Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

It’s been slow since I got back into Eve. I’ve been doing a bit of exploring, diving into wormholes looking for excitement, checking local belts for hostility-crippled miners, visiting mission runners in their missions, all the usual stuff. But the pickings have been slim. Most everybody mines in a secure fashion, and anybody who cares about mission salvage has an alt in a Noctis, so there just isn’t as much for a hard-working salvager to do as there used to be. This is not a whine; it was true before I left the game and I’m well aware that I need a new program to keep myself entertained. All this exploratory nosing-about is with an eye toward finding it.

So far, I haven’t. But I get bits of old-fashioned fun along the way.

Today when I popped out my probes to survey the system, just with a general eye toward finding out who might be in space and have cans that needed salvaging, I quickly popped up a little gravimetrics site with a Covetor mining barge in it. A Covetor? Really? Who flies a Covetor these days? If you can fly a Covetor, you’re just days away from flying a Hulk. I haven’t seen Covetors in large numbers since Hulks got cheap. And when was the last time I killed one? Jim Bridger caught one in a Rifter back in 2008, but me? I can’t remember, but the last one I can find in my archives is this one from 2007.

But, here he was. With a jetcan out. He named it “Giant Secure Container” … a trick even more stale than jet-can mining in a Covetor. And get this, he was flying two Civilian Mining Drones (WTF? Never seen those in actual use before) and three Hornet I combat drones. Is this some kind of ridiculous bait?

It gets better. Pilot’s name is Bady Ast, a member of YasTec [YAST] “for 7 years and 8 days.” Wow, birthdate? August 9, 2003! Old enough to know better, that’s for sure!

No matter. I bookmarked his jetcan and went for my trusty Crane. Maybe surprise and the arrogance of age will buy me the hostile reaction I’m looking for. If, as I suspect, this is an old old character who has spent most of the last seven years not playing, maybe there are nuances to jet can mining he has not yet encountered.

So there I was, coming out of warp next to a jet can half full of golden omber and kernite. As usual, I took what I could and transferred the rest to an Ironfleet can.

I’ll give Bady Ast some credit, he pays more attention than the average miner. In fact, he was locking me up before I finished manipulating the ore. Could this be a live one?

Sure enough! As soon as he had me locked, those three Hornets started buzzing me, and Bady was flashing red. So of course I did the usual routine, and started shooting the Covetor.

Interestingly, right when I got through the shields, Bady Ast dropped offline. I though it might be a lame (or really really obsolete and these-days ineffective) logoffski tactic, but he came back online while I was still shooting armor — really, as fast as it’s possible to get back in the game, I’d say. So I’m guessing it was an internet interruption.

So then the inevitable happened:

2011.11.03 23:44:00

Victim: Bady Ast
Corp: YasTec
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Covetor
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.5
Damage Taken: 3637

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.3
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Crane
Weapon: Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 3637

Destroyed items:

Kernite, Qty: 1514 (Cargo)
Residual Survey Scanner I
Modulated Strip Miner II, Qty: 3
Expanded Cargohold II
Hammerhead I (Drone Bay)

Dropped items:

Expanded Cargohold II

Just my bad luck none of the strip miners dropped!

Bady warped away with the alacrity of someone who expects to come right back in another ship, so I docked myself, and jumped in a stealth bomber to go back and observe.

And here is where I probably misplayed the encounter. Shortly after I got back, another character showed up in a Harbinger battle cruiser. And when the Harby pilot got there, she went straight for the Ironfleet ore can.

My natural assumption was that she was an alt of Bady’s. And I didn’t want to give that ore back, because a flashy Harby would be a bit of a challenge for the bomber I was in. So I uncloaked, blew the can, and recloaked.

A moment later, here comes Bady in a Megathron, still flashy red.

And sorely was I tempted. Bombers have a pretty good chance at soloing your average battleship. But the Mega has a huge drone bay, and with the wrong drones, there’s no hope at all. And Bady is old, my friends. Those Hornet Is made it look like he has no skills, but they actually did a surprising amount of damage to my Crane’s shields. If this guy has actually been skilling since 2003, my usual “I can get away with this crazed scheme because skillpoints” plan goes right out the window.

