Life in a Wormhole: Too Long in the Wasteland #eveonline

[Good album, by the way. James McMurtry. I recommend it.]



Yeah, I know it's been a few weeks. Believe me when I say I'd rather be here -- I'm still in lesbian with you, EvE, even when you hurt me.

Just what have you been up to, mister?

November is always a crazy month around Random-Average, and this year was no exception. Matter of fact, it's possible I bit off a BIT more than I could chew. Dec-tupled normal work load, plus a good-sized contract job, plus editing work, plus Harper Collins stuff, plus baby, plus NaNoWriMo.

I realize now that I should have nixed one or more of those projects, and the most likely candidate rhymes with NaNoWriMo. Hindsight.

I'll tell you what I haven't been doing. Fucking Skyrim. My god, but internet people like to talk about that game. Never played any of the Elder Scrolls stuff, so it just didn't make my radar. Also have not played any table top stuff, or LotRO, or SWTOR beta, or whatever, so please don't imagine I'm messing around with anygame in lieu of EvE and depriving you of my hijinx.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

November has been a month in which our whole corporation has been taking advantage of Stuff Going On and getting some long-time-to-train skills done. Gor's flying force recon ships around now and cackling madly. CB has a couple Sabre-class interdictors in the hanger. Ty's almost done mastering Minmatar cruisers and will then (as I understand it) flip a coin to decide between Logistics or Strategic cruisers. Bre's doing something esoteric with Shields and finally mastered Gas Harvesting. Both Gor and Em have got their Rorqual skills up to par.

Me? I harvested a few gas clouds this month. That's about it.

December? December is looking a lot better.

One highlight I wanted to mention:

I popped in late one night to learn that Walrus and Cabbage Corp found a largely abandoned Class 2 wormhole and did some profound plundering. Walrus did quite well -- running over 20 sleeper sites for roughly 400 million in total profit -- but Cabbage and company really scored, in that they found a tower that had run out of fuel and lost its force field, allowing them to gather up a huge number of abandoned ships. Grand total haul for that day for everyone in the home system was well over 3 billion isk. Yowza.

What's coming up?

Things should be marginally back to normal in the next few weeks -- I've already been able to get into the home system a bit more. Here's some stuff I wanted to talk about.

• Blowing off steam with Red versus Blue.


• The allure of agency.


• The new Crucible expansion.

Actually, I'll talk about that last thing a little bit right now.

CCP released its winter expansion today. The best way I can explain it is this:

Imagine an MMO expansion with over three dozen paragraph-length bullet points worth of changes.

Now, imagine that every single one of those items was, in effect, what players and developers in the industry would call "Quality of Life" improvements, and that they were all (or 99% of them were) changes welcomed by 99% of the player base, some of them so fundamental as to change the way the game will be played.

That's what's going on in EvE right now. Is there a lot of new content? No. Not exactly.

You don't technically get 'new content' when someone completely guts and renovates your kitchen, either. Doesn't mean that the renovation won't make you really, really happy.

It's a very cool time to be involved in the game.


More soon. I'm not going anywhere.

Life in a Wormhole: A Flurry of Activity #eveonline

Things are heating up for the madness of the coming month, and I'm not able to get on until late the next evening, after everyone is already gone for the night.

Everyone, that is, except Bre, who is admiring her new Anathema covert-ops frigate and scanning the system almost as an afterthought.

The scanning pays off, as Bre is able to pin down a rare magnometric signature indicating piles of sleeper goodies waiting for trick-or-treaters dressed up as space ships. It takes a bit of coaxing, but I'm even able to convince Bre to leave her Anathema behind and ship up into something a little more durable and pointy, and we make short work of the site. Once that's done, I switch to a salvager refit with a analyzer used to crack open the discarded sleeper containers floating around the site, and in about the same time it took us to destroy its defenders, the site had delivered a cool 50 million isk profit. Not bad for 20 minutes.

Loot is distributed in the normal manner.


Unfortunately, that's an end to the evening for both of us, and I won't be on for a few days due to a decidedly unfriendly work schedule.

---

My estimation isn't wrong, and it's several days before I can make it back online, finally reconnecting in the middle of the afternoon as Em, Ichi, Shan, and Liss muster up for an Alliance-wide operation in another wormhole.

Yes, we are functioning under a wardec, but after seeing some information about this particular target, we decide that taking part in taking this tower a-part is a moral imperative; it's just THAT bad.

Protip: When you are bringing your tower defenses online, you might find it more effective to anchor the shield resistance arrays INSIDE the tower's force field. I don't want to tell you your business, but... you know. Just think about it.

/headdesk

I've logged in to join my Walrus brethren and sistren for the op, which requires 20+ jumps through known space. Em and Ichi and I are making the trip in stealth bombers, which provide quite a bit of natural defense against getting jumped by war targets as we travel, but Shan and Liss are bringing a battlecruiser and command ship, respectively, so we enlist the aid of one of the operations scouts to assure a safe route from point A to point B, and although his voice comms are incredibly quiet, he knows what he's about and we arrive in the target system without incident.

What can I say about a tower bash that hasn't been said before?

How about this: If you don't already fly Amarr ships, it might be worth your time to crosstrain a bit -- at least for laser turrets, so you don't have to reload all the damn time.

Barring that? Bring a lot of ammo. More than that. Yes, more than that too. Just... bring all of it.

Yes. All of it.

Anyway, after a few hours of hurling torpedoes at The Tower of Incredibad Decision-Making, everything goes boom, dozens of incredibly poorly and/or stupidly fit ships are collected for resale, and our mini-fleet reforms to return home.

This time, Em has a scouting alt handy to make sure the path is clear, and I take over as the-guy-who-makes-sure-everyone-jumps-and-warps as a group, a role in which I perform adequately for almost... 85% of the trip.

Still, despite the VERY OCCASIONAL leaving behind of my fleet-mates when I forget to initiate a group warp, we coast home with nary a war target on scan, and tuck back into the home system. It was good practice for moving the fleet as a group (prep for the roams Em and I have been planning) and secure in the knowledge that today, we did our part in the constant battle to raise the collective IQ of wormhole dwellers everywhere.

Ha ha! That tower set up is so sil-- OMGWTF!?!

Life in a Wormhole: Run for the Rorq #eveonline

The one corp in our home system that wasn't around for the previous evening's supply run consisted of our Oceanic compadres, and I want to make sure they have the support they need before we lock up the system, so I drop in early in the morning (one of the upsides of a nine-month-old copilot) to see what's what.

It turns out Cabbage and Pan Demic are fine on tower fuel, but Pan is still planning a run out in an Orca, due to a slight miscalculation on the ore required for the Rorqual project. We're ready to begin building parts of the ship, but as it stands right now we won't have enough material to keep the forges running for the week we're going known-space cold turkey. I might not be able to do too much to help, but luckily Berke is around as well, so our corp can still lend a hand.

