Hearing of a hacking Heron

More anomalies have popped up in the home system, but another K162 today too, this one from class 4 w-space. My glorious leader is around, somewhere, I'm not sure where, although it's obvious she has scanned her way through our neighbouring class 3 w-space system and out to empire space. There's no bookmark for the other side of that K162, though, so I jump through to touch the system.

A black hole is pretty obvious, and my directional scanner shows me a tower in the system, but I can't see any ships. I warp away, launch probes, and perform a blanket scan, revealing seventeen anomalies, ten signatures, and still no ships. And here's Fin, telling me that the K162 has been around for hours, her having come on-line some time ago to scan. Now she mentions it, all the signatures look stale as well. I give them a poke anyway but there's nothing of interest.

I leave the inactive C4 system alone and cross our home system to jump to C3a, where Fin has launched probes to scan for the new exit. The previously found static wormhole to low-sec has died of old age. Whilst she looks for the new U210, there are a couple of K162s from null-sec that may be worth visiting. One isn't, the wormhole from Venal now at the end of its life, but the other remains healthy and takes me to a system in Malpais. There are no signatures to scan, but no pilots in the system either, letting me find and pop a rat to pass the time.

C3a's new static wormhole is found. I warp to Fin and see a wormhole shimmering with the nebulae of the four main high-sec regions, which I think means Sinq Laison is on the other side. I exit w-space to find out, and am indeed in a system in Sinq Laison, with four other signatures to scan to boot. I scan the signatures, finding two wormholes, a combat site, and a data site, resolving and bookmarking the latter in case it comes in handy. Low-sec exploration sites get the occasional visitors.

Both wormholes in the low-sec system have class 3 w-space on the other side, one an X702 outbound connection at the end of its life, the other a K162. That's the way I like my options. I jump to C3b, update d-scan, and check the system map. There's not much to see. D-scan is clear and there is only one anomaly and three signatures in the system. I launch probes and blanket the system anyway as I check my notes, seeing that this is my eleventh visit. That seems like a lot.

There have been changes since my last visit. The blanket scan adds a ship to the anomaly and signatures, and looking for it finds a tower that wasn't around six months ago. Mind you, occupation was almost guaranteed, considering how few sites there are. I get close enough to the tower to see the ship is an Iteron hauler, but that has changed to a shuttle that is no longer in the tower by the time I get to the right moon. Well, that's a sign of activity, I suppose, but maybe of finished activity.

I warp to the low-sec exit, knowing I'm much too late to see the fast-accelerating shuttle if it came this way, and Fin hits low-sec from C3a, but also no doubt too late to see if the shuttle passed through. Still, the pilot bringing back a bigger ship is our best hope for activity at the moment. That, and scanning. I check out the signatures in C3b, the one possible K162 actually being a K162, but only from null-sec, the winged sprite indicating Feythabolis being the originating region. Let's hope the shuttle returns.

Some pilots pass through low-sec, so Fin tells me, but they do just pass through. What do we do normally do when we've stalled? 'Eat chocolate', she says, which sounds like a good plan. But the plan goes awry when a new pilot enters the low-sec system, launching probes to scan. I point Fin to the bookmark I made of the data site, in case the pilot is looking for that and not wormholes, but keep myself in C3b in case an extra pilot in the same corporation as Fin spooks him. 'The Heron is in the site.'

I urge Fin to kill the frigate. After a pause, she tells me she got it. Excellent. The pilot was probably distracted by hacking. It was either his first site of the evening or he's careful about stashing loot, as his wreck is empty of anything but surviving modules. It's good that we don't do this for the ISK. And that looks like it for tonight. The C3b pilot hasn't come back and I don't care to wait much longer, and although as I head home another pilot starts scanning in low-sec, all I see is a Stratios cruiser blip on d-scan as he hops a stargate.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, heron, iteron, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, stratios, w-space