Too, the Harby was still there. And last time I checked (it was a long time ago, true) high-sec aggression mechanics allowed a neutral third party to rep without consequence. I wouldn’t expect repping capability to be fitted on a Harby, but then I wouldn’t expect to find a Covetor jet can mining, either. Just one more chaotic variable, but it was enough to quash my temptation. I shrugged and docked.

It was — maybe — a mistake. The Harby pilot engaged me in conversation, said kind words about this blog, and says that after I left, the ‘Thron popped — get this — three Ogre Is and two Wasp Is. I considered going back, but by then, the relevant aggression timers had run out, and it was getting on toward my mealtime.

(The Harby Pilot, it turns out, is a reader of this blog, and has her own blog called A Scientist’s Life In Eve. I haven’t mentioned her EVE name here, because I can’t see where she used it on her blog, and I’m therefore not sure she’d like them to be associated.)

Got it, that is, if by “it” we happen to mean “a talent for getting crazy miners to shoot at me in Empire.” It’s not as much fun as it used to be, but I cannot tell a lie: it’s still fun.

It’s been 182 days (before today) since I blew up anybody’s ship in EVE. And I started today, like I start all my days, by cruising the belts of the system I’m in to see whether I could find any miners with an overdeveloped sense of aggression.

What I found was a miner in an Osprey, name of Croydon, with a birth date in 2007 and a sparse employment history, plinking roids and flying Hornet I drones for rat defense. When I look at those tea leaves, I see “recent returnee to the game”. Well, that only makes sense … you don’t see too many mining cruisers out there these days when ISK is cheap and barges are, too.

So, I paid his ore can a visit, flying one of Ironfleet’s many Crane blockade runners that have the one heavy missile launcher in the high slot. He had more ore than would fit in my hold, so I temporarily spaced the rest in an Ironfleet can. And then, because I was getting no reaction, I went and started removing the loot from his rat wrecks.

After all, how dangerous can the helpless hauler be, if the driver is so poor he’s cruising around at hauler speeds collecting worthless trash?

Croydon finished his mining laser cycle, went to put his ore in his can, and didn’t find his can. There was a pause. (There’s always a pause.) And then … he began to lock me up.

That’s always a good sign, but it’s by no means a guarantee that I’ve got a fish on the hook. Some miner pilots use lock as a sort of “fuck you” aggressive gesture, but never shoot. Still, a lock is escalation, and escalation is what this little game is about. Without it, there’s never any shooty-shooty. So I love to see it.

And then, finally, he shot a missile at me. That’s the end of the story; in any true miner smaller than a hulk, there’s not likely to be any drama after that. All the fun is in getting the mark to bite the baited hook; actually killing them with one heavy missile launcher is just a long process of belaboring them lightly, for as long as it takes:

2011.10.27 21:36:00

Victim: croydon
Corp: Perkone
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Osprey
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.5
Damage Taken: 5204

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.3
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Crane
Weapon: Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 5204

Destroyed items:

Shield Recharger I
Widowmaker Heavy Missile, Qty: 434 (Cargo)
Havoc Heavy Missile, Qty: 7 (Cargo)
Co-Processor I
Miner II
Rich Plagioclase, Qty: 1345 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Heavy Missile Launcher I
Co-Processor I
Medium Shield Booster I
Miner II, Qty: 2
Widowmaker Heavy Missile, Qty: 18
Survey Scanner I

Sometimes after one of these affairs there’s hope the victim will come back in another ship with revenge in his eye. But not this guy … he logged off directly.

So today I was cruising the belts in Eitu, looking for interesting salvage opportunities. And I zoomed into this one belt just as an Omen and a Rupture made a failed gank attempt on one Hulk pilot by the name of Paragon Prime.

They had some flashy red pods, but in my combat Crane, I didn’t expect them to be stupid enough to wait around for my heavy missiles. Nor were they. They warped away, followed quickly by the Hulk pilot (who probably went in for a change of underwear and a pod-swabbing).

And then I noticed the Hulk pilot had some ore cans littering the spaceways. So I consolidated them into an almost-full Ironfleet can, and docked for a Bustard.

And then there was a pleasant exchange of mails, while I was hauling my new ore:

bastard
From: Paragon Prime
Sent: 2011.10.25 04:52
To: Marlenus,

you fucking bastard

——————————–
Re: bastard
От: Marlenus
Отправлено: 2011.10.25 04:52
Кому: Paragon Prime,

Huh? Whuh I do?

