Our relations with our German neighbors continue to improve from our original neutral baseline. We started off with an agreement of mutual non-aggression, moved onto a shared intelligence channel that has actually proven to be the source of a number of pleasant chats despite the language barrier, and have moved on to a third stage: increased activity in the system on the part of our neighbors.
This may sound like a bad thing, but what it indicates is that the Germans see our presence as a benefit. They are actually active in two different wormholes, and the one they comutually habitate with us is their secondary -- an idle playground for a few neglected alts, apparently.
Or at least that was the case. We're told that a number of their alliance members have been favorably impressed by the benefits of having many eyes in many timezones protecting the system, and have decided to move their mains into our zip code. This move seems to be taking place this weekend, since a second tower is going up and there are quite a few heavy haulers in system, dropping off supplies.
Or is it a second tower? It seems not, because as soon as the new one is up, the second one starts coming down. Although our own tower is (finally) functioning as intended and not blowing up friendly ships, it's possible I don't fully understand the nuances of Player-Owned Structures in EVE, because I simply don't get why you would put up a tower identical to the one you already have up, then take the first one down.
That seems like the sort of question best saved for one of the fluent linguists in their group, and none are on, so I shelve my curiosity and (with few combat sites available in our system at the moment, and our Class 1 system empty as well) touroughly scan the home system to take stock of the mining and gas-harvesting sites we have at our disposal. There's been some talk of a joint mining operation between our two corporations, so I want to make sure we have our options laid out. (Plus I plan to do a bit of mining during the next week.)
The joint mining op won't happen this weekend in any case, because the Germans are doing a lot of moving and set up, so I take the opportunity to set up a few Planetary Interaction "colonies" in our system using automated command centers. All of our active members working on that kind of production should cut the cost of fueling our tower by at least half, per month, which is a pretty major cost and a good one to defray.
I'm set up fairly well by the end of the weekend, and celebrate by shooting some sleepers in the home system with a Gila-class cruiser, which has proven to be a very effective small ship for PvE wormhole operations -- excellent shields and a positively cavernous drone bay give me lots of options to play with.
In fact, I like it so much I decide to get another one. The current wormhole exit to known space dumps us out only a few jumps from a major trading hub, and I happen to have a Gila blueprint wasting away in storage, so with the cash made from that single combat site, I buy all the materials necessary to assemble a ship, plus all the fittings needed to make it fully operational, and I still have a 10 million isk surplus I drop into the corporate account. I take "Monster" out for a shakedown run of a sleepers' Perimeter Hangar, pull in another 20 million in profit for the corp, and call it a weekend; we're off to Orlanda for a week, and it's time to get some packing done.
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