I spent a long time hanging out though a K162 in a neighbour C4 hole today. I woke up to reports of a mining op next door. While Epi tracked the three Hulks down I got myself ready to jump through to take advantage of the situation.
Unfortunately we didn't already have a set of bookmarks for the sites in this neighbour so d-scan was being used to narrow down the location of the grav site we hoped to find these poor miners in. We also didn't have combat probes available, Epi being in a Nemesis, so catching these guys was possibly going to be tricky.
The wormhole connection was out of d-scan from their POS so when the Hulks warped back home I was given a cue to jump through. I parked myself on their POS to watch manoeuvres while Epi went back to tracing where the elusive grav site was located.
"Got it" said Epi and he warped in to await the arrival of the Hulks. After some time they eventually warped back and we waited for the call to jump to Epi and commence firing. The call never came and Epi decided there must be another grav site. Bugger.
Again two of the Hulks warped back to the POS but this seemed rather quick. We wondered if they had been spooked by the so-far unnoticed probes. Well, might as well resolve the other grav site, which Epi did with efficiency while I watched the Hulks doing nothing from their POS. There was still that third Hulk hanging out in the grav site so when Epi jumped to the new signature you can imaging our surprise when the site was empty. Seriously, a third grav so close?
In scanning the third site down it seems we definitely spooked the gaggle of miners as they warped out and almost instantly back to the POS and eventually logged out. Most of my corp headed off for food but I was still hopeful that the newly active Iteron V would be taken out for some PI harversting.
Sadly it wasn't to be. I sat watching him for about an hour before he logged out. Well, wasn't like I had anything else planned. Our normal static connection seemed to lead to an infinite chain of C4s with static C4s and no K162s in sight. Oh well, still to actually loose some missiles in anger from this Tengu.
That was an unlucky operation. If we had BM for the grav sites, we could have bagged 3 Hulks in one swift operation. If I had the Helios with combat probes and you on standby, we may have locked them down straight away. They were not asleep. When I do this scanning, I move lock the place to 100%, then keep the probes out but move them further away to give the impression that I am scanning something else. The second grav site sat right on top of the third and I made a mistake of not resolving both in one round.
ReplyDeleteA few months ago in some C2, I actually scanned down a Ladar operation with Core probes before - presumably, the guys were only looking out for Combat probes. As I landed in my bomber, they had loaded their hauler and warped off. Bad timing. A Ferox, a gas sucking Dominix and some Iteron. /me salivates