We scan down the exit to lowsec to see if we'll get lucky with a useful connection and the answer is "yes.. and no." The system itself is quite useful: immediately adjacent to the minor market in the Hek system means we only need to go a single jump with the Orcas to get the minerals we need (and the prices are even good). Unfortunately, the local comms channels (unavailable in wormhole space) tells us that there are two pilots in system who are members of the alliance with whom we will very shortly be at war.

We consider collapsing the hole to find a more secure connection, but as we debate it, Ty (who's scouting the lowsec system) reports that the two pilots have jumped out of the system. A bit more research shows that the gates we need to use are currently clear of any pilots, so we decide to make a break for it; Thunder-orcas are GO.

Our orca pilots are skilled in the stealthy arts.


Pan heads out first to purchase all the necessary materials, followed a few minutes later by Berke, who has a very small shopping list of his own.

It takes more than a few minutes to deal with the logistics, but eventually both the ships are ready to return to the system, and we get scouting eyes on the gate again. Both ships jump, but there was a miscommunication: Pan went to the gate back home, while Berke jumped to the next system over to pick up the last thing on his personal list.

We don't wait; the gate is clear for Pan to get home, so we get him moving and back into the home system without incident, however just as he warps away from the gate, he sees a Tengu-class strategic cruiser decloak and an Armageddon-class battleship land nearby. Things look a bit interesting for Berke's return.

Berke, for his part, is ready to make the attempt as soon as the gate gets a bit less congested -- he's fit with warp-core stabilizers (as usual), so it's highly unlikely a single battleship will be able to tackle him, and it doesn't look like the Tengu is on the Armageddon's side, since it warps away as soon as the bigger ship heads its direction.

Right. Berke warps to the gate and prepares to jump.

Meanwhile, Pan has unloaded his own orca and jumped back to the wormhole to jump through it and back again, to ensure that it's close to collapse when Berke returns -- he's thinking positive, but he has good reason, since one of his corp mates has jumped into a Hurricane-class battlecruiser and is en route to the gate to meet Berke coming the other way.

The Hurricane lands, the Armageddon turns and starts blowing away his shields, and Berke jumps through. With the Hurricane already in his sites and the Orca coming through the gate over 35 kilometers away, the attacking pilot doesn't bother switching targets, and Berke is easily able to warp away from the fight -- as soon as he does, his bodyguard/decoy jumps through the gate and into high-sec space. Easy peasy.

A few minutes later, the Hurricane is ready to jump back, and the Armageddon is nowhere to be seen. Curious. Also curious is the return of both of the pilots from the corp we're about to be at war with. Ty does a bit of poking around the system to see if he can figure out where everyone's at.

"You're clear to jump back home," he informs the hurricane pilot.

"You sure?"

"Very sure," comes the reply. "The Armageddon is dead."

"No kidding? Who killed it?"

Ty peers through the canopy of his cloaked covert ops ship. "Looks like those two pilots we've been watching out for," he says. "And they're currently looting the wreck a few klicks off one of the other stargates, so they're distracted. Come on through."

The hurricane jumps through the gate, warps to the wormhole, and jumps through. Ty follows, and Berke drops an Orca-shaped hammer on the over-stressed wormhole to bring it crashing down.

"Nice work," comments Pan. "Now then: time to build a Rorqual."

Life in a Wormhole: War Dec...oration #eveonline

I mentioned the new wardec in the last post, but I was getting a bit ahead of myself, since we get the tower set up and actually get a day or two to enjoy the new configuration (including a lovely couple evenings shooting sleepers with Liss, Em, and Ichi from the Walrus crew) before we get word that a notorious grief-infliction corp has declared war.

I am nonplussed by news of the wardec.


The notice goes out almost at exactly the same time as we discover a random outbound wormhole exiting our system. The coincidence could not possibly be more fortuitous, as it is not only an exit to highsec, but lies a mere four jumps from the Dodoxie market hub and a few more jumps from our corporate hangars. It seems we all know what to do (thanks to doing this dance only a few weeks ago), and Bre, Gor, Wil, Ty, Decker, Em, and Shan hop into haulers and head out to known space for various supplies. Berke even abandons his precious Orca to preserve the stability of our lucky wormhole connection, hopping into a Bustard deep space transport ship for maximum non-orca hauling.

Thanks to all the haulers present (our corp alone shows up in dodixie with six ships), we're able to get all the fuel we need with plenty of room to spare, and take a look at some other things we've been meaning to do, such as pick up another half-dozen guns and electronic counter measures for the tower, then pack them into a hauler and send them home.

Also, I've been looking askance at a couple Prophecy-class battlecruisers that have been gathering dust in one of our hangars, and I suggest a refit to Gor that would turn the ships from inadequate Sleeper-killers to tough little "bait and tackle" ships for PvP engagements. He gives a thumbs up, and we fill one ship with all the fittings necessary and send it back as well.

Having delivered the fuel, Gor's decided to swing by our corporate offices in known space, and I ask him about any Harbinger-class battlecruisers we have in storage, since they can be used more effectively on sleepers than the Prophecies, and two of our new members are focusing on ships of the Amarr nation. We have one in the hangar, and as luck would have it it's already pretty much set up how we want for new-guy Sleeper killing. I buy a second hull and all the fitting necessary and pack that into another hauler to unpack and assemble at the tower. Our new pilots can't quite ready to pilot them yet, but once they are the shield-tanked Amarr ships will be waiting and ready for Sleeper melting, and the Prophecies will give them something to fly when things go pear-shaped. Excellent.

The only problem is, since our new members aren't quite ready to come into the wormhole (Scanning skills. Get 'em.), the wardec puts them at considerable risk, so for their safety, we decide to remove them from the corp roster until they either join us in the home system or the wardec ends.

Or at least that's the plan. Turns out our new folks are having none of it -- Moondog logs in later and says he'd rather stand with us, even with the added risk, so we leave him where he is -- an old friend, we trust him to be alert to danger (or learn from mistakes).

Can't wait to get these guys in with us; really can't.

So: fuel loaded; ships delivered, unpacked, fit or refit (including Bre's shiny new Anathema, leaving her only one more race's covert ops ship to collect); defenses strengthened; and wormhole collapsed. That's our evening complete, and the job's a good'un. With the rorqual paid for and only one site to mine at the moment, we don't even have to worry about a week of uneventful cabin fever -- let the poor griefers in highsec twiddle their thumbs waiting for us -- we've got better things to do.

Life in a Wormhole: Tower Tweaks #eveonline

Taken all together, "wormholes" (and everything that comprises wormhole activity) are probably the best-designed things ever released for EvE. No other content addition to the game is so complete, so well-considered, so deep in its gameplay. Proof of that can be found in the simple fact that two years after their introduction into the game, they are (if anything) more popular than ever, well-populated with pilots who collectively have very few axes to grind in terms of wormhole stuff that needs to be fixed, added, or killed with fire.

If there is one major exception to this, it is Player-owned Structures, or POS Towers.

The Minmatar Control Tower, equally painful when inserted rectally or when setting security permissions.


