It hit servers yesterday and I’ve gotten to spend some time with it now, in it’s (mostly) finished state. I have an iMac at home so I was able to finally get a premium client running on Tranquility — the graphics are quite beautiful. The first thing I really wanted to try out was the new exploration, I’ve tried it on the test server and couldn’t get it to work for various reasons and now I wanted to find a wormhole. Grabbing a cheap Probe, probe launcher and probes — I headed out into Amarr high sec.
The first thing I did whenever I entered a system was to warp to the first planet and scan 32 AU to see if anything was in the system. With the new changes, scanning no longer takes forever — ten seconds is the base time — this makes finding out if anything is around quick and easy. The first few systems I had nothing, then the next few each had one cosmic signature. The next step I take when I find something is in the system is to drop the range on the probe till I just lose it. Afterwards I pop out two more probes and start setting them up in a rough circle and go about moving them around the first probe till I find the signature again. Once found, I check which probe has found it, shrink the scan range again and move the other two around it till it’s found. This is generally repeated till I can bring up some visual display of the signature’s location — either the red/yellow dots or the red circle. Once a visual is obtained I pop out the fourth probe and set it on top of the other three, getting them all in as close as possible and lowering the scan ranges further till I get an accurate result that I can warp to.
It took a few hours — three and a half to four — to find a wormhole, but I only have the most basic of exploration skills and a cheap T1 exploration frigate. It is completely possible for newbies to find these places, but finding them is the easy part. I had nothing to lose on this character — no implants, a cheap T1 friagte with just a launcher and some probes, so I decided to head into the unknown and see how it was. In one word? Awesome. I took several screenshots of my wormhole adventure — even though it was pretty short lived. The new wormