EVE: No combat, no loss

After losing a battlecruiser a few days ago I wanted to try running the available combat sites again but saturday we had 3 incoming wormholes so I deemed it unsafe. Today we didn't have any incoming wormholes so right after downtime I logged in and warped one harbinger with auguror support to the first combat site.

I was almost done when I noticed a new signature on the probe scanner. I immediately refreshed dscan and spotted a loki, which meant that a loki had spotted me and a collection of sleeper wrecks so I immediately warped off, leaving behind my MTU.

 

Switching so a scanning frigate I scanned down the new wormhole and took a peek inside. A C5, J114353. Two POS-es and a Rorqual were in dscan range of the hole and a quick look at the poco owners gave me at least some intel on who I was dealing with, Section 2. I added their alliance to my contacts with bad standing so they would stand out in local and added all corp members to my watchlist to see who was online. A quick look at their killboard revealed they like to use bait and to fight with odds on their side.

After all this I scanned down my abandoned MTU (forgot to bookmark it after dropping) and put my alt in a salvaging catalyst. While in warp to the site I noticed a myrmidon appearing on dscan but I landed first, scooped up the MTU plus loot and was back in warp right as the myrmidon landed at zero.

I then went off to do some other stuff besides playing EVE and when I did return I decided to go out shopping for a new battlecruiser. As my capsule landed on the N110 there was a drake loitering which warped off as my capsule landed. What a coincidence that I would spot a visitor just as I returned from my break, I thought to myself.

The drake then started running a combat site in dscan range of the static and wrecks started to appear. Even though the drake was from a different alliance as the C5 corporation I suspected it was bait so I parked my new myrmidon battlecruiser on the high sec side of the static instead of jumping back in. The drake didn’t salvage wrecks as it went about and after completing a site it took a convenient break outside of dscan range of my scout. 

 

After I entered the C1 and warped to the POS the drake returned and started clearing his second combat site. When I boarded my salvaging catalyst my scout in the C5 noticed a switch from ventures to a HIC and combat ship. When the drake started site running I had bookmarked all anomalies so I now warped to the first cleared combat site, no ships appeared on dscan in our C1 but a sleipnir and devoter appeared on the C5 wormhole. I quickly salvaged all wrecks and came away with 23m in loot. After this the sleipnir was exchanged for a noctis that jumped to our C1 and wrecks started disappearing from dscan. I asked in local if this meant no more salvaging after the bait drake was done with sites but I got no response.

Apparantly they got the clue because after the last wreck disappeared from Dscan the drake jumped to high sec, followed by the noctis. My guess was the noctis was going to give the loot to the drake player. Since that noctis was probably going to return to the C5 (which still had a devoter waiting on the wormhole) my plan was to try and catch it as it returned from high sec. Since I didn’t have a tornado available I thought about using the newly bought myrmidon and sentry drones but the noctis returned right as I landed and warped off before I could attain lock.

A short while later I went afk again to visit my parents. Little over an hour later I returned, just in time to see yet another battlecruiser running a combat site in our static. A two month old character in a venture also made a quick apearance at the static before jumping back to high. Perhaps I should mention that or static for the day exited in Frarn, just one jump out of Rens and a system with plenty of new characters in exploration frigates. During the course of the day I think I saw at least half a dozen newbie players entering our system.

Not two minutes after my return the N110 activated again and in came a proteus, onyx and drake. Apparantly this spooked our site running visitor because he warped right on top of the bubble that had gone up. http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=21362413 and http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=21362412 The venture choose this time to return to wormhole space as well and was quickly obliterated, http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=21362411.

Because we had so much traffic on the static I brought in a sensor boosted oracle to try and pop small stuff on the static as well. After I jumped the oracle in and got some range on the wormhole the proteus from before returned and started to approach me, the onyx returned as well and bubbled up while at the same time the devoter in the C5 bubbled up as well so I shelved my oracle and started watching my scouts again. 

 

A lot of the newbie visitors that day scanned down the C5 and made an appearance there as well. When one of the newbie visitors jumped back from the C5 to our C1 I opened a convo and warned him not to warp directly to the C1 static because there was a bubble up and people might try to kill him. He thanked me for the information but still went for the bubble and didn't cloak up after landing. He moved out of the bubble and warped off again only to return a minute later to repeat another warp-off and return before the inevitable pop and pop.

 

I asked the proteus pilot if they were related to the C5 crowd but they answered negatively. I hoped these pilots would get a fight with the C5 crowd but these were very timid and didn’t engage, much to the chagrin of the proteus pilot. All the jumping around had caused our wormhole to pass it's 50% mass limit so the high sec crowd decided to permanently leave because they were afraid of getting trapped in our wormhole. 

 

In all it was an exciting day and after I decided the hole had gone without activity long enough I decided to clear the last few combat sites that remained. Together with the ninja salvage earlier I ended up with 140m ISK in salvage and loot after which I went off to get some sleep.