——————————–
Re: Re: bastard
From: Paragon Prime
Sent: 2011.10.25 04:53
To: Marlenus,

you stole my ore freak

——————————–
Re: Re: Re: bastard
От: Marlenus
Отправлено: 2011.10.25 04:53
Кому: Paragon Prime,

Ore freak? Is that like a militiaman or an exotic dancer? I’ve never seen one of those…

——————————–
Re: Re: Re: Re: bastard
From: Paragon Prime
Sent: 2011.10.25 04:54
To: Marlenus,

you stupid idiot

I do so love a creative bit of invective!

I’ll do a big post later on all the reasons, if I ever decide I care enough to take the time. But as of today, I’ve canceled all three EVE subscriptions. Here’s what I posted in the reasons box:

5 year veteran, unsubscribing 3 accounts because:

1) Persistent failure to balance, update, and iterate on old content.

2) Cannot operate multiple clients without turning off new Captains Quarters station environment.

3) No new game functionality in recent patch to replace the functionality lost.

5) Complete pants-on-headedness of new micro(mega)transaction store.

6) Utter loss of faith that the old EVE, the spaceship game, will every get the attention it needs to survive and thrive.

7) I am beginning to believe that CCP/EVE had now committed itself to an unretrievable failcascade.

It was a good five years. I used to think I’d play EVE forever. I’m sad that won’t be happening. But thanks for all the fish.

Right now I’m playing World of Tanks, but that’s not going to last more than weeks, or maybe months. Battlefield 3 is coming.

Will I be back to EVE? Dunno. Right now it looks like they are going to gut the game in pursuit of microtransaction riches. There might be a party on the way down, with tons of goodies flying around in the possession of rich newbie idiots — and I can see a role for Ironfleet in that decline.

Or, they might come to their senses and start fixing all the stuff that’s been neglected over the last few years…

Yeah. Me neither.

So I dropped out of W-space in some very empty NPC nullsec in the Stain region. There wasn’t a lot going on, but I went exploring for undefended towers and more wormholes. And in this one system (A-SAX0 if you want to go see it for yourself) I found something peculiar.

I’d already zipped about to take a d-scan inventory of the system, and found it entirely free of towers. So you’ll imagine my interest when 26 structures popped up when I launched a probe.

At first I had visions of all the fittings for a deathstar POS, abandoned loose in space somewhere for complicated logistical reasons. But soon my probing made it clear these were warp disruptor bubbles, all in the same place. Was I probing down the world’s largest rapecage, placed at a safespot for no obvious reason?

Not even that. Eventually I found this:

What you are looking at is 27 anchored small warp disruptor bubbles, aligned in a widely spaced grid, with one extra off to the side. What is it for? I have no idea. But somebody took a lot of time to build it!

When I finally escaped from the Klein-bottle wormhole system, I dropped into Amar high sec in devoid. Whilst having a glance around, I found an offline pinata research dickstar POS — my guess is, it’s kept offline and only brought up in time of war.

Only, the corporate hangar array was not anchored.

Now, I’m not fully versed on how arrays work. I know that when you blow them up, they have a chance of dropping stuff that’s inside. And I think I know that if you blow up a control tower, anchored mods will come unanchored, can be scooped with a hauler, and can be repackaged in a station like secure containers — whereupon any loot will fall out, with no risk of loss.

What I don’t know, though, is whether you can deliberately unanchor an array that’s got stuff in it — or whether this hangar array had to be empty when it was dropped or unanchored in the place I found it.

No matter, for an array worth 15 million ISK, I’ll go buy a Badger and haul that puppy into a station.

Which I did. Of course I watched with great interest as it repackaged, but nothing fell out.

Oh well … it was still a fast 15 million.

This is not supposed to happen, therefore, the skeptical man assumes it did not happen. But, it totally has.

What am I babbling about?

Simply this: I’m currently stuck in a wormhole system with no wormholes. Not even one.

Jumped in from high sec last night. Watched a pair of Drake ratters painfully, slowly kill sleepers. (One of them was only 20 days old or so, but I never got an opportunity to molest them.)

Logged off in the wormhole. Logged back in today, scanned for signatures. Result: no signatures. Not even one. Anomalies, yes, structures, yes, one ship in a POS, yes. But signatures? “Negative response, Captain.”

