I may not get you, but I will get your Alt

I've found a new C2 to hang out in, the reasons for my stay are threefold.  1.  It appears that the locals are reasonably active in my timezone 2. I couldn't be arsed logging off in another system and have to rescan everything and 3.  There is a particular ship buzzing around the system that I hope to have a chance at landing on grid with and hopefully squashing:

I don't have any luck with the Epithal for a couple of days, and the locals don't appear to be doing much else that I can interfere with.  This changes when I have a half hour after work where the rest of the family is out of the house.  I login to have a look around and see if anything new is happening.

Interesting.  I become even more interested when the Procurer warps to an ore anomaly.  I follow and land on grid and set about creating a tactical perch that I can GTFO to if needed.  It takes a little while to work out how I can get close to the Procurer without getting decloaked, but I finally work out if I warp to this particular rock at 30km I should remain cloaked. Done, I'm around 40km to the target with nothing of concern either on dscan or in terms of my approach path to the ship.  However, there is a potential problem.

I don't see any mining lasers active, so we have a miner just warping to an anomaly and just going AFK, or a potential bait ship.  I haven't done any scanning this afternoon so the chances I was spotting when I logged in are pretty slim.  But I'm a bit concerned given a Procurer can sport a pretty heavy tank for a mining barge, so if it is bait I most likely won't be able to kill it before the cloaky(ies) waiting nearby will kill me.  But what the hell, I'll decloak aligned to my perch and if there is a Proteus lurking nearby I'll (hopefully) warp off before they can lock me.  I start moving into position, but my plans are dashed when the family arrives home.  Farewell, potential bait Procurer, I will never know your true nature.

Later that night I have some play time and fully scan out the chain, there isn't a lot doing until I jump back into the hole one system away from my "Home" C2 and notice a Cheetah on scan.  It's probably just dumping probes or transiting a wormhole, it'll soon cloak up.  Or will it?

It's not cloaking up.  Swinging dscan around I quickly determine it's over at the Losec static in this system and warp over to see if it's still hanging around.  I land on grid to find the Cheetah about 115km away from me.  At this point I want to point out how much I love the sensor overlay with the bookmarks showing in space.  It makes aligning things such as bubbles a hell of a lot easier to do and it's a tremendous aid in situations such as I have here, as there is a bookmark hanging in space for the C2 static roughly inline with this Cheetah.  I'll warp to the C2 hole and warp back to the Losec hole at 100km, it will be a thousand times quicker than trying to slowboat towards it and I should land pretty close.  A bit under 10km in fact.

I orbit at 15km, preselect the torps, painters and disruptor, decloak and get everything that needs to be heated.  Pretty straightforward, except there are no Torpedoes streaking to my target.  Speaking of which I don't have a target - I haven't locked him up when I decloaked.  *Sigh*.  I try locking the Cheetah but my delay has given Xrebelion enough time to react, and the ship disappears in a cloud of shimmering hexagons.  I half heartedly light my microwarp drive and steer in the general direction of where the Cheetah was in a vain attempt to decloak him, but he's gone.  The game is up, the locals know I'm here and what I'm flying, it might be time to move on.  I jump back to "Home" (I'm going to call my main stalking site "Kimbo" from now on) and just manage to get cloaked up before Xrebelion and another pilot I didn't get the name of land on the hole in a pair of T3 destroyers.  I can see that my presence is not welcome here, and rapidly warp off to find greener pastures.

I'll poke a highsec connection first, with the aim of finding another wormhole to jump into.  A quick scan reveals the connection I came through is the only wormhole in system.  I'll go poke another known space connection, as I'm not feeling inclined to jump gates and I might find something in the chain as I go from K space connection to K space connection.  Before I leave though, something catches my eye on Dscan and with my interest piqued I get on grid.

So many graves.

I had in fact read up on the Eve Cemetery only earlier that day while looking up trading in corpses (I have a project I'm working on that will require a few frozen corpses, but given my lack of podding lately I'm all out.  And no, I'm not in any way related to those pesky drifters, certainly involved with nothing illegal, but it could be construed as of slightly questionable taste.  I will reveal all at a later date).  The Eve Cemetery is basically a place where you can drop of the corpse of your vanquished foes or your previous clone if you so wish and the owners of the POS will organise a burial & internment in a secure cargo container so the "grave" is on display.  As you can see from the screenshots above there's certainly a lot of graves there.  Feeling slightly humbled, I decide to head back to Kimbo as it's nearly time for bed and I couldn't be bothered getting set up in another hole.

