Ecliptic Rift

I had worked up some substantial frustration after looking at component prices to build the new command ship blueprint my labs had produced. Seriously, when the cost of the Fernite Carbide Composite Armor Plates alone will nearly equal the market price of the entire Sleipnir, something has gone wrong. We had managed to drive the materials budget down fairly low in our blueprint research, but I can’t really skimp that much or the whole thing will just vent into space. I understand that the moon materials market has started to fluctuate wildly, partly due to speculation and partly due to changes in the supply coming out from nullsec.

So, after I snapped at a few research assistants for petty little things that not only didn’t matter but really didn’t even have anything to do with them, one of my senior advisors pulled me aside and quietly suggested that maybe I needed a vacation. I didn’t really want to do it, but he convinced me after a bit. I poked around my inventory and realized I had an exploration Drake and a jump clone out in Khanid. I hate leaving assets all over the cluster and figured this seemed like a good time just to fly it back to base.

One of the local station staff really irritated me, though, with her condescending manner and preachiness. After the third snide, under-the-breath remark about uppity heathens with no soul, I let myself accidentally stumble into her, then started yelling about an assault. My security staff ensured she’ll be off work for the next week or two.

All this really just explains why I decided to take the scenic route from Ashi to Oursulaert, and look for whatever Blood Raider cosmic anomalies I could find along the way. That means the trip will probably take a few days, but given my temper, that might be safest. Nobody will miss a few slaving vampire wannabes, right?

In the next system over, I found a Blood Raider refuge. They have drugs, gambling, female prostitutes… some set of believers! The image above shows what I found. As soon as my Drake showed up on their scanners, they launched their frigate guards, but a few well-placed Scourge Heavy Missiles took care of those Corpii types. The gas silos didn’t succumb so easily, so I let loose some volleys on their bunkers and warped out.

Once I reached the following system, I found some burrow of theirs. Same result, though this had less in the way of built-up infrastructure. I think they used it for mining and production, more than anything else. See below.

Ring around the weirdos... lots of veldspar

Storage silos and bunker

If you look, you can see the other one in the background

I thought that would do it for this run, and I’d just dock up and sleep in my quarters on the ship. But in the last system I checked, I found another stinking Blood Raider burrow. This time, they had a lot more production infrastructure, including a shipyard. The nearby junkyard full of wrecks gave me the creeps, and I don’t mind slamming a few missiles up their tailpipes or showing them the business end of my Hobgoblin IIs.

Shipyard in a burrow

The fate of the survivors in those wrecks doesn't bear thinking about...

Colonies depend on towers

For a long time, I’ve dreamed of a world without centralized power structures. A world where people work together in an effort to build something new, with their efforts rewarded with freedom and liberty.

My dream just took another step on the road to reality with the establishment of a starbase for the Back Alley Trading Company in a wormhole system.

Granted, it took a bit to find our foothold. We’d spent several days scouting every wormhole we could find, looking for a place that met our criteria. One of my scouts found a promising connection in the Khanid region, but a couple of other pod pilots had gotten there already for a quick raid. I vectored in another scout and raced across 17 jumps to reach it myself in my Drake.

A Maller and Myrmidon evidently paid no attention while my scouts stalked them, so when I arrived, I had a scout give me a warp-in point. I landed on the grid and started spewing missiles from range. Of course, we didn’t have any warp disruption on them from that range and didn’t want to use covops frigates for that purpose, so they fled back to K-space. In reality, while I wouldn’t have minded a kill or two, this accomplished our primary tactical goal of clearing the system. I had little intention of actually destroying their ships (though I would have done so if they’d chosen to engage).

When I chased them back into Ashi, the wormhole closed behind me, with my scouts still inside. Perfect.

We hurriedly arranged logistics while they probed out a new entrance and set up our starbase. We’ve already cleared out quite a bit of Sleeper activity, plus some gas clouds. I left pod for a while and came back to find that my associates had lost a couple of barges due to not watching their directional scanners or staying aligned. As I told them, I don’t mind losses, but I do mind losses from which they learn no lessons. I think they got the point… actually, I know they got the point.

A few other lessons I learned: in tower management, you can choose which roles can perform various tasks on specific structures in the base. The settings for Ship Management Arrays and Corporate Management Arrays have selections for Starbase Fuel Technician, Config Starbase Equipment, Corporation, and Alliance. I set those to Corporation and then created a title, “W-space Pilot”, for the folks out there that gave them access to the proper hangars and such. This lets everyone do their jobs without having the ability to take the whole thing offline themselves. Security matters, and I’ve learned paranoia in my years as a podder. (Fortunately, I had a consultant come in and help us with the organization, so we have the needed bureaucracy already in place to grow quite a bit.)

Also, if you want your tower to shoot at neutrals, you need to set the defense AI to target anyone below 0.1, not the default 0.0. Obvious in hindsight but I just did too many things at once.

Later we’ll move to a system with a higher rating, but for now, this system gives us a great opportunity to work out the kinks in our operation and get some of the newer pilots accustomed to flying in space without CONCORD’s paternalistic protection.