12 March 2009

I Found One! ...wha....Damnit!

So yesterday evening, things were rather slow around the home base. A lot of the corp mates were just finishing up with some corp ops and although I generally mine every Wednesday evening as a part of my own contribution to the corp, I just didn't have it in me. I'd spent so much time at the desk earlier that day, doing paperwork and other menial tasks that I just needed to do something entertaining. So in my pondering, I overheard a few people talking on the blogger channel about probing and so that got me thinking. Here I am with a few decent probing skills, a launcher, and a hefty load of probes.....and I have yet to even track me down one of these elusive wormholes that have been appearing as of late all over New Eden. I currently have the skill to fly a covert ops ship but still have a couple days before I'm able to actually fit the cloaking device. Because of that, I haven't actually purchased a covert ops frig so instead just headed out in a Probe frigate. Sides, I wasn't actually planning on going in....I just wanted to find one.

The new probing system I must say can be a bit confusing. In some ways its exciting and I love the fact that scanning is SOOO much faster as well as being able to recall my probes. I'm going to have to do some research into the skills though because currently, I'm not clear on what use it would be to train any skills further in terms of probing. I did have some difficulty tracking things down but it was more of just learning how to manipulate and comprehend the results from the scans. As well as figuring out the best method to narrow things down.

It seems that as long as you recall your probes, they can be used over and over again. They don't appear to be like the mining crystals where after some use, they eventually expire completely. With this in mind, I generally was sending out about 4 or 5 probes. And recalling them when needed. And yes, I did have to recall them a couple times as it took me more then the roughly hour long time period to scan things down.

Reality is I should have just gone and read up on what my fellow writers have written about the new probe system but was determined to figure it out on my own. Sometimes its just the best way I learn things. (Plus it keeps my hyperactive mind occupied)

So after a few rather unsuccessful attempts, I finally managed to figure out how narrow down the scan to give me the accuracy of 100%. Unfortunately, it landed me at a ladar sight being called a Glass Nebula. Really it was nothing more than an abandon research facility. Okay, possibly useful to others but not to me. So moving on.

Next item I scanned down ended up being some ruins of...well...something. Drones had ravaged the place and it was really nothing more than a pile of floating space debris. There was a lone rogue drone hanging about that attempted to attack me but I restrained myself from ending his seemingly lonesome misery, as something in my gut was just screaming bait. Besides, I really wasn't carrying any serious offensive systems anyways.

So moving on again. I'm now in my third system. I send out a single probe with full scan range set. Bam! Four unknown hits. Certainly one of these has to be a wormhole! With this in mind, I now launch three other probes and send them out in various directions, with mediocre scan ranges, but close enough to each other to overlap. I did this until eventually I narrowed down one of the signatures. Lost it a few times but would easily reacquire it and try again. I couldn't begin to describe how excited I was when it popped up on my scanner "Unstable Wormhole".

Quickly, I warped to it and immediately sent out word to my fellow corpmates. Seems I'm the first within the corp to have actually found one. Quickly a couple other guys hop in their ships and as soon as we're fleeted up and sitting near to the wormhole, we give the signal to enter.

I know...I know... I wasn't planning on actually going through it but I could almost see temptation in the depths of that wormhole, motioning with her finger to come to her. Sides, we were just too excited by the possibilities...as well as being the first in our corp to say we were in w-space. So...with an immense feeling of both excitement and nervousness, in we went!

*Wormhole cleared. Checking navigation systems......*
.........
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*Region: Aridia*
*Solar system: Pahineh*
*Security Level: 0.7*

What?!?

Yep. That's right. We travelled through a wormhole from a high security system in Solitude to a small pocket of high security in the Aridia region. Basically right next door to Solitude! I honestly didn't even realize the wormholes would do that. But guess that proved that wrong. So with a slight damper to our excitement we jumped back through the wormhole and headed home. So it wasn't to w-space....but hell, I still found and had my first wormhole experience and I can definitely say, they look wicked as hell. (although my corp mate said it looked like the butt hole of the universe......hmm......)

-ML-

2 comments:

Kirith Kodachi said...

For a better idea of how these work, check out the dev blog:
http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=642

Geaux Tiger said...

Good times, good times. That dev blog has excellent info.

And I found a w-hole leading from lowsec verge vendor to highsec Amarr space during my testing. Talk about a "Oh Sh**!" moment for a for a Minmatar pirate. :)

Thanks for the comment on my site. I should have the second part of the series up in about 10 hours or so.