When a POS (Player Owned Station) runs out of fuel, it’s forcefield is deactivated. A forcefield can be filtered for in your overview and dscan-settings. I traditionally have filters where I see a POS, it’s potentially anchored modules, forcefield and of course ships.
Roaming Opportunities
I was in a Worm that had earned it’s 10th kill mark on this roam when I saw some ships on my directional scanner and a POS-tower – but no forcefield. I did not realize that fact at the time. To check if my bookmarks of the different POS-locations in the system were still up to date I warped to one of them. The POS was gone and I deleted the bookmark. The next one I spared because POS-guns, -webs and -warp disruptor batteries showed up on my scanner. You won’t keep your ship for long when you take unnecessary risks. The third POS was new. I had no bookmark for it. If you can tell what planet the POS is on, but not which moon from a further distance, the customs office of the planet is usually a good call to warp to. From there scanning each moon separately with a 5° angle lets you find the “stick” pretty quick.
I warped to the moon at 100 km range and made a bookmark while landing to get an even further warpin-spot. I was quite surprised not to see the typical blue sphere around the POS. There were two characters in the system with me. But nothing had moved for the last five minutes while I was checking and making bookmarks. An Astero and a Tayra were just sitting there, unpiloted.
This smelled like an opportunity for easy ISK! Or was it bait? Unlikely. There are better ways to place bait that I would have been more likely to fall for. Who warps to moons when there are citadels, right?
Funny enough, I had bookmarks for POS-towers in this system, but no actual safe spot – lol. So I quickly warped off to an anomaly to create one.
Reward for Risk
Now would follow the risky part: I would eject from my Worm and go back to the seemingly unattended ships at the tower to board and see if they would be worth the time and effort to fly them home.
With an eye on my dscan results, I initiated warp back to the POS in my pod. Luckily the ships were parked right beside the tower – It’s former owner must have warped them to 0. I boarded the Astero first and opened the fitting-window. The estimated price calculation in the bottom right showed just above 200 million. Nice! The two other characters were still there but nothing on dscan.
I warped back to my safe where I had parked my Worm, ejected and went back to the get the Tayra. I had lots of loot from NPC sites and three MTUs loaded. It had been obviously used to pick up the remains of anomalies. All in all worth an estimated 80 million ISK. Back at my safe spot, I jumped in the Worm to scout the way and bring the trusty vessel home first. In my staging Keepstar, I switched into a shuttle and raced back to the system with the unpiloted ships.
Of course, the Astero had priority – and thanks to the frigate speed and ability to warp cloaked it was only a matter of time to get it safe. Even the heated border zone where Winter Coalition, FI.RE and Legacy forces are constantly skirmishing each other, I could pass without problems.
Encouraged by this success I hopped into an empty Kestrel hull, added some Intertial Stabilizers II to fit onto the Tayra, placed a Mobile Depot into the hold and travelled the route one more time. On the way back I met another, hostile Tayra and was a bit sorry that I wasn’t in my Worm.
Cloaks and Sabres
For the long warp through the last system of Tenerifis, 46DP-O, I took a very yoloesk approach. I wanted to get out of the system quickly and just warped to 0 at the gate, not knowing if it was camped or bubbled. As mentioned earlier. This and the next system was were the constant skirmishings took place.
I made it through the gate but was surely spotted by the ships sitting at the grid, safely tethered on the X.I.X.-Fortizar. Luckily the other side was clear as well. But a few red flagged pilots were in the system, so I warped to a safe spot on the next gate. It was clear.
As I initiated the warp to move on, a hostile Sabre showed up. Too late for me to cancel warp, we both landed within jump range of the gate. RIP me?
Most Interdictor pilots will just bubble in such cases and jump the gate, as the prey (me) is expected to jump the gate as well. The bubble went up and the Sabre jumped. But I didn’t follow him. I just sat there and aligned to the next blue structure, then set my speed manually very slow so I would not get out of jump range of the gate by the time the Sabre would have crashed the gate and came back to my current position.
My plan was to wait until he crashed the gate, then jump and immediately break gate-cloak and cloak with the Prototype Cloaking Device the previous owner of the Tayra had luckily installed. As expected the other was already bubbled. But because of the few seconds, the Sabre pilot would need to get back to the gate and load grid on the other side, he would not be able to see the position I cloak on – hopefully.
And it worked. Despite some nerve-straining seconds when the interdictor pilot came pretty close, but not close enough to decloak me while orbiting the gate. After a while, he lost interest and I was able to continue my way without a scratch.
OP Success.
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the greybill 