The wardec has ended as it often does: not with a bang, but a whimper.
In this case, the whimpering comes from me, wrestling with some serious server problems — stuff the keeps me offline for a couple days. When I finally get back, we no longer have to worry about high-sec space shenanigans, but our connection to New Eden is aging to the point where I don’t trust it to stay open, and Berke isn’t around to kill it early, which leaves me a still trapped in the home system.
Well, trapped at least as far as known space goes: no reason I can’t go poking around in our neighboring wormholes, now that the mining has slowed down. Still, it’s late by the time I realize I have other options, so I leave it for the next day.
Conveniently, the next day is somewhat free of other obligations, and I start it off with some early morning scanning, which leads me to a class 2 system with a plethora of connections to other systems. An hour of scanning later, and I’m amassed a long list of bookmarks to gas clouds and connections to Class 1, Class 4, high sec empire, and class 3 space (that last one already old and dying).
A bit more exploration reveals that the class 4 wormhole (with a persistent connection to class 1 wormhole space) is completely unoccupied; unbelievably, there is no tower evident, and I decide to capitalize on this good fortune by contacting a wormhole broker I’ve used in the past. Lucius Taggart of Taggart Transdimensional gets a quick evemail from me, and posts a notice on my behalf.
All that’s left to do (as far as the wormhole sale goes) is wait, which I’m quite bad at. I consider joining the rest of the home system pilots in some gas harvesting, but just as I’m about to hop in my trusty Thorax-class cruiser, the fleet spots a Buzzard-class covert ops ship on d-scan, and everyone scrambles for pointier ships. I don’t fancy our luck snagging even a moderately wary cov-ops pilot, and the rest of the household is waking up, so I call it quits for awhile to get some other stuff done.
I log back in when I get a message from Taggart about a potential buyer for the empty class four system, but by the time I get in the buyer has logged out for the day. Ahh well — Tira’s agreed to stay hidden in the class four to provide access whenever we need, so there’s no rush.
It seems I missed a bit of violence while I was gone; the Walrus fleet mixed it up with a Raven-class battleship. The fight didn’t go very well, apparently, and left the fleet down a Falcon and the Raven scot-free, thanks to their judicious use of drones. We need to get folks some more appropriately PvP-fit ships, and maybe a few training sessions for the newer pilots. Something to consider.
In any case, the tussle with the Raven left no one really in the mood for evening mayhem — it’s only me and CB once the sun sets, so we saddle up in gas harvesters and take care of the sites that the Buzzard pilot interrupted in the morning. Once that’s done, we use the highsec exit from that same system to sell the gas for a quick 50 million ISK. I take my cut and cobble together a serviceable Scythe-class mining cruiser — it’s no Hulk-class exhumer, but it’ll give me something to do when there’s nothing else to do, I suppose.
Meanwhile, Bre has logged in and is celebrating a couple complete skill training sessions by grabbing her Vengeance-class assault frigate and flying it out to known space to get it properly fit. I’m a bit concerned about this, since our connection to the class two (and, therefore, to known space) is aging and close to collapse, but Bre has great faith in her ability to find the fittings she needs quickly (or great faith in our ability to scan down a new entrance for her to use tomorrow). I wait on the wormhole to tell her if she need not bother hurrying.
It turns out her faith is well-placed; even stopping in a several far-flung systems to get the best prices (and pick up a few new skill books), she manages to get back into the home system before the connection dies.
Just before; a few minutes after she warps home to our tower, I notice that the wormhole I’d been watching is gone. Given the potential wormhole system sale, the gas mining, and a few new ships parked at the tower, I’d say it served us well.
When you bookmark up your home system (or another connection for that matter) what kind of naming convention do you use?
Like “11.26 C2 Grav. sig” or what?
Any insight into the hold up in recruiting? I know itโs only recently resumed but it seems as though nothing is happening w/ anyone from the pub chat?
Love the blog… keep on teaching!
When it comes to signature sites to run, I tend to number them in the order I want to run them:
1. MAG: Forgotten Perimeter Habitation Coils
2. RAD: Unsecured Perimeter Transponder Farm
3. Barren Perimeter Reservoir
4. Barren Perimeter Reservoir
5. Minor… [etc]
…
15. GRAV: Whatever.
When it comes to actual wormholes, I record more data.
213 WH -> C2 (OCT25 12:12E) J222222
214 WH -> LS (OCT25 12:25E) Amamake
215 WH <- C4 (OCT25) J444444 In this case, the numbers indicate how many wormholes I've scanned, and their sequence. Makes it easy for me to see which ones are old and need to die. The "WH" thing is just me noting what it is. The Arrows indicate whether it's an outbound or inbound connection. The date and time stamp tell me when it was opened (and thus approximately when it will die), and then I'll go back and edit it later to note where it connections to/from.
I realized I’d forgotten to reply about the recruiting thing.
As should be obvious now, the recruiting freeze had to do with the wardec — just didn’t seem prudent to bring anyone into the alliance when they’d immediately become a target.
Not sure why there would be any delay NOW, however — that just seems odd. I’m assuming you’ve put an app in on the forums as well, or are you waiting to talk with someone in-game?
Yha i put in an app like a week before it closed. I also talked w/ a recruiter a few times (“R.J”) and he said it was “in the final stages”, but that was more than a week ago.
If its just a patience thing than thats fine i can wait. But i just want to know what else i should do.
BTW your drake fit was working great for me until a tengu decloaked and bumped me off align and then 2 Legions and a Mac. wapped in. Never a probe in space to give me a tip off. I can build a new one but i want it to have a better chance on life then its older sister lol.
Thanks again.
If it’s been a week, I’d definitely ping someone in the public channel or the recruiter that you talked with to check in. Maybe an evemail.
Aggh. Sorry about the Drake. Only thing I can think about the probes is that if you were in a basic anomaly, they wouldn’t need to use them — just a passive scan + d-scan can tell them where you are.
Ahh, EvE: where the most common and thus most profitable time-to-isk sites in the wormhole are also the sites that put you in the most immediate danger. ๐
Ill try that tonight when i log in.
Yha that was was my lesson learned drake i guess. I had other sites marked but i thought i would test out the fit in WH with that site first. I can see how important it is to have someone watching your back. At the very least an active WH looks like far less of a juicy target then a lone drake in an empty hole.
To that effect if i find truly empty holes how do you go about selling one? What info do you log and what should i know first? Figure out the connection types, WH effects, and signatures… that it? Then just shoot an email to a person like the one you mentioned?
Usually I just get the name of the system (J160000 or whatever), and send that over — from that, he can check it in Wormnav or dotlan or whatever and see the local affects, PI opportunities, statics, and so forth.