Archive for the 'Salvage Notes' Category

There are a total of fifteen signatures in Greater Mars today.

Ten of them are gravimetric.

The other five? Wormholes. All five of them.

This is the most wormholes I’ve yet seen in any one system.

Only one is to high sec space. There is also one to low sec, and then one each to “unknown”, “dangerous unknown”, and “deadly unknown” space.

Outside the wormhole to “deadly unknown”, I found a cargo can with a salvager, a high-meta web, and some scan probes.

So I was chillin’ in Greater Mars this morning when I noticed a new ship on scan at the about-to-vanish high-sec wormhole. A Probe. Presumably, probing.

We can’t have this. Didn’t this person see the No Trespassing sign?

Warped to the wormhole in my Buzzard just to have a look. Arrived in time to see the Probe warp away to a planet.

Nudged my scan probes, got a new warp in. Warped in, approached closely, bookmarked.

Went home and got my Caracal. Returned. Probe is gone.

We could play this sort of cat-and-mouse game all day. I really need to get a combat prober with enough firepower to catch and eat helpless astrometric frigates.

No worries. Probe (rather than covert ops) suggests relative lack of experience; maybe they’ll get engrossed in their scanning interface somewhere? I’ll keep looking.

Aha! They are back at the wormhole. This isn’t good, because if they are hugging the hole, they can just jump out when I show up. Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I get back in the Caracal. (Yeah, I really need to bring a better selection of PvP ships in here. My Worm would be sweet for this.)

Warp the Caracal to zero on the wormhole, sensor boosters hot. There she is! Start locking, warm up the guns and the warp disruptor, surely this isn’t going to work?

[ 2009.03.31 20:44:18 ] (combat) Your group of Scourge Heavy Missile hits Wysi (Probe), doing 420.3 damage.
[ 2009.03.31 20:44:25 ] (combat) Your group of Scourge Heavy Missile hits Wysi (Probe), doing 315.6 damage.

Wow. Usually frigates are moving when I shoot at them. This one? Wasn’t. Two volleys.

2009.03.31 20:44:00

Destroyed: Probe
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 315

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 315

Destroyed items:

Core Probe Launcher I
Small Converse I Deflection Catalyzer
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Dropped items:

Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 2
1MN Afterburner I
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 14 (Cargo)
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Lock the pod, lock the pod! Surely this won’t work, but one must try.

Dur… it worked!

2009.03.31 20:45:00

Victim: Wysi
Corp: Caldari Provisions
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Capsule
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 137

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 137

Wow. Corpse is 8,000 meters from the wormhole. Who sits stationary, near a wormhole but not actually close enough to jump through? I musta shot me a newbie. Hope I didn’t just convince someone on their first wormhole peeping expedition that wormholes are deadly and never to be visited again!

No, wait, let’s look up Wysi. Caldari Provisions, check. Age… wait, really? January of 2006? She’s been playing for three months longer than me, and still got podded by a T1 cruiser?

Never, boys and girls, underestimate the power of surprise.

It turns out, “she” is kind of cute, too:

Wysi used to be cute

Or maybe I should say was. She’s not looking so good now:

Wysi isn\'t so cute any more

I thought I should update this post about w-space loot. I made no effort to sell any of the sleeper salvage, but everything else has sold now, for quite nice prices I think.

It took four days, but the Wrecked Hull Section sold for 300 million ISK.

7x Datacore: Electronic Subsystems Engineering sold for 18 million ISK each, 136 million ISK total.
8x Datacore: Defensive Subsystems Engineering sold for 13 million ISK each, 104 million ISK total
8x Datacore: Engineering Subsystems Engineering sold for 8 million ISK each, 64 million ISK total
5x Datacore: Offensive Subsystems Engineering sold for 12.5 million ISK each, 62.5 million ISK total
4x datacore: Propulsion Subsystems Engineering sold for 8 million ISK each, 32 million ISK total

~3000x Fullerite-C50 gas sold for an average of 13,000 ISK each, total about 39 million ISK
~1500x Fullerite-C60 gas sold for an average of 16,800 ISK each, total about 25.5 million ISK
~1500x Fullerite-C70 gas sold for an average of 11,000 ISK each, total about 16.5 million ISK
227x Fullerite-C84 gas sold for just over 15,000 ISK ea, total about 3.5 million ISK

Grand total: Seven hundred and fifty one million ISK. As cool a three-quarter-billion as anybody could hope for.

It’s true what the forum whiners say. There’s not enough profit to be had in w-space. Everybody should go back to running those level 4 missions, w-space is full of fail, T3 will never catch on. We should all rage-quit.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I think I’ll go see if another radar site spawned while I was sleeping…

Today’s find in the next-door w-space system de jour was a free Rifter and shuttle belonging to The Interstellar Foundry alliance . The Rifter, belonging to Alcatraz Inc. [ALTZ], was amusingly named “On A Mercy Mission”; the shuttle belonged to Captain Chip of Metalworks [MTW].

Nothing exciting in loot or fittings. But Jim Bridger will enjoy the Rifter.

I found, and knocked over, my third w-space Radar site last night. It was a slow and painful process in my solo Drake, but well worth it — in addition to Sleeper datacores in six out of eight hacking cans, there was a Talocan Frigate wreck (spawn container) from which I salvaged a Wrecked Hull Section. (I’ll tell you what it was worth after it sells, but from the incomplete market info, it looks like it’s worth at least a couple of hundred million.)

I decided that meant it was time to remove a small hauler-load of goodies from w-space and cash them in:

loot

First thing that sold was about 37 million ISK worth of the Sleeper “pay me” drops.

I’ll update this post with sales information on other stuff as I get it sold, because I’m not taking the market offer prices on very much at all, and a bunch of the salvage I probably won’t sell at this time. My gut is telling me that the current low prices on Sleeper salvage may rise as T3 production ramps up; the novelty factor of w-space will be wearing off, and getting in (and especially out) of w-space is a bit slower/harder since the deep space probes got reduced in scan strength. Plus there’s the fact that T3 overall will presumably increase in attractiveness as the rest of the subsystems get added — although this expectation may already be factored into the market.

P.S. It is ironic, but typical of where I am in relationship to the novelty curve in online games, that my first load of parts for T3 production comes out of W-Space on the same day that one of the first of the T3 ships is being killed. Quick to market, I am not.

Market update, Saturday 01:30 game time: The hull section has not yet found a buyer, but the Jita prices today ranged up to a quarter of a billion ISK. I’m in no hurry; I can wait for a sale like that. Meanwhile, I’ve sold 17 of 33 datacores for about 200 million ISK, and 22 million ISK worth of my fullerene gasses. The only thing that I’ve sold out of are the R.A.M.- Hybrid Technology items; I must have underpriced them, because they sold out fast, netting close to 28 million for the 14 of them that I had. I’d say this dispels any lingering doubts about whether it’s possible to make money in w-space. And, although I’ve been lucky enough not to lose a ship in there yet, it’s worth noting that I haven’t been flying anything more expensive than a Drake, mostly using bog-standard T1 Scourge missiles. For all the expensive fits you see in w-space, it can be done on the cheap!

Today saw more explodey good fun in Greater Mars. It went down like this.

First of all, there was an odd crew that showed up in a small fleet, consisting of a Heron, an Incursus, and an Iskur I think (I’m talking about that assault frigate with the nasty drones). They sat on their entrance wormhole, where I found them; and the wormhole was new to me, leading directly into Gallente space only a few jumps from Dodixie, where Suddenly Ninjas and much of the rest of my TEARS alliance works out of. I traded some shots with these guys, but they were reinforced with a battlecruiser, so I decided to leave them alone after making several terror runs to pummel them with heavy missiles from range. Shortly thereafter, they left.