Nothing doing on the way back to Kimbo, but when I do arrive I see a new Confessor with a ship name that I haven't seen before on dscan.  I warp over to one of the local's towers and find my friend Xrebelion the Cheetah pilot now sitting in the Confessor along with a buddy in a Svipul.  As I watch the Svipul is swapped for a Catalyst - these guys sure like their destroyers.  It dawns on me that I should be saying this guy and not the plural given the similarity of the names.

The Confessor warps off to a D382 and I follow, confident that this turn of events might mean I get a chance to redeem my inability to target earlier tonight.  I give it a couple of minutes before I follow the Confessor into the C2 where Dscan confirms I may get my chance.

I set a tactical perch, bookmark the MTU and then get in position inside point range of the MTU in preparation for a salvager.  I can confirm that the Confessor is a boss at C2 anomalies, Xrebelion powers through the site in next to no time, which makes me wince painfully thinking of the half hour it used to take me to do the same site in a Drake.  However, there is what I assume is a Confessor wreck here from the same corporation and with the same tag on the ship name, suggesting that he's had a bit of trouble with this site previously.  No such problems this time though, and a kind of grim certainty settles over me - this Confessor is going to warp off when the site is done taking the MTU and the loot drop with him, Xrebelion's alt in the Catalyst will warp in and salvage most of the wrecks, at which point I will kill it.  I almost feel bad for the guy, but then the Catalyst lands on grid.

The Confessor lingers but for a moment before warping off back to Kimbo.  A final check that this Catalyst isn't packing blasters - Check.

Ok lets get this right this time.

See what happens when you actually target someone you want to shoot at?

I have only the one scare when the Catalyst targets me right back after I lock him up, so I align out and get ready to hit the MWD, but it appears that he may have had auto target back set to yes.  The only way he was going to hurt me with the above setup was if I was flying a Minmatar ship.  Once again the pod gets away - I'm considering swapping a painter for a sebo to try and address that.  While I would have preferred to have nabbed the Cheetah first time round, I'll take killing someone's alt any day.

PvP in EVE is a lot like public speaking.

PvP in Eve is a lot like public speaking. Interesting premise to start with I know, so let's quickly examine the two.  Both have a ton of guides out there on the internet to help you speak/PvP better, easier, fun-er.  Both involve communicating with an audience (I use both terms loosely) in a public setting, although the exact medium of communication differs with one involving verbal communication, the other shooting live munitions in your audience's face.  To become better at both requires practice, around the 10th time you speak in public you'll be fully confident and enjoy the experience, likewise the Eve Wiki newbie PVP guide recommends that you go out and sacrifice 20 frigates to the PvP gods to get started.  A bad public speaking experience can condition someone to never engage in public speaking again while a bad PvP experience in Eve can lead to a rage quit.  Both scenarios entail a certain element of risk - on the one hand you may find yourself publically ridiculed, ostracized and banned from speaking at any future family gatherings while on the other you can lose a fictional bunch of pixels in an internet spaceships game.  Ok, maybe they're not the same, with the exception being if you end up as an ALOD.

The fear of public speaking is known as Glossophobia, which is derived from Greek and means tongue and fear or dread.  Common symptoms of Glossophobia include:

1. Nausea
2. Dry mouth
3. Sleep loss
4. Headaches
5. Dilated pupils
6. Acute hearing
7. Sweaty hands
8. Shortness of breath
9. Increased heart rate
10. Increased perspiration
11. Increased oxygen intake
12. Increased blood pressure

I reckon when I know I'm about to have a fight in Eve I experience numbers 2, 5, 6 (excluding anything my wife says to me), 7, 9, 10 and both 11 and 12 (pending lab results).  8 of 10 symptoms - that's a pretty close match.  When I'm getting in position to execute a gank I tend to get a little bit light headed, my heart rate noticeably increases and I pretty sure my face gets flushed.  Physically I experienced the same thing when prepared to give me best man's speech at my mates wedding, or when speaking to an angry customer over phone at work.  My ability to manage all the information that the Eve client is displaying also tends to decrease and the focus of my attention narrows quite a bit, I tend to lose what little situational awareness I may have.  To illustrate I have previously lost a ship while trying to ambush an explorer and only realised there was a Loki on grid when I looked at the kill mail.  I've also noted on various other blogs that a lot of people get the "Shakes" when PvP'ing and I know first hand that I've caused such a physical reaction on an intended victim.  Back when I was living in my wormhole I ambushed an Astero at a Data site, but unfortunately I had swapped my prop mod out for a 3rd scramber as I'd been having trouble catching people with stabs.  He was afterburner fit, burned out of scram range and warped out.  I convoed him afterwards to congratulate him on getting away and the first thing he said was:

