Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

“Safe”, of course, being a purely relative term.

After another day prowling around in Morsus Mihi space, I decided it was time to come home.

I learned a lot on that jaunt.

One thing I was hoping was that I’d find poorly-secured loot to scoop. I did come back with half a dozen nice high-meta named mods that I found cleaning up after local ratters, but nothing substantial in value. In low sec and empire, you often find drifting garbage associated with POS projects, especially stuff left drifting inside force fields that remains after the POS goes unfueled and the forcefield drops.

I didn’t find anything like that in 0.0 space. I don’t know if it’s a general rule, evolutionary pressure, or just a clean operation by Morsus Mihi tenants, but I put eyes on every POS installation in close to twenty MM systems, and the only scoopable object I found there was a single Giant Secure Container. Unfortunately, it was floating just outside the shields of a very serious-looking death star, and I didn’t feel comfortable trying to scoop-and-scoot under the POS guns, complete with webbing and scrambling batteries. I don’t know how fast the warp scrambling battery can lock a transport, and I’d like to test it in a disposable (preferably “borrowed”) Badger II before trying it in my blockade runner.

Those were some ship-shape POS installations. Clean, tight, and devoid of anything that could be readily shoplifted.

I also looked at every belt rat in those twenty systems, and shot a fair few of them. What I learned from that is what I already knew, which is that my Prowler is a bit puny for 0.0 rats. I can, however, kill most anything up to cruiser size with the fit I was packing, and with some fitting changes it wouldn’t be too hard. As I was fit (for agility and speed) it was a challenge; and I burned far more ISK in faction missiles than I got back in loot. As expected; this was a voyage of discovery and science.

The one hauler spawn I found had four cruiser escorts and two medium “Gatherers” based on the Osprey hull. It was a challenge killing the first cruiser with the DPS I had, while surviving the fire of the four enemy cruisers. But once I killed the first one, the rest dropped easily, if slowly. One Gatherer dropped a million units of Tritanium, which was nice, but not so useful fourteen jumps from the nearest station I can dock at. The other one dropped 30k units of Isogen.

I only saw one faction spawn, and it was a Dread Gurista battlecruiser that I could not scratch. I did try, just for giggles, but his natural shield regeneration shrugged off my puny missiles.

Coming home, with a hold full of loot even if it wasn’t enough to pay my ammo bill, was uneventful, with one notable exception. Jumping into the last system before lowsec, I expected to find a gatecamp on the Taisy gate. No worries; on my last trip through, I made a bookmark 300km off the gate so I can scout the camp and make sure I’m not warping through a bubble.

What I did not expect, being an awful noob at 0.0 combat, was the huge frickin’ bubble around the gate I jumped IN through … the next gate down the pipe in the direction I was coming from.

After I got done soiling the interior of my pod, I took stock. It was hard to see my position within the bubble because the camera was zoomed all the way in. There were wrecks on my overview, there was a handful (or more) of live ships present, I could hear the sound of some other poor fool being shot at, and most importantly, something had decloaked me. I needed instant action.

I hit the afterburner and the cloak button, in that order. Cloaking failed because I was being targetted, and indeed, I now saw three or four ships targetting me in the overview. The distant Taisy gate was visible sort of vaguely in front of me, so I right-clicked it and attempted to warp. No joy, still in the bubble, but moving fast now. Shields are melting, I’ve got some active tank so I turned it on, this shit is getting serious. Am I out of the bubble? Have they got me warp scrambled yet? Surely I’m dead. Let’s try that warp again!”

Hey! “Warp drive, activated!” Yay! But it’s not like I was aligned, and the shields aren’t looking good. Let’s kill the afterburner, shall we?

And….WHOOOOSH. I am gone, I am cloaked, and they never even scratched the armor. Remind me to send a postcard of appreciation to Core Complexions, Inc. for building the finest blockade runner in known space.

The above is how I remembered it; I wrote it before I looked at the ship’s logs. The logs show I was actually in a 20km bubble from a Warp Disrupt Probe, presumably launched by MrHooke who was present in a Heretic inderdictor. As for damage, I took:

* four Bloodclaw Light Missiles from Grantavius Fowler, for 50ish each
* two Caldari Navy Paradise Cruise Missiles from Ensidious, ouchy at 520ish each
* one volley of three Wrath Cruise Missiles from Yurrin Range, much calmer at 120ish each
* one volley of six mixed heavy missiles from Argos Knightblade, mere tickles at 20ish each
* one exceptionally painful Caldari Navy Bloodclaw Light Missile from MrHooke, for 243.8 damage (how he do dat?)
* one little gunnery scratch (13.9), also from MrHooke.

We rejoin our intrepid dirty-underwear-wearing hero in mid warp to the Taisy gate:

There were ships present at the Taisy gate, but no bubble; I hit the stargate, uncloaked, and was back in sweet bubble-free .3 space. It felt safe, which told me I’d been in 0.0 for too long.

Now I’m back in high security, ship and cargo and all. I’ve got plans to refit before the next voyage out, sacrificing a smidge of agility for better damage. More on that as the plan comes together.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Salvage Notes, Today In Ironfleet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.