smaller stuff with it's missiles. 1st and 3rd wave of the Frontier Barracks you should be fine with that, dunno about the 2nd as they're closer and may out track your guns.
Whatever you end up with, you should get through a site in under a single siege cycle now :)
It makes sense. I was thinking 'the bigger, the better' but, of course, EVE Online matches weapon and ship sizes, so dreadnought versus battleship won't be optimal.