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.