Life in a Wormhole: Life on the Freeway #eveonline

There are a lot of upsides to the kind of class two wormhole system we live in. Easy access to known space. Profitable planetary colonies. Readily available high(er)-profit wormhole content the next system over.

And a constant influx of traffic to pick a fight with. This new system of ours is a LOT busier than our old home, which had considerably less-useful exits.

This last feature can sometimes feel a little be less like a pro and more like a con. While random visitors from high-sec can be, at times, hilarious, the fact is that our persistent wormhole connections (to highsec and class four wormhole space) make us the perfect route for travelers from deeper, more dangerous wormhole systems trying to get to known space. As a result, when one of those kinds of holes connect to our class four, they tend to get REALLY active in our hole as they race for highsec to cash in weeks or months of loot and bring needed supplies back in. That's great for random hauler mugging, if they're idiots or unlucky, but depressingly few of those pilots hauling billions of isk worth of loot through our system are that dumb -- they move with stealth, scouts, and bodyguards.

As a result, when we've got traffic, we usually have a lot, and while that means we have something to do, it often isn't what we'd planned on. Bre's rumble with a nemesis, thorax, nighthawk, wolf, and drake marked the end of a day where we were trying to keep our eyes on our normal connection to high-sec and class four wormhole space, plus an additional two random, incoming connections from class four wormhole systems.

Today, those connections are gone, only be replaced with our two persistent connections and two random, incoming connections from high-sec, marking the third day running where we've had plenty of time to do stuff, only to see those plans sidelined while we watch for idiots sneaking into the system. Our only productive activity is hauling planetary products out to market ridiculously close to one of our many high-sec exits.

While out in the world, Ty puts together a passively-tanked Loki strategic cruiser designed to run sites in class four and higher wormholes. This comes following a number of conversations with the ceo of the alliance who used to make a habit of camping our old wormhole, as we've collectively been invited to come up to their home system and shoot some sleepers. I'm approaching this situation with some caution, and keeping our group involvement to a minimum (CB's suggestion -- testing the waters rather than jumping in headfirst, the way we did with the c6 corp), and in any case most of our 'main' pilots are still in the c6 corp itself, proving once again that their annoyance threshold is far higher than mine (obviously, or they'd never have put up with me for as long as they have, I think).

CB has also put together a passively-tanked sleeper shooter in the same vein as my own, though in his case it's a Tempest-class battleship, rather than a ridiculously expensive Loki (I'm not being THAT cautious after all, I guess). After putting it together, he notes that it is the first time he's been able to fit a battleship-class ship "properly" in every way: no corners cut, no modules included only so they can help other modules fit, a strong tech 2 tank, and tech 2 weaponry. There are certainly ways to get to this stage of character skill more quickly, but considering that CB and Ty rarely fly battleships and have both spent a lot of time cross-training the sub-battleship skills for virtually every faction and type of combat, it's not surprising that this milestone has taken as long as it has.

And in any case, it feels good.

CB isn't around in the evening, nor is anyone else (and even if they were, they'd been in another wormhole), so I head back out to known space and refit my Ishtar for a little project I've been toying with (null-sec scanning and exploration in The Syndicate and Cloud Ring regions), then call it an early night.