This is a quick bit of story time while I finish up and edit some thoughts on my experiences with the player community, and a splurge on the CSM thing.
It is a story about rolling a wormhole - many 'funny' stories involving horrible fits in w-space start off with "So I was trying to roll this wormhole..."
For those who do not live in w-space, wormholes are the connections we use to get from system to system. They offer a dynamic environment and an ever-changing map of how to get from one place to another, and that happens because each intra system connection is only open for a limited duration. Each wormhole expires after a set length of time, or after a given number of ships have jumped through it.
Since it can only handle a limited number of ships, it is also possible to force a hole to close early by making extra jumps back and forth. As a wormhole gets close to the timer limit, it enters the 'end of natural life' stage (EoNL) - meaning it will close at some point in the next four hours. A wormhole that takes a significant amount of mass through it becomes mass reduced (stage 2, at 50% capacity remaining) and critical/on the verge of collapse (stage 3, at 10% or less capacity remaining).
I spell this out because, as I logged into our C5 to begin my operations for the day, I found that our static wormhole was both EoNL and at stage three mass. A quick scan of the other signatures revealed that the static was the only current hole in our system, but it was rather unusable for my purposes - I didn't want to be worrying about the hole closing behind me as I scanned down the chain, but with the mass on the hole that low already it made closing the hole difficult. At stage 3, the hole could take at most 200,000,000 kg before closing - an orca, the usual hole-roller, weighed 250,000,000 kg. Most battleships clock in at around 100,000,000 kg, but if someone else had been using the hole there was a good chance it had less that much left, so I wasn't about to jump one of those out either. The next step down, battle cruisers, range much lighter - usually around 15,000,000 kg or so, so if I wanted to use one of those to pop the hole it might take several jumps, increasing the chance that an out jump would lock me out. On the other hand, the hole might have just entered EoNL, and if I wanted to wait it out it might take a full four hours before the old one died and the new one spawned, and like hell was I going to float around in the POS or harvest gas for four hours when I had logged in to explore and hunt.
I began digging around in my hangar to see what I could slap together. I had a 100mn Microwarp Drive; those are very convenient for hole closing, since turning one on added 50,000,000 kg to the mass of your ship - but only while it was running. So I could jump out in something skinny, bloom my mass, and come back in weighing several times what I went out at. A 100mn Afterburner will also have the same effect on your ship's mass, and take 625 power grid - half the space of the MWD, making it much easier to fit on undersized ships. Unfortunately, I didn't have one of those, and a Caracal only has a 630 powergrid. My Stratios could just barely squeeze one on, with a couple fitting mods, but that was still out in a station in high sec at the time (with the only mobile depot I own).
The only ship I had that could fit my 100mn MWD, then, was my Ferox. And to fit the MWD, I had to offline all of the guns. Still... I wasn't going to be shooting anyone, right? Just out the hole, back in, then I could get to the fun of chain-hunting.
So I offlined all but one of my Ferox's blasters, swapped the 10mn MWD for the 100, and stuck a probe launcher in the utility high slot. Just in case. With my awesome new Ferox fit in the can, I warped to the wormhole, pulled my alt's scout heron back in from the other side, and took a moment to contemplate the growling, pulsing wormhole. It had been abused, and looked angry, and as I jumped through I tried thinking skinny thoughts - I had heard that helped.
I landed on the other side. The hole snarled and wubbed in protest behind me, shaking violently... and then instead of stabilizing so I could jump back through, it winked out and closed up.
I floated there, still cloaked from the system jump, and stared at the empty space where the *only* way to get into my home system had just been. Whoops! On a hole that could have had anywhere from 1kg to 199,000,000 kg of mass left on it my Ferox, at a whopping 13,500,000 kg, had finished it off.
I had already made sure that the surrounding area was clear thanks to my scout-alt, so I figured I may as well see how fast this ship could go. I double clicked in a random direction, let the Ferox get up to it's blinding top speed of 175m/s, then kicked on the 100mn MDW. I giggled. I ran out of capacitor before I even hit 2/3rds of my new top speed, in three MWD cycles. As I coasted back to my regular slowboat speed, I offlined the now-useless MWD and dropped scanner probes.
The C4's static was another C4, so I jumped to it and went on it. D-scan was clear; two signatures in system; wormhol.es reported that I was in a C4>3 now, so the other signature was a C3 hole. My probes went out, I scanned it down, and before jumping I onlined a second blaster.
The C3, though, was littered with signatures. Littered with them. D-scan was still clear, although several planets were out of range; I decided I'd rather play safe than warp into d-scan range of someone at a POS, so I picked a planet I could see was uninhabited and warped to a random moon there. Still nothing on d-scan, so I set a course in a random direction, dropped probes, and started scanning.
A half dozen gas sites, a few data, and a relic site were all ignored, and two more guns came online before I finally found a wormhole other than the one I came in through. I warped to it, and it was the C3's static C2.
I jumped through, d-scanned, and spotted a POS. There were no ships, though, and I was in a C2 with a high sec exit; I warped around and made a couple of safe spots, then started scanning.
This C2 was full of other holes. The first hole I scanned (after filtering out the one I came in through) was a K162 from Dangerous Unknown Space. Nope. The second wormhole I found was a K162 from Unknown space. Nope. The third K162 I landed on was OMG Cheetah Buzzard Tengu, NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. The cheetah vanished, either back through their hole or into its cloak, and the buzzard warped off. I only had four of my seven blasters online, and Tengus are known for having pretty hefty tanks; I might have tested the Tengu's shields if I had a full rack, but as it was I immediately began aligning to one of my safe spots.
The tengu locked me up and fired missiles; I obliged it by returning fire with just over half of my guns. It scratched my shields without doing too much damage, and I was in warp before the third volley hit me.
And I still hadn't found the HS static.
I began bouncing back and forth between the three safe spots I had made in the system, watching their combat probes hop around behind me through the system. I wanted to spend the least amount of time possible sitting in one spot, so I only kept scanning in between warps; this was a huge system, and I had a couple of 40-ish AU jumps in my route.
I got three more wormholes to 100%, and landed at the first one 100km from... the high sec static and the buzzard. It was alright, though, I could warp to a spot then back to the hole at 0, and as long as they didn't have a bubble I'd be fine. For giggles, I warped to the next hole down the list on my scanner... and it was a K162 from high sec.
I had been saved! Praise Bob! \o/
I jumped out into high sec, docked up and onlined the rest of my guns (in case they chased me down in high sec, right? Habits.) then started making my way to Dodixie.
For giggles, I EFT'd my 100mn Ferox. It does 80 DPS from the one blaster and 80 drone DPS, which is actually a bit higher than the DPS from the first drake I ever brought into w-space. o.o It also has a capacitor life of 30 seconds (which I had observed). The top speed (which you would never reach without a cap booster) is 2,800 m/s (4,000 m/s overheated), and it has a stunning align time of 39.6 seconds. 81 DPS tank and 54k EHP.
o7
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