Flying Home From Placid

The Liberty Squad deployment up to low sec in Placid wrapped up over the weekend.

The stated reason for heading home was that our two primary FCs have been busy with real life, which I am sure is true.  However, I suspect that if we had been been getting the “good fights” we had been hoping for, we wouldn’t be leaving.  Instead, after proving that Snuff and its local allies were set to simply out-escalate us in every fight they chose to take (See fights one, two, and three.) we started looking for other things to do.   But in the shade of those supers not much else grows.  So we packed up and headed back to Delve.

I managed to miss the move ops home.

I am certainly not one to claim “I have a life” or anything, but any Saturday night op comes behind my wife wanting to go out to dinner or something, so I was off doing that while the move op happened.

Late in the evening though I decided to see if I could just slip back home.  I didn’t have much to move, and the online count was under 18K, which makes for a lot of empty space.  I had a Guardian on my main, and a Harpy on my alt that could scout for him.  I undocked and headed back towards Delve.

Harpy occluding the sun

The fastest route home according to DOTLAN was a good 36 jumps.

From Placid back down to Delve

I’ve done longer trips alone through null sec, but that many gates does expose you to some risk, even if most of the trip is through friendly territory.

However, DOTLAN doesn’t know about the reconstituted Eye of Terror, the Ansiblex jump gate route that runs from Pure Blind down to Delve, Period Basis, and the boarder with Catch down in Querious.

The route home using space mass transit

I remain a bit mystified as to why CCP replaced POS jump bridges, which had jump fatigue associated with them… granted, a greatly reduced and and capped jump fatigue compare to what was introduced with the Phoebe update…, with the fatigue free Ansiblex.   I don’t think anybody in null sec was asking for that big of a pass.  We were good with the old jump bridge routine, fatigue and all.  But we use what we’re given.

So rather than 36 gates home, I had to take just five gates through low sec to get on the Eye of Terror system, after which it was just four Ansiblex gates, with a normal gate in between each.

Including that one parked right on the sun in Delve

That cut my total system transitions down to 14, which doesn’t even account for the safety factor.  They Ansiblex jump gates tend to be on grid with the gate they most likely server, so you drop into system on a perch over your next jump.  That and watching intel channels makes such a trip much less dangerous than it might otherwise be.

Of course, there is a cost.  You get charged for each jump.

Fuel tolls

I’ll pay that, even if INIT charges us more.

And the blackout?  Well, if nothing else, it does give you a false sense of security.  I did not see any hostiles on the way home.  Maybe there were some.  Maybe they were cloaked.  Maybe they just were not on grid.  I’ll never now.

The whole thing went smoothly enough that I clone jumped my alt back to Frarie and grabbed my last ship, a Sabre, and ran the route again.

Permaband SKIN online!

I try not to run the same route twice in a row right away, if only because it tends to court danger.  But space seemed empty enough, the intel channels were quiet, and what the hell.  The Sabre got home safely as well.

And so ends another deployment.  I probably won’t bother undocking again for the rest of the month.  CCP has thrown all the skill points at us already and there aren’t any wars or deployments going on, save for Black Ops, and I am not actually a member of Black Ops.  But mostly it will be due to WoW Classic going live later today.  I expect that will keep me busy for a bit.