Now, to be fair to Wormholes, Player-owned Structures are not actually part of that expansion -- they're really part of (and were, I believe, introduced with) the Sovereignty System that sees a lot of use out in Nullsec known space and (unlike wormholes) is a system that engenders a lot of criticism and suggestions for change. Sovereignty is a non-issue in wormhole space, but these things are still necessary for long-term living in wormholes, simply because there aren't any other options -- there are no stations in the inky black of the Great Unknown, and we need someplace to put our stuff.

So, we have wonderful wormholes, into which we are forced to insert POS towers and tower modules like rusty, jagged suppositories.

The problems with the towers go hand in hand with the problems that surround corporate administration in general, actually -- security in an EvE corporation is very important to a lot of folks, and CCP has responded to this need by making the Corporate management screen labyrinthine, confusing, obtuse, poorly documented, redundant, AND contradictory. It's actually possible to give a member of your corporation access to the same object or area in your corporate hangars from at least two and frequently three different screens inside of corporate management, and contradictory settings can not only be set in each window, but at different times/places/lunar cycles, each of those sets of permissions will be true. It's frustrating for the pilots and maddening for the administrators.

Things get even more annoying when you're dealing with a tower, because in addition to setting up permissions for the seven specific sub-hangars within the collective corporate hangar (settings which, if I'm counting correctly, can (in our corporation) be set to contradictory values for each pilot in no less than twenty-one different screens), you also need to set up the permissions for each of the structures you have in orbit around the tower itself.

"Okay, your ships are all in the lower hangar."

"I can't get into the lower hangar. Says I don't have permission."

"Crap. Right. Okay, give me a second and I'll move them to the hangar you can see."

(Five minutes later.)

"Okay, check now. Can you see your ships?"

"Yes."

"Cool."

"I can't board any of them though -- it says I'm missing "withdraw" rights for that area."

[screaming]

And then you have the tower structures that, for no reason I am able to fathom, do NOT observe the corporate 'sub-hangar' structure at all (I'm looking at you, Ship Maintenance Array), and are thus less secure. These are, of course, where you have to put all the really expensive stuff (ships).

Up to this point in our glorious corporate history, this hasn't really be a huge problem because our main pilots are either the CEO or (to keep things simple in terms of permissions) made Directors in the corporation because (a) we trust each other and (b) we're very lazy people. Voila: everyone can get to everything. Fixed.

Except that we'll soon have some new pilots coming into both the corp and the wormhole, and while we trust them not to do anything nefarious, we don't trust that they'll know to do (or not do) something that might have very negative affects on the tower itself. That would be bad.

So, to protect ourselves and the pilots, we've settled on a new structure for the tower in which all the new pilots have both a storage hangar and ship hangar for all their stuff, and the officers have a separate ship and storage hangar just for our stuff and things like tower fuel and other critical materials. Setting it up requires setting up security permissions for each of the structures within the tower forcefield, then setting up individual pilot permissions for each pilot, in each folder, so that everyone can (in essence) get into their footlocker as well as have access to group resources that we provide for everyone's shared use (ammo, replacement drones, scanning probes, various types of armaments and armor/shield fittings, et cetera).

It has taken us approximately two days to get it all set up, but (with the help of a very patient Tira, who plays guinea pig through many tedious sessions of "Okay, can you get into that folder now? no? try now? Yes? Okay try now. Okay, let's go to the next one...") it is done.

A few hours after we get it all just right, I get a message in my Alliance folder, informing me that we have been wardecced by another highsec griefer alliance.

All of these new pilots are still in known space. Only one of them (out of town) has the skills to move into wormhole space, and the rest simply do not. If we leave them in the corp for this wardec, they will become targets for everyone in that other alliance looking for an easy kill.

The best option, given our limited timeframe, is to remove the new pilots from our corporation until the wardec expires.

And before we can do that, we have to undo every single permission, in every window, for each of those pilots.

Life in a Wormhole: Moa Constrictors #eveonline

Once Em and I are back on line, she grabs her Onyx heavy interdictor and breaks several laws of physics to finish collapsing the connection between our wormhole and the one with the extremely enthusiastic defenders.

Once that's done, I rescan and jump through our new connection to find a system that is heavily overgrown with sleepers, despite what looks like some level of habitation by other pilots. Could be the pilots are simply slovenly home owners; they appear to be asleep right now, and are lazy enough to leave an Orca command ship, Covetor mining barge, and two Badger-class industrial haulers floating free inside their shields rather than docking them properly. My six-year old cleans up her room better than this.

Far more important is the fact that not all the ships I can see on d-scan are present in the tower. Still unaccounted for are two Moa-class cruisers and a Vagabond-class heavy assault cruiser. I swing my d-scan to-and-fro, verifying that the ships aren't in any of the sleeper anomalies, and in fact seem to be clustered somewhere in the midst of empty space. This might indicate that they're running some kind of magnometric or radar-signature site, but it seems unlikely with the Moas present; odds are that the tough little Moa cruisers are fit for gas harvesting, and the Vagabond is on site to clean up the few sleepers that inevitably show up during such operations.

My guess seems to be a good one, as a few minutes later I see a flurry of sleeper wrecks appear, then vanish. A few seconds later the Vagabond is gone.

But he is not back the tower. Curiouser and curiouser. Seems both the Vagabond and moa pilots are, like me, from some other system.

That means they don't have any backup.

With this thought in mind, I warp to the far end of the system, out of d-scan range of the active ships, and drop a handful of combat probes capable of locating ships as well as cosmic anomalies. I move them far outside the system for a blanket scan, then return to planetary orbit as close to the Moas as I can get without an actual location. Some more d-scan work puts them roughly 2 AU away, "below" me at about a thirty-five degree angle. I center my probes on that location, put them in motion, and scan.

Nothing.

Dammit. I set the probe scan radius far too small and missed the ships' location entirely. I quickly expand their sensor radius, rescan, recenter, and scan again to get a lock on their gas cloud, if not their actual ships (which are proving suspiciously difficult to lock down). Once that's done, I recall the probes and warp into the site at a distance, to get the lay of the land and look for a good angle for an ambush, but it's all for naught. My clumsy scanning mistake left the probes visible for far too long, and the wary pilots did what wary pilots armed only with gas harvesters do: run. Only the second of the two ships is still on-site when I arrive, and he flashes away as I watch.

Nothing wrong with a little caution.


Still, the moas are gone, like the Vagabond, leaving us a system ready for harvesting -- seems a shame to ignore the silver lining in favor of the gray cloud of my bumbled scanning.

Since my probes are already out, I continue normal scanning, revealing many gas clouds, plus a convenient high-sec exit near the Rens market. I put up a flare and we assemble the troops for money-making activities.

Em, Lar, Ichi, and CB jump into ships appropriate for sleeper shooting, Bre parks her Buzzard-class covops scout on the wormhole leading back to the home of the Vagabond and Moa pilots and puts out some scanner probes to keep an eye on the rest of the system, and I grab a Catalyst-class destroyer fit out for salvaging and stealth, and give the combatant pilots plenty of lead-time before jumping into the now-despawned sites to pick apart the wrecks and dig through old Sleeper sofas looking for loose change (and ridiculously valuable 'melted nanoribbons').

