I have managed to find some time to play my main after things have settled down a bit at work and on my travels along the winding ways of wormhole space I stumbled into a C1 and started scanning down all of the signatures. I had two signatures to go when a local logs in at the tower I'm perched at. I quickly pull my probes and find the locals have put out something that piques my interest.
Very interesting. A quick check on the local corporation shows it's only 4 man strong and with a short history of losing mining ships on Zkillboard - it appears the corp has only been established in June of this year. I decide this may be the perfect spot to set up camp, so I watchlist all of the corp members and settle in to see what they do.
The Covetor logs and in it's place a Stratios under a different character logs in. It becomes apparent that these two characters must be on the same account, as one logs off, the other logs in - they are never online at the same time.
The Stratios warps over to a gas site and starts clearing the sleepers that are present. I make a perch but I'm not hopeful of getting any action, as a Stratios doing sites usually carries salvaging drones, and this proves to be the case here. However, the pilot leaves a couple of cargo containers it the site and warps off to their tower before the notification chimes that the Stratios is no longer online. A second notification chimes - the Covetor pilot is back on line. I perch up on the tower and watch the Covetor swapped for a Venture.
Thankfully there is an outside planet well off Dscan range that I can refit to my Venture killing fit with dual scrams so I warp off to get myself equipped. Once tooled up, I warp back to the tower and try to re-acquire this Venture. After a bit of swinging Dscan around I finally narrow the Venture down to one of the outer planets that is around 20AU from the tower, but here's the rub - I hadn't been able to scan the two signatures around this planet before the locals logged in. Ok, I drop probes off Dscan range and do my best to narrow down the signature via Dscan before activating the probes. Once they have finished scanning I pull them immediately, but it appears my use of Dsan isn't up to scratch, as I don't get a hit. I move back out of range and drop probes again, this time getting a weak hit on the site. But it appears that the Venture pilot was paying attention as I see them warping back the tower. The Venture logs, the Stratios logs in and disappears, throwing core probes into the ether.
Around 15 minutes later the characters swap again and the Venture heads back to the same gas site. I try again with the core probes, but it takes two efforts to get a warp in and again my probes were spotted. The Venture warps back to their tower and probably getting the feeling that there is someone close by with not the best of intentions they log for the night.
Well that's pretty frustrating, but it does give me time to reflect on my process. So I know where this Venture returns to, and from what direction - I've been going about this all arse-backwards. How about instead of trying to find the grid the Venture is on, why don't I let the Venture come to me? With that in mind I finish scanning the signatures and work my way 450 kilometres behind the POS and roughly in line with the two gas signatures at the outer planet. I drop a bookmark before logging out for the night.
Next morning I log my trading alt in and add Min Juni as a watchlist contact. I leave the client running all day and check in on it now and then. Early evening a notification chimes - Min Juni is back online. I swap accounts and scope out whats going on and sure enough the Venture is back at the same gas site. I get in position and prepare my trap.
I had already dropped probes when I logged in, so it's a simple matter of moving them on top of the gas site and waiting. Attentive as always, it's not long before I see the Venture on Dscan. It's at this point that things go a bit awry.
The Venture lands on the very edge of the bubble and as you can see above I've been orbiting the mobile disruptor at 7500 metres - unfortunately my orbit has taken me outside of scram range. I get a lock and send a volley of torpedoes at the Venture, hoping beyond hope that I can MWD close enough to land point but alas the Venture spools up their warp drive and blinks back to the tower. Well that's frustrating, but a great learning experience. Next time I'll remember that frigates don't usually go too far into the bubble when they are caught, so I'll be waiting at the front edge of the bubble in future. I've also handily found the shortcut keys to overheat the mid slot rack so my process is now to overheat my mids whenever I jump into a system. Next time I'll do better.
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.
So after my little bubble camp adventure I again reship at Rens. For those of you keeping score, I've named my new Manticore "The Flying Target" in an effort to outwit anyone who spots me on dscan. There's 1 sig in Rens so I figure what the hell, I'll throw probes at it and see it what sticks and lo and behold we have an EOL K162 to C1 space. What are the odds??? Excellent, I'll take that thank you very much.
There's not a lot doing in the C1 so I spend the next couple of days moving around J space looking for targets. I eventually find a C4 with a kill board history that shows the locals like to mine in a Covetor. I settle in to stalk them for a while and see if they are getting annoyed by all the ore anomalies in their system. In the meantime, Carnyx has dropped, and I really like the new overview icons, they look really cool and (from subsequent use) the overview is a lot more informative at a glance as the different ship classes show the different icons. Just got to learn them all now.
Very nice. I like.
While waiting around for the locals to do something I check next door in the C2 static just before downtime and find something that perks my interest:
Now in my experience most people in wormholes usually only get transport ships out of the hangar when they are going to be moving stuff and given this wormhole has a high sec static, I'm reasonably confident I know where that Tayra is going to be headed along with when - just after downtime when there aren't as many players logged in. My problem is that I didn't scan down all the wormholes when I jumped into this C2 earlier that day, so finding the highsec exit is my first priority. The second priority is if and when that Tayra goes to that high sec hole, how do I catch it?
I can't really try and nab it on the highsec hole because it can just jump back through to highsec and I don't particularly feel like engaging in ritual concordukken. That seriously limits my options, but I have an idea in mind that stems from factional warfare and warp core stabilisers - a bit random I know, but bear with me.
