Saturday, January 25, 2014

A Calculator. Best wormholer's sidekick

Going back home


It's time for me to reunite with my corpmates. I start my day scanning around to find a good exit to the empire. Preferably somewhere near Jita as I need to sell all my stuff that I brought from old days in lowsec. I immediately scan c4 static and check it out to see where it takes me. Fast forward some minutes and here I am sitting on a c3. I like c3's. Usually they have low sec static and as it turns out, this one does too. Worth mentioning, I always do check out the wormholes I visit. This time was no exception. I quickly mapped the tower and three ships, which unfortunately were empty. You never know... The trip home can be fun or boring. Even when living in low sec I was practically visiting more wormholes than some remote K-space areas. When I enter the system I always scan around. It's in the blood. I probably could do it blindfolded. The negative side is that it takes a lot of time. Good side? You create/find content by putting that little extra work to check out what's around. No local in wormholes actually means you can get a kill without announcing your presence too much.
Look at me. I'm in local.

I consider local a maphack. I dislike it so much probably because I don't do much pve and unconsciously click a dscan even when noone is around. Anyway, I exit lowsec and see it's 3 jumps from nearest highsec. Not bad. I go ahead with my proteus and scout/scan next systems. I check a couple of wormholes until I see a guy enter local. A quick look shows me a logo of a corp I could swear I saw in one of the wormholes. The guy is flying a transport ship and soon disappears from scan. Excited, I go back to my mapped wormholes and try to find that system with a corp I saw the guy from. After 5min it turns out to be one of C3 wormholes I came from. Sure enough I see a transport ship on scan. After stalking for a bit and seeing no activity I decide to go back. Who cares about t1 transport ships anyway?

Just I jump to lowsec, one jump away from that wormhole I was stalking in, I see another guy in local. A quick check shows again that it's the same corp. This time Dscan shows a hurricane! Well that is interesting. I quickly burn back to gate and jump as soon as he lands. Now I think what would be my best course of action. I could catch him on the gate, but as my domies are a jump away, I decide to warp directly to his wormhole and wait for him there as I probably could not hold him long enough. As I initiate warp, hurricane jumps in and and sees me cloak up. I was expecting him to be at least a bit hesitant to jump in, given the fact that proteus just went in few seconds ago. Well, I am really not the one to complain. I order my domies to jump to the system and warp to the wormhole that I expect to meet hurricane at.


A short range scan shows the cane coming in. I love when the plan comes together. The cane lands and jumps in and I follow. I quickly decloak, get my weapons hot and wait. The hurricane pilot hesitates a bit, but just in a few seconds decloaks. I lock him, scrammed and pointed! I don't expect him to stay around much. I burn to him and get ready to jump back. I wonder why he is not jumping back? I see his speed is going up and... he warps away. Dear lord. Are you kidding me? I bet my ISK that it was a full rack of warp core stabilizers. That explains why he was flying it like he was in highsec. After all, wcs makes you immune from pvp doesn't it? With nothing else to do, I go back to finish checking out few wormholes before heading back to empire.

A man needs his calculator


So I check a random c2. A dscan immediately shows some activity going on. I see this one has c4 and a HS static. What an interesting combination! I see a lot of bubbles and some ships camping space. I don't pretend to be stealthy so I move cloak and launch probes. Only 3 sigs to scan make it easy. I quickly resolve c4 and HS exits, where I find a proteus, a sabe and a slasher sitting on HS wormhole camping, all bubbled up.


Well that's interesting. Shortly proteus and slasher warps away. I do a quick check who are the guys and it turns out to be one of pvp wormhole corps - sky fighters. With over 200 people and ganks that include 10-20+ people. What would any sane person that is flying solo would do? Move along of course. Fortunately I am far from a sane person. And as my solo means actually 4 guys I see if I can get something out of this situation. I start mapping all the guys. My rule of thumb is 80-20 rule, which means 20% are active pvpers in a corp. I collect 40 people to watch list to evaluate situation and my chances, which might not be too bad as most of them are offline.

After all the intel I realize that wormholes, both c4 and HS, are all on verge of collapse. I do not know if they rolled them or they were just used up. My guess is that they rolled it and have a feeling they might roll LS exit next. I quickly jump out to LS to make some safe spots and get my domies ready. I guess they have scout on a WH so I assume I have been seen. And I don't assume anymore as just when I jump, a proteus lands on the wormhole. I eagerly wait for him to jump after me, but nothing happens. I guess the guy was waiting for me to jump back. I also think, they might think I'm just a random tourist and will just ignore me. And I think I am right on what they think as falcon quickly jumps in and out and there are no more presence in the system (<3 local).

I get my domies ready on a wormhole 4.5km away and cloaked up. I jump in again to see whats up. I see a dominix, anathema and ishtar on scan now. I trust in my psychic abilities and think of a domi as a "dedicated rolling ship". Now here comes the interesting part. Wormhole is R943 which is only 750m mass in total. Now I have to decide on my course of action. Obviously if Dominix jumps in and out heavy I can't bring all my "fleet" in. Also I do not know how many ships already jumped through this exit, apart from me and falcon. So I decide to do some evaluations.


Above I select 2 different scenarios. If wormhole does not go half, I jump in 2 dominixes after and bring some chaos. If it goes half,  I jump one dominix only to fool around. In this case I assume the worst and take 200mil mass left as a bare minimum, while it could be between 200-350. I take 350 and not 375 to consider small deviation that wormholes have.

All is set. I launch probes and orbit wormhole for a couple of minutes. Scan around, pretend being stupid and don't cloak. I am positive someone can see me. System is small and only one wormhole that is not critical is low sec exit. Nothing happens. Not to be too obvious bait I cloak up and continue with the probes. No activity whatsoever. No activity in overview that is, while dscan shows constant ships changing and some guys logging in once in awhile. I have mass control here so I feel quite confident even if outnumbered. I trust in BoB's will. Whatever way this plays out, I'm good. Fast forward 30 minutes and nothing happens. Not even one ship jumps to LS for a look or anything. I get quite demotivated. Also I see more and more guys logging in and dscan is starting to look dangerous.



Put in there a logi or a falcon and I won't be able to do shit. I have done small gang pvp solo vs numerous ships and let me tell you, it is very stressful. A lot of things can go wrong. I decide to cut it  and be done with it. I jump out and warp away. What an anti-climax. I was really hoping something would turn out of this. I guess ship spinning in space has it's own merits.

Killing procurer, because why not...


On my way back I found another c2 with another HS static. I also found a procurer mining. It didn't take long to find where he is at. I also noticed that there are probes on dscan. Perhaps some solo hunter will try to gank him and I can gank the hunter. I get in position and wait while fleet is sitting on the wormhole on the other side. Probes are gone and nothing happens. Procurer also seems not to give a shit about probes in system. I figured if someone was to gank him would have done it already, without any probes. I had enough of waiting today. I warp to procurer tackle it and start killing it in short order.


Procurer explodes and I go to empire and set autopilot to Jita. I don't really feel excited killing t1 barges, hence why I did not hide my probes while scanned highsec before ganking him, but I just couldn't let this ignorance pass by.

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