From blue to red
4th August 2014 – 5.21 pmI hope w-space is going to be more active tonight than it has been recently. A cursory glance at the home system as I come on-line suggests that, yep, shit's been going down. Select anomalies are missing from our system, damned thieves, and extra signatures almost certainly point to extra wormholes. I'd best get scanning them, so that I can wreak my revenge on the perps who stole our Sleeper ISK.
Of course, my revenge may be sneaking in to their system and finding a tower that has not seen any active ships for hours, but at least I'm in space and the revenge will be a dish served cold. I just need to find the right connection, and the two extra signatures are two extra wormholes. One comes in from class 5 w-space, the other from class 4 w-space. The C4 may be the simpler system to scout, with less chance of multiple, forking wormholes, and I go there first.
Jumping to C4a and updating my directional scanner sees two towers and no ships. My revenge may be working already. There are also only two anomalies and three signatures, so checking for K162s will be quick and simple. I launch probes and perform a blanket scan in preparation, at which point my combat probes detect a ship. I warp to the inner system to see if I've found a miner or a third tower, and, of course, it's a third tower.
The ship is a Crane transport, naturally inside the tower's force field. It's piloted but most definitely idle, and I call my probes in to scan the two other signatures. They're both K162s, one from a C5, one from a C3. Continuing my theme of trying to make sensible choices, the C3 could be a dead end, prompting my jumping to C3b to see a tower and no ships on d-scan. It looks dull, but again my combat probes pick up a ship on a blanket scan, along with four anomalies and six signatures.
This time, the ship is a fat, empty Rorqual at a second tower, easily ignored. Well, kinda. This tower wasn't around three weeks ago, so that looks like some quick work. I also see from my notes that the static wormhole exits to high-sec, which could be worth finding. I start scanning, resolving the high-sec exit and four other wormholes. I haven't even fully explored my options up to this point, and new forks are appearing.
The high-sec exit takes me to Genesis, six hops to Dodixie, with no oranges in the system, no other signatures. The other wormholes call to me, and I jump back to C3b and warp around, spotting a Taranis interceptor—definitely not a Bestower—on d-scan as I do. There's also a Cheetah covert operations boat in the system as I land near a K162 from high-sec. Activity is around, I just don't know where.
I get a better idea of where the activity is when the Cheetah drops on to the high-sec K162 as I warp away. Sadly, the Cheetah is blue to us, probably meaning I perhaps shouldn't shoot him, even if he is just a light-blue. It's more of a grey, really. Ah well, I'll ignore this direction, as I have more wormholes to explore elsewhere. Back to C4a and across to the C5 K162, where I pause as the same Cheetah appears from nowhere and jumps to C5b ahead of me.
Maybe that's the blues' home, or leads to it. Or they are just scouting that way. Whatever the situation, I doubt it's worth my time following behind him, and I abandon this arm of the constellation completely. That's cool, I still have a K162 at home, and our static wormhole to explore through. I turn my Proteus strategic cruiser around, warp across C4a, and jump home, aiming for the K162 to C5a.
I pause in our system after jumping. D-scan shows me an Anathema cov-ops with scanning probes, the ship persisting through a couple of updates. I open the system map, narrow d-scan's beam, and interrogate the known wormholes. The Anathema is on our static connection, still visible. In that case, I'll go that way too. I warp across, drop short as usual, and see the Anathema floating near the wormhole, the cov-ops highlighted in a brilliant red.
A red Anathema looking all vulnerable on our static wormhole. What could possibly go wrong in ambushing it? I plan to find out. I approach the cov-ops to get in to the optimal range of my blasters—probably, I don't really know what that is, and don't waste time looking right now—decloak, and start locking on to the tiny ship. I get a positive lock, disrupt its warp engines, and start shooting.
Shooting stops rather abruptly, my blasters ripping the ship apart in three volleys, and I follow up by getting a positive lock on the sleepy pod too. One more volley cracks that open, and I can see why the pilot wasn't responsive: there was a corpse inside. I scoop the corpse, and loot and shoot the wreck, happy to have even a minor kill. I should probably work out where the red pilot came from, but before I do that I'll drop off the loot at our tower. Cov-ops cloaks are bulky.
3 Responses to “From blue to red”
I approach the cov-ops to get in to the optimal range of my blasters—probably, I don't really know what that is, and don't waste time looking right now—decloak, and start locking on to the tiny ship
If you had to manually decloak you were not yet at optimal for blast proteus the tactic i use is go for the bump and lock when your cloak drops due to range that way your in web/scram range you have the bump lined up and you blasters can shred the target just my thoughts when i read the quote above :-) fly safe or dangerous whichever you prefer o/
Not enough distance to build speed for a decent bump if you wait until proximity decloaks you.
From experience, getting close enough to bump will exaggerate movements to completely throw out your tracking, causing blasters to miss the target. It's probably best to sit still and get a solid hit on a small ship than try to bump it.
I take your point, though. Blasters are like hugs, the closer the better.