I maintain my composure as the loot accumulates.


Once all the available anomalies are cleared, the combat pilots switch to gas harvesting ships to pick up where the Moa pilots left off, and I skitter off to Rens to sell the loot and distribute the wealth -- 180 million ISK for 90 minutes work (not counting the profit from gas harvesting) looks like a solid return to normal operations.

Life in a Wormhole: Eager Defenders #eveonline

Morning in the 'hole, and with the wardec over and mining ops closing down, I'm ready to explore our connection to class-two wormhole space. Sounds great, except for the fact that our connection leads to a very alert system. In the ten minutes during which our wormhole connection appeared in their system, I jumped through, passively scanned, and located a few of the (many) online towers, the locals have detected our wormhole entry point, scanned it down and -- just as I land outside one of their more heavily populated towers -- warped off toward it with a number of pointy ships.

I'm concerned about imminent invasion, and fly back to the wormhole to see what's going on. On scan, I spot a Raven-class battleship, Manticore-class stealth bomber, and Heron-class frigate (probably the ship that scanned down the hole in the first place). While I watch, the space around the Raven distorts, and the ship is sucked through the hole into our system. Not good.

But not as bad as it seems, as the Raven returns to the system less than a minute later -- barely time to have even a cursory shufti, let alone any kind of serious recon -- it looks as though the locals (no strangers to PvP shenanigans) plan to slowly close the hole with repeated jumps back and forth with the Raven.

Actually, I spoke too soon; as I watch, the Raven is joined by a Dominix, Scorpion, Magathron and two Typhoon-class battleships. It looks like they're going to close the wormhole fast. I'm a bit surprised at the sudden arrival of the BBs, but given that the system (itself a class 2) has a persistent connection to class 4 wormhole space where battleships are far more useful ships to fly, the fact they have so many on hand isn't as odd as it seems at first.

The big ships fumble around the wormhole for a few minutes, looking unsure of themselves and generally confused, compared to the speed of their decisive arrival, but I believe I can reconstruct the conversation that's brought them to this point.

Scout: We have an inbound wormhole!
Everyone: Where? What's going on?
Raven pilot: I'll take a look... yeah. Nothing over there but deathstar towers, and no sleepers. I'm going to collapse it.
Everyone: I HAVE A BATTLESHIP! I WILL COME HELP!
Raven pilot: No, but...
Everyone: *arrives*
Raven pilot: *sighs* Okay, let me do the math...

Battleship pilots, waiting for math.


Slowly, jumps start to happen, but I remain cloaked up with an eye on the wormhole. I don't know if I'll get the timing right, but given that the other exit from this wormhole is to highsec, I'm not terribly worried in either case.

My patience pays off, and the moment I see the wormhole become critically unstable, I warp directly on top of the connection, my velocity bumping the Dominix battleship to the side, and jump through, leaving our brief neighbors on the wrong side of a very unstable hole with no viable way to pursue. Works for me.

Em and I decide to leave critically unstable wormhole alone for now, as we both have places to be. Hopefully, there will be better options when we return.

Life in a Wormhole: Things that are Harder than Fighting #eveonline

I log in the next morning to find most of our pilots mobilizing for some kind of major operation.

Their plan is hazy, but their enthusiasm is clear.


After a few minutes, I'm able to sort out what's going on -- PanDemic (a member of Cabbage's corp who's handling all the actual assembly aspects of The Rorqual Project) needs ore, and we're suiting up three Orca-class industrial command ship to get through our lowsec exit, into high security space, and on to a major trade hub to pick up everything the big ships can carry.

Berke, Ichi, and Pan himself head out into the world and make the the round trip largely without incident (thanks to diligently paranoid bodyguard details commanded by Em). Berke is even able to bring CB's shiny new Cheetah and Hound Cov-ops frigate hulls back in with him in anticipation of CB completing that training in a few weeks.

Once the run is complete, we collapse all the connections leading to our system and the fleet reforms into a serious mining operation designed to strip our current asteroid belts right down to their rocky bones.

I won't lie to you Marge; I'm not much of a miner, but I can respect serious organization, and with six pilots in the field, with Gor sitting in his Orca providing perfect mining foreman boosts to the whole endeavor, not even Ty in his Mammoth (which can carry off an entire twenty-seven thousand cubic meter canister of ore per trip) can keep up -- I never stop moving, never stop selecting targets, and can really never take my eyes off the screen... and it's not enough.

Thankfully, Bre and Shan show up and also get into hauling ships to help me get caught up, and after two hours of hauling, we have filled two hangars at the Walrus tower to the brim with rocky goodness, and leave the asteroid belt to stagger away on shaky legs and find a good place to die with dignity. Job's a good'un, and I head out for some errand running, glad to have been able to contribute to the operation.

Honestly, as busy as I was, I feel like I've been fighting non-stop, and I'm glad to have a break. Who knew these miners were so hard-core?

---

The rest of my day is packed with weekend activities, but I have a minute later in the evening to check my EvEMail, and I log in to see this:

Great job on the all-day mining ops! Thanks to Gor for staying logged in the whole time, and thanks to everyone else for the mining jihad. The rocks never stood a chance.

All day? What did I miss?

An email explains:

Less than two weeks ago, we decided to try to get together the resources and ISK necessary to build a Rorqual.

I'm happy to say that, after today's mining ops, we have cleared our goal. There's a lot more to do, but as of right now, the Rorqual is paid for. I'm just blown away by what we've been able to accomplish in so short a time. Great job, everyone.

-Em

Success.

Life in a Wormhole, Always Smaller than You Remember #eveonline

There are Germans in the adjoining class two system, but since I'm really just looking for a good exit to known space (and the Germans are going to sleep), we just ignore each other and I keep looking.

This system has the same kind of lowsec exit as our own, but unlike our useless egress, this system drops out into Podion. On paper, this looks like a terrible system for hauling valuables, as it's a good half-dozen jumps from highsec, and takes you through the lone connection between the Derelik region and the nullsec region of Curse.

I know a bit better, however, since Bre used to frequent this area of New Eden. Podion is a sleepy little dead-end system that would probably never be visted by anyone except for one interesting feature -- although it does not connect to the Curse region, it is physically closer to Curse than any other system in Derelik -- as a result, it is often used by Jump Freighter captains looking to get in and out of the deeper areas of Curse without attracting too much attention. The few people you see in the system (and the other systems leading out from Podion to highsec) are usually pilots trying very hard not to be noticed.

Armed with this knowledge (and a number of warp core stabilizers), Ty sets out for Derelik and (eventually) the market system of Rens. For all that I wasn't expecting much from the run, I have to say that Derelik seems even quieter than I remember -- I suppose that my time with OUCH tended to fill these quiet trips with corp-channel chatter, so that I didn't notice the second-class space that the Ammatar people have been saddled with.

