Okay, since there’s not much going on at the moment but Planetary Interaction, I feel like I can compress the action a bit: lets get back to that thing where I try to get us a little closer to the current day, because right now? We’re still about two months behind.
It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas
I do not enjoy the Rolling Stones. Never have. Just putting that out there.
The guys are harvesting fullerene gas from the many Ladar signatures next door in a class two wormhole system that has lain dormant and abandoned for (I’m going to guess) a really long time, since its two persistent wormhole connections lead to deadly Class 6 wormhole space… and null-sec. Yeah. That’s not a system that’s going to see a lot of traffic — I can’t imagine anyone who would ever find that whole enticing as a home, no matter who they are — you’ll never or rarely be anywhere useful via your nullsec connection, and you can’t bring big ships through your c6 connection, so you can’t really do anything that way, either. Maybe if the system has good native resources? Nope; terrible planets — basically we’re already pulling everything of value out of the system in the form of the randomly-occurring fullerene clouds.
I’m a bit distracted from this, however, thanks to a chat request from none other than the CEO of the corp of pilots who have been camped in our system twice. He wants to know why my blog is time-shifted by so many weeks, because he’s eager to read about their shenanigans from my point of view. This is the danger with EvE blogging: sometimes, people decide to fuck with you simply because they’ll get to read about it later.
At any rate, I’m not super-receptive to the “hurry up and get to the good stuff” request, though the conversation easily qualifies as the most surreal in my time playing EvE.
Cool Wormhole Stuff Doesn’t Always Happen in the Wormhole Itself
Our connections out of the wormhole are boring and useless, so I decide to drop out into known space and scan the remote low-sec system to which we find ourselves connected. The results are two more wormholes to explore, a number of radar and magnometric signatures, and a huge pile of reasonably profitable Blood Raider combat sites I can mop up in my Ishtar. It’s not our normal fare, but it suits me just fine since I can be super lazy about security and simply watch the Local comms channel to see if I get any visitors (I don’t, for the next several hours).
By the time we (Gor and CB joined me) are done with shooting Blood Raiders, we have a new connection to wormhole space at home; one that leads to a convenient hi-sec exit Gor uses to fly unused ships out. I take off fairly early for the night, but smile at an email from CB:
Tweed and me killed a retriever in the c2. Chatted with the guy for about an hour after, giving him tips about not getting podded. Are we recruiting?
That’s a good question…
Happy Birthday to Meee
I splurge and by myself a Loki strategic cruiser, fitting it for a similar role as my Proteus simply because the Proteus is driving me CRAZY with how slowly the heavily armored ship crawls around when it’s cloaked. (I’ve renamed it from Twilight Sparkle to Derpy Hooves.)
All ready for action, Applejack heads out into the wilds of wormhole space. Yee-haw.
Meanwhile, I send emails to a few unaffiliated blog commenters to see if they’re interested in wormhole space.
Schadenfreude
Some guy I don’t like very much who lectures people about tactics and combat awareness loses over 4 billion isk worth of ships, simply by running Sleeper sites in a pimped out strategic cruisers and not keeping any kind of lookout posted. Lost a couple pods, too.
I won’t lie to you, Marge; I laughed.
Then I bookmarked the killboard and tucked it away next to pictures of cute animals and viral videos for those days when I need a good cheering up.
Please forward your CV
After discussing it with CB and Gor, we decided to allow a (very) few corp applicants from people who’ve been actively asking smart questions on the blog, who don’t seem to be attached to wormhole corps already. The first couple I contact are unfortunately in far distant timezones and thus a bad fit (for them and us), but the third one looks better, and Gor and I spend the evening chatting with the pilot in question, both asking and answering questions.
I’m a Big Sisi
The next couple days have family in town, so I’m not on much, and when I am, I’m logged into “SiSi”, the Singularity test server, checking out builds for Scimitar and Oneiros logistics ships under pseudo-combat situations. I remain very impressed with how much even one logistics ship can change an engagement for a small group of ships.
Back on the Live server, we have a good High-sec exit, so we help Ko move his stuff into the wormhole. Then I slip out and buy CB a Cynabal for his birthday. Everyone should have a cool ship they didn’t pay for.
Hello. It’s Been Awhile.
Family are still in town, but I sneak a bit of time online to chat with Ko and set up a bit more P.I. stuff, then do some exploring. Looks like we’re connected to the same system we were in 25 days ago, and not much has changed. Still a class two, still c5/null-sec statics, still (or rather, again) full of Sleeper anomalies. Me, Em, Shan, Ko, CB, Tweed, and Dirk (a new addition to Em’s corp) warm up the guns and get to work, making some fun but odd ship choices that leave us looking more like a PvP gang than a sleeper fleet. CB’s ship actually is a PvP ship – a blaster-fit Talos – which he flies against sleepers whenever he’s bored and looking for the fun of flying fast and dying young… which is pretty much what happens when he gets primaried by a couple sleeper battleships before he can warp out. Oops.
The loot is poor overall, but at least there’s a LOT of it — 30 anomalies die for well over 600 million isk in loot (less one Talos).
Afterwards, I respond to CB’s obvious enjoyment of the zoomy Talos by helping him fit up a properly-tanked hurricane that should give roughly the same experience. It’s not cap-stable, but I explain how he can drain energy off Drake battlecruisers in between waves of sleepers, and this pleases him.