Monday, January 4, 2010

Podded!

We break from our regularly scheduled W-Space post to bring you an update on LightTraveler, who was last seen traveling to his old-old base of operations in Hykanima to clear out some old BPO Copy Jobs that were restricting his Reverse Engineering capacity here in W-Space.

En-route to said system, he reported passing through the oft-camped Onnamon-Kinakka gateway to LowSec. These were, after all, his LowSec stomping grounds for close to a year immediately prior to the Great W-Space Migration. Never a problem with his trusty CovOps, he had no problem jumping through and Warp-Cloaking to avoid the substantial gatecamp presence.

After logging that he successfully cleared the BPO Jobs in Hykanima , he decided to clean up some year-old fittings, selling some locally and then dropping the rest into cargo, including some old skill books that had long since been trained - he planned on dropping by Jita to put them on market on the return route to the new LowSec exit that opened in Lonetrek. He was last seen in Kinakka evaluating the longer route around the camped gate or to cloak through. Seeing that he had done so dozens of time previously, he was cleared to proceed and attempted the jump.

However, a cascading failure of internal warp and cloaking system malfunctions led to the demise of LightTraveler's long-lived Helios and his pod. His last report was from his Clone base in Isinokka, where he was showering before taking a shuttle to his new Helios. His return to the new LowSec exit is imminent.

(OOC) Classic EVE - before I even exited warp I was podded. How I could have been locked, shot, ship destroyed, pod-locked, and then podded before I even exited warp is beyond me, but I tally it up to game mechanics and lag at the heavily camped gate. I convo'd one of the campers and wished him best of luck with the loot drop - probably 20-30M in fittings and skill books. Not so much as a ripple in the wallet to replace and refit the Helios - I even took the opportunity to go get a Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher this time, which was on the Xmas List! Side note: I considered briefly attempting to move some of my 1o0+ BPO's and countless BPCs collected at that station, but without a construction or T2 production plan, decided they were fine where they were... Good thing, although I would have never attempted a gatecamp party-crash with BPOs..

Fly Safe(r)!

9 comments:

  1. Were you cloaked when you were inbound to the gate? A common trick gate campers are using more often these days is to sit in line with another gate, watch their overviews, and set off smart bombs that tear a frig, especially a cov-ops to pieces, as you said, before your even fully out of warp. No need to lock or nothing.

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  2. Gotta love those "game mechanics". Was busy shooting sleepers in our C3 WH when my Drake's shields were at 1/2 1 second & the next second shields, armor & hull completely red while my corpie was screaming to warp out. To make matters worse, I was salvaging & looting as I was going along. My corp mate targeted my wreck & blew it up :-(
    Wil Ricker

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  3. Smartbombs. Smarties can hit you as you're decelerating from warp. Look at his killmail.

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  4. Selina - Yes, I was warping to gate at 0km cloaked.

    And you both nailed it - the killboard entry (http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9061984) shows the Large YF-12a Smartbomb as the culprit.

    Good to know.

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  5. Bummer about the podding :<

    Curious about the following: Whenever you go through any wormhole that is not k162, you emerge at the target system next to a k162. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the K162 leading back to your system does not spawn unless you go through a named wormhole (i.e. the statics in your home system). So unless you open up the statics in your system (for me a C2 and lowsec), then you don't need to worry about closing them, right?

    Unless a K162 opens up in your system, then you should assume that whoever jumped in also opened your static exits to other unwelcomes. Something I do in addition to watching directional is fit a basic probe launcher to my Raven when I'm Sleeper-ing and monitoring the number of cosmic signatures in system. If something spawns, assume the worst and safe up at the POS. Saved me from several cloaky types before. HATE cloaky types, they always find my wrecks and wait until I come back.

    Thanks for your work as always :D!

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  6. There is a bit of a debate on whether a newly spawned exit is "present" on the other-end or only occurs once you warp-to the WH exit. I believe that as long as you do not warp-to the exit, it will not represent a source of "visitors" unless someone else warps to the exit. This is supported by other comments where they have 2 static exits as the only wormholes, they do not warp-to the exit, and the same location continues to scan as a wormhole for many days past what would have otherwise been the natural lifetime of the wormhole.

    In other words, wormholes likely have the same spawn mechanics as other anomolies - if you never warp to them, they will naturally despawn eventually, but not nearly as fast as if you had warped to the location and then warped out.

    On your other point - cool! I do the same exact thing - I keep a launcher on one of my ships, "Ignore" all of the known sigs, and then every refresh is simply picking up any newlt instantiated WH's. If one appears, it means someone has entered your system and it is time to consider options, typically in the form of getting back the POS, swapping out for a combat probe-capable ship and identify the visitor(s) and get on with (likely) closing the new exit.

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  7. Wow, dont why i never thougt of putting a prober on my Abby, and I even have a free high slot as my skills are not good enough yet to get 7 beams onto it.

    As for the Static Wormholes, I can say in my experience that flying to the grid opens the K162 in the destination sector, be it W-space ot K-space. While I have never been able to prove it, there were times that I got visitors in my system when there had been no K162 that I know of and I had not flown through the static wormhole but simply to it.

    For safety sake now, if there are only two Unknowns in my system I do not fly to them, unless I am resonablly sure they are already opened or there has been a K162 in the system. If we are planning any operations, I close the statics, bookmark the new signature location without flying to it, and then do what needs done. I still struggle on what to do with an active neighbor and a K162, as I too have learned to hate cloaky things.

    Mick

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  8. Gotta love just sitting at a gate blowing smart bombs. Such skill. Just happened to me in Udianoor. Ship exploded before I was even out of warp. Tried to initiate the gate jump, but the lag essentially locked me out. Found myself back in my home system.

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  9. You got into warp-in disco trap.
    2 disco phoons will hit ship while it decelerates from warp and probably get a pod, if they put a disco on the gate too.

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