So Close!

This was a busy weekend for me in Eve, so let's start at the top.

Saturday morning I logged in and promptly started ratting, looking for a Shadow Serpentis spawn. I had a few battleship spawns which lined the wallet nicely, but no faction. Sigh. During this time a hostile in an Amarr Purifier Stealth Bomber came in local and we organized a defense op to deal with it.

I jumped into my Falcon and then got the message to warp to a gang member. Unfortunately, the bomber had been destroyed already and the best I could do was get on the killmail of a pod that wanted to be killed anyways.

Later on the hostile returned again with a buddy in a Minmatar Hound Stealth Bomber and we once again rallied to defend our space. This time I got into a Raptor interceptor in an effort to uncloak them with speed whenever they showed up. We played cat and mouse for an hour but no luck and I had to log. Soon after I logged, they were caught and destroyed.

On Sunday I logged in again and soon thereafter the hostile returned for a third time. Well, we formed up the fleet again and this time I got into my Onyx to run a bubble for a gate camp on the stargate entrance to our system. We played cat and mouse for an hour then the hostile logged. But he still had an aggression timer from engaging one of our bait ships. Which means his ship stays in space for 15 minutes before it disappears. Which means it can be scanned out!

Once we figured this out, I warped to station and grabbed my newly delivered Buzzard Covert Ops (thanks for the carrier jump CEO!) and quickly warped to where the Purifier was showing up on scan. Drop a probe, hit scan, and ... what the hell!? Whadda mean 240 seconds!? Turns out I still had a Scan Probe Launcher from earlier exploration efforts and not the Recon Probe Launcher.

We impatiently waited out the timer and curse it all, the Purifier was not picked up. I warped back to station to get the Recon Probe Launcher, back out to space where the enemy ship was picked up on the directional scanner, launcher a probe, waiting 60 seconds (much better!), got a hit (excitement rising!) warp to it, see the Purifier in space, gang is warped to me.... and it disappeared. NNNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! The timer ran out.

So lesson learned: make sure you have the right launcher for the job.

So close.

Sunday night I had one more chance to log in and surprisingly found our system empty except for me and a corp mate who was afk anyways. Nine asteroid belts all to myself? Sure, why not. I began ratting and was enjoying myself when I got a hit on the On Board Scanner. You see, every system has mini-complex dungeons called cosmic anomalies that can only be picked up by the On Board ship scanner. As you rat you can run this 30 second scan to see if one is within 5 AU of your position.

These mini-complexes are not as difficult as real complexes or exploration sites, but they don't require any special skill or equipment to find.

The one I found was rogue drones which I halfway considered leaving for someone else. Drone rats don't have an immediate bounty that you receive for killing them like regular rats do. Instead they drop valuable alloys that you can take and reprocess for minerals. A lot of work and I wondered if I would have time to finish it but I decided what the hell, first complex in 0.0 for me I might as well try.

The first two waves I had trouble with in my Cerberus. The Heavy Assault Missiles work wonders on larger targets but small fast moving rogue drones were tough to take down and their resistance to kinetic damage was proving frustrating. When the third wave arrived much larger than the first two I said "screw this" and I went to get a real ship.

Out comes the Rokh. Slinging 300 DPS out to 60km put a damper on those drones real quick and I never even had to activate my defenses. Only problem I had was cap since my 0.0 Rokh has no rigs for capacitor recharge on it. A while later the drones were cleared and I sent Derranna in to clean up the alloys and while it took a bit longer than I hoped, it was a good time.

All in all I made a lot of money, picked up a lot of loot, got some high end minerals, and almost got in on a real kill or two. A good weekend in New Eden.