Do you know what else there is in wormholes, except valuable ores and gases? Right. Other people who also want a piece of that!
So there I was, sitting in an Ordinary Perimeter Deposit, nibbling away on a piece of Arkonor when I spot this Venture on D-scan. I immediately cloak up and prepare to wait for what is going to happen now. Only seconds later, the Venture lands on the beacon of the Deposit and starts burning to the rock right next to me! I put a bit of distance between me and the rock they’re going for so they don’t accidently uncloak me when they overshoot. They start mining without a care in the world and so I decide that maybe I could try to take them down? I knew that at least on the first try I was very unlikely to succeed because they were in a Venture which has built-in warp core stabilization and I didn’t even have any warp scrambling equipment so the chance of them warping off before they took serious damage was very high…
So, I moved closer to them, uncloaked right on top of them and set my drones on them. After a few seconds they responded by launching their drones (but not sending them towards me because I never took any damage) and after a few more seconds they warped off, leaving their drones behind!
That went slightly better than expected. I collected their drones and as they were still visible on D-scan, I cloaked up again. And guess what? Only a few seconds later they warped back in and approached the same rock as before! How… what… WHY?!
Anyway, I repeated the little dance: uncloaked on top of them and set my drones on them, only this time they didn’t have any drones to respond with so they warped off again.
At this point I must shamefully admit that I got a bit blood-thirsty. I went back to high-sec and my corp’s HQ which was only two jumps away and has a corp hangar full of useful stuff. I switched my Shield Extenders for two Warp Scramblers and made my way back into the wormhole system. And behold, the Venture was still in there!
Only now they apparently switched to gas huffing so they did refit somewhere which probably also meant they re-equipped some drones (or at least one would hope so). Anyway, I warped in to the Reservoir they were at and imagine my surprise when I found them sitting directly on the beacon! That couldn’t have been easier!
In a few seconds they were warp-scrambled and my drones were once again at work. They did have a Shield Booster installed so every now and then the red bar shrunk slightly but all in all it kept growing. They launched a drone (and one drone only) and targeted one of my drones but it couldn’t get to work fast enough… after about a minute my drones had chewed through all of the Venture’s defenses and I got the killmark you can see above!
All in all there are quite a number of things that could have and maybe even should have gone differently. I initiated a conversation with them and asked them if they wanted to talk about what happened but I never got a reply. Anyway, here’s a list of things that I would probably do different, had the roles been reversed:
- D-scan. D-scan, D-scan, D-scan! When jumping into a wormhole, your D-scan window has to be open and visible all the time! So upon entering the system I would have spotted an Endurance and would have known there’s somebody out there.
- If you know somebody is out there, try to find out where they are. Change your D-scan settings to smallest angle (5°) and scan all anomalies to see if they are in one of those. If you do this in your first minute after jumping into the system you have the advantage that you can see them but they cannot see you, due to the cloak of the wormhole. Invaluable!
- At this point I would have known exactly where the Endurance was. Great! I would have warped a couple of times around the system and created a small number of safe spots. While doing that I would have noticed that the Endurance is now no longer visible on D-scan. As all known anomalies and celestial were well within D-scan range (it was a small wormhole system) this means that it has either cloaked up or left the system. No way to know for sure.
- Alright, so, I want to mine. Where? Definitely not in the same Deposit where I spotted the Endurance earlier! There were two other Deposits in the system and I would have picked a different one.
- Okay, I picked a Deposit and started mining. Oh, there it is, right on top of me! Okay, I’m not being scrambled so I know I can run at any time. Drones, do your thing! Shield Boost, do your thing! Cap Boosts, do your thing, too! Dang, their drones are better than mine, plus they have one more. Not fair!
- I’m still not being scrambled so I’d grab my drones and head out. See you!
- Now the Endurance has disappeared from D-scan again. I know in which Deposit it just was, and it’s either still there, cloaked up again, or it has left the system. Which means I will now pick the third Deposit to mine at.
- Wow, another Endurance decloaking on top of me! Weird where they all come from!
Anyway, not being scrambled I warp off and everything’s fine. - If it had gone this way with the Endurance chasing me through two Deposits I would at this point probably have ditched the system altogether. Wormhole ore is fine but even losing a Venture over it is not my idea of fun. But let’s assume for a second that I would now decide to still go back but now try getting some gas out of it.
- I jump back to high-sec, to a station where I have some gear, equip the gas scoops and go back into the wormhole. Initial D-scanning shows an empty system. Awesome! Off to the Reservoir it is!
- There are two Harvestable Clouds, one directly at the beacon and one about 70 km off. I pick the second one so if a hunter is not using Combat Probes (which show up on D-scan) I can see them coming for 70 km.
- D-scan shows an Endurance again. Is it the same as before? Oh shit, it has the same ship name! I warp to my safe spot and try to see where they are, watching D-scan all the time to spot Combat Probes. Now, I either spot the Endurance again at some point because they decided to decloak and go about their business and when they are not where I want to be I’ll come out to continue gas mining (always ready to warp off when they arrive) or I will at some point decide that today is just not the day to mine in this particular system and will leave, to probably never see that system again. And good riddance, too, it’s full of Endurances that want to kill me!
