Zoom

Reading this blog you may come to the conclusion that I am an unstoppable killing machine, closing on my next kill while my ears are still ringing from the previous explosion. I hate to shatter my image, but the fact is I spend hours probing and jumping to be greeted by empty towers. I can easily go two hours without seeing a soul. Sometimes I turn in for the night and sometimes I go just one more hole and manage a kill. Just because I don't see anyone doesn't mean they aren't there though. I think people would be extraordinarily surprised If they were shown at any one time just how many people are in their unkown system at any one time. I’m convinced of this because of the number of people I end up passing by near WHs. For the majority of the travelers in unknown space they uncloak only at holes, which is a bad idea by the way. Much like cockroaches, for everyone I see at a hole I assume there are at least another handful that I never saw in the previous hour. I was on my way out of a network of holes when I passed by this prober. He uncloaked just as I warped off in my prober. He looked down to acknowledge me in local:

Baron VonCratton > zoom

I’m pretty sure he had been tracking me for some of the night, but was caught off guard when I uncloaked my bomber and popped him. I was picking up the loot when my other client screamed at me. I clicked over to see my cov ops with no shield. I had warped to zero on the POS I was watching instead of 70km. I frantically picked a planet and clicked warp. Through sheer luck it was not on the other side of the shields and I warped off… with 31% structure left. I am usually very disciplined when I hunt. I do everything slowly and methodically. I am more than willing to let the target slip away to prevent an unexpected decloaking. For me the stalk is the most important part and a sloppy kill isn’t worth the effort, which is probably why I make a so-so null sec fleet commander. I would rather the target get away and never know that I was there than clumsily decloak and botch the kill.

One thing that I am disciplined about is BMing a 70km safespot off every tower I find. I typically do so by warping in to the moon at 100km and BMing the tower. I warp back to the most common warp from spot and warp into the tower at 70km. I make sure to remove the tower BM and label the safe spot with where it is safe to warp from like “tower safe from inner planets.” These BMs allow me to quickly monitor who is at the towers and see which ships are piloted and which are empty. This time though, I had gotten sloppy, I had only bookmarked the tower assuming I’d remember to warp to 70km. Well I didn’t remember and almost paid the price. The 15 sisters probes the cov ops dropped wouldn’t have come close to replacing my Cheetah. So finishing my thought from above, why is it a bad idea to only uncloak at wormholes? Becasue that is where they put their probes out. That is the same place I leave my bomber when I am probing with GF. Instead immediately warp off and put your probes out someplace random like an empty moon.