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.
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March 17th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
So by hanging out in the W-system, you’re essentially adrift in a raft that bounces from place to place in the galaxy. Is that right? That’s so wild. Totally changes the game play
March 17th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Yes, very interesting game play!
I wish I could afford to do such by myself, I assume you are not alone?
Anyways. Have yet to find a hack site yet in WH space, just mining ones (bleh)!
March 18th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Orontes, I guess that’s a fair practical description, but it’s philosophically all wrong. ;-) Greater Mars doesn’t move; neither does the galaxy. But as the fabric of spacetime deforms in different ways on different days, a different place in the galaxy becomes close to me, every day.
March 18th, 2009 at 2:11 am
You are living the dream Marlenus, lost in space, but not so lost that you can’t pop out for occasional supplies.
I wonder – have you come across any sleepers that warp-scramble yet?
I know it’s a trade secret right now, but somewhere down the line, I’d love some juicy details on the logistics of keeping a POS going in W-space. I’d love to give it a go but I don’t think we have the resources to keep it going right now.
is Ironfleet recruiting at the moment? :)
March 18th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Malphas, none of the sleepers I’ve encountered have done anything to me except shoot at me. But I am, very deliberately, in one of the easier “unknown space” (as opposed to “dangerous unknown” or “deadly unknown”) systems — and so far, the only sleepers I’ve gone to play with have been the guards at gravimetric sites and at the one Radar site. So, there’s plenty of time to encounter the different behaviors, and I won’t be surprised if I will.
Sorry to say, we aren’t recruiting, unless I know you in the real world — it’s what I call my “fingers around your neck” corporate security policy. ;-)
What I’m keeping proprietary at the moment are some of the specifics of the POS I’m using — its configuration and ownership, mostly, and the identities of some of my fellow conspirators who aren’t in a hurry to be publicly associated with Ironfleet in the eyes of Ironfleet’s enemies. The configuration, obviously, would be illuminated to a degree if I spoke of exactly how many T1 haulers it took to bring in the modules and a month’s worth of fuel — but it’s a fairly small number that fit through our initial wormhole without even making a reported dent in its mass budget.
The biggest issue with a wormhole POS is the fuel budget — will it pay, in “unknown” space, to keep the thing fueled? Right now, I don’t know; signs point to no but there’s much I haven’t explored and we don’t have enough players in Greater Mars to fully exploit it. Time will tell. I don’t care, short run, because I’m having a great deal of fun for the ISK this thing cost to put up.
March 18th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I’ve been webified (and shot at) so far, but nothing more than that.
I’ve been thinking of taking a much smaller contingent with my new Orca as a base – I don’t really need any of the POS equipment for what I’d be doing. Just can’t quite muster the guts to risk it yet (plus I don’t have all the hacky/archeo skills just yet), but as you say, at some point, you’re paying isk out to enjoy yourself at some point!
GL in w-space and keep us posted, I love hearing your stories!
March 18th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
You’ve got a lot more guts than I have, to take a half-a-billion ISK Orca into w-space. A small POS and a month’s worth of fuel costs considerably less! And you don’t need different pilots for the hauler loads, you can do them sequentially if you find a fairly fresh wormhole.
Actually an Orca would be awesome in W-space if you had a POS to park it at; it would eliminate the need for two of your biggest arrays, and be a lot easier to use. But without a force field to park it in, I’d never feel secure taking my eyes off the scanner, and even then, there’s always cloakers to worry about.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:49 am
I’ve been webified and scrammed by frigs and cruisers alike, although i haven’t seen a warp scrambling sleeper in any of the easier w-space plexes. Oh well, keep your Gas Cloud Harvester Reclamation side project alive for as long as you can, its entertaining stuff :)