I tried it three or four different ways, using Sisters core probes, Sisters combat probes, enveloping the whole system in probes, doing 8 and 16 AU scans at each planet … nothing. Checked my ignore list, it was clear. Checked my filters, they were right, scanned again on the “show all” setting. Not one cosmic signature in the system.

It’s like a roach motel: salvagers check in, but they don’t check out!

The whole system of wormholes depends on the iron law that there’s always at least one static wormhole out of every system. I know this. I assume I must have screwed up somewhere, which is the only reason I didn’t immediately file a stuck petition.

That was about three hours ago. I’ll log back in soon, and check again. If I find a wormhole, phew! I’ll chalk it up to EVE weirdness.

But if I don’t? Then it’s the stuck petition for me … and how much do you want to bet I’ll be told “There’s a wormhole, you just haven’t found it?”

This reminds me of that old Arth folk song about a man named Charlie and something called a “subway”, whatever that is:

“And did he ever return?
No, he never returned,
And his fate is still unlearned…
He will ride forever
‘neath the streets of Boston
He’s the man who never returned!”

Update: I was painfully aware as I wrote this post that if anybody else came to me with this story, I’d make sympathetic noises while thinking “You dumbass, you obviously didn’t scan it right.” Logic tells me that’s the only explanation.

So I logged back in and had another look at this huge system, with the outer planet way out in a 70AU stellar orbit. Damn this is a big system. And, uh… with my screen zoomed so that I can see the whole ring of that 70AU orbit on my solar system map, why is there a little curved line in one of the corners of my screen?

You guessed it: another planet out at 124AU. With my wormhole. Doh!

Does anybody but me remember the only war Ironfleet ever declared? The time we (me, Torpedo Ted, and Miss Iron) declared war on a whole alliance, and achieved our war aims?

That was all the way back in 2007, and the alliance in question was called Independent Faction (INDY). I haven’t seen them since, until today, when I found a Class 5 wormhole absolute chock full of their towers and industrial apparatus. I note with interest that the corp I had a real grievance against [AC-ME] is still a member, but it’s just a residual nub now, with only one member left.

I got all my kills in an old-model cruise-missile bomber in that war, but our best kill was by a three-day-old character in a Kestrel, who caught a war-target Badger II moving all his stuff. It’s interesting to read (in the post I linked above) my negative attitudes about PvP back then. I find it much more entertaining now…

Still, hunting war-target mining barges was some serious fun. Good times, good times.

Not lost, actually … just very displaced from anywhere I’ve ever been.

I’ve been slowly diving through w-space, looking for poorly-secured goods and incautious players. Today I find myself in an uninhabited C5 hole with a static connection to another C5.

I decided to drop through a hole into nullsec to look for trouble and fun. Found myself in H-YHYM, in a region I’ve never heard of (Esoteria) under the sovereignty of a Romanian alliance (Romanian-Legion, ticker ATAK) which is a thing I didn’t even know EVE had.

Damn, this game is big.

Does anybody remember this post, in which I describe the very first time Ironfleet Towing And Salvage ever came into serious conflict with another EVE player?

One of my friends (and partners in that particular “crime”) described our salvage operation against that POS as “throwing rocks through window panes”. We didn’t know what we were doing, we didn’t get any loot, but we did a lot of damage and enjoyed watching POS modules blowing up really good.

Well, late yesterday, Ironfleet Towing And Salvage returned to its roots … with a vengeance. I lost a ship, too … the first one in almost two years (710 days, to be precise — although Jim Bridger lost plenty during that time, during his leave of absence from Ironfleet to go play in 0.0.)

This story really begins last night. The last thing the Empress and I did before we logged off was to find and survey a new Class 1 wormhole. At that time, there were two active towers in there, both belonging to A Very Cynacle Alliance [AVCA]. And in those towers, there was one live pilot (name of “paragous”) just sitting inside one of the towers (for at least an hour) in a Probe named Anal. (Original, huh?)

Well, life happens. Fast forward 20 hours or so, and when I logged in today…guess how many force fields were on scan? Still two towers, only one force field. Woah, Nelly!

After a quick bit of zipping to my bookmarks, this is what met my wondering eye:

Would you look at all those fat hangars! Just sitting there!

However, there is the little problem of the active pilot, one moon over on the same planet, in easy D-scan range.