Begin Tangent:
Rixx and Kirith have had some back and forth recently over the use of Warp Core Stabilizer by factional warfare plex farmers. Without going too deeply into the issue my own general view is that FW plexing is inherently a PVE activity that takes place inside a free for all PVP zone (limited by ship sizes due to acceleration gates obviously). This in itself isn't an issue, and a general comparison can be made with Sleeper anomalies in wormhole space. Both FW plexes and Sleeper sites provide rewards that can be converted to ISK for players completing PVE content - for the Plexer it's flipping the timer, for the sleeper anom it's destroying, looting and salvaging sleepers. However, the reason we don't see stabbed Tengus running sleeper sites is that there is a minimum DPS benchmarks for tank and damage in order to complete the site. Stabbing a Tengu would seriously inhibit its performance via reduced targeting range and DPS (BCU, Gyros and MFS or armour tank modules) which would a) increase the time taken to complete the site (increased risk) or b) prevent the site from being completed altogether.
A FW farmer has no such requirement - all they need to do is orbit a beacon. This lack of combat benchmark requirements to complete the content means that the low slots aren't needed for gank or tank DPS and enables those who don't want to PVP to fill their empty low slots with as many WCS as they can fit.
In wormholes, you would typically see only see WCS on a couple of occasions - explorers running exploration sites and on industrials such as the infamous 4 WCS Epithal PI runner. Explorers I have no issue with, it's pretty much a given that explorers use stabs so I normally hunt explorers in a dual scram Astero. The time it takes for the hacking minigame to be completed allows a hunter to get close enough to make a MWD bump and land tackle. The typical exploration frigates also don't usually have 4 low slots, and putting 4 stabs on an Astero seriously compromises it's armour tank. To contrast this, I found a killmail from way back when when I used to run Radar explorer sites (which became the current data sites) in losec pre Odyssey when there were rats guarding the cans - once you get past that it's a Drake, you will notice a distinct lack of anything resembling stabs - you needed BCU's to up your DPS to take out the rats - fitting stabs wasn't an option.
Epithals on the other hand are typically at a POCO to pick up PI goods for the time it takes to align back to the POS and are pretty hard to catch at the best of times, not even considering whether they are stabbed or not. I remember a particular quote from Penny (sadly no longer posting) over at Tiger Ears on the issue of WCS:
We do have tools available to use that can overcome stabs, but they are often ridiculously expensive or you have to compromise on your overall effectiveness - a 4 WCS Epithal would need two scrams and a long point to be caught - that's 3 mid slots for tackle. However, there is another option that has caught my eye, and though it is extremely situational I want to try it out
End Tangent:
That's right my friends - A bubble trap.
I've been carrying a Mobile Small Warp Disruptor around since I came back to the game, but haven't thought about using it until now. However, on pondering WCS, I resolved to try this out and see if I can't get it to work. My thinking was to find someone who does PI regularly, work out which POCO they go to and set the bubble up, preferably off dscan range, and hopefully catch or drag them out of warp and give them a serve of torps - a bubble negates WCS completely and combined with the low speed of the industrial, there would be little chance of escape. The other situation I thought it might work was camping a high sec hole, so fortuitously I might get a chance to try this now.
I'm the 13th player (don't ask me how I know) to log back in after downtime and quickly get probes out to find the highsec static. I'm just about done when Poonury logs back in. I quickly try and finish so my probes aren't spotted but muff the scans so I need two passes - the high sec hole is within a couple of AU of the tower so they must have been spotted. I'm probably right, as nothing happens for around 10 minutes. But my patience is rewarded when the Astero is swapped for the Tayra, shield hardeners are activated, and the Tayra warps to the high sec hole.
It's nice being right.
Ok, time to set up my trap. I warp to the highsec hole, make sure that the Tayra transits the wormhole and then align back to the Tayra's tower. I'm aiming to set the bubble around 130 to 150km away from the hole so it's not so obvious when the Tayra jumps back in that there is a bubble and after a bit of fiddling about trying to work out how to launch it I drop the disrupter, orbit it at 10km and settle in to wait.
The bubble has a anchoring time of 2 minutes, so I keep a close eye on the time hoping I can get this set up before the Tayra jumps back in. I'm on edge with nervous energy which only increases as the time ticks past 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes. WTF is going on? I get onto google and look up "how to launch mobile warp disruptors" - ohhhh, I need to right click on them once launched and anchor them, just like a POS. The web page also note that they only affect ships if they are on the same grid as the ship's destination. Shit, this looks like a bust, my idea of setting it up like I have won't work at all. A little deflated, I scoop the disruptor and warp back to the POS. While thinking about what I should do I happen to switch to my colliders overview tab.
There are no POS guns.
Awesome!!! We are back in business!!! I'm 100km from the POS and in line with the highsec exit, so I decloak, align back to the highsec hole and MWD for a cycle before dropping the mobile disruptor, anchoring it, orbit at 10km and cloak.
2 minutes to wait while the bubble anchors, spent clicking dscan over and over and over, and over and over.
And the trap is set.
So now all there is to do is wait. So I wait. And I wait. And then I wait some more. I wait so long that I decide I'll actually do some real paid work instead of hitting dscan over and over and over. I set myself up 100km from the highsec wormhole aligned to my bubble. I then do some of my real life work with my headphones on, listening for the telltale sound of a wormhole activation. There are a couple of scares, like when my daughter needs to be settled back to bed and another when my bladder reaches a critical point and I have to answer the call of nature (I did consider an empty milk bottle close by, but didn't think that would go down too well with my significant other). But each time I return there is no Tayra on dscan, nothing new.
50 minutes later, I hear the wormhole activate. I switch back to Eve and the Tayra is at the highsec hole.
Once I finish laughing, I warp back to my bubble, orbit the disruptor and get ready. The rest is pretty self explanatory.
I'm extremely satisfied with that. My plan worked a treat, once I actually figured out how to use a bubble properly. I forsee future applications as well even with POS's with guns, as I know how to extend the grids around the POS so the bubble can be set safely out of range of any defences.
I'm off to get me a few more mobile warp disruptors.
