“Dig In. Spread Out. Get Comfortable!”
I always thought “Because We’re Here to Stay” should be added to the end, but in truth, we’re only here to stay until we get bored or run out of resources.
I’m using dscan trying to get a good idea of everyone’s general location and weight as I decide which route I want to take to low sec, gotta pick up some goodies for the corp including a ship or two, ammo and PI materials of course. This reconnaissance is for future running, I’m just looking today for a possible trip tomorrow or later. Once I’ve pulled a small squad together, we’ll at least already have our routes bookmarked for easy survival. You won’t catch it, I change the route every trip. I paid for that lesson too. They ain’t free.
Oh, what’s this, private chat? No. Someone in system just added me to their corp chat! And then in their own corp comms they post:
[13:36:03] REDACTED (cappies name) >REDACTED (my name linked): freunde von Euch??
Hmm, I think he’s asking me if I’m friendly but I drop it into the translator to make sure and no that’s not what he’s asking me. As a matter of fact he’s not even talking to me, even though he is. It translates out to “Friends of you??”
Just to screw with him, I answered, “Yes, I’m a friend of mine.”
I’m thinking that was meant for his corp in corp window with a link to my name, but somehow accidentally added me to the channel, which as you can imagine took them a minute to figure out.
I had figured it out completely when an English speaking pilot came on to comms and CAP yelled “YOU IDIOT - YOU’RE DRUNK!” I was swiftly kicked out of the channel at that point. Bless their heart.
When you sit out in the vast nothingness of space day in and day out it takes a toll, if it weren’t for meditation and a good diet, I’d lose it eventually. We’re not only doing this job day in and day out and looking forward to retiring and leaving for the great beyond. No, we live forever. Sometimes over time you forget that you can do something else.
A good way to remember how to stay fresh in this game is to know that soft and flexible is life, hard and stiff is death. Stay flexible and you will stay alive but become stiff and unwavering and face the biomasser. Eventually you will throw yourself in there if you can’t be a little softer in your approach.
In addition I’ve set saved spots all over the system for any type of situation, I believe if I get caught with my pants down and need a system to hem a few players into this would be the one, right next door and full of dead end.
Once I've decided to crank up the engines and start aligning towards home, I take a little peek at the mapping system, Dotlan, just to see how my homeward gate has been holding up this morning with all the traffic, more than I normally see in my system.
Where I live there isn't much in and out traffic like you would expect with a normal system in between two or more others. We are a dead end in the trail, not a dead end system as we have two ways in and out, but cut off from the main drag where everyone crosses to get here or there. You don’t come this way, and I like that a lot.
I do notice that just in the past hour - 6 ships have been destroyed and a few pods as well. There’s a camp somewhere. I have a mark set at the opposite gate so I head there to see if that’s where they are camping and of course it’s not. That would be WAY too easy seeing as I have bookmarks here and not at my home gate yet.
I sigh, realizing the inevitable and warp back to my ‘safe’ from which I start on impulse power only, slow boating towards a better angle of descent for my home star gate.
I will have to do this for a minute or 15, and let me tell you something, I am not a patient person and never have been, it cost me at least 2 Viators to change my ways, but today I’m happy and healthy for learning a little patience. It’s paid off in spades.
My goal at the moment is to evaluate using my eyes on the U.I. versus my alignment as it shows in the map panels to align myself to the gate outside of where the normal placement of bubbles will not affect me. Basically these bubbles are all aligned to major traffic routes in system, the idea is to get off the beaten path and approach the gate from a random ‘not aligned to other entities’ trajectory facing the gate, get it?
Well, like I said, I’m impatient, and as always I’ll probably pay for it with my ship, but I've slow boated all I can stand, which is a fairly good amount by the way. I appear to be out of the pathway of anything remotely important or traffic generating. I’m going to go for it.
Pause! Here is where I should have reset my 'safe' but didn't.
I set my warp in to show up 100 km’s off the gate, you know, the way we all do, from there I should be able to impulse out and get a close spy-worthy warp in to the gate for next time. I hit warp and finally arrive… ...And that’s when the bubble kicks in.
There’s bubbles everywhere, three of them right above me and the closest one, i kid you not, licking at the back fender of my Viator.
What? I only twitched briefly, I've been caught before and I quickly learned that the more of a whiny putz you appear to be in moments of stress caused by bullies that insta-lock you at a gate the more likely you will become dead and get a free trip back to wherever the hell it was the last time you were podded for essentially twitching again.
I watch patiently, very patiently. I am approximately 1 km from the warp bubble and I have exactly 12 ships orbiting above me, slowly circling the bubbles. Vulture space. I've warped in from off kilter, coming in from a weird angle I realize my guess was correct, however, exactly correct - I wish I would have warped in about 50 km further away from the action.
I have to admit though I am thoroughly excited that I didn't get seen by these guys the second I dropped out of warp. I’m literally sitting less than 5 km from the nearest of them as they navigate about in a haphazard fashion; hoping maybe to nick a corner of my cloak and expose me to the sharks. Well, I mean, if they did it would be inadvertently, they really have no idea I’m watching them.
Now that I've seen where everyone is, I slowly spin around and pick a direction to putter away in. They have three bubbles setup to catch the cappies unaware from three different routes and that’s about all you need in this small system.
These gate camps cover the majority, and you may think there is no way out, but a moment of silence is always a good tool to help determine what your next move should be only of course if you are not in immediate danger or instantly under attack. I got lucky and hit nothing as I warped in, I had skillfully picked a direction that only scraped their trap. With a little bit more patience when slow boating earlier, I would have completely avoided it and laughed as I swooshed by them to jump through.
Now, here’s an intelligence moment, as we are here, right next to the trap that is set daily by an alliance that lives next door in a system that sees way more traffic than we are used to. These guys see literally hundreds of ships cross through their trap on a daily basis. They have to be a little blind because of it, even if it’s only 5% due to boredom (or drunkenness, lol).
I bookmark EXACTLY where I warped in, this is not a bookmark I ever plan on using as it is approximately less than a km to the edge of the bubble. However, this bookmark gives me a really good idea of how they typically set up their daily operations. This is great Intel to have, inherently people are lazy and I imagine that there isn't much difference from one day to the next on how these guys set up their trap, they have three main targets and anything above and beyond requires too much effort to corral together.
From this BM I warp back out to my safe (which with foresight, I realize should have been reset earlier when slow boating) and then back in again at 100 km of the original at the gate and from here I pick the angle I want to approach from. This eventually, if done right, will reset your safe (if you haven't already done it) as well because you will need to realign that safe with this position in order to cleanly pass by these guys on a regular basis. By the way, gate campers hate that and will eventually, because of the boredom, sit there and figure out your secrets. It doesn't’ take long because all they have to do is see which way you go one time too many and you are toast my friend.
I have done the absolute minimum today with this bookmark, I've made it safe for me to come through without getting caught in the jumble of destruction, which is why of course it hasn't graduated from my personal bookmarks to the corporate bookmark list. That would be very irresponsible, especially because you want your corp to use the corp bookmarks with no fear. Taint that and you screw up a valid place to store locations that you depend on.
So I warp home, but you know that tomorrow or later today when I get free time and it’s nagging at me from the back of my mind, I’ll head back to next door and expand on those safes and bookmarks. I like 3 of each if it’s somewhere I pass through daily. Mix it up and stop getting caught. Take a different route everywhere you go if you normally travel in a predictable manner. Predictability honestly is the best way to get your ass podded back to the stone age every time.
Stay flexible! It’s in your best interests.