John Hexis> Dude, heart was RACING, that was fun as hell

Adrenaline kicks in, fight or flight, kill or be killed.  It's interesting to me that fictional Internet Spaceships can generate such a response from me (and others it seems).  I haven't yet played a game that can provoke anywhere near the same kind of reaction and I fully believe the mechanics of the game world promote this.  For me, losing a ship in Eve matters, I'm not space rich and only have a limited pool of ISK to replace my losses before I will be forced towards ISK generating activities which are time consuming, an order of magnitude less fun and for the most part PvE.  The fear of losing my ship that I have sunk time and effort into obtaining creates a tangible physical reaction.

It's often said that Eve has a steep learning curve, but I think that once you get past the initial mechanics of exactly how to do things it's not that bad - there is plenty of information out there if you are willing to look for it.  What truly differentiates Eve from other games is that it punishes your mistakes in a tangible way, so when you stuff up, you really know about it. This leads on to my latest adventures.  I have had a bit of a frustrating week in terms of actually finding someone to shoot at.  On the other hand I been able to do some sightseeing.  It's pretty much a given that when you see non sisters core probes on dscan that there's probably a tech 1 probing frigate somewhere in system, and so it was in a C2 that I was hanging out in.  However, after around 10 seconds of a Minmatar Probe being on dscan it occurred to me that this guy may have forgotten to cloak up after firing off probes.  I quickly worked out that this guy is at the Highsec static and warped over at 30 to have a look.  There he is, sitting right on the wormhole.  Smart boy, if something jumps him he'll enter the wormhole and be safe.  I figure I'll wait until he finds one of the 2 data sites in this system and then I'll try to gank his ganker as I know there has been a Hound flying around this system recently and the odds are high that he will get jumped mid hack.  In the meantime I get a nice shot with the wormhole in the background.

Meet my cousin Joseph, he's my aunt Random Lastnamegenerators's son.

However, the locals scuttle any such plan by warping to zero on the highsec hole.

The Probe jumps through the wormhole as expected, the Hound disappears and the Thrasher sits there, hoping to catch the Probe jumping back through and possibly polarising itself.  But he's not coming back, and I take the time to take a couple of artistic shots for you all.

Say Cheese!!!

A Skinned Astero I found at the local tower.  Very cool.  Should be a loot drop.

I move on and eventually find a massive C3, it's probably around 120 AU across.  I find a Loki sitting at the only tower in system and get to work scanning all the signatures outside dscan range of the tower.  I complete the first 3 sigs before moving onto a couple that are a little bit closer to the active tower, so I decide to warp to the tower to keep tabs on the Loki pilot.  He hasn't moved, chirp chirp chirp, move the probes.  A damage notification flashes up on my screen, and my heart sinks.  I try to align out but I already know that I'm stuffed.  A couple more shots and I'm in my pod.  I know there are no decloaking hazards this far away from the tower and I rapidly deduce that I've made the little, tiny, fatal mistake of forgetting to cloak back up after launching probes.  Several expletives later I get my pod away from the tower and start the self destruct on my pod - there is no way I'm going to leg it back to Rens from where I am and I have a new Manticore waiting for me there.  Man I hate towers, most of my losses in bombers have been to towers due to stupid shit exactly like this.  I'm pretty pissed off at myself by this stage and I logout for the day just as my new clone awakens.

I've got a suggestion for CCP that would help alleviate this problem - it shouldn't take much to code and would very much fall under the banner of a quality of life improvement.  I suggest a subtle little reminder pop up, just like a combat message notification, whenever you are in a ship with a cloak fitted that isn't activated and the true sec of the system the ship is below 0.5.  I've done a little mock up below and I think you agree this would prevent any further such idiocy on my behalf in the future:

When I return I make my way back to Rens to grab a new Manticore, stealthily named "Mobile Depot" and resolve myself to always double check my cloak after dropping probes.  We'll see how long that keeps me out of trouble.  Eve must be sensing my frustration and provides me with the following on Dscan in the first C1 that I jump into.

