Turning to the dark side
20th June 2014 – 5.47 pmLet's see if I can maintain interest in w-space a little longer. Perhaps I am just being curmudgeonly, and there are still plenty of opportunities for action and excitement. Like in the home system, where our anomalies are once more building up. Shooting Sleepers is excellent fun, am I right? At least we haven't had any rampaging intruders for a while, and their fun fun fun mobile tractor units.
Two new signatures replace the old, almost literally. The previous gas sites have wafted out of the system, two new ones have formed. I ignore them and head through our static wormhole, where my directional scanner shows me a tower and two ships in the neighbouring class 3 system. The Maelstrom battleship and Gnosis battlecruiser are even joined on d-scan by drones, but a lack of wrecks makes me wonder if I'm actually interrupting anything.
Waving d-scan around with rather more focus than 'waving' suggests has both ships coincident with the tower, the drones elsewhere. Warping in that direction finds the pair piloted and idle, the Maelstrom more obviously idle than the Gnosis. No problem, I warp away, launch probes, and perform a blanket scan of the system. It's pretty much as it looks. Two anomalies, five signatures, and the ships and drones d-scan has already shown me.
The static exit to high-sec is obvious from its mid-strength signature, the others all being quite chubby. All the signatures are in d-scan range of the piloted ships, but I really don't think they are watching for probes. If they are, they'll have noticed our K162 pop on the discovery scanner. Either way, I have nothing to lose by scanning.
Two gas sites, two wormholes. Hey, I've found some of the drones too, floating abandoned around the high-sec exit to Verge Vendor. The other wormhole has no drones and is a wobbly K162 from class 5 w-space, the connection at the end of its life. To high-sec, then, where an orange pilot is in the local communication channel. Checking his information shows him to be local to C3a.
Has the orange pilot been chased out by the C5a menace, the drones left behind on the wormhole orphans of combat? Is he a scout monitoring the wormhole for movements? Or maybe he's just chilling in a station. Either way, there's not much I can do to him in high-sec. So what can I do? Hit the market, I suppose. Not here, though. I am close to Dodixie. Hive of scum and villainy it may be, but it will have better prices.
Hop hoppity hop through stargates and in to Dodixie, where I dock and make the decision to buy a new ship, a decision I failed to make a short while ago. I'm not terribly spontaneous, it seems, but if I'm getting bored then the least I can do is spend some ISK and try to inject some spice in to my time in space. There's nothing quite like flying yet another too-expensive ship that I don't yet know how to pilot in to obvious bait that gets me killed.
I feel dirty. I've finally turned to the dark side. But the decreasing options available to me call for drastic measures, and I have to try something. I put together my new ship, cribbed from elsewhere with few tweaks by myself, and leave my Loki strategic cruiser behind as I take my new strategic cruiser out in to space. Damn, but this is an ugly ship. It even flies backwards. At least I won't feel too sad if it explodes.
I take the Proteus back through the stargates to the exit system. I could drop the new ship at our tower and return for my Loki, but I'm not sure what would benefit me most. Having the Loki stay in dock in empire space would be convenient if I get podded, giving me a ship ready to fly back to w-space. But if I only lose my ship and not my pod, I would prefer the Loki to be at our tower. I dunno. Let's see what's happening in w-space before deciding.
12 Responses to “Turning to the dark side”
Finally! You will not regret this decision.
I already am! Look at the state of it.
Oh come on. The Proteus is awesome. It may look like something you find floating in the toilet bowl but you can make a brick out of it. :)
And the DPS beats all the other T3's. If you're going to get up in someone's face with a cloak, often unsure of their backup situation, you may as well have as much "oomph" as you can get to gank and run with maximum efficiency. Penny's irrational space-frog hatred is coming to an end, I predict.
Hah! If it's irrational, I'll never stop hating!
The proteus is always my first choice when wormhole diving. I have experimented with Loki's and do like the 4th mid slot, I even tried a stratios but for raw dps and tank from a cloaky / scanny ship the proteus is no1.
Granted it is butt ugly and soooo slow, (hey i recon i was overtaken by a bicycle last week) but it sure suvives some great fights as well as being a great primary tackle.
Yeah, this change is prompted by the capability of the Proteus. I can't ignore it, any more than I can ignore how damned ugly the ship is.
The Stratios is your other option for cloak and damage, however you do lose the capability of being nullified.
Stratios also has a longer cloak reactivation delay, which isn't always a big deal, but can sometimes be very important.
I've never had an issue with it to be honest. You can adapt to suit providing you're constantly aware of it.
I've been flying a Proteus for a few months now. I personally don't think it's ugly, but rather I think it looks kind of like an awesome motorcycle. A flying motorcycle.
That said, I really don't see it much, since it's cloaked 99% of the time. Keeps me from getting too tired of it.
That's a good point. A cloaked Gallente ship is the best Gallente ship.