Ctrl – Space

All has been quiet on the podlogs front for me: but not on the anomalous front.

I’ve had limited time with eve these past two weeks due to wrecking hits from the girlfriend (or reps, whichever way you want to look at it. We did watch season 3 of 24 in it’s entirety so no complaints from me!) and I’ve been kicked into some sort of whirlwind of activity due to my band all of a sudden being asked to do things.

[we were selected top 6 bands on YSYP and have been asked to play goNORTH, Rockness and the T-break stage at T in the Park. uhm...wtf is going on!?]

The time I have had with EVE (oh, Aurora how I missed your sweet soothing docking report updates) has been spent looking into exploration.
I’ve had an alt training up the astrometric and profession skills. He can now scan down anything he comes across with no difficulty, salvage T2 wrecks and use the Analyser for those elusive archaeology sites. All this in under 3 weeks!
Here is where I pay tribute to the banishment of starter careers and the ushering of 100% SP advance for the first 1.6 Mil SP. This, in conjunction with the 24 hour Skill Planner and we’ve got a winner, that’s for sure. I can’t help but think how many more SP my main would have if we’d had this Skill Queue from the start. All those valuable minutes and hours missed whilst sleeping or generally being absent minded; all those skills I never use but trained anyway ’cause I needed something long running whilst I was away for the weekend…

I’ve been doing all of my exploration in High Sec for now which has yielded not so much in the ways of monetary reward. Right now, the risk is too high for me to venture into low and null sec for the epic heists they promise. I’d like to wait till I have found a good exploration corp who enjoys a fight and doesn’t require me to be on every day of the week.
The sites I have found though, have been great fun.

My favourite experience so far has been in a Class 1 wormhole I found about 2 AU’s from my agents station (convenient much?).
I warped my alt in a probe to have a look at the even horizon. Pretty. Shiny. Squiggly. I slipped my main into a perma tanked Ishtar and made for the wormhole. Whilst in warp I jumped my alt through into w-space.

This is what space should look like. It’s dark and serine, an empty void on the surface but underneath you know that if you sniff around enough, you’re going find something that’ll put gold on your fingers or eat you cold, dry and without condiment.
Having no local really adds to the suspense and I’ve always agreed with those who said local should be removed from the game. Now I am even more in favour: it just works.

I drop cloak and warp to a mid planet to make a few safe spots when a buzzard drops on the event horizon. Needless to say I brick it and spam warp a few more times. My alt may be very skilled in astrometrics but I have no support skills to speak of. It’d be like shooting a dead whale in a very small fish bowl with an RPG.
My warp drive engages as a Brutix and an Absolution drop out of warp. No doubt they would engage me if I had stuck around, I know I would have.
My alt in a safe spot with the scanner pointed at the wormhole, I switch back to my main. I’m tempted. I could just jump through and engage to clear the wormhole rather than wait for them to move out. They’ve seen the probe, and now they think there is some High Sec explorer waiting for the all clear to come through: not a somewhat seasoned PvP pilot in an Ishtar that looks for any excuse to dance and kick dust.
They couldn’t risk loosing the buzzard if it was their only prober, and it would make sense for them all to jump out rather than risk the kill: but I don’t. I play it cool, like that dude in the West-Side Story. Wasn’t he real cool?

They wait a minute or so and jump out to K-space. They see my Ishtar and they size me up, hanging around for another minute or so before warping off.

Get in!!! My first w-space system all to myself!

My main makes for the safe spot whilst my alt scans down some plexes. 100% hits all round on the first 32AU probe. Cool, that’s simple. My Ishtar flies to the first “Perimeter Whatever”. In warp I hit my dual reps as I’ve heard all about the sleepers and their nasty alpha strikes: I’m dropping hawt.
Nothing there. Gah! The group that were in before me have obviously gutted the entire system!
Clutching to my sickly optimism, I warp to the next perimeter. Sleepers!

The overview turns red and I hesitate.

My shields are down before I can think and they start to chip away at my armour. I let loose the hobgoblin IIs and get to work on the frig sized sleepers. 

The overview turn yellow and I hesitate.

Eh? These sleepers are rabid for drones! They can’t enough of them! Being somewhat drone like themselves and trapped for untold millennia in isolation they probably just want to make new friends. George didn’t want Lennie having puppies for reason…(that’s two Of Mice and Men references in one blog. Note to self: widen horizons)

After a little experimentation and a new found confidence that my cap is in fact stable running the reps, I found the best tactic was to keep the drones in, orbit at 500m then swarm the little bastards at point blank range. This way as soon as the overview starts to yellow, you can scoop drones and they’ll receive no damage.

After a few re-spawns, a crow appearing and disappearing on scan and a tag team salvaging session, I made back to the wormhole. I had a lot of fun with the sleeper AI and can’t wait to get involved with some RR gangs taking on the more challenging w-space content. With my alt not far off being able to clear the cans of all profession sites I’m sure I could make a few coins too.

“That’s strange, I thought I warped to the worm hole.”

Still sitting in my safe spot, I go to warp to the wormhole for real this time.

“Approach location.”

Um…what!? The wormhole had collapsed leaving me stranded till I find another exit. I can see how easy it would be to loose everything you came with and gained if you ran out of probes or had your prober destroyed.

A few mental notes I made which could come in handy for anyone yet to venture into a wormhole:

- Your prober goes in first, and out last. You don’t want to risk any complications which could result in a ship without probes getting stranded and taking the Pod Express.
- Scan max range, 360 degrees at any point you’re not clicking something else.
- Don’t fly what you can’t afford to loose. This is obvious and something you should always keep in mind wherever and whatever you fly. However, in w-space you’re not just covering the very unlikely event that you are suicide ganked in high sec. There is a good chance, not matter how prepared you are, that Sleepers could get lucky with a well timed alpha strike (and they hit HARD). Not to mention w-space pirates and local inhabitants that wants yos eggs.

This aside: go have a blast in w-space!

I’ll post some pics when I get back from work.