I'm concerned that the Prospect might be at a gas site which would need scanning down, but no, it's at an ore site and best of all the Jackdaw is not present.

Now the issue with this Prospect is getting a lock on it before it cloaks up.  I'm also concerned on the whereabouts of this Jackdaw on dscan, but a 1AU scan shows it's nowhere near me.  I warp to a convenient rock at 20km which puts me 30km above the Prospect.  The crowd quietens and the spotlight goes on as I nervously approach the pulpit.  To settle myself I orbit at 15 before decloaking and clearing my throat.  Every eye is upon me and I'm buzzing when I realise I have the audience fully locked and disrupted.  I begin slinging torpedo anecdotes, each more boisterous and amusing as the last and my audience is enraptured - they are fully captivated by the experience, or AFK.  I have a small hiccup when I try to take a screenshot - the screen capture software I've been experimenting with to record my experiences helpfully puts a full screen dialog box over the Eve client when I hit ALT PRNT SCRN, momentarily throwing my off my train of thought but I recover with a rip roaring joke about how I walk away from explosions, not because it looks cool, but to decrease my sig radius. The Prospect collapses in a fit of side splitting, atmospheric venting explosions.

A Garmur in the crowd rises to it's feet in applause as the pod warps off and I destroy the Prospect wreck.  I respectfully decline signing any autographs, as I have another gathering to attend but I do wave appreciatively at the Garmur while making my way off the stage, cloaking up as I go and warping off.

When it rains it pours

I'm not the biggest fan of C5s.  Once you get caught in one it becomes a rolling highway of C5's with very few connections to lower class space.  This would be ok if those C5's weren't empty and lacking in content, but the majority that I come across don't have much happening.  So my adventure tonight begins with the uneventful login to a deserted C5. I throw probes at the new signatures that are present, hoping to find a C4 or something.  Aha - a EOL frigate hole to null sec - that will do.

I emerge from session change and do the normal things, bookmark the hole, dscan, recloak back up, but no hurry, local is empty but for myself.  A quick look at the system designation has me doing a double take and a quick search to make sure - yes it is the same system.

B-R, where a little over a year and a half ago over 7,000 capsuleers participated in the destruction of over $300,000 USD worth of Internet Spaceships in a battle lasting over 21 hours, all over an unpaid sov bill.  It's just a smidge quieter now, but the presence of the Titan graveyard is awesome and indicative of just how special New Eden is - there is no other game out there that I know of that player actions can have a lasting effect on the game environment in such a way as you can in Eve.

I've discovered that having local makes you lazy.  I mosey about getting my selfie screenshot of the Titan graveyard, refit to my dual painter setup and lazily dump probes to scan down the other signatures, all safe in the knowledge that there isn't anyone sneaking up to gank me.  As luck would have it we have another wormhole so I grab the mobile depot and head over to more dangerous space.  Ok, back to business, I find myself a C3 and a lonesome MTU.  Littering in W space, tsk tsk.  I quickly ensure that the natural order of things is restored.

Feeling slightly less soiled I push on, hoping to find some real content to keep me entertained.  Onwards to another C3 where I find a Gila and Cyanbal sitting in their POS.  I watch for a while before getting probes out and scanning everything down.  I take my time a bit bookmarking all the sites after scanning and the lack of activity after my probes are recalled seems to assure the locals that I'm gone - dscan shows wrecks on scan.  I quickly determine which combat anomaly the residents are running and warp in at 100km to have a look.

What a wonderful sight.

They appear to be having trouble with the two webbing battleships at the end of the anomaly as they keep warping off, but I don't mind all that much as it gives me time to make a nice tactical perch.  The fact they keep coming back reassures me they will also finish the site, and when they do something will be sure to come along for the salvaging and that's when I'll get my shot.  They eventually finish killing sleepers and the Gila warps off to their tower.  The Cynabal stays in the site.  Hmmmnnn, this could mess things up for me.  If he stays in the site I can pretty much guarantee I'll be in a pod if I have a crack at the Thrasher that warps back into the site.  I warp down from my perch 30km out and start moving into position to execute the gank while making sure that the Thrasher is in fact equipped with salvagers and not something nasty like autocannons all the while keeping a close eye on the Cynabal.

