Exploration Vexes Me Again

Last night I logged once more on to the laptop while watching TV on the couch with the wife.

(Man, from reading this blog you might think this is all I do! The truth is, I could care less about 90% of the TV shows but my wife likes to relax after a long day of taking care of the Carebear Brigade and TV is her hobby of choice. And she likes to have me nearby rather than being alone. After 12 years of marriage, you learn where you can win a little and where you can lose big.)

Well, I have no access to voice comms on the laptop so X-ing up to a fleet is out of the question - I refuse to PvP in a Fleet without voice comms - and I didn't feel like running solo when my attention could be diverted at any moment by the pregnant wife. Case in point, halfway through last night she had a huge craving for a Wunderbar chocolate bar and asked me to go out to the Mac's Milk to get one. Last pregnancy she had a craving for something late at night and I didn't go to get it and I have not yet heard the end of it two years later. Needless to say, bitter as I was I went out in the cold Canadian fall night and got her TWO Wunderbars, one for now and one as backup for later in case this craving becomes a long term one.

I decided to do some probing again like I did Sunday evening. I like the new probing mechanics, and with Kirith's skills being excellent now there was no reason not to. So I jumped in the Buzzard and went to work.

I only detected one signature on my initial scan and it was a low one. Eager for the challenge I broke out the Sisters Core Scan Probe Tetrahedron and went to work. It was a tough one (a good sign, means other casual probers may not have been able to resolve it) and eventually I got the 100% signal. It turned out to be a profession site called "Pristine Sansha Graveyard" or something like that and the site description informed me I would need Salvaging skills to exploit it. Which is good because Derranna left her good Cheetah covert ops with the Hacking and Archeology modules back in High Sec. (Note to self, get some of those down here.)

The site had a bunch of cans that required salvaging to open floating in some Large Collidable Objects shaped like ship wrecks. No rats to be seen but I knew that as soon as I tried to open one, bad guys would show up. They always do. I got Derranna in a ship with salavagers to warp in and try the first can and sure enough Sanshas show up, three cruisers and 5 battleships.

I sent Derranna to safety while I checked out the rats with my Cerberus. The bounties on the battleships were in the 1.2 million range suggesting these were not the cannon fodder typically found in belts. Sure enough, my shields were strong but not strong enough and slowly they went down. I reshipped Derranna to her Scimitar and brought her in to boost my shields enough to finish off the rats.

It was slow going. The Cerb does fine for belt ratting but I need more DPS and tank for these high end complexes.

(Side note: there was a silent red in system this whole time and I kept watching intel channels and directional scanner for scan probes. I still realize I was taking a risk but I can afford it monetarily if not egotistically.)

Once the spawn was done, I got Derranna back to salvaging. Again the rats came back, this time in two spawns! I decided to dock up both characters at this point (the aforementioned convenience store run). When I came back, I went in with the Cerberus again, intending to follow up with the Scimitar to shield transfer and.... the rats, cans, scenery was gone! Nothing left but the wrecks from the first spawn.

Riiiiiight.... I remember now. Complexes will despawn if they are partially done and you leave it. I apparently had successfully cracked up one can with salvagers just as I had Derranna warp out and the trigger was set. Kirith warped out and the complex packed up and went somewhere else.

BUGGER!

Well, for the best I suppose. I was running out of time. I looted and salvaged the wrecks and was slightly molified to find a best named large Tachyon beam module in one of the wrecks, worth about 8 million plus.