Pulling in profit from Sleepers
11th September 2014 – 5.51 pmHow closed is our system? It looks pretty closed to me at first glance, the silly discovery scanner showing me two signatures amongst the anomalies I'm already eyeing up. Those will be the relic site I scanned yesterday and today's static wormhole to class 3 w-space. I launch probes anyway, because I'll want to know the location of today's wormhole at some point, and initiating warp to the bookmarked relic site confirms its persistence.
Our system is closed. I'll be clearing those two anomalies, in that case. I resolve the new wormhole, and take my Proteus strategic cruiser in to our tower's force field, having already warped to a safe spot on-grid with the tower in anticipation. Swapping to the Golem marauder, I make a systems check and take one last look at the silly discovery scanner, refreshed from the session change. All is clear. I warp in to the first anomaly, drop the equally silly mobile tractor unit, and start shooting Sleepers for profit.
It is finally revealed at the end of Oblivion that Jack Harper and Victoria were on a mission that was diverted to investigate what turns out to be the Tet. Their spaceship gets to the Tet, yet only the two of them are awake. The rest of the crew aren't woken up and remain in stasis. Why? That would be like Neil and Buzz getting in to the Moon's orbit and letting Michael have a lie in, because he's just been working so hard, the little dear. Admittedly, the Tet is a secondary objective, but if you have a spaceship full of trained personnel, you want them awake and alert before you reach that objective.
The first anomaly is cleared of Sleepers, the last two wrecks left behind for the purposes of efficiency and safety. I can sweep them up later in a cheap salvaging destroyer, instead of waiting another couple of minutes in a rather expensive marauder for the silly MTU to bring the wrecks closer. I'd rather fly a Noctis salvager, of course. Or, indeed, have the challenge of pathing through an entire field of wrecks in a destroyer not bonussed for salvaging. Those were the days.
These days, I have my hold of loot and salvage in the Golem, and, again for safety, I warp back to the tower and drop the potential ISK in to a hangar before for safe keeping. The system is still closed, giving me opportunity to clear the second site as well. Remembering to activate the bastion module on the marauder before too long gives me a better chance of surviving this opportunity too, which is nice.
The spaceship gets pulled towards the Tet. Jack says that full retro thrust isn't stopping them, and because they can't escape the pull he decides to jettison the sleeping quarters. Why, Jack? Because the bigger, more massive part of the ship will be able to escape by being thrown back merely from detonating some separation charges? Yeah, I'm sure that it won't just continue drifting towards the Tet itself, or that the Tet will ignore it and only pull in the cockpit module.
The tactic used made more sense in Pitch Black, where Fry had her motives right: jettison the sleepy heads in the back to die like dogs in order to give her a significantly better chance of survival. If Jack wanted to get rid of the dead weight to give his command module more chance of surviving that would be interesting. But expecting the jettisoned part of the ship to evade the Tet's attention makes no sense, and not just because the Tet has no reason to know which part of the ship jettisoned the other.
The second site is cleared much like the first, most of the loot and salvage taken back to our tower with the Golem. I store the plunder with the rest, resupply the marauder's ammunition, and swap to my Cormorant destroyer, an elegant salvager for a more civilised age. I sweep up the last two Sleeper battleship wrecks in the two anomalies, and tot up the profit for the evening. It's a good haul, made better by the finishing sweep, bagging me close to two hundred million ISK for the two sites. I'm happy with that.
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