My potential headache removes itself when the Cyanbal warps back to it's POS just as the Thrasher starts salvaging.  I orbit the Minnie destroyer and wait until he's on the last wreck before decloaking and letting fly.  He doesn't last long but unfortunately the pod gets clear.

Not bad.  I'll take it.  But the night is still young.  Not really, it is way past my bedtime, but I'll keep going.  There is a Highsec hole in this system, I'll jump to K space to sell my ill gotten loot from the MTU I popped earlier and maybe see if there is another wormhole I can quickly dive into, as the C3 chain I'm in has hit a dead end.  I sell my loot and make a few jumps over before I find another wormhole.  It's a C2 and dscan again lights up my night.

This time we have a Legion and an Eagle running the site, and due to it being a C2 they are completing it with ease.  I don't have much time so I go about setting up my perch while keeping an eye on these guys at work.  I haven't had a chance to scope out the rest of the system as I warped straight to this anomaly so there is a bit of fog of war about what else might be at the outer planets, but I don't really want to move off until I have my perch set.  However, sweeping dscan around while I wait does shows me something intriguing:

Surely they won't will they?  I don't understand why people would use a Noctis when a MTU and cheap dessie will do the job just fine and for a fraction of the co....  ahhh... I retract the previous statement, everyone in wormhole space should ditch their MTU's and just use a Noctis.  They are way more efficient, look much cooler and are definitely NOT a target I would try to gank at every opportunity.

Noctis on grid!!!

Wow, this night just got really exciting.  I move myself into position while the Legion and Eagle warp off to their POS.  I'm setting up for a drive by, starting 20km from the Noctis just inside point range with my bomber aligned to my perch so my trajectory will take me within a couple of kilometers from the Noctis, but keeping me aligned for when he friends come to save him.  By starting at the edge of point range I also give maximum time for the gank to be completed, as my ship will need to cover 40km before my target is back out of point range on the other side.  I wait until the Noctis starts on the final set of wrecks, align to the perch, declock, lock, overload everything and then keep an eye on dscan.

Starting Well

Still no cavalry, nearly there...

So close - just as the cavalry arrives.

The Noctis is deep into structure when the Legion and Eagle finally land on grid and time seems to stretch out while I'm waiting for my next volley of torps to fly.  It seems to take an eternity for the reload cycle to complete, all the while I'm keeping a close eye out for impending doom of my ship via the flashing yellow targeting box.  Yellow boxes on the overview - discretion takes the better part of valour and I warp to my perch.  So, so so close.  I quickly warp back down to my warp in point hoping to decloak, get 1 or 2 volleys off again but the Noctis is aligning out and warps before I can get in position.

The Noctis pilot, Judu Hekki, confirms that it was a tight run thing, with his ship being at 27% structure - that's 864 structure HP.  One more volley probably would have done it, but I was pretty close to being targeted with all the associated squashiness that a targeted bomber experiences.  *Sigh*.  All in all I'm pretty happy with my night's work though, it's been one of the most productive nights so far.  I got a couple of kills, was a lot better in terms of my situational awareness compared with my last tangle with a Noctis even though I still managed to burn out a target painter and my warp disruptor near the end of the fight.  It's at this point though I have to hang my head in shame - I'm a stealth bomber pilot using torpedoes and I have Torpedoes and Warhead Upgrades only at level 4 - training those to 5 would have given me an additional 5% and 2% damage respectively.  I'm pretty sure 7% extra damage over the course of 8 volleys would have given me that extra 864 damage.

Bait or AFK?

Oh the sights I've seen travelling around unknown space, the insights that I've gained into the lives of my fellow capsuleers.  For example, I note that we immortals tend to be a particularly bloodthirsty lot.

I may have chuckled a little.

I've also become acquainted with the fact that different ships in eve warp at different speeds as well, who'd of guessed that.  This was demonstrated vividly to me when I followed a Dominix to an ore anomaly.  A Domi warps at 2 AU a second, while a Manticore does 4.5/second.  I'm guessing that the Dominix warped to the site at 100km just like I did, because we basically landed at the same and the big ol' girl nearly gave me a bump, decloaking me in the process.  The Domi pilot must have been quite bemused watching me scramble back to a safe, and I chose to depart the scene when another pilot at the Domi's POS swapped into a Sabre.  Lesson learnt!

