Carebear in disguise

After all this time, I get back into the wormhole and I lose my gas harvesting exeq to a proteus within my first hour. All respects due to the pilot of that ship – I didn’t even see probes on scan! Perhaps I need to hit the scan button every four seconds from now on? Maybe every two?

Interstellar Forces are at war again. First time since we joined them, I think. Then they get a second wardec from mercenaries. At least this lot aren’t too afraid to fight. I’ve not engaged them myself, yet, but they field marauders, recon and strategic cruisers and all sorts of tasty salvage just waiting to happen. Shame they also insist on using neutral remote repair ships too.

Now I have to get out of the wormhole, get back to my combat ships, and pick them off one by one. Or get destroyed myself everytime one of them looks at me. Either way is fun, really.

save and exit

The w-space we try to occupy seems reachable most often from Amarr space. It is as if the wormholes have a preference of ideaologies, or some other bias. For the past three months, whenever I asked for an entrance location from whoever was in there, I was invariably disappointed to learn that I would need to transfer my ship equipment more than 20 jumps! Maybe I’m lazy, or just impatient, but that is too far for a journey in an orca or obelisk, and remaining sane would be very difficult.

Last night the entrance to the w-space opened only 4 jumps away! Needless to say, I grabbed my wormholing gear and got setup immediately. It’s the first time I’ve been in this new w-space and the wolf-rayett star makes the visuals very distracting, but still beautiful in their own way. I felt like handing out cookies in celebration of the beauty and the success of finally returning to the sleeper systems.

I fully aim to resuscitate my plans for building a Tech 3 cruiser or two for use within the w-space we are in – I have all the concord-sanctioned skills necessary, and they took time out of my training queue that I could’ve put to more practical use, so I am going to make a big effort this time.

When I’ve made the first strategic cruiser, I was going to name it after the system it was created in… Maybe I should think of a name for the w-space system and just impose my will on the sleepers until they see sense and change the system info broadcast. It might happen!

Choices for names, though? There is a great book created a long time ago, before the New Eden wormhole collapsed, that was very popular. It may have been non-fiction, but I can’t see it somehow. It was the most popular book of it’s time, so may have been the basis for some obscure religion or two, but I just find it a great escape into much simpler times. I shall draw a name from that book and hope that Tolkien does not smite me for my impudence in using His work (as some of the less restrained news media outlets would have you believe is possible!) Lothlorien? Mordor? I’ll have to read it again for the perfect name.

/save and exit

TransMiners has been going through a little upheaval recently. We had another war, which prompted many of our regular members to leave (“enough is enough” was the general consensus – after six wars with cowardly bullies in three months, I don’t blame them.) And many of the alliance members left as well. This basically left 6 regular pilots covering all corporation and alliance business and trying to fight the war, which was just too much effort for such little gain. So, I moved the corporation to a new alliance named Interstellar Forces, who seem to be a much more active group and so the feeling of safety in numbers returns. (BTW, Interstellar Forces are recruiting corporations still! Contact their diplomats if you are in a corporation who wants to feel welcomed into a larger team.)

Wormhole operations within the corp have basically come to a halt with a lack of capable pilots to fight the sleepers and insurgents from outside the w-space system. Hopefully there are some alliance members interested in moving into w-space, or some regular wormhole operations, otherwise we’ll have to shut down the whole thing and take a new route to financial success. I haven’t made any progress on my tech3 dreams from a class 2 wormhole due to the lack of pilots to help, and the lack of ready cash, but maybe I can restart that in the near future.

I am going to need to concentrate on obliterating the Serpentis pirates for the Gallente faction for the next few months if I can not continue with the wormhole operations. At least until I can find some new pilots to join our ranks and train them in the right way to do things. If anyone wants a position, just apply and I will interview you as soon as I can.

Hah! I’ve just realised that I have been writing this log as though I have readers looking at it. Maybe one day, someone will read my whitterings, but I shall not hold out too much hope.

Future plans for TransMiners and me now include rebuilding the corp membership, helping the alliance with their ambitions, and exploring the limits of this so called immortality I accepted so many years ago. Also, I am wondering what form of capital ship would suit me? I am very fond of nippy frigates and cruisers, and a capital ship just wouldn’t be as easy to fly, but I feel I should try to offer more to the corp members and allys as so much trust is being put in my leadership skills. Does anyone have advice on a starter capital ship?

save and exit

Do not spend all your time in a w-space system, and then mine in the empire system outside the entrance to that w-space. Your “home” can be tracked down easily and you will pay!

