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| The Mote in God's Eye... |
I wake to SARA’s warm contralto telling me I am needed on the bridge. I thank her, dress and head on up. On arrival I take the con of the HDF “=Lochotic=”, a ‘Loki’ Class Strategic Cruiser. We are on Midwatch a few hours from Morning watch. We are powered down, cloaked, sitting at a Safe, watching Dscan. You LIVE by Dscan in holes. You learn to hit dscan frequently and often and watch it like it is local, because, in here… it IS ‘local’.
I have been called to the Bridge because there is a single “Combat Sisters Probe” on scan…. Hmmm…. only one? I have the Exec sound General Quarters. Once all decks have reported in I warp to a pounce 200Km off the POS, we have MANY pounces in and around the POS and many Safes throughout the system. We normally spend Midwatch at one of my System Scan safes because I can ‘see’ both Serenity Station and that damn dead Amarr POS in our system from there…
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On an aside…
I live in fear of someone getting back in here and fueling up that POS… Just Imagine if you will, the following scenario:
In an empty hole, setup a Lrg POS, anchor a defense mod or two, incap em, bring in an Orca (or 2 is better) full of fuel, stront, POS mods, ammo and a POS Bash Fleet all fully fitted and loaded to the gills w/ ammo… get everyone out except your scout and log off.
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| Is there anybody... In there? |
Sell the hole to some unsuspecting corp… give em a week, a month, whatever to get setup and get some juicy ships and stuffs inside and log onto your CovOps scout from time to time, scout out everything, watch them, make BMs, find out their online schedule, pick a night when they're offline then…
Log on your Orca pilot(s) who land(s) right next to your offline POS, your scout brings your Fleet pilots in from Empire. Launch and double check ships, everyone mans their ships and… Fleet log off.
That would be a Long and Deep Troll of the First Degree.
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But I digress…
Anyway, so we ‘see’ this single Cmbt Probe on scan… by habit I always check cloak status as my screens clear from logon so the trespassers chance to have ‘seen’ us is very slight. I first warp to the K162 to a C4 from last night, nope, it was a 16 hr hole and it has popped. OK, I warp to the D210 Losec static, yup still there, no activity I can ‘see’ and the hole’s mass limit has not been disrupted. OK, I warp to the K162 Hisec from last night, ah ha… no activity, but the hole’s mass limit has been affected by ships passing through it.
Now, I made two Amarr runs last night (4 hops thru) inna Mammoth and a corpmate flew a Mach and an Orca out so that is probably the majority of the mass change to this hole… but… (I have a hunch, you live by them in here too) that this is where our ‘guest’ is from. A lot of people scan holes in Hisec…. Not so many in Lo and basically none in Null.) Also, the Combat Probe is now gone and there are Sisters Scan Probes in the air… Allrighty, I warp to the POS, quickly as possible load up a Med Warp Bubble and head out to 10Km off the Hisec hole. I maneuver to anchor it 5Km vertical directly over the hole and wait for it to go up, then I settle inna CAMP (Combat Action Maneuver Point) at the south end under the hole where the edge of the bubble is closest to the hole and sit cloaked at 5Km…
So now I am sittin there… spamming dscan, watching the hole, and trying to do some backed up paperwork, then back to dscan, watching the hole, back to the paperwork, back to dscan, back to the hole and A HELIOS UNCLOAKS in the bubble! Inside my optimal for the Hail loaded in the 425mm AC IIs and at about 5500m from the hole!! I uncloak, accelerate towards the Dire Trespasser and ‘target-to-fire’ by activating my guns and targeting the Helios!!! He warps thru when I am just a few tenths of a second away from lock!!!! DAMMIT! LOL
Oh well, so it goes in holes… I sit and watch for a spell considering my options. I can follow, in all likely-hood he was solo and just scouting and once thru warped immediately away… and as each second passes my chance to catch him decreases geometrically. Also, on the off chance he has friends and was baiting me, I 'could' possibly jump right into a gank CAMP on the other side. So meh, I warp back to the POS, get another bubble and ‘dubble bubble’ the hole top and bottom so they overlap the hole itself, JIC. I make a pounce approx 200Km off the hole and take up CAMP…
You know, if I had a SeBo (Sensor Booster) or even dual SeBos, that might have gone very very differently… I ask SARA, the Semi-Autonomous Rational Array computer that runs.. well, everything… to call up PYFA, CONCORDS 'Projected Yulai Fitting Agent', and bring up the schematics for my Loki… so, let's see just how would a SeBo affect my CPU & CAP hmmmm?
Just another day in the hole…
Fly Safe and see you in the Sky =/|)=
You LIVE by Dscan in holes. You learn to hit dscan frequently and often and watch it like it is local, because, in here… it IS ‘local’.
ReplyDeleteSomething I sometimes do is DSP scan instead. Suppose I can see from the sig names that every sig is native (eg ALX, BLX, CLX etc). And also that the static has changed since the last one I warped to.
I KNOW there's no way in. (99.9% certain anyway). No outside hole has a way in. The native static doesn't yet have another side and no one is likely to overnight in my hole.
In this situation I park a cloaked alt with a DSP out and just refresh the DSP to check for intruders. Unless a sig appears there's no one in the hole.
It's only failed once in the last 6 months and that was when I was afk for a couple of hours watching the footie (and lost a Hulk). And in that case had I been refreshing the DSP I certainly would have spotted the sig and got safe, I only died because I was completely slacking.
It's actually a lot safer than D scan if you refresh it regularly as it covers the entire hole. No sig, no intruders.
My CEO trained up for DSPs (Deep Space Probes for them as dunt know) and now I am gonna have to do same... and give that a try, anything that might make life 'safer' in Negsec is worth skilling time. Thanx Stabs!
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