But, how active is he, really? He seems to be perma-logged in here, but I’ve never seen him move. And he’s what, 10 months old? In a Probe? I’ve got to wonder how scary he’ll be in truth. But, on the third hand, hello, tissue paper bomber?

It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to see what’s inside some of those lovely hangars.

But first, some preparation. I should at least probe down the exit to highsec, so that if I get anything hugely valuable, I’ll be able extricate it to safety. And for that matter, if I liberate some tasty ship hulls, I’ll want to be able to go dock my bomber and come back for them (depending on the level of local opposition).

So, there was some nattering and probing time lost here. And maybe it wasn’t as discrete as it should have been, because right when I was about to uncloak and start torping POS facilities, the Probe shows up.

OK, I can wait. He goes away again.

So I uncloaked and started demolishing the Corporate Hangar Array. It goes smoothly enough, but as I’m into the structure, I see the Probe vanish from d-scan and be replaced with a Hurricane. Shite, he’s reshipped into a bomber killer!

At this point the array goes boom and drops two cans. I just have time to open them and look inside (a bunch of reaction compounds I don’t recognize, some POS fuel, no mods of any kind) when the Hurricane arrives on grid.

I boogied…and came right back cloaked, of course.

The Hurricane sat right on the cans, like a broody hen sitting on her eggs.

There followed some fair few minutes of me thinking, and him sitting. My thoughts were running to the bad odds of bomber versus alert battlecruiser, and my countervailing advantages (mostly, skill points).

Finally I decided, well, I’ve got about sixty klicks of torp range on this beast, and there’s no way a 10-month-old character is going to be fit to reach out and touch me at that range. So, I lined up, uncloaked, and started sending torps down range. This first time, I don’t touch my afterburners; I just stay aligned and see what he does.

Of course, he charges. Turns out he’s MWD-fit and packing autocannons. I let him get close enough to launch drones and tickle me with the ACs in deep falloff before I warped out. He, in turn, took several volleys of torps, which hit him for about 2.5k per volley. But he’s fit to tank Sleepers, clearly, because he can take it for a little while at least.

So this time when I came right back, I set up out in a distant orbit, and turned on my afterburner when I uncloaked. Could he close with me? About the time I got through his shields, he decided not to find out; instead, he warped off, giving me the chance to switch targets and blow up the mobile lab. Yay! A can fell out.

Whoops, the Hurricane is back, and close! Time to bounce.

And again, I came back cloaked, picked my range, and drove him away with torpedoes. Then I blew up the ship maintenance array. Out fell a Hulk — which I don’t have the skills to fly — plus two destroyers, several frigates, and a shuttle. Not the ships I would have rather seen, but still, not bad.

But the Hurricane is back, and this time, he wants to kite me. He’s running straight away, and although at first it seems like I can dictate the distance, eventually he pulls out of torp range.

And then, I have to confess, I don’t understand quite what happened next. From a distance of about 90KM, he appeared to enter warp, and then landed pretty much right on my head.

I’m NOT a PvP god. There are many better than me. So I don’t mind admitting, I’m not entirely sure how that was accomplished.

Possibility 1: A failure of situational awareness on my part. Could he have actually gotten out to 150+ clicks from me, and I just think he was closer? And then he warped to a tactical bookmark after cleverly leading me right over it? I suppose it’s possible; I was pretty busy and my adrenaline was up. But man-o-man, I don’t think he got that far from me at any time.

Possibility 2: I’ve seen some amazing things done with on-grid warps, using the assistance of a probing covert ops ship. So, when a Covert Ops probes you down, can he then fleet-warp his buddy to the probed location, even if the warp is shorter than 150KM? I’ve played with combat covops warps, but I never tried that, and do not know the answer. I know I never saw probes on my d-scan, but I can’t say I was watching carefully enough for that to be dispositive. Certainly there was no sign of a third pilot in local at any time, but a careful covert pilot doesn’t leave much spoor.

No matter. I popped.

