Sunday, February 26, 2012

a merry chase continues

Popping into the C1 greets me with 2 towers and 2 haulers, 1 anomaly.  Now if you recall I'm in a nemesis, this one fitted with a probe launcher fortunately.  I can bring the probe launcher online if I offline the target painter, which I do as the corps living here have nobody online apparently.  (Really, a small tower in wormhole space?  GLOBEX. is begging to have it popped)

Oh there are probes out now, and that helios is briefly visible.  The residents of C4c are still trying to catch me apparently.  Might as well scan out the exit while after he leaves.  5 signatures to sift through, one being the exit back to C4c.

2 piles of rock, and 3 other wormholes are revealed after tortuous scanning - Just remember kids, a probe launcher might save you from death, but it's really painful to use on a bomber.  Let's find out where these other exits lead.

Exit L1 leads to lowsec, I ignore it for the time being and head over to the static hisec at wormhole 2 to bookmark it.  Exit 3 leads to C2 space, I'll leave it be while I find my way back home.  Jumping out to hisec lands me in Isikemi, conveniently 3 jumps from Jita, if I wanted to haul fuel through several hostile systems.

I'll have to wake someone up to get me the hisec exit from the home system, I had it scanned down but not activated.  I was spit out into hisec a mere 4 jumps from the location of our previous hisec exit, a tad bit late as it collapsed several hours previous.

Being rather tired I decide to wait till the morning for the corp bookmakrs to get populated with the system connecting with home.


Notes of importance-
     Always have probes and a probe launcher if you head deeper into wormhole space
     Scanning in a non-bonused bomber sucks
     DaShmoo has ice cream, vanilla with chocolate syrup
     Eden's Knights of Malta gave a merry chase around the block
     GLOBEX.    Really?
     DaShmoo is out of whipped cream.  Sorry ladies you'll have to come back later.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Exploration, camping and a slippery noctis

I slip into the familiar electronic murmur of the proteus as I start today's exploration. The first 2 systems are boring, not many signatures and I keep heading deeper hoping for soft targets.

home -> c4a -> c4b -> c4c -> c1a

System C4c holds promise as dscan reveals a proteus, and 2 carriers running a site.  Swinging dscan around they are not at an anomaly, but going to the furthest planet showed a well-staffed tower with pilots in several ships including one scanning.  Oh dear.  I've narrowed them down, drop probes and bookmark the radar site while recalling probes.   Only then I notice the carriers and proteus have left the area.

 Warping to the bookmark shows the site as complete, but a pair of cloakies follows the incoming noctis.   Looks like they saw me after all.  I'm not eager to lose my proteus, so I run across the systems home to grab the bomber.

After jumping back into system with the bomber I hear the wormhole flare behind me and a helios blips into the system, belonging to the corp that lives here - well they really saw me now since the noctis just warped off without hacking the rest of the containers.

I head to a safe distance from the exit back home in time to see a welcome party of a dramiel show up - I know I'm no match for the fast little frigate, and I do believe they have another one stationed on the other side.   I have really no choice but to head to the static C1 I bookmarked earlier (bubbled of course) and see what is on the other side...

Thursday, February 23, 2012

neighbor moves out

Draco moved out.   He's not part of our corp, but a friend for a while.  The T3 gas prices have risen without the corresponding increase in reactant end products he was hoping for, so he moved out until the market stabilizes.

I have started reconfiguring my PI away from purely POS fuel into more profitable items, it's going to be a little bit until I figure out the best return for the planets we have with the minimum effort.  No need to make P1 materials anymore, everything is going into P2 or higher - currently the market for mechanical parts has been dropping enough that we will be making an effort to replace the remaining 3 customs offices this weekend.

On yet another note, I've managed to get 2 more people to try Eve, one of them has motion sickness but can tolerate the graphics of Eve, yay for me.

Monday, February 13, 2012

choosing the easy target

Woke up this morning in a bad mood, and that usually means someone gets podded.  Settling into the helm of my proteus I start my usual morning routine of popping around the system to check for interlopers - what is this?  A CNR and a heron on dscan along with some sleeper wrecks.  I narrow the location down to a single anomaly, a Ruins of the Enclave Cohort 27, and warp in at 100 to check on pilot names. 

Both pilots are from the same corp, and the names are similar enough that I think it's 1 guy dual boxing.  While a CNR would be an awesome addition to the killboard, I am still unsure of my ability to take one down solo, even with an astarte.  I head back to the pos to swap out for my bomber, waiting seemingly forever for the ships to load.  I head back as the heron start salvaging another wreck, the CNR warps out to start another site.

I lay in a tight orbit of the heron, decloak and gain point.  Shortly the heron pops, diorienting the pilot long enough for the pod to fall to my volley of torps.  Overkill perhaps but it got the job done.   Another corpse to add to my collection, I cloak up and wait to see what the CNR does.

The CNR bounces between anomalies for a while while I wait, then finally leaves.   Slade has logged in after the heron pops, if I had waited we could have double teamed the CNR, but I wanted a kill right away.  Oh well  I have to attempt to add a CNR to my kill list eventually.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Just a quick update - not a whole lot happening lately, as it has been rather quiet in our neck of the woods.  Slade nabbed a drake running the sites, turns that either the drake had backup or we had an opportunist in a bomber get in on the kill.

Added Slade as an author to the blog, he will be able to post things from a different perspective.