The war is over. It was a bit of a non-event, really. Apart from TransMiners losing our research and development station. Actually, that alone was a big loss for us, but we managed to save most of the gear in there.

We fought valiantly, destroyed several of their ships, lost a few of ours, and then the griefers spent nearly two weeks picking out young pilots who didn’t have the common sense skill trained at all. The new guys needed teaching the errors of mining/missions/ratting during war, but I would have preferred that they listen to our warnings rather than give the griefers something to do.

After several losses for the younger pilots, an effort was made to get a fleet together and go get the war targets. But we had to station camp a few of them with no interesting results and they ended the war after that.

“War is over, we can get back to making ISK” was the common thought for all our pilots that day, and I was thinking the same. My fellow director and I went back to raking in sleeper loot in an effort to repay our losses and get back to our original plans, but we didn’t count on the griefers still being interested in us.

A corp member was mining in high-sec, in the same system as  the wormhole entrance. This pilot had spent the whole duration of the war tucked safely in the ever-moving w-space. If you do not know where the wormhole entrance to a particular w-space system is, then it is extremely unlikely that you will find it. However, locator agents do tell their employers the ID of the w-space system that their objective pilot is stationed in. If the same w-space name comes up again and again, day after day, you can safely assume that the pilot is in the w-space for the long haul. If the pilot turns out to be outside the w-space one day, and you later find him mining in the system your agent said he was in, then chances are that the entrance wormhole is where that pilot happens to be. This is how they found us.

There we were, my fellow director and me, flying two megathrons soaking sleeper fire and giving back as good as we got when suddenly the overview was full of new ships, many target locks were reported and a warp-disruption bubble popped up. I admit it, I didn’t do anything for at least 10 seconds, still pounding on a sleeper battleship. I was thinking “WTF” over and over. I froze!

Then I came back to myself and assessed how I could get out of this with my ship. I had been messing with fittings for sleeper combat, trying to find a good mix of DPS and tank, and my latest iteration was trying to use mid- to long-range weapons and keep that range. This called for pulsing a microwarpdrive and using heavy capacitor boosters, so I fitted some really good ones I had lying around. Really good, and really expensive. This was not a good combat fit, and unlikely to be good at escaping a bubble.

The griefers had found the wormhole entrance, had a covert spy within the w-space watching us shoot sleepers, and they then brought a fleet of impressive ships to wipe us out. It was very well planned and happened very quickly. Unfortunately, I lost my experimental and expensive fail-fit.

The griefers stayed in the w-space, bragging in local, and watching us with their covert ships. We weren’t sure why they had picked on us in particular, but we couldn’t leave our last POS in that system for them to destroy. With some phenomenal dedication and work by some alliance mates and corp members, we evacuated everything from the system safely and put a temporary close to our wormhole experiments.

So, in all, not a good few weeks. I’m back to hugging high-sec empire space, licking my wounds and trying to work out what I could have done better. Maybe some revenge would make me feel better…?

/save and exit

Always make sure you know who your neighbours are. If a wormhole opens from your w-space to a trade hub, like Jita or Dodixie, then you will have a large number of visitors and they are likely to want to fight – it is time to organise a closure of that wormhole!

The question posed to me last night was: “Is this possible?” Is the turnover of sleeper salvage and data in a class 2 wormhole large enough to actually support a tech 3 production line? The production line would have to be small, obviously, but I think it is possible.

It is possible to produce tech 2 ships in high security space, although you need to purchase the moon materials required for component production. Is it the same for tech 3 production in a quiet class 2 wormhole? I think this question needs to be answered, and that is going to be my little project for the next few months.

I bought the skillbooks to fly a Proteus and a Loki, and the skillbooks to invent and build the hull and subsystem blueprints from sleeper salvage. I just need to get all these booked into the queue. I love being a capsuleer! You can’t even imagine learning new skills this way if you are a planetsider!

/save and exit

If you spend time in the same w-space system, some of the cosmic signatures will last for a few days. To clear the known ones off your list of sigs to probe down, warp to the previous bookmarks and you can find them in just a single scan by dropping probes, rearranging them for shortest range and separating them a little. Note: Do not do the scanning while uncloaked! Chances are you will be popped very quickly while your attention is on the map.

You can clear any grav sites in just over half the non-crystal-utilizing time if you can use the required crystals in your modulated strip miners. The Caille University industry skill set is your friend!

If you go through a wormhole, immediately get Aura to bookmark both sides of it. It saves hours of frustration and waiting for help later on.