Ahh, the comforts of a familiar shopping center featuring all my favorite items.


I can't seem to convince any of my corp or alliance-mates of the generally benign nature of the area around Podion, so I'm unfortunately alone in my travels, though it does give me the chance to help folks out by bringing back some necessaries that we're short on, including some new strip mining lasers and crystals for CB, who seems to be anticipating another mining extravaganza. I manage to get it all packed in and still leave myself all but immune to the lesser, low-sec versions of interdiction, which works out in my favor as I dodge a few uppity Rifter-class frigates on my way home and tuck in at the tower, satisfied that my main PvP encounter of the evening was giving a few pilots internet-carnage-blue-balls.

You have to take your fun where you can.

Life in a Wormhole: An Embarrassment of Riches #eveonline

I get another message from my broker the next morning, telling me that the buyers are back online and still interested in buying the C4, so I send up a flare and meet Tira online.

Em and Cabbage are already there, and report that we're currently connected to a "very lootable" class 2 system; Cabbage gleefully reports over twenty sleeper anomalies, thirteen gas harvesting sites, several rarer signatures... all guarded by a single small tower with no guns, no shield hardeners, and no ECM.

It sounds great, and I'm invited to come along on the space-fleecing, but I need to concentrate on coordinating with the broker, buyer, and Tira as she scouts a way out of the Class Four, into a Class One, and from there into (thankfully for the buyer) Highsec empire space.

It takes a little over an hour for the buyer to get to the entry location (I send it to them once the third-party broker has the full payment in his possession), go inside, scan everything, and verify it's what they were hoping for. Once that's done, the broker sends me the payment, pockets his 10% cut, and we thank everyone for a smooth transaction. It takes 90 minutes to wrap the whole thing up, but I walk away from it 350 million ISK richer, which I consider an effective use of my time, even if I didn't get to shoot anything.

Every so often, those high exploration skills really pay off.


Tira is rewarded in the way she most prefers, with a pretty pony; in this case, that means a Taranis-class interceptor named "Pony" and contracted to her in the nearest market system. She declares it 'shiny' and takes off for a shake-down.

Once that's done, I finally join my alliance mates in the nearby system. Cabbage is gone and likely off to bed, but a few more folks are logging in, so while I and Si reship into harvesters that take advantage of our leet gas-sucking skills, Bre gets into a cloaky hauler to move the product back to our tower while Em flies overwatch and blows up the occasional sleeper ship that shows up to defend the gas clouds.

Two pilots with maxed out skills make very short work of the fullerite-c50 gas clouds at various sites, and we leave the less profitable gas behind to hit the highest profit for the time spent, which means killing off all the c50 and moving to the c72.

It isn't until we reach the third c72 site that we realize there's actually a proper tower in the system -- a well-fit "death star" style Domination-class tower that might have given us pause if the scouts had noticed it three or four hours earlier. It's a bit of a scouting SNAFU, but to be fair, it's a huge system that undeniably looks neglected. In any case, our gas harvesting operation is undeterred, and we manage to pull a hundred million isk worth of fullerites into our holds before we decide we need a break.

---

I return later in the evening to find Em, CB, and Ichiban shooting sleepers, with Gor cleaning up the shattered wrecks lying in their wake in his Noctis-class industrial. Bre and I join them in an effort to speed up the killing as much as possible, since we are nearing the end of life on our connection to this system and we're nowhere near finished shearing this sheep.

Our caution at not wanting to be stranded in the system finally overcomes our greed, and we head back to our towers with seven sleeper sites still unplundered and roughly 250 million isk in our hold to be split between the involved pilots.

All in all, another pretty damned good time spent with our friends in the home system.

Life in a Wormhole: Frontier Real-Estate #eveonline

The wardec has ended as it often does: not with a bang, but a whimper.

In this case, the whimpering comes from me, wrestling with some serious server problems -- stuff the keeps me offline for a couple days. When I finally get back, we no longer have to worry about high-sec space shenanigans, but our connection to New Eden is aging to the point where I don't trust it to stay open, and Berke isn't around to kill it early, which leaves me a still trapped in the home system.

Well, trapped at least as far as known space goes: no reason I can't go poking around in our neighboring wormholes, now that the mining has slowed down. Still, it's late by the time I realize I have other options, so I leave it for the next day.

---

Conveniently, the next day is somewhat free of other obligations, and I start it off with some early morning scanning, which leads me to a class 2 system with a plethora of connections to other systems. An hour of scanning later, and I'm amassed a long list of bookmarks to gas clouds and connections to Class 1, Class 4, high sec empire, and class 3 space (that last one already old and dying).

A bit more exploration reveals that the class 4 wormhole (with a persistent connection to class 1 wormhole space) is completely unoccupied; unbelievably, there is no tower evident, and I decide to capitalize on this good fortune by contacting a wormhole broker I've used in the past. Lucius Taggart of Taggart Transdimensional gets a quick evemail from me, and posts a notice on my behalf.

All that's left to do (as far as the wormhole sale goes) is wait, which I'm quite bad at. I consider joining the rest of the home system pilots in some gas harvesting, but just as I'm about to hop in my trusty Thorax-class cruiser, the fleet spots a Buzzard-class covert ops ship on d-scan, and everyone scrambles for pointier ships. I don't fancy our luck snagging even a moderately wary cov-ops pilot, and the rest of the household is waking up, so I call it quits for awhile to get some other stuff done.

---

I log back in when I get a message from Taggart about a potential buyer for the empty class four system, but by the time I get in the buyer has logged out for the day. Ahh well -- Tira's agreed to stay hidden in the class four to provide access whenever we need, so there's no rush.

It seems I missed a bit of violence while I was gone; the Walrus fleet mixed it up with a Raven-class battleship. The fight didn't go very well, apparently, and left the fleet down a Falcon and the Raven scot-free, thanks to their judicious use of drones. We need to get folks some more appropriately PvP-fit ships, and maybe a few training sessions for the newer pilots. Something to consider.

In any case, the tussle with the Raven left no one really in the mood for evening mayhem -- it's only me and CB once the sun sets, so we saddle up in gas harvesters and take care of the sites that the Buzzard pilot interrupted in the morning. Once that's done, we use the highsec exit from that same system to sell the gas for a quick 50 million ISK. I take my cut and cobble together a serviceable Scythe-class mining cruiser -- it's no Hulk-class exhumer, but it'll give me something to do when there's nothing else to do, I suppose.

Meanwhile, Bre has logged in and is celebrating a couple complete skill training sessions by grabbing her Vengeance-class assault frigate and flying it out to known space to get it properly fit. I'm a bit concerned about this, since our connection to the class two (and, therefore, to known space) is aging and close to collapse, but Bre has great faith in her ability to find the fittings she needs quickly (or great faith in our ability to scan down a new entrance for her to use tomorrow). I wait on the wormhole to tell her if she need not bother hurrying.

It turns out her faith is well-placed; even stopping in a several far-flung systems to get the best prices (and pick up a few new skill books), she manages to get back into the home system before the connection dies.

