Detonating a ghost site
23rd June 2014 – 5.49 pmThere is a ghost site in the home system that I somehow overlooked yesterday. It sticks out quite plainly in yesterday's stack of bookmarks, and checking the discovery scanner shows that it remains today. That's something, I suppose. I could clear the site, or try to, but even when I get something decent it doesn't seem like much of an achievement or worthwhile. Still, better I do it than some passing explorer, and it's not like there is much greater excitement left in w-space.
I swap one strategic cruiser for another, from my new scanning Proteus to my Loki, reconfiguring it for the ghost site. I know it's survived others, so better use this than risk my new ship needlessly. Now it's a simple matter of warping in, scanning each canister, and trying to hack in to the best one. In this case, the 'best one' is barely worth even exploding, as it has a small chunk of pyerite along with some covert research tools. Looking more closely, the canister is clearly a reconditioned Ibis. The other three cans are all considerably worse in content.
I'm here, I may as well grab what I can. I move to the container with pyerite and start 'hacking', otherwise known as random button mashing. The attempt fails. How peculiar that a random activity has random results. The canister explodes with the failure, and I somewhat reluctantly move to the third-worst canister. I feel I should try to get some reward for my time, however minimal. Thankfully, before I get too uninvolved in more button mashing the rats turn up to chase me away.
I get away cleanly from the rats, the whole ghost site detonating soon afterwards. I think they just wanted an excuse to get rid of the crap they stored here, probably for tax purposes. Whatever, it's time to explore. I swap back to my Proteus, warp to our static wormhole, and jump to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system.
Updating my directional scanner from the K162 sees a tower, no ships, but a clutch of scanning probes. I think I'll just move from the wormhole, cloak, and loiter with intent. With any luck, the scout will come my way and I can try to catch him. Whilst I wait I check my notes, which tell me this is my fifth visit to the system, the last being about fourteen months ago. The tower listed should be out of range, although the one nearby is easy enough to locate without leaving the wormhole, what with it being around a planet with just one moon.
The core scanning probes disappear. Five anomalies and six signatures shouldn't take long to scan anyway. Now to see if the scout comes my way. It doesn't look like it. A bit of waiting has no ships taking a peek through our wormhole, but a little bit more does see a Cheetah covert operations boat appear on d-scan, before disappearing again. That's suggestive of a wormhole jump.
The scout is in a cov-ops. That's good to know. It's a ship that I have little chance of catching in my Proteus, but that he has gone through a wormhole should give me a little time before he's ready to come this way. I take advantage of this time to jump home, warp to our tower, and swap to a Flycatcher interdictor. The fast locking time and interdiction sphere launcher should give me my best chance of catching the Cheetah. If it comes my way, that is.
I drop the Flycatcher on to our wormhole and wait. I kinda hope the Cheetah takes at least a couple more minutes before coming this way, as I'm still currently polarised and won't be able to pursue him back to C3a. Thankfully, he does, and longer. Much longer, in fact. I'm no longer polarised, and no longer thinking that the Cheetah's actually going to come this way. I should probably go back to scouting and maybe find out why.
3 Responses to “Detonating a ghost site”
You bookmark anoms? Routinely?
Oh sure. It doesn't take long, and really comes in handy on the odd occasion when a fleet comes in to steal from us. Even if they are nearing completion and have left fields of wrecks behind in despawned sites, I have bookmarks to all of them.
I also bookmark anomalies when jumping to a new system. Again, if a fleet is mid-way through sites, particularly if they are out of d-scan range to start with and unnoticed, it makes sure no sites disappear unexpectedly from the scanner when the last trigger is popped.
It doesn't happen often, admittedly, but it's more than worth the minor effort for those times when it pays off.
Yeah, we do the same. Our hole is huge, requiring a minimum of 4 warps to scan it all down. So there is a real 'danger' of things de-spawning. And I just hate losing the opportunity to greet guests in person.