Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Got a double-deep-space message beacon from Jim Bridger late last night, flash priority. Signal quality was so bad, I thing the message drone must have had a hell of a trip before it ever got withing range of a Concord beacon.

Bottom line sounds like Jim’s deep in a wormhole complex, staring at an offline tower surrounded by most of a deathstar’s armaments, just sittin’ there waiting for an adventurous salvage corp to come along. I’m supposed to round up some battleships and haulers (and shovels and rakes and implements of destruction) and be ready to haul ass halfway across the known universe, when-and-if Jim finds some deeply-implausible chain of wormholes that doesn’t lead back to the ass-end of Syndicate where he started.

I called up the Empress of Greater Mars (you remember her? She’s the lady who managed the logistics for my one long sojourn into wormhole space) and she’s game. She’s standing by with the wormhole-fit laser battleship and an impressive array of hauler minions.

So now we wait. Updates as events warrant.

Update, a day later: The wormholes were not friendly; there’s currently no good route for the ships needed to get in there, and the mods to be salvaged aren’t worth using a bad route. So I parked a probing minion in there to wait for better wormhole conjunctions.

On a brighter note, while exploring wormhole chains I found a very-badly-defended (but alive and shields up) small tower with an Orca parked inside the shields. That’s more than Ironfleet can handle, so I passed the intel along to TEARS, in hopes that some of the merry thugs in that fine organization may be able to put together the small expedition required to liberate that Orca.

Dear Marlenus. What a time I’ve had! After tonight’s adventure, I knew you’d want another postcard.

I remember fondly the Ironfleet forays into the wormholes with The Empress and on TEARS ops. But, since I’ve been down in 0.0, I just haven’t seen very many wormholes at all. And the few I have found, didn’t lead to anywhere interesting.

Until tonight. One jump out of my “home” in 0.0, I found a wormhole leading into unknown space. As I was in a covert ops ship, I jumped on in and warped around a bit, checking for locals on my directional scanner.

It quickly developed that the system contained one armed POS and had two ships in space — a Retriever mining barge flying T1 mining drones, and a hauler. So I went to a distant location, uncloaked, dropped combat probes, recloaked, positioned the probes very carefully, and did my best “speedy probe” evolution. Just as soon as I had a warp-in on the mining barge, I pulled the combat probes back in, then warped at 100 to see what was what.

And there they were, merrily mining Arkanor from the Retriever into the hauler, via a transfer jet can. There was *nobody* else visible on directional scan, but of course there might be other cloakers like myself.

So, back “home” I went (2 jumps) for a combat ship. Normally I would have recruited some other guys from the alliance, but everybody else in local was vigorously engaged in a long-running and futile-seeming effort to bait and trap a cloaky Vagabond that’s been hanging out in “our” system. So, I didn’t want to try and pull them away for a wormhole mission that won’t advance our local military interests.

Instead, I decided to jump in my trusty Sabre light interdictor, which I’ve trained on for years but never actually flown much. (I did lose one shortly after getting to 0.0, in the process of which learning that I don’t know how to use them properly in fleets. So, my other two have been gathering hangar dust.)

My reasoning is that I could hit the wormhole, warp directly to the barge/hauler pair, pop a bubble, and with a bit of luck maybe even get two kills. And (I hoped) if I could pod the hauler pilot clear out of the wormhole, I might even get a chance to sneak back in later and salvage some of the yummy Arkanor they were mining.

Like any military plan, it did not survive contact with the enemy intact. Here’s how it actually went down:

I hit the worm hole and warped right to my Retriever bookmark. Unfortunately, he must have been alert (or lucky) with his d-scanning, because by the time I got there, the Retriever was gone. (I know he left in a hurry because his mining drones were still there.) So, I popped the bubble and engaged the hauler.

Weird, it’s some Amarr hauler I’ve never seen before. Impel? Which one is the Impel?