Meanwhile, Kahega Amielden, a Ninja and one of our more aggressive “usual suspects” who has been leading TEARS on some quite successful wormhole hunting trips lately, asked if he could come visit Greater Mars (since it was right handy) and maybe stage a few ships in for later use. I encouraged him, and he showed up in a Wolf, which I gather is a Minmatar assault frigate. He then jumped back out to grab a hauler load of assorted gear, but when he got back to the wormhole, he saw it close in front of him, just after a Myrmidon jumped into Greater Mars.

So, he cursed and swore, and then I told him about the other high-sec wormhole then open, which was fourteen jumps away and threatening to expire. He started jumping. I was messing about in the POS, minding my own business, until it was time to go meet him outside the wormhole.

Finally he’s in the wormhole, his gear is stowed, and he’s back in his Wolf, all hot to find that Myrmidon. Go go go, I told him — and he started probing.

Well, he didn’t have his fully pimped-out probing Cheetah handy, so he found the guy but was having trouble getting a fast warp-point. So we decided to get tricky. I probed the Mrym in my buzzard, initiated a fleet warp to send his little Wolf flanging into harm’s way, canceled my own warp, hopped into my Caracal, then warped to Kahega when he started shouting that he had the guy locked down.

(I kinda got the idea that he had a bit of a tiger-by-the-tail feeling going on. “Sure, I caught it; but I sure hope you’re planning to show up fairly soon to help me kill it…” That’s not what he said, but his “warp to me” had that certain expressive urgency about it.)

When I dropped out of warp, he had the Mrym pointed and was shooting at the guy’s drones. I locked the Mrym, added another point, and began pounding on his shields, which were substantial.

Then Kahega started complaining that he’d been jammed with ECM. Really? On a Mrymidon? But it was true; a little while later, I got jammed myself.

None of which did the Myrm pilot any good. We were light on DPS in our Wolf and Caracal, but we had two points, and he only had one jammer. The Wolf was busy schooling the drones, and I just kept launching heavy missiles, and it was slow, but we were clearly gaining.

Kahega, who’s got more pirate in his blood than me and I think perhaps a not-quite-so-fat wallet, asks me if we want to ransom. I say “Not me, but you feel free to try.” He has me stop shooting, and initiates a convo.

I’m not privy to all that was said — I’ve got a request in for the log, to share it here — but fairly quickly Kahega tells me to start shooting again, and he goes back to dancing with drones. Apparently the Myrm pilot laughed at him, scoffed (at least implicitly) at our DPS, and said he had friends on the way (which struck me as unlikely).

So, after shooting him a little bit longer we finally got through his impressive shield tank, after which he melted like warm butter and popped easily. Unfortunately, we were not fast enough to get a lock on his pod, so he got away. However, I now wonder how much good it did him. At that moment, the wormhole he came in via was closed, and there were two more available. Did he already have them bookmarked? One of them went to hi sec and salvation; the other one, into more “unknown” space. The next time I probed — a few minutes later — he was gone from the system, that’s all I know.

The Mrymidon salvaged nicely — we got five Armor Plates — and here’s the killmail:

2009.03.25 03:22:00

Victim: Drahcir Sirrap
Corp: Lost Drone Squadron
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Myrmidon
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 48934

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 36753

Name: Kahega Amielden
Security: 0.5
Corp: Suddenly Ninjas
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Wolf
Weapon: Wolf
Damage Done: 12181

Destroyed items:

Core Probe Launcher I
Viscoelastic EM Ward Salubrity I
Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 4
Shield Power Relay II, Qty: 4
250mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Qty: 3
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 11 (Cargo)
Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 9703 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Additional Thermal Barrier Emitter I
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
Large Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I, Qty: 2
Antimatter Charge M
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 8
Shield Power Relay II, Qty: 2
250mm Prototype I Gauss Gun
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Lead Charge M, Qty: 5000 (Cargo)
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 77 (Cargo)

Note he was carrying 96 core probes. It wouldn’t do to run out!