Just before; a few minutes after she warps home to our tower, I notice that the wormhole I'd been watching is gone. Given the potential wormhole system sale, the gas mining, and a few new ships parked at the tower, I'd say it served us well.

Life in a Wormhole: Dangerous When Bored #eveonline

It's less than 24 hours since I first heard murmurs about getting a Rorqual for the system, with a number of ideas tossed around about funding the whole thing.

Twenty-four hours is a long time for a bunch of pilots trapped in a single wormhole -- a lot of things can happen, and apparently they have; by the time I log in, Em has a new spreadsheet set up to track "the Rorqual project", and people are mining away, tallying up the value of the ore and adding it to sheet in a slow count toward lofty monetary benchmarks.

It would appear we're doing this, or at least we're seriously considering it. Our corp is lagging behind, so I cast our vote with an enthusiastic email and three hundred fifty million ISK sent over to Em to get the wheels turning -- I'm a shite miner, but I do have cash, and since the Rorqual plan involves repaying all the investors (eventually), I'm more than happy to chip in.

Honestly, I would be anyway: as I said, I'm not much of a miner, but several of our other pilots (CB, Gor, Wil, to name a few) definitely are; They don't mine in wormholes due to all the problems with mining that I've mentioned -- I love the idea of them being able to use more of their character's abilities -- ultimately, a completely 'realized' wormhole should be allowing you to use all aspects of your EvE pilot's abilities (except your official "social" skills, maybe), and this is a step in that direction.

We're still running the home system with the wormholes closed up, so I've little enough to do other than that. The wardec has a few days left; the alliance has lost a hauler in a ridiculous example of poor decision making, but we've popped a couple tech 2 assault frigates, so with all that said, we're 'ahead' for the week, and will easily cost the wardeccing corp more than they cost us.

This is probably the most dangerous part of the wardec: with only a few days left and nothing much happening, this is when someone decides to take a chance and run to a market system. I'm not a patient person, and I've got no mining ship with which to distract myself, so the safest thing I can do is log out for the night to keep myself out of trouble.

As I head back to the tower, the mining continues, and although there's no sound in space, I'd swear I can hear the pilots humming a tune over comms.

Pilot you’re a punk
flyin' cheap junk.
Playin’ in wormholes
gonna go mine some rocks today.
Shootin' Plagioclase
You big disgrace
Kickin’ jetcans all over the place.

We will we will Rorqual
We will we will Rorqual.

Pilot you’re a carebear
don't care
Lookin’ for a way
gonna pay to smash some ore today.
You got dirt on yo’ face
You big disgrace
Screams of boredom make no sound in space.

We will we will Rorqual
We will we will Rorqual.

Pilot you’re an rich man
ore man
Lickin' cracked lips
Gonna make you some ISK today.
Crushing ore in a vice
You're not that Gneiss
Gotta crazed glaze creepin' over your eyes.

We will we will Rorqual
We will we will Rorqual...

(With apologies to Freddy Mercury... and everyone else.)

Life in a Wormhole: Welcome to the Alliance #eveonline

The war declaration I mentioned yesterday came on the last day of our month-long trial period with the Alliance, so while we were prepping for a bit of alone time in wormhole space, we were also going through the minor paperwork that comes with full membership; apparently, we managed to pass muster and got some pretty glowing reviews from the other corps in our wormhole.

As an added plus, Walrus and Cabbage offer to make our 'trial' arrangement permanent, so thankfully we don't have to relocate, either -- we're not 'guests' anymore; just the third 'home' corporation in our system. It feels good. We become full members within an hour of the wardec going active, which I personally find kind of amusing.

Not that the wardec has no effect at all -- it does hinder us a bit (at least it hinders me), simply because we're keeping our persistent connection to known space closed for the duration. This isn't a problem for the obvious reasons -- if we really needed supplies, all of our corporations have alt characters outside the alliance who can haul stuff in -- the 'problem' is that we're taking this opportunity to do some mining in the home system, hitting the three belts currently available in the system while the chance of outside interruption is low.

This increased security is due to the strange nature of wormholes in general. The way it works is that while any given wormhole system has one or two persistent connections available, they are only potential connections -- they show up on scan, but they don't "activate" until you actually warp a ship out close enough to them to show up on the same tactical overview grid as the wormhole.

Basically, what that means is that until you actually fly close to a wormhole, is has no 'other' side; it's not connected to anything until it needs to be (I smell some database programming efficiencies here). This affords a wormhole dweller a fair amount of security just by leaving their wormhole connections alone; since there's no 'other' side to the wormhole, no one can use your unvisited persistent connections to enter your system -- the only way to get unexpected visitors is if some other system's wormhole connection randomly selects your system as its destination point when it's activated. This is (a) not incredibly common (happens to us every week or so, maybe) and (b) pretty easy to watch for.

So, given all that, and the fact that we are already going to leave our LowSec exit closed, Mining Ops are set up, with the accompanying request to "keep all exits closed unless necessary", which means that our class two connection should be left alone as well, unless you know you have the ability and time to collapse it when you're done.

I don't want to endanger my fellow alliance mates while they shoot rocks, and Berke's not around much this week, so I'm left with few options for the next couple days, twiddling my thumbs while I pondering the fact that I didn't remember to bring a mining ship into the home system.

I'm not the only one mildly displeased by the current situations, though; surprisingly, it's the pilots in the system doing the mining who are looking askance at the whole set up, and the reason is that demon of wormhole mining: refining loss.

Miners in known space don't generally have to deal with this kind of problem; when they mine, they haul the raw ore back to a station and, assuming that their skills are good and their standing with the faction that controls the station is good, they will realize close to 100% return on the refining process. In short, if they mine X amount ore that should, on paper, yield Y amount of minerals, then Y amount is pretty much exactly what they're going to get.

Wormholes don't work that way. There are no stations, and the best refining facility you can set up at your tower yields only a 75% return on the refinement process, which (if you're selling the minerals for profit) is a pretty major cut into your profits and (if you're building stuff) is a pretty damned inefficient way to get the materials you need for manufacture. On top of that, any kind of effort to haul the raw ore out into known space where the refining percentages are better is hampered by the fact that the ore itself is extremely bulky and basically a huge pain in the ass to move out of the wormhole in any useful amount.

And mining is already kind of iffy in terms of profit in the first place: even in high security known space, a pilot with the standing and ability to run level 4 missions will make far more ISK running missions than they will with maxed-out mining skills, unless they're running something like four mining accounts at the same time. Even with the the existence of the rarer, more valuable ores inside wormholes, shooting sleepers is still almost always an exponentially faster and more effective way to make some ISK, even assuming perfect refining, and without that, mining becomes a very, very, very last-resort activity, even for pilots with a long list of perfect industrial skills.

Even carebear wormhole dwellers balk at 'mining op' fleet invitations.


Which is why my fellow pilots are spending their time in solitary talking about a Rorqual.