And right about then I noticed, this Impel is isn’t dying as fast as I’d hoped. In fact, it’s pretty crunchy. Did I really catch me a Transport?

Turns out, I did, a genuine no-shit Deep Space Transport kill:

2009.09.12 02:18:00

Victim: Hauling Styx
Corp: Division of Dying Stars
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Impel
System: J151516
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 6441

Involved parties:

Name: Jim Bridger (laid the final blow)
Security: 2.0
Corp: Steel Fleet
Alliance: Ocularis Inferno
Faction: NONE
Ship: Sabre
Weapon: 250mm Light ‘Scout’ Artillery I
Damage Done: 6441

Destroyed items:

Medium Cargohold Optimization I, Qty: 2
Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 5

Dropped items:

Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 2
Arkonor, Qty: 1503 (Cargo)

He died well. No bribe attempts or blubbering. But of course, I had to pod him anyway, just in case he had a spare hauler lurking in that POS:

2009.09.12 02:20:00

Victim: Hauling Styx
Corp: Division of Dying Stars
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Capsule
System: J151516
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 407

Involved parties:

Name: Jim Bridger (laid the final blow)
Security: 2.0
Corp: Steel Fleet
Alliance: Ocularis Inferno
Faction: NONE
Ship: Sabre
Weapon: 250mm Light ‘Scout’ Artillery I
Damage Done: 407

So then I spent the next little while chortling as I hauled 1504 units of Arkanor (3 trips in my Prowler blockade runner) home to my hangar. (With my refine skills at the local station that’s roughly 2000 Megacyte and 1000 Zydrine — quality salvaging in anybody’s book!) The Retriever pilot was briefly on scan in a Heron, but I never encountered him again.

Wish you were here!

So, late last night the hyperspace telephone rang. “Marlenus, this is Jim. Sorry I’ve been too busy to write! No, I’m doing good. Hey, can you do me a favor? Can you bring me a Prowler full of Nitrogen Oxides? No, no, just part way, you don’t even have to leave high sec. Just twenty jumps, yeah, I’ll meet you there, I know a guy with a covert jump bridge who is taking me the rest of the way. When? Well, he’s waiting now, how quick can you get going?”

It turns out he and his boys have been using bombers to drive ice miners out of the ice belts, then going in and scooping the mined ice in blockade runners. The scooping part, of course, was Jim’s idea. Talk about “in the best traditions of Ironfleet!” How could I refuse?

I couldn’t. Not even when he said “…oh, and by the way, would you pick me up a couple of bomb blueprints on your way? We’re running short down here, but we’ve got minerals coming out our ears from all the hauler spawns and rat loot.” 180M ISK, Jim? Sure, no problem. You can owe me.

I’m glad he’s having fun down there…

Dear Marlenus —

Still having a great time in 0.0. Since my last postcard, I’ve lost a covert ops ship and a couple more frigates, gotten podded once, and been in some fun (if usually inconclusive) fleet fights.

My Steel Fleet brethren, though, are strange bunch. They think nothing of losing two or three battleships a night in pursuit of mayhem — at which, they excel — but they shrink and quail from flying a 300,000 ISK hauler two jumps through 0.0 to clean up a mineral spawn. Today I was snooping around two jumps from our home system when I found a hauler spawn, three cruiser-sized haulers guarded by four cruiser-sized rats. When I announced this find in fleet coms, I was astonished to hear “naw, that’s too far.” Two jumps! In further discussion, these intrepid warriors explained that the two (then completely empty) systems were too dangerous for a hauler, we’d need to set up a fleet and get scouts out, and it wasn’t enough minerals to be worth the trouble.

Needless to say, my years in Ironfleet have trained me to view the world in a different way. “Well, then,” said the little red hen, “I shall simply eat it myself.”

I went back in a Rifter and killed all the rats. (If anybody had told me you could rat in a Rifter in 0.0, I’d have been out here long ago!) Got my first piece of truly excellent 0.0 loot when I did that — one of the hauler rats dropped a named mining laser upgrade (the “Elara” one) which is about a thirty million ISK module. Then I went back in my Mammoth for three loads of mixed tritanium and pyerite. In all this time and jumping, I never saw another soul in local. However, I was able to entertain myself by listening to the Steel Fleet boys on vent, who spent most of the same time sitting outside of “our” station, shooting each other and swapping insults.

All in all, a most productive afternoon!

— Jim

Dear Marlenus,

Wish you were here. We are having a great time, and the salvage here you would not believe. Last night after a quick tussle with three optimists who were flying my beloved Thrashers (2 died, one escaped, they never scratched my Claw because of some godlike weapons disruption action by my friendly neighborhood Onyx pilot) I was warping between two asteroid belts when I saw a flash of cans go by on my overview about three million miles out.

Well, of course I had to do some old-fashioned safe-spot busting, the kind where you warp between bookmarks, dropping more bookmarks, until you narrow yourself down to where you’re on grid with the target. Took me about an hour because I am WAY out of practice.

Ultimately what I got was three standard containers containing about 600 cubic meters of local rat loot, so not really worth my time. But still, it was a lot of fun!

— Jim

My time in Faction Warfare coincided with the peak of the nano-frenzy, when everybody and his brother was in a Vagabond going so fast that the game engine could barely cope. Our Caldari blob of Drakes and Ravens and Caracals was often hard pressed by these fast-movers, and we developed a considerable hatred of them. Every now and then we’d get a kill on one of those boys, and there would always be much rejoicing.

Of course, that was long ago, and there have been many changes since then. But still.

There was a TEARS roaming op tonight, another wormhole dive in search of unwary targets. I joined up some two and a half hours late, due to a conflict with my dinner hour and some quality family time. By the time I joined, the FC sounded weary and rough (I think he’s been sick).

I found a wormhole, and the gang converged on me. The FC jumped in to scout for targets. He found at least two POSs there, along with various parked ships and (he said) a piloted Orca, sitting safely inside POS shields. After just a few minutes scouting, he declared the system free of targets and announced that the op was over. Then he jumped out, docked, and logged.

Well, for me the op was just beginning, so I jumped in (in my stealth bomber) and began snooping around for something to shoot at. I figured if I found something, I could get a few other TEARS guys to jump in after me and help kill it. I was specifically hoping that the Orca might do something stupid. Not very likely, but in EVE I’ve found that you sort of have to make your own luck. It might be true that “there’s no way to get a kill in this ship against that target” if the other guy doesn’t screw up, but in my experience, the other guy often does screw up, and if you aren’t hunting him when he does, you won’t get him.

Great minds think alike, and it turns out that Khalia Nestune and Lian Xander from Suddenly Ninjas were similarly interested in spending more time in this wormhole. They were flying a Malediction interceptor and an Ishkur assault frigate.

We snoop around. No sight of the Orca, but there’s a guy in his pod somewhere, and various unpiloted ships inside POS forcefields. A couple of haulers, and once I got a Helios on scan, which explained the combat scanner probes visible on the directional scanner. We were directional-scanning, since none of us had combat probes available.

After about ten minutes of random warping around and snooping, we decided there was nothing to be found without combat scanners, and it was agreed that I’d go out to known space and pick up my Buzzard covops. I entered warp to the wormhole.

At that moment, Khalia began shouting that the Helios at the wormhole and (miracle!) pointed. Turns out he warped in uncloaked (why?) and Khalia was able to burn over and point him (about 30 kilometers from the wormhole, again, why?) before he could cloak.