All in all, it was quite fun to get a kill that I wouldn’t and couldn’t have gotten solo. And for all that I’m an anti-social sort who plays EVE solo most of the time and is just fine with that, it’s always more fun to have a successful hunt with alliance mates.

Addendum: Doh! Completely forgot that my Caracal has a drone bay. Launching those might have been handy! Sigh, next time.

Caught another gas miner at “my” gas cloud tonight. He was in a T2-fitted Stabber with four gas harvesters high, not a gun to be seen. I think he had a covert ops bird somewhere in the system “watching out” for him, but if so, they failed:

2009.03.19 02:53:00
Victim: iEatBlackPanthers
Corp: b.b.k
Alliance: Fidelas Constans
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Stabber
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 3706

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 3706

Destroyed items:

Cap Recharger II
Expanded Cargohold II
Gas Cloud Harvester I, Qty: 3

Dropped items:

Invulnerability Field I
Cap Recharger II
Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 2
Gas Cloud Harvester I

They also failed to hit warp in their pod, which is odd considering that my little Caracal is not the fastest-locking boat in space:

2009.03.19 02:54:00

Victim: iEatBlackPanthers
Corp: b.b.k
Alliance: Fidelas Constans
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Capsule
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 415

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 415

And best of all, he was mining into a jet can, so I’m now richer by 1500 units of Fullerite-C70.

If the gas miners keep coming to Greater Mars, I’m going to have to make a special trip to Jita, just to sell all the gas and excess gas harvesters!

The fight itself was nothing special; due to good recon, I came out of warp less than a dozen klicks away from him, put a warp disruptor on him and blew him away in six volleys. He was awake enough that he was trying to speed out of my disruptor range, but he didn’t have a speed advantage , so it didn’t work. The combat was short, sweet, and one-sided, just the way I like ’em.

Update: Just after I finished posting the above, I turned my attention back to my other screen, where I was sitting, still in my Caracal, at the POS administrative headquarters of Greater Mars.

Guess who came sliding out of warp in a newbie ship? Your friend and mine, iEatBlackPanthers.

There are guns on this POS. This is news to you and it was news to him. They blew him out of space.

Pretty much simultaneously, I initiated warp out to the wreck from where I was, and a Curse came sliding out of warp in the same place as the wreck. About the time I landed on the wreck, a Myrmidon came out of warp, also.

In my imagination, Panthers-boy left the wormhole long enough to dock and get a newbie ship, then came back with friends to get some revenge. I can picture a prober saying “I’ve got him, warping fleet now!” followed by the yelling “It’s a POS! They have guns!” as Panthersboy went kaboom. I’d say all three were separated by about the amount of time you’d expect for ships of three different warp-speed-and-agility classes, if they were ending a long warp that was initiated for all of them at the same time.

In the event, the Curse executed a very quick exit. I got a lock on the Myrm and on Panthers-boy’s pod, and put a couple of volleys into the battlecruiser; apparently the POS guns were helping, because he want to low armor with shocking speed, before he lumbered back into warp himself.

The pod was still there, even though I didn’t think to warp scramble it:

2009.03.19 03:36:00

Victim: iEatBlackPanthers
Corp: b.b.k
Alliance: Fidelas Constans
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Capsule
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 439

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 439

Revenge expedition: failed.

I notice there were 42 minutes between those two poddings. Do you suppose, in all the excitement of rounding up a little revenge fleet, our man remembered to buy a new clone?

So, today I noticed a wormhole in my space that opened up in Caldari high security, a horrid little backwater system I’d never heard of, with three people in local. “Aha!” I thought. “That’s why I haven’t seen anybody lately.”

So, I took the opportunity to go and get a Drake battlecruiser from my hangar. It’s a slow and brutal beast, all heavy missiles and tank. But, I thought it might be handy against Sleepers.