Ouch:

2011.04.29 01:23:00

Victim: Marlenus
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Manticore
System: J105700
Security: -1.0
Damage Taken: 1321

Involved parties:

Name: paragous (laid the final blow)
Security: 0.1
Corp: Unfortunate Enterprises
Alliance: A Very Cynacle Alliance
Faction: NONE
Ship: Hurricane
Weapon: 425mm AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 1321

Destroyed items:

Caldari Navy Juggernaut Torpedo, Qty: 111 (Cargo)
Dual Light Beam Laser I (Cargo)
‘Skadi’ Coolant System I (Cargo)
Gamma S (Cargo)
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 3 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Juggernaut Torpedo, Qty: 22
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II
Multifrequency S (Cargo)
Ultraviolet S (Cargo)
Target Painter II
Medium Pulse Laser I (Cargo)
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Large Auxiliary Thrusters I
Coreli C-Type 1MN Afterburner

Dropped items:

‘Shade’ I White Noise ECM (Cargo)
Core Probe Launcher I
Ballistic Control System II, Qty: 2
Dual Light Pulse Laser I (Cargo)
Juggernaut Torpedo, Qty: 928 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Juggernaut Torpedo, Qty: 11
Warp Disruptor II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Core Scanner Probe I, Qty: 8
Guristas Ship Log 180983465 (Cargo)
Ultraviolet S (Cargo)
‘Arbalest’ Siege Missile Launcher, Qty: 3

That was an old bomber, too — so old it would have been fitted with cruise launchers, back in the day. See the large rig it had? Oh well, fly it like you stole it…

Moving on. I said “Nicely done” in local, got a “gf” in return. This while my pod is warping to a planet with the hurricane in hot pursuit.

And then, I bounced right back to the tower. Where, you will recall, there were two destroyers and three loot cans.

I am determined to salvage what I can out of this expensive combat lesson.

So, I land on the tower. There’s a dessie in boarding range, so I board it. Hurricane is not visible. The two cans of reaction goos are right there, but I’m interested in whatever dropped from the lab. It’s a few clicks too far away to scoop, so I start motoring over there.

Damn this destroyer, it’s fit for gas mining only — three gas suckers high, and no other mods at all. So it’s a wallowing pigdog. But it gets me to the lab can.

Which I opened. And saw row after row after row of lovely blueprints:

( click pic for a larger view )

Scoop like you’ve never scooped before, Marlenus! Because that damned Hurricane is back on the grid.

And, I’m out! I wish I’d had time to pop that loose Hulk before I lost the bomber, but I’m just me, I can’t do everything.

So, I jumped out to high sec and docked my blueprints. Then, it was time for dinner and some TV with my girl.

Hours pass.

I watch TV. The Empress sits in space, watching the two towers. When I get back to the computer, she reports that my Hurricane pilot (or somebody) vanished the Hulk and the frigates, then went back to his functioning tower, got back in his Probe, and is hanging in his accustomed spot.

But the defunct POS? Is still defunct. And still has those three manufacturing arrays…

What this job needs is a Drake.

Unfortunately, my only Drake is in my corporate hangar, 28 jumps away. And I haven’t flown it in two years; it will need refitting. Jim Bridger, now Jim has Drakes out the ass … but most of them are down in 0.0, or various resupply centers at the edges of 0.0.

I think about going to a minor market hub about 10 jumps away, but I know that will be frustrating and slow. Faster, I decided, to eat the 28 jumps, fit in my stupidly well-stocked Ironfleet hangar, and jump 28 jumps back. Maybe by then the Probe/Hurricane pilot will have logged off for the night?

And so it proved. About the time I was halfway back, he logged.

A lot of jumps later, I’m back on the defunct tower, shooting arrays:

The popping goes without incident. The ammo array drops another nice set of original blueprints:

The equipment assembly array drops three jetcans full of minerals, mostly low-end, plus a couple of module blueprints. I grabbed the Megacyte, some Noxium, and the blueprints:

Sadly, the drone assembly array dropped nothing.

Since there was not a peep in local, and I brought along a thousand spare missiles…what the heck! I went ahead and blew up all of the defensive arrays. Here’s the last one going “Kaboom”:

And then, a good day’s salvaging work done, it was time for bed.

I haven’t run the numbers on the facilities I blew up, or tried to price my trove of not-very-expensive but nicely-researched blueprints. (Yes, they are all originals; or it least, every one I’ve clicked on so far has been both original and heavily-researched.) Did it sting to lose the bomber? Yup. But would I have done anything different? Tactically, sure. But all in all, it was an operation in the best spirit of Ironfleet … I had to do it.

I leave you with a final look at the structure kills on my combat log: