Friday, June 28, 2013

Getting an Orca through lowsec

Day One

I have my system. It's a C4/C4 without any effects and it is not inhabited. Well, sort of. There was a POS in here, and I talked to the people that's running it. I simply explained what I wanted to do, and asked if I could possibly live in their system for a week or two. It turns out that they are in the process of moving. So they did not care one bit about what I did in their system. Now they have abandon their tower and let the fuel run out, so it's just a dead stick. I don't care.

I'm starting to prepare to move my stuff in. Warp around to all the gas-sites in the system to make them despawn. It saves a lot of time if you don't have to scan down a bunch of extra sigs each day.

I got an Orca in high sec, packed and ready, waiting for me. First mission is to find a route in for that. When I scan out my static C4 I find it to be a C4/C3 which suits me perfect. A C3 always have a k-space static, so I knew I would find empire that way. If I got unlucky it would be a C3/Null and then I just would have to roll my static C4.

Luckily it's a low sec static and it puts me quite close to Amarr, where I have my Orca. It's also just two low sec systems before I hit the relative safety of high sec. Surly I could scout the Orca in that way?

Normally, I think that a ship should be fitted and rigged towards its strong points, but since I don't really have use for all the cargo-capacity an Orca can get, mine is fitted a tad differently. The thinking is speed (it warps in 10s, doing over 300 m/s) and stealth. The tackle and tank are remains from the time we used it as bait in R-NAT. I did not change it because I thought having some pvp capabilities might come in handy sometime and could potentially make a cool kill mail.

Orca, WH workhorse

High power
1x Dark Blood Small Energy Neutralizer
1x Improved Cloaking Device II
1x Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher

Medium power
1x Prototype 100MN Microwarpdrive I
1x Warp Scrambler II
1x Warp Disruptor II
1x Shadow Serpentis Stasis Webifier

Low power
1x Damage Control II
1x Reinforced Bulkheads II

Rig Slot
1x Large Ancillary Current Router I
2x Large Polycarbon Engine Housing I

Drones
5x Hammerhead II
5x Hornet EC-300

I'm starting to jump the Orca towards the low sec while scouting out the C3. There's funny things going on at one of the POS'es. A dude (assuming it's one dude with two alts based on how he moves ships around) is piloting a Chimera and a Dominix, aligning them both at the wormhole to low sec. I'm watching as he starting to come close to the POS shield. Sure enough, when the Chimmy is through, it pops some fighters. Whats going on? Is he going to camp the LS with the Dominix and some assigned fighters? Why? Does he know about me? Possibly. He don't know about the inbound Orca thou, and that's the important thing.

Maybe he is just waiting for it to die? It is EOL after all. Anyhow, I have not seen anything cloaky or with tackle around the wormhole back to my static C4, so the chances he would be able to catch my Orca is minimal. And I don't smell a trap since he don't know whats coming. As far as he knows, there's simply not anything to trap.

When arriving at the first lowsec, I use my third character (don't want to show myself by leaving the C3) to scout that in the two gates. All gates clear. Orca in warp to the C3. The jump into the C3 might be the most risky one. If he (or someone else) have a cloaky there it would get a chance of pointing the Orca. Had it been a high sec I could just have aborted and jumped back out, not so now though.

On the other hand, the low sec plays to my advantage in that it's highly unlikely that anything would come in that way, in particular anything as juicy as an Orca. The risk that someone would be camping the WH is pretty low. And even if they are, they would need to be pretty fast on the uncloak to catch the Orca before it's in warp.

As expected, nothing de-cloaks, nothing happens. I jump the Orca in, warp it through the C3 and the C4, getting it safely into whats going to be my home for the next few weeks. Step one complete!

I log for a few hours and when back I briefly see a Hound on scan. I check the sigs and discover that I have no less than two new incoming WH's. I scout them, but don't find anything dangerous or interesting in any of them. I watch the Hound jump back into one of them. I check his corp. Not the same as the inhabitants in that system, which is a C2 so I assume he just came from the HS they have in there. I decide to take a small risk setting up the POS with the holes still open. With some scouts, it would be safer than to close them I recon.

The erecting of the POS goes well as expected, nothing bad happens. I'm home!

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