Once I got it home to Greater Mars (for it seems that’s what the POS proprietress and de facto Empress of Local Space has named the wormhole system I’ve been enjoying) I jumped in my Buzzard covert ops ship and went looking for something to kill.

Spent some time narrowing down weak cosmic signatures until I found a Radar site — something I’ve not found in this system hitherto. A cautious reconnoiter revealed five Sleeper cruisers sitting at something called an Unsecured Perimeter Comms Relay. If that’s unsecured, I’d hate to see secured. Somebody has a sense of humor.

Still, it looked like work for the Drake.

And such work! The cruisers died fairly easily. The next spawn was a battleship and two frigates. After killing the frigates, I engaged the battleship; and it, I was able to kill, but it was a close race between his tank and mine. I needed to launch my drones to take some of the heat off me, and I lost one of them in the process. But the Sleeper battleship died.

Then, of course, TWO battleships spawned, and two more frigates.

By the time I killed the frigates, both battleships were in range and giving my poor Drake the pounding of its life. She was holding together — barely — but my cap was dropping quickly. I chewed a bunch of the armor off of the first Sleeper battleship before I started taking armor hits my own self, which in a Drake is a clear message from God that it’s time to go. So, I went.

Back at the POS, I begged a bit of armor rep from a friendly Osprey, had a cup of coffee, borrowed a replacement drone, and considered my options. Finally I decided to load up Navy missiles and go finish the job — or at least see if there would be an impossible “Wave Four” spawn.

Fortunately, wave three was the last wave. I was able to polish off one battleship before long, and the damage from the other was tankable (barely) with what I had left. When the second battleship died, the killing was over.

All this took a lot of time, and if I hadn’t had a friendly back at the POS doing the odd system scan to assure me that I wasn’t in any danger of interruption from hostile pod pilots, my stress level would have been extreme.

And then, it was time for looting! And codebreaking!

First the loot and salvage, from 3x battleships, 5x cruisers, and 4x frigates:

19x Reinforced Metal Scraps
14x Neural Network Analyzer
31x Sleeper Data Library
01x Defensive Control Node
30x Electromechanical Hull Sheeting
01x Emergent Combat Analyzer
02x Emergent Combat Intelligence
03x Fused Nanomechanical Engines
02x Heuristic Selfassemblers
12x Modified Fluid Router
29x Powdered C-540
01x Thermoelectric Catalysts

There were a total of 8 spawn containers requiring a Codebreaker to access, the contents of which were:

2x R.A.M. Hybrid Technology
6x Datacore – Defensive Subsystems Engineering
1x Datacore – Electronic Subsystems Engineering
4x Datacore – Engineering Subsystems Engineering
1x Datacore – Offensive Subsystems Engineering

Of course I have no idea what any of this will be worth once the T3 manufactuaries spin up to speed.

After this morning’s stomping of the hapless gas-mining destroyer, I had to go out and do non-EVE things in the real world. (Believe it or not, I don’t get to play EVE 24/7 — pout!)

When I came back, guess what I found at the same gas cloud?

Yup, my gas miners were back “in force” — three battle cruisers, the destroyer again, and a Bestower industrial. According to my scans, there was nobody else (except of course the always-possible cloakers) in the system, so back I went in my Caracal of Doom.

The Bestower blew up in two volleys. I guess it wasn’t aligned, because I was shooting from a full hundred clicks out:

2009.03.16 22:36:00

Victim: Serleanka Darkwater
Corp: Atlantean Corporation
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Bestower
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 1968

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 1968

Destroyed items:

Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 4
Dual Light Pulse Laser I
Small Tractor Beam I
Multifrequency S
Fullerite-C60, Qty: 2172 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Fullerite-C84, Qty: 342 (Cargo)

And ouch! Look how much gas blew up. :(

Next up, the Catalyst destroyer. More gas harvesters for me? And why is it still here? Did we learn nothing from this morning’s kaboom experience?

2009.03.16 22:37:00

Victim: Dag Tackar
Corp: Atlantean Corporation
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Catalyst
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 2346

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 2346

Destroyed items:

Gas Cloud Harvester I
Type-D Altered SS Expanded Cargo

Dropped items:

Gas Cloud Harvester I
ML-3 Amphilotite Mining Probe
Fullerite-C84, Qty: 12 (Cargo)
Fullerite-C60 (Cargo)

Yup! Another harvester!

That was three volleys. Two of the battle cruisers are just milling about, still, but the third, a Ferox, looks like he’s trying to close the range. He’s no sniper, that’s for sure, because he’s 75 klicks out and still hasn’t locked me. I motor away from him and begin lobbing missiles.

Nineteen volleys later, he warped away in deep armor, without ever having target locked me or gotten closer than about 65 klicks.

Somewhere during this exchange, the other two battle cruisers warped off; and I guess I expected that somebody in system was trying to get a warp in point on my little cruiser so they could come back and stomp on my head. But, it didn’t happen. An associate of mine had time to come in a small fast salvager, salvage the wrecks, loot the mods, look at the gas volume, go and get a hauler, and come back for the gas. Meanwhile, I orbited at range to provide a bit of protection. The only person who came back was Serleanka Darkwater, the Bestower pilot, who jumped in and out in her pod about three times to observe the cleanup process.

Twenty minutes later, when I checked, I was alone in the system as far as my probes could tell me.

I am now officially LOVING w-space and the Apocrypha expansion. This was aggressive salvage in the best Ironfleet tradition, and the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Of course, I don’t think for a moment that targets this fat will be found in w-space for long; these people are acting like they are mining in Empire belts under the full protection of Concord. That’s got to stop, as the carnage mounts up. But I plan to enjoy it while it lasts.

Here in w-space, where (as you probably assumed from my last post) I have at least temporary access to a rather well-equipped POS, I’ve been having a lot of fun doing “casual” gaming, sitting at the POS like a spider at the center of a web. Working at other projects on my other screen, from time to time I can scan “my” system to see what ships might be in it. And then, if I feel like it, I can scan them down and — if they seem tasty — land on their head with a pile of missiles.

This morning, my scans showed me a destroyer, an assault frigate, and a battlecruiser, all at the same spot. So I hopped in my trusty Caracal of Doom (yeah, I know, but it’s a very cheap platform on a per-tube basis for delivery of heavy missiles) and went to see where the party was.

I found the battlecruiser and the assault frig at a gas mining site, although the destroyer was nowhere visible. So, I started launching on the assault frig, but being at a great distance, he was able to warp out in armor. Transferring my missile affections to the battlecruiser, he, too, decided to go elsewhere.

Fun, but not profitable.

Returning to the center of my web, I resumed scanning. The battlecruiser and the assault frigate eventually left the system, but the destroyer seemed to be warping around. A bit of time passed.

I scanned again. There’s the destroyer — alone? — at the gas site.

About ninety seconds later, heavy missiles began landing on his head. He never had a chance:

2009.03.16 18:53:00

Victim: Dag Tackar
Corp: Atlantean Corporation
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Catalyst
System: J235321
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 2562

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Caracal
Weapon: Scourge Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 2562

Destroyed items:

Monopropellant I Hydrazine Boosters
Salvager I
Fullerite-C84, Qty: 54 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Gas Cloud Harvester I
Small ‘Accommodation’ Vestment Reconstructer I
Small Shield Extender I
Photonic CPU Enhancer I
Salvager I
Small Tractor Beam I, Qty: 2
Hornet I (Drone Bay)

I was particularly pleased to see the gas harvester, as those are currently on my shopping list; it was nice to have one delivered to w-space for me. The tractor beams, too, are nice loot to get, although I’m not sure what use they are for a gas-miner, or why they were fitted.