I’m not sure where Lian in the Ishur was — also at the wormhole I think — but they were already burning the Helios pretty hard by the time I came out of warp. I was able to lock and get a volley of torps launched, but the Helios popped before my torps ever arrived:

2009.05.18 02:43

Victim: MulaSoldats
Corp: The Dark Tribe
Alliance: None
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Helios
System: J103716
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 1954

Involved parties:

Name: Lian Xander (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.33
Corp: Suddenly Ninjas
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Ishkur
Weapon: Light Neutron Blaster II
Damage Done: 1954

Name: Khalia Nestune
Security: 0.2
Corp: Suddenly Ninjas
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Malediction
Weapon: Warp Disruptor II
Damage Done: 0

Name: Marlenus
Security: 1.3
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Manticore
Weapon: ‘Arbalest’ Siege Missile Launcher
Damage Done: 0

Destroyed items:

Cap Recharger II
Warp Disruptor II
Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Inertia Stabilizers II
Co-Processor II
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Combat Scanner Probe I, Qty: 4 (Cargo)
Hobgoblin II (Drone Bay)

Dropped items:

Combat Scanner Probe I
Combat Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Expanded Probe Launcher I
Survey Scanner II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Co-Processor II
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Combat Scanner Probe I, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron (Cargo)

Nice! I can’t imagine what MulaSoldats thought he was doing, but I don’t much care. Of course we tried to catch his pod, and of course we failed. And right then…

A Vagabond (which, for any of you fortunate few who don’t know, is a very expensive and very fast and very deadly T2 heavy assault cruiser) dropped out of warp right on top of Khalia and Lian, who by this time are close to 50km from where I am, which is right on the wormhole.

Now, a fully T2-fitted and rigged Vagabond chattering autocannons at you from point-blank range can be a terrifying thing when you’re in any frigate-sized vessel. So, I don’t blame Khalia for shouting at us to run away. I think he’d have warped out himself, only, he was pointed. So of course he began burning away from the Vaga. I said “no, kill him!” (easy for me to say when I’m parked on the wormhole for quick escape!) and began launching butt-slow torps. Lian attacked with drones and guns.

From there on out everything happened very fast. My torps started arriving, Khalia was speaking urgently of where in armor he was, I noticed the Vaga was finally targetting me, I was praying for one more volley to hit, somebody was saying “I’m in structure, I’m gone”, I got volley of torps that hit for more than 2k damage, there was lotsa yelling, I heard “I’m dead!” and then the Vaga was a wreck.

It turns out, Khalia had less than 20% structure left on his interceptor. I think (not sure) that he got out of scramble range and was using his speed to tank (badly but well enough) the Vaga’s guns, which presumably were in deep falloff by then. If Khalia did have a chance to leave and didn’t take it, I’m very impressed. Brave!

I’m not clear whether we ever had a point on the Vaga, or whether the pilot was just overconfident and planning to melt faces. I believe Lian had a point, but I’m not sure if the Ishkur is fast enough to keep a Vagabond pointed for long — I just don’t know. Like I said, it all happened very fast. Whatever the details, I was pleased to see that we suffered no losses, except maybe in the soiled-underpants department.

We speculate that maybe the uncloaked Helios was a badly-set trap; I’d been cloaked at all times and they may have thought they could bait the other two frigates and kill them both with the Vagabond. If so, they timed it badly (considering how fast the Helios popped) and were surprised by my bomber. But still, they should have had tactical initiative at all times, and I can’t figure out why they squandered it the way they did.

No matter, here’s the killmail, complete with faction remote armor repper:

2009.05.18 02:45

Victim: Garreden
Corp: The Dark Tribe
Alliance: None
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Vagabond
System: J103716
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 8605

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.3
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Manticore
Weapon: Caldari Navy Juggernaut Torpedo
Damage Done: 8171

Name: Lian Xander
Security: 1.3
Corp: Suddenly Ninjas
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Ishkur
Weapon: Hobgoblin II
Damage Done: 434

Destroyed items:

Barrage M, Qty: 140
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Warp Disruptor II
Large Shield Extender II
Gyrostabilizer II
Overdrive Injector System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Core Defence Field Extender I, Qty: 2

Dropped items:

Barrage M, Qty: 35
Coreli C-Type Small Remote Armor Repair System
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II
Large Shield Extender II
10MN MicroWarpdrive II
Gyrostabilizer II
Overdrive Injector System II
Barrage M, Qty: 3520 (Cargo)

I suspect the pair of large shield extenders didn’t do him any favors when my torpedoes began striking home. I am fitting a target painter, and against his shields, I was doing between 440 and 720 points per volley. My sixth volley, which broke into his armor I think, landed for 945 points; and my seventh volley did an astounding 2096 points. I wonder if he may have pulsed his micro-warp drive, giving him the sig radius of a small sun? Then my next volley landed for a thousand points (taking him to half structure) and my last volley popped him.

All in all, the best fight I’ve been in lately, and the best killmail I’ve seen since my FW days. All thanks to Khalia and Lian!

What a dream.

The boards have been abuzz, lately, about an assortment of pirates who watched a mothership cloak at a safespot, then assembled a nefarious crew to melt it. Here’s Mynxee’s account, which sounds like jolly good rogering fun. (Double entendre intended.)

But the part that caught my salvager’s eye was this:

Someone who made an effort to salvage it got this message:

“You cannot salvage this wreck because it contains too much loot to fit into a single cargo container. The wreck contains 89,230 m3 but can contain no more than 27,500 m3…”

I wonder what the final numbers of salvage bits were, because surely someone sorted this and got it done.

I’m salivating over the idea of 89k cubic meters of salvage bits, but I’m somewhat puzzled about the message. I frequently get a similar message when trying to salvage a battleship in a salvaging frigate, because of all the metal scraps. But in that case, the message is about inadequate cargo space on my ship. This message talks of loot not fitting in a standard jetcan.

How big are the modules (and cargo space) on a mothership? Because this sounds to me like a message that’s not about lack of space to put the salvage. Rather, when you salvage a ship before looting it, all the dropped modules and cargo get evicted into space in an old-fashioned jet can. This sounds like a “you can’t salvage because we can’t create a big enough jet-can for the loot” error.

Still, a fun problem to have.

Last night, for the first time since I started working in Greater Mars, a Magnetometric site spawned, one called “Forgotten Perimeter Gateway.” I’m sad to say that it proved something of a disappointment.

I went in, in the usual way, in my Drake. The initial spawn was four cruisers; after I killed the second one, I got a spawn of a battleship and four frigates. Foolishly, I concentrated on the battleship, and when it died, I got another spawn consisting of two more battleships and two more frigates.

So, by now I’m out of shield and out of cap and there are ten Sleepers on the field: 2 BS, 2 cruisers, 6 frigs. They had me surrounded and outnumbered … it was time to warp away, rest, and recover.

Back, at range. Picked off the two cruisers before the damage got out of hand. Was just killing the second one when I noticed an Imicus and four Sisters core probes on my directional scan. They are in my w-space, scannin’ my dudez!

Warp away, rest, recover, ask the Empress of Greater Mars to scan down the Imicus. She tries, reports back that there are no hostiles in system. What, they left already?

Back to the mag site. Come out of warp and there’s the Imicus, 40 klicks away. (Empress, you are fired as my backup scanning minion.)

Targeted the Imicus, or tried to; but of course this is a Drake, and he’s long gone before the lock is obtained. Nobody else on directional scan, I gamble on finishing off the rest of the frigates.

Now we are down to 2 sleeper battleships, which is a substantial but not impossible nut to crack for my Drake. Assuming no enemies land on my head…

First, back to the POS, swap into my Buzzard, sweep the system carefully and competently. No ships on scan, no hostile probes out, maybe he really did leave the system this time.

Back into the Drake, back to the Mag site. Launch all the drones to increase DPS and soak some up too, start chewing on the first battleship. Keep weather eye on d-scanner. First battleship pops just before my shields go, I can tank the last one, we are done with Sleepers. Will I be unmolested long enough to do the archeology, or will my Imicus friend come back with reinforcements?

In the event, nobody came back. But the loot was a disappointment. In addition to the usual ship droppings, there were eight archeology cans, from which I got 9 ancient relics to be used (if I understand it right) in reverse engineering the blueprint copies for making Tech III subsystems. They were:

3x Wrecked Armor Nanobot
1x Wrecked Electromechanical Component
1x Wrecked Power Cores
4x Wrecked Weapon Subroutines

Unfortunately, my spies in Jita tell me these are none of them worth as much as a million ISK on the current market. Given that the wrecked hull section I found in a Radar site sold for 300 million, I was hoping that a Mag site would have some valuable stuff too. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about TIII production to understand where the bottlenecks are. I’m also uncertain how developed the market is yet; if production chains are still gearing up, it might be that items are in surplus temporarily until demand builds. At any rate, I’m not selling these for trivial prices; I’ll hang on to them until the market is fully developed, for better or worse.

So there I was, cruising through the cosmos in my Drake, a little bit of Caldari steel jazz blowing on my pod speakers, quaffing Quafe Ultra with a shot of Gurista Dark Rum and feeling not a care in the world. I’d swept Greater Mars for hostiles and, finding none, hopped in the Drake to blow up some Sleepers at a cosmic anomaly, one of two in the system. Mellow fun, no stress, just mindless carebear kaboomski time, communing with my heavy missles. Fly, my pretties, fly!

That was the plan. However, this IS w-space. One keeps one’s eyes on the sensors.

Thus it was only mostly unexpected when a casual sweep with my directional scanner showed me three sleeper wrecks and a Ferox.

I expected to see him when I lumbered out of warp, but he wasn’t at my destination. So, I figured he must be at the other anomaly.

I wanted to be sure, though, because you don’t get a lot of second chances when you’re tackling with a Drake. So, back I went to the Greater Mars headquarters POS, where I hopped in my Buzzard for a quick scout.

First I popped four probes at 32 AU range, overlapping where I thought he’d be. Sure enough, I got a hit. So I went all the way down to 1AU and moved the probe indicators to cover the suspected location. One fast scan, 100% hit, instantly mashed the probe return button. Bookmarked the Ferox and hopped back in the Drake. Launched that bad boy at my bookmark like a dumptruck full of bricks down a steep icy hill.

Dropped out of warp about eleven klicks from the Ferox. Locked him up. I’d activated my warp disruptor and missile launchers before I came out of warp, but for some reason they deactivated instead of firing when lock was complete, I’m not sure why. So he got about five free seconds while I waited for my modules to activate, before I noticed I wasn’t shooting. Then I said a dirty word and hit the buttons again.

The extra GTFO time I gave him apparently wasn’t enough.

He was engaged with a Sleeper battleship and two cruisers, and was down at maybe 20% shields when I got my lock. He didn’t last long, even though all three Sleepers started shooting at me as soon as my first volley hit the Ferox:

2009.04.22 04:13:00

Victim: Cristal Dawn
Corp: BongBrothers Inc.
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Ferox
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 37385

Involved parties:

Name: Awakened Escort / Unknown
Damage Done: 22271

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.3
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Drake
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 15114

Destroyed items:

Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 46 (Cargo)
Plutonium Charge M, Qty: 251 (Cargo)
Acolyte I (Drone Bay)
Sleeper Data Library, Qty: 4 (Cargo)
Iridium Charge M, Qty: 351 (Cargo)
Widowmaker Heavy Missile, Qty: 25
Large Shield Extender I
Heavy Missile Launcher I, Qty: 3
Uranium Charge M, Qty: 24 (Cargo)
Scourge Heavy Missile, Qty: 26
Neural Network Analyzer, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 143 (Cargo)
Medium Neutron Saturation Injector I
250mm ‘Scout’ I Accelerator Cannon
V-M15 Braced Multispectral Shield Matrix
Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 70 (Cargo)
Iron Charge M, Qty: 392 (Cargo)
Guristas Iron Charge M, Qty: 120 (Cargo)
Uranium Charge M, Qty: 64

Dropped items:

Power Diagnostic System I
800mm Reinforced Crystalline Carbonide Plates I
Gravimetric Backup Array I
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Large Shield Extender I
Shield Recharger I
Widowmaker Heavy Missile, Qty: 291 (Cargo)
Neural Network Analyzer, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 30
Tungsten Charge M, Qty: 534 (Cargo)
200mm Railgun I
Thorium Charge M, Qty: 442 (Cargo)
Ballistic Control System I
Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 55
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I
Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 120 (Cargo)
Warrior I, Qty: 2 (Drone Bay)
Lead Charge M, Qty: 367 (Cargo)

The Sleepers were hitting me hard, so I didn’t even try to catch his pod. He was cool about it, making an “easy come, easy go” sort of remark in local before (presumably) hitting the wormhole back towards home.

As you can see, it was a cheaply fit Ferox, so not too much of a loss for him. I enjoyed salvaging his wrecks, after I finished off the anomaly for him.

Greater Mars was quiet today, so after some desultory probing in a couple of adjacent w-systems, I decided to take a holiday at home, visiting my home base and fittings hangar to play with my stealth bombers and my ECM ships, since they all need refitting after the recent patch.

Well, after a long day of that, I decided to do some high-sec probing, since I’ve been in w-space pretty much constantly since Apocrypha released. I was curious to see how the new probing system would work for finding salvage opportunities.

Pretty soon I picked up the spoor of a whole swarm of drones and battleships at a moon, which is an odd thing to see in high sec. So went to have a look-see. What I found was about a dozen heavy ships from the Habitat Against Humanity alliance, with members from The IMorral Majority [BADD] and Squirrel Horde [NUTSS]. They appeared to be having a long and happy POS-stomping party; there was a Dread Gurista tower going down and a whole lot of shooting going on.

What caught my eye, though, were a number of Giant Secure Cans scattered about; several of the battleships were snuggled up to them, and they had names like “Antimatter L”.

Now, it’s unfortunate that ever since Apocrypha gave secure cans their new graphics, it’s no longer possible to tell whether a can is anchored or not unless you have functional color vision (which I don’t). But there was such a chaos of ships and drones, I thought it highly unlikely that anybody took the time to anchor their ammo cans. So, off I went for a cargo vessel.

I chose the humble Badger — not even a Badger II — because I thought there was some chance somebody might be willing to suicide me in a fit of pique, and I wanted to deny them any satisfaction for any such berserker insanity. And besides, it was funnier that way.

First load, I got two Giant Secure Cans, with no sign that anybody saw me. By the second load, the tower was down, and they noticed when I scooped can #3. Suddenly I had two battleships targeting me.

You go, boys! I love a good Concord show. Meanwhile, I steered toward can #4. Unfortunately, it was in the process of being scooped by Klendaxor in a Bustard. (He was a BADD member until yesterday, so it looks like he dropped corp so he could supply today’s operation with impunity from any tower defenders.)

Back at base, I checked out the contents of my cans. One was empty — no surprise since I came along near the end of the tower shooting. But the others? One of them had twenty five thousand large anti-matter rounds in it, which is a cool three million ISK in anybody’s book. The other was even better: 16,000 Bane Rage torpedoes, worth about eight million ISK on the current market.

There having been a lot of loose unclaimed drones floating around, I went back in a fast scooping frigate. This attracted a lot of blinky yellow boxes from assorted battleships, but they were cleaning up drones rapidly, and all I got was a single Hammerhead II.

Finally, reasoning that they might have taken this tower down in order to put their own up, I went back in my trusty Prowler and prowled for a while. But in the interim, they’d already anchored a small tower, and (though I watched carefully while they onlined it and got the forcefield up, writing this blog post in the meanwhile) they didn’t show any inclination to drop anything else for an ambitious salvager to scoop.