Tuesday, September 22, 2015

False sense of security

Once I find a high-sec exit and am out of connections, I scan the surrounding systems. Perhaps I will find a day tripper or some small time corp doing sites or a big time corp doing logistics. I come across a c2 wormhole with Astero sitting on it.


Here is another tip: never warp to freshly scanned wormhole signature to 0 or 10. Chances are, sometimes you will land within 0km and it can be the time when it would be a potential gank opportunity, but you blew it, because got decloaked. To be safe, I always warp to 20km and so far I am at 100% success rate of not getting decloaked.

Sure it can be a bit annoying to be burning the distance everytime, but I had countless times when landing on wormhole I suddenly had someone jump in, jump out or decloak in general. If you are stalking in wormholes, I highly suggest you be patient. Those seconds of you showboating to jump range will decrease the ods of blowing your cover by a lot.

So I land and watch Astero pilot, which does absolutely nothing. He either went afk or he is waiting for someone. Background killboard check doesn't show anything interesting, so I doubt there is any pvp happening. After some time he warps out and comes back again just to sit there more. I don't know what the hell is he doing, but once he warps out again, I don't wait and jump in to see what the heck is going on.

Wormhole is empty. Nothing is there, or at least that I can see. I set an orbit and watch some more from within inside. Soon I hear a jump! A Drake decloaks and warps to an anomaly. Well I'll be damned, it's the same pilot. I follow him, warping to 100km as usual.

Warping to 100km is usually a safe bet. Regardless of direction you come from, mostly you land just far enough from any celestial to decloak you. It's not always true. There have been times where I got decloaked. It's sucks when that happens, but that is the way it is. Sometimes, like this particular time, you are just lucky enough.


That little dot in the middle? That's me, surrounded by various celestial objects. No, they are not decorations. I cross myself in the name of Bob and warp out to make a position bookmark. That was one close call. Lucky for me, but unlucky for the Drake pilot. Probably, as I still have to get him.

Few more warps and I find myself slowly approaching the prey with Domi fleet waiting next door.


You may think, what I am waiting for. I am within point range and probably could burn within webifier range before he realized he is not alone. I tend to be careful. You never know what you are about to tackle, so I prefer to to get a little bit closer to scram range. Once I'm in position, I decloak, tackle the Drake and get my Domi fleet in which kills it in no time. Checking the killmail, I smile. My decision to be a little patient paid off.


Yep, those are two warp core stabilizers. Talk about risk aversion. Granted, it probably does help you to escape from your average tackler, but that is just wrong. I checked his killboard and noticed a Drake Navy loss one week ago. Without wcs, but cloak fitted. I guess he figured cloak is useless once you are in a site fighting sleepers, so he opted for a few stabs instead. One point for going out to the dangerous space, minus hundred for not wanting to commit your ship.

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