A what?
A rorqual-class capitol industrial ship is a kind of big-(big-big-)brother to the Orca. It is capable of performing a number of functions (mobile ship hangar and clone bay being of particular interest in known space), but the most valuable function to a group of wormhole miners lies in its ability to compress ore; it doesn't refine it into manufacture-grade minerals, but instead makes them far more portable in their raw state, which lets you accumulate what would otherwise be unmanageable amounts of ore and -- thanks to something like a 140:1 compression ratio -- smash them into a dense package that can be far more easily hauled to known space.

Obviously, this is a great solution to the problem.

There's just a few problems:

• Cost: Between the blue-prints, required training books, and materials, the Rorqual costs several billion ISK to make, and to train up pilots who can us it in the way I've described.


• Mass Limitations: All the minerals that Rorqual manufacture requires have to be acquired from somewhere -- either purchased and hauled in from known space (which goes back to the whole problem with hauling minerals through mass-limted wormholes), or mined and refined in the home system (which runs into the problem with 75% return from the refining array).


• Training time: None of us can pilot a rorqual right now, and ideally at least one member from each of our corps should be able to, so we can all make use of it at any time -- that's a big commitment for a pilot to make, even if they'd be done before the ship is actually completed.


• It's a ship in a bottle. We live in a class two system, which in turn means that any wormholes that leave or enter our system have a certain total mass restriction, and a certain per-jump mass restriction. In short, that means that we can't build or buy a Rorqual out in known space and bring it in, nor can we get such a ship out if we build it inside the hole; if we build it, we have to build it locally, knowing that it can never leave.

In short, it's a hell of a big project, and a hell of a big commitment to make. Given that our little corp only just joined the Alliance a few days ago, the fact that we're even discussing it says something about the great relationship we've already formed with our fellow system-mates.

It's all just talk for now, of course, likely driven by a bit of cabin fever and the fact that every hour spent mining is (thanks to the refining problem) at least 15 minutes worth of completely binned effort, but all the same I take it as a good sign for the future health of our home system.

Life in a Wormhole: WAR (or something like it) #eveonline

I log in a few days after our last big day to find a notification of War Declaration in my mailbox, so my evening plans are put on hold to make proper preparations.

War declarations are something in EvE that never fail to amuse me a little bit, probably because of when and how I've experienced any wardecs during my time in the game.

The basic idea behind the wardec is that war between corporations or alliances in high-security space is illegal, according to the Yulai Convention. In order for one group to declare war on another group, the instigating corp has to pay a fee to bribe CONCORD so that they will leave the aggressors to attack their target without getting mobbed by a bunch of peacekeepers. The bribe lasts for a week, at which point in time it must be paid again to keep going (with, I think, increasing costs every week), or allowed to lapse, at which point in time the pencil pushers at CONCORD finally notice the shenanigans and call a halt to the whole illegal mess.

It makes me smile, because the process has a very heavy EvE flavor to it. I know the folks that suffer from (or instigate) a lot of these wardecs are aware of more than a few deep flaws in the system, but that's pretty far outside my arena of regular activity.

Which brings me to the reason that I've always found wardecs personally amusing. The whole point of the things is to allow you to attack someone you otherwise would not be able to attack, while in highsec space... and I've never been in highsec when I've been wardecced. I remember two wardecs while living in Curse (to which the corp responded "we're right here, come get us!" -- it was a very quiet week) and now while in Wormhole space which (I believe I've mentioned) is a lawless frontier wilderness.

When you can safely assume that everyone is trying to kill you, it doesn't matter that much if a particular group is paying an extra special fee bribe to do so.

So why worry?
Well, as I understand it, the group in the process of deccing us specializes in ganking inattentive haulers as they move in and out of (and between) market systems, and they're associated with a wormhole alliance that doesn't much care for ours, so it would seem that their goal is to get some easy kills and screw with our lines of supply. This affects the whole alliance as well -- not just the three corps in our system -- which at this point numbers something like 20 inhabited wormholes. That's a fair amount of logistics.

The war goes into affect 24 hours after the fees bribes have been paid, which gives me about 22 hours to get ready from the point where I get this notification, and pretty much everyone else in our home system is doing the same stuff: scan down the exits, get some hauler ships out into highsec, grab whatever tower fuels we're a skosh low on (in our case, there aren't many), get any lingering ship/drone reparis done, update the Planetary Interaction colonies to make sure the tower fuel we can make will be entirely sufficient, double check everything...

And then wire the doors shut and just ignore known space for awhile.

If these corporations want to come and find us in our home systems, they are welcome to: this is our home territory, where we understand the rules and idiosyncrasies, and where we fully expect trouble. To try to function around a high-sec 'griefer' wardec corp in their home arena -- where they are the ones who know all the little tricks and exploits and can turn them to their advantage -- is pretty much the height of foolishness and (despite evidence to the contrary) we try fairly hard to avoid being foolish.

So, 20 hours later, we have closed up the wormhole, taken stock of the activities with which we can amuse ourselves for a week (quite a few gravimetric signatures indicating mineable asteroid fields), and settled in.

It's only then that realize I never brought in any mining vessels. My time-killing options just got a *lot* more limited.

Life in a Wormhole: Day-tripping #eveonline

A few days ago in the comments, Ko asked:

Question, when day tripping, at what point do you say “thanks but no thanks” to a hole? It seems that most holes spawning into High Sec space are occupied, regardless of how many sites left. They are positively littered with POSes and more often than not, ships.

I’ve been probing down with cov-ops, peeking inside and running a quick passive and d-scan. If ships are present I’ll pull out the probes. I then run back to high sec for the Drake if things look nice. I’ve been lucky so far, but after a close call a few days ago (got tackled by an assault frig with his friends in-bound.) I’m wondering what I can do to increase my security.

I feel like I’m being stretched 5 ways from Friday trying to keep an eye on the d-scan while running sites and keeping myself aligned to a celestial or safe spot, and I’m at loathe to run a cloak on the Drake since I’ve already got a probe launcher and salvager.

Really, really good question I'm probably going to answer poorly.

At what point do you say “thanks but no thanks” to a hole?

The short answer: "If there's any kind of activity."

That doesn't mean "if you see Towers", or "if you see ships". It means you see ships, and there's pilots in them, especially if they're doing stuff. (Really, the only way to tell if there's pilots in them is if you can tell they're moving around, or by getting on grid with them, which means finding their tower and looking at them. If the overview shows you a Drake in one column, but a player name in the other column, it's piloted. If it says the ship type in both columns, it's just floating there.)

The long answer: You should cancel your original plans of shooting sleepers if you see online pilots in system, for sure, although it's possible that you can make new plans that involve doing pointy things to the pilots. By yourself, you won't be able to do much, but mugging a lax miner or a badger out collecting planet goo is a fun change of pace, and maybe you'll scare him into logging off so you can shoot sleepers in peace. If you have a couple friends online, you might even be able to lure a guy into attacking you and ambushing him.

It seems that most holes spawning into High Sec space are occupied, regardless of how many sites left. They are positively littered with POSes and more often than not, ships.

I would say that at least 9 of every 10 wormholes I encounter are occupied to some degree, yes. Keep in mind I'm talking mostly about Class 2 and Class 1 systems, but given that Class 2s are the most numerous type, this is indicative.

With that said, "occupied" isn't the same thing as "active". A few minutes of poking around when you get into a system will tell you a lot about what's really going on there. If you do a passive scan (using your onboard scanner), do you see a lot of anomalies? If so, these guys either aren't terribly active, or they just aren't there for the Sleepers (they're doing gas reactions, or making tech3 cruisers or something).

You can also tell by the modules they have on their towers. Are there a lot of silos and coupling arrays? Then they're doing some kind of industry. Online ship assemblies (or ammo or drones or whatever)? Building stuff. Is it nothing but guns and a few hangars? They shoot stuff.

And as I said, just because you see a lot of ships doesn't mean anyone's online. Lots of people are very sloppy and just leave their stuff floating inside the tower shields. The only way to tell for sure is to get on-grid with the tower and look, and that means finding the tower first. More on that in a bit.

I’m wondering what I can do to increase my security.

Okay, so here's me, coming into a system for the first time. I'm not day-tripping, but aside from that, nothing is really different, nor should it be.

I'm outside the wormhole, cloaked. I bookmark it. I have the scanning window up, and I have the in-game browser open and minimized. The homepage of my browser is set to wormnav.com.

I approach the wormhole and jump.

I am on the other side. I have less than a minute before my the 'jump cloak' drops. I check my overview (which is currently set for basic PvP and tower-hunting) and hit both my ship's passive scanner and d-scan. I open the browser window and tell wormnav to update to my current position (something it can only do if it's open in your in-game browser).

Bookmark this side of the wormhole.

I now have data to analyze. Assuming no one is sitting immediately on the wormhole, I align to convenient celestial and immediately cloak. Maybe I jump somewhere to sit at a safe spot, or maybe I keep flying off in random directions while cloaked. Up to you. Time to analyze the data I have.

1. Passive scan: Least-important, but fastest to analyze. Are there anomalies here? "Few or none." means this system is actively occupied, or has very hungry visitors. "A half-dozen or so" means they occupants aren't very active, or they're very inactive and someone cleaned them out a few days ago. "Many" means they're inactive and haven't been visited recently. "OMG it's full of stars" means no one lives here. Jackpot.

2. D-scan. Any ships or towers? If ships AND towers, they're probably together. If ships and no towers, uncheck 'use my overview settings' and re-d-scan, looking for wrecks. If you see wrecks and ships, they're shooting sleepers. No wrecks might mean mining, gas harvesting, Planetary Interaction, space rugby, or ... hell, lots of stuff. If Tower and no ship, probably everyone's asleep. Make sure your overview is set to also show you force fields; if you see a tower but no forcefield, it's abandoned.

If you see no ships or towers, open your system map and see which planets with moons are more than 14AU from you. You will need to warp to those planets (NOT THE MOONS) and refresh d-scan in that area until you have d-scanned the whole system.

Do that even if you initially find a tower. There may be more.

Rule 0: there is a tower. There is always a tower.

3. Wormnav. This page will tell you lots of things about the system, but mostly you're looking for the readouts in the middle that tell you about recent jump activity (random, far-flung spikes indicates visitors-only; lots of consistent jumping means occupants that are active), NPC shooting in the last week or so (indicates activity), and PvP ship and POD kills.

If you see ship and pod kills, reconsider sticking around, unless you're looking for a fight.

If you see ship and pod kills, go to the bottom of wormnav and open up the battleclinic link for more details. Maybe it's the locals who get shot up all the time; that's not bad news.

If you see very little activity, then things are looking pretty good for you.

Let's have a look at that tower. (Or those towers.)

Directional scan is called that for a reason. At this point, it's time to figure out where the towers are and go look at them. Change the 'angle' of your d-scan down to about 15 degrees and swing your camera around so that a planetary cluster within d-scan range is dead-center, then scan.

Do you see the tower on the results? If yes, then the tower is at one of those planet's moons. Warp to that planet at some random distance (not 0 and not 100). If no, repeat this with each planet until you get a 'yes'.

Once in orbit around the planet, swing your camera around to point at each of the planet's moons, d-scanning each, until you figure out which moon is concurrent with the tower. That's your moon.

Make sure your d-scan is showing you EVERYTHING, then scan again, looking for a lot of secure containers, abandoned drones, or corpses, concurrent with mobile warp disruptor bubbles. Such things equal traps meant to snag and decloak you. Be wary.

Warp to the moon and check out the tower. See if the ships are piloted. "Show info" on the tower, check out the owning corp and alliance, and see what their corp info says. Look up the corp and alliance on the battleclinic kill boards. Google them. See if they have a website. Do your research.

Repeat this for every tower where you see ships.

Is everyone logged out? Are you alone?

Good.

Now.

Finally.

You may deploy scanning probes.

Wormnav will tell you how many wormholes there should be in the system. Use your scanning probes and verify there aren't more than that, but don't visit them if you have the right number and want to keep the system quiet.

So: Are we cool? All things are right in the world?

Now you can go get your Drake. Hopefully, all of this hasn't taken more than an hour or so. If you're lucky, or you get good at it, it'll be about 20 minutes, top to bottom. (Yes, it takes a tedious amount of time. I've said as much. C'est la EvE.)

What if there isn't a tower?

There is always a tower.

If you really think there isn't, drop a single combat scanner probe, set it to 64 au, and scan the whole system.

If you don't get any hits but you, congratulations: You either just found your new home, or are about to make about 300 million isk or more from selling the system's location.

I feel like I’m being stretched 5 ways from Friday trying to keep an eye on the d-scan while running sites and keeping myself aligned to a celestial or safe spot.

You're doing it right, mostly. Solo, daytripping into a wormhole, you need to land on the site, align to a celestial, keep moving, and be ready to warp away to that celestial the moment you see anything weird on d-scan (which window should simply never be closed, and which you should be hitting every 10 to 15 seconds, at minimum.

Don't salvage on that Drake, though; not while you're solo and fighting (if you have friends with you, one of them can salvage as they fight, if they're very good at it, but don't expect them to watch d-scan). Bookmark a wreck as you keep moving and killing. When everything's dead, warp to another site and keep going, or warp away somewhere and wait, or warp home for a salvaging ship. In 20 minutes or less, the site will despawn. (You'll know it has if you try to warp to the wreck and DO NOT see the little pop-up message.) Don't salvage until it's despawned. Preferably, do it in a dedicated salvaging boat, because it's better to do it faster and get out, and frankly one salvager on a properly tanked Drake will take WAY too long.

The reason you wait for the despawn is because anyone in the world can find you with no probes in an active anomaly (they need only d-scan and the passive scanner), but in a despawned anomaly, they must use probes, and that gives you a layer of protection and a few more seconds of warning.

And if you have someone following behind you to salvage, try not to do what these guys did.

Hope that helps. More good questions and bad answers in the comments...