A prolonged stay

In my previous encounter with the Rattlesnakes I couldn't break their passive tank. It got me annoyed. I started considering what other setups I could use. Even though I carry extra drone damage amplifiers together with some other modules, waiting 1 minute weapons timer and refitting them mid battle, with spider tank setup while multiboxing 4 ships is next to impossible. Everyone is fast to throw a casual "just refit an extra dda", but that sounds easy to accomplish only in theory. I like my Nestor fleet. I grew fond of the ship. It's agile, has good repair bonuses, good tank and good damage. Well, ok, not good enough to break a well fitted passive Rattlesnake, but the bottom line is: I do not want to change my setup. Sure I could use more DPS focused ships, but my strength is in versatility. I can fight off small fleets, gank targets with sleepers on grid, repair, neut and so on. It works really well.

I use 4 accounts to do pvp, but I have 3 extra accounts from my trading days that have 9 characters in total. 6 of them are dedicated traders. Unfortunately I spend exactly 0 time trading anymore. All I do is use my accumulated 300bil trading capital to subscribe those accounts and train random shit that I don't really need. I've tried to do a passive trading, but usually end up with big losses due to game changes crashing the markets and me can't be arsed to update orders once in 90 days. Besides traders, those accounts also have "scouts". Almost untrained characters that I use to park at some random systems that have potential shiny targets. One of them had barely enough skills to sit in an Armageddon which gave me an idea. I quickly went to Jita and bought a 4th battleship that I will bring into the mix to kill the Rattlesnake. Behold, a pilot, that out of all the modules can only online a cloaking device.

What can go wrong. Fully fitted with meta 4 modules, it should finish minimum requirements within a day or two. I took it not because of it's neuting power, but to have that extra set of heavy drones. Thankfully to my unexplained fetish for the drones, I can already use Ogres. I'm ready for you - Sarah Valdez.

I came back to the wormhole with whole fleet. Of course locals have been watching the entrance.

But I don't care. I'm in for the long haul. I will wait for the opportunity. I'm pretty sure I will die horribly multiboxing 5 ships, but if it's a lone Rattlesnake, perhaps I will be fine.

It's never as you expect it to be

Time was going by and I was enjoying a newly bought xcom 2. Holy crap that game is so much fun. My EVE interaction was limited with me logging in a tackle Proteus,checking d-scan once an hour and logging out for sleep. I was maximum afk stalking. I would very rarely scan the system. It's very difficult to know if any of my targets are online without the watch-list. I know they like to park cloaky ships on the exits, so if I wanted to be stealthy, I just had to stay put.

One week passes, two weeks go by and nothing really happens. Not at least during the time I'm logged in. The most action I would see was my targets occasionally cleaning an ore site and mining in cheap Retrievers. Even when clearing the ore sites, their ships were always aligned back to the pos.

It was tempting to score a Gila kill, but I knew it was a small chance I will tackle it in time. Despite my expectations, locals would never do any serious farming. I was wondering if they still expected me in the system. I did scout the surrounding systems few times when I thought it was empty, but I could have been wrong. You never know. If they did anything more than clearing an ore site it would be too much for me to handle.

I watched the damned Rattlesnake fleet bash some pocos. As I did not have system scanned I couldn't get any reinforcements. That's the life of nomadic play style. You will often encounter great targets, but out of your reach. Finally things were looking up. I found a Tengu doing sites.

It was full of Serpentis ships. What the hell are they doing in my wormhole space? Must be some new patch from CCP. I must admit I haven't been following any patch notes since I started my pilgrimage in 2015. But it does not matter, there is a target in front of me, sitting still. I do the usual perch bookmark at 200km and get ready to warp and grab this Tengu. This is the moment I've been waiting for!

"You cannot warp there, because natural phenomena are disrupting the warp". What the...? What is this shit? Is this site seriously a deadpsace pocket? Oh god damn you, CCP.  I warp to the beacon at 10 and slowboat to the Tengu. It is quite far, but I hope my Proteus will be able to tank until Nestors warp in and get in repair range. Besides, I've been in this wormhole for literally a month with no opportunities. I was starting my third walkthrough in xcom 2 and decided it was time to call it a day (month?). And what better way to part than ganking someone? I was getting closer to the Tengu and things were looking up when all of a sudden the strategic cruiser warps out and I watch all NPC start blinking red. What the hell? Looks like my cloak is suddenly off. I have no idea how this happened. I thought I was careful by checking for all the collidable objects to be out of the way.  The Tengu pilot greets me in local. Ok, I got the message. It was clear Bob had other plans for me than to enact revenge upon the Rattlesnakes. I pack my shit and move out.