My travels took me to a C4 and on jumping into the system my Dscan nearly exploded.

I eventually scoped out 10 towers in system, but my use of dscan was quite limited due to the sheer number of floating ships that were showing up - 3 scrolls of the mousewheel.  But determined to not let anything obstruct me in my purpose I settled in to find a worthy target.

Eventually I found a couple of things that piqued my interest.  The first was a Crane that was warping all over the system.  At first I thought he might be going to POCOS, but then worked out he was going from tower to tower.  I had eyes on him and was trying to determine which tower he was headed to when I found a new target to keep me occupied.

When I jumped into the system I did a little research on the resident corps and found an old reddit about them where they proudly proclaimed that they mined in wormhole space, and given the lack of signatures and anomalies in system it appears that they like to gobble all their PVE content up.  It was fortunate that they had an Ore anomaly in system, and given I'd seen the Retriever I was hopeful I could say hello.

However, I'd warped straight to the Ore site when I read that they mined on the off chance of catching someone, so of course there were now Sleepers trying to defend their bits of rock. Thankfully one of the locals came by in a Gila and cleaned up my mess.

 After that nothing happened for a while.  I'd lost track of the Retriever while scoping out the Gila, and couldn't find it amongst the mess that is dscan.  I warped back to the towers trying to pick up where it has gone when a narrow band scan back at the Ore site fills my heart with joy.

I warp in to my perch and there is my mark, close to a asteroid.  I warp to a nearby rock at 30 and begin the approach.  However, there is something wrong.  I'm not seeing any mining lasers active.  Is this an elaborate bait?  Are you just happy to see me or is that a gank Proteus in your ore bay?  I don't think I've shown myself since I scanned all the signatures down yesterday, so they shouldn't know I'm here.  Is he just AFK?

Bait or AFK???

Let's find out.  Align to the perch, decloak, target, torps, painter, point and the Retriever pops after 2 or 3 volleys.  I even snag the pod, but instead of launching torps I cloak myself in a gesture of friendship and the pod warps off.  That's what I'm calling it anyway, not at all me hitting the wrong key.

Yield fit.  Definitely not bait.

I get a convo from Sigvard not long after and he was very cool about it all.  We had a little chat about what they were doing and what I was doing, he asked if I was looking for a corp and offered to message me for a spot when they go on a roam.  Although I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing now, the offer was and is greatly appreciated.  Kudos to you Sigvard for being a cool dude.

This situation is a crystal clear example of non consensual PVP bringing people together.  I would never have spoken to Sigvard had I not enacted violence upon his mining barge, nor would Sigvard felt the need to reach out to me.  We ended the conversion with a o7 and a feeling of a thing done right settled over me.  Right, time to go try and kill some of Sigvard's mates.

I finally locate which tower that Crane that has been bugging me is flying to and the reason for all of the warping around becomes clear.

Jack is getting this tower set up with all of it's defences, SMA, corp hangars, etc.  So given this and the fact that he's warping to and from a particular tower means that I can try a drag bubble to catch him in the act.  It would be tight time frame wise, as there isn't much delay in between the trips Jack is making between each tower, but you never know, he may not have bubbles on his overview and if he does warp back before the bubble is up he may not notice it.  You can only be podded for trying.

I slow boat my way out 368km from the tower to get out of range of the defences and wait for Jack to warp off.  Off he goes, drop the warp disruptor and orbit, get cloaked back up.  Even though it would take me nearly a month to train up for them, I'm beginning to see the value in Tech II bubbles as they only have a 1 minute anchoring delay on a small bubble.  If I had one of those I might have got Jack, as he warped back in not long before the anchoring was done.

Will he notice?

And with the worst timing of all the bubble goes up when he is on grid.

After a longish delay Jack warps off.  This is it, has he noticed???

It appears he has, as he is warping back to the tower without being caught.  I test the bubble and it does drag me when I warp from the tower it's aligned with, and further investigation shows Jack is warping from another tower at a different angle that avoids the bubble.  Well played Jack, well played.  I scoop the bubble, finding out in the process that you can de-anchor it while cloaked.  I decide to jump next door and find a system with 20 sigs, no towers.  I try scanning a few down but it's just not working for me.  You know you are too tired to play Eve when you nearly fall asleep in between scan cycles.