Shattered Wormhole Backpacking Trip Day 5ish Final day

See that Sabre? Yea I do too, a little too often. I saw that Sabre named cleverly, “Scanner Probe”, just one too many times on my D-scan. The interesting thing is he would appear each time I logged in my Confessor pilot, for two day straight. 

My time in W-space has taught me many lessons, one of them is to notice patterns in player behaviors that I might interact with.  “But Spear, you’re just being paranoid.” My paranoia keeps me alive and keeps others dead. Seeing the same ship, named the same way two days in a row exactly after I log on my character means that guy has me watch listed.

For those of you who may not know what a watch list is or what “watch listing” is. Its where you’re hunting a player and add them as a contact, adding the little check mark to notify you when that player logs in. This is commonly used by player hunters to map a targets play times.

What our Sabre friend did was simply add my character to his watch list on an alt. Each time my character logged in, he would log off his main and jump on his Sabre pilot. The thing is, he was sloppy about it. He didn’t wait or change his ships name each time he logged in. Two Sabres in the hole can be coincidence, two Sabres in the hole named the exact same thing long after all connections have cycled…. Well that’s a pattern.

Sure it could be someone lost, without a cloak, without probes… that just so happens to play at the exact same time as me. Nope. I’m not that mark.

I suspect I picked up a dedicated screen sniper from one of my broad casts. Its not like I made a huge effort to hide my character’s name or location. It could be found when I moused over the planet list when I right click and go to my book marks.

Now my opinions on screen sniping. The one hand I’m happy for any use of intel to murder another player, even outside of game tools. Anything that brings players together for the sake of shots being fired makes me happy. On the other hand, he was so very lazy in hiding his intentions and honestly that can’t be rewarded.

Its hard to describe to someone that hasn’t ever hunted another player. That extreme tense buildup of making all the right choices while the fate of another players’ hard work rests in your fingertips. Knowing that the prey could flee the second you fuck up. That level of commitment needs to be rewarded. Even while I assume the role of prey and you hunter I can respect a good game.

Well Sabre pilot you dun fked up. Work harder next time.

Since the outcome of most pvp engagements is determined before shots are fired. This is how the battle would have gone down.

Sabre pilot would have turned on my twitch stream and waited till the moment I refit for salvagers. Without salvagers loaded I couldn’t fight back. I would have warped onto grid to salvage my wrecks, he would have appeared bubbled and I would  be forced to refit on the spot or die to him. I might have had a chance if I could refit and tanked him, but that’s iffy. Good chance that he wasn’t alone.

I decided to evac all scouts and all loots from the frig hole. Git while the gitten’s good.

Summary:

Total backpacking isk gains: 1,423,000,000

Not a bad total for logging in every few days and running sites for a few hours.(2-3 hours every 2 or 3 days, wasn't keeping track. No clue what my isk per hour was, I just know how much money I have now. )

What I would have done differently:

Instead of using cans to hold my sleeper loot, I should have brought in an alt in a cloaky hauler destroyer. Think a destroyer with all cargo expanders and small cargo rigs. You can get them fairly high, not sure how high but I would have slept better at night knowing my loot wasn’t floating in space waiting for Wingspan to come and fly to it.

I would have brought more crystals, just Aurora and Gleam. I wasn’t sure which crystals to use the first time but Gleam at under 10k in a Wolf Rayte is like crack… Its sooooo good. People on my stream were telling me that pulse lasers with conflag was better, meh, I don’t know enough about lasers to counter it. I just know I was dishing way more damage than I should.

IF I was serious about doing this as a longer lasting PVE thing, I sure as hell wouldn’t blog about it, or stream it. There are just too many snipers out there.

That’s about it, everything else was flawless IMO. The fit was amazing, it buffered quite well when I screwed up the timers, it was flexible enough to swap out stuff fairly easy. Honestly the confessor is amazing in that hole.

For those of you waiting to see my confessor explode, well it happened, in a truly hilarious way.

I had dropped off my loot and I was cruising around in High sec and saw a Covert Research Anom. Oooo I can do that, I warped to it hacked 3 cans, the rats showed up, I flipped into tank mode because I have resistances right?  NOPE.

KAAABoooOOM. 

Living in a C13 for about 2 weeks, running sites without scanning out the chain, doing massive salvaging in a combat ship, totally alone... I lived! Then I out wit a scene sniper and his friends… only to have the 275 million isk confessor explode to this bull shit, I had to laugh. 

This is Bobs way of showing I should have stayed in his bountiful domain.

I have been telling people this for years, high sec is the most dangerous sec in the game. Shit is crazy out there!

Thank you for everyone who read this series, asked questions and is having more fun in wormholes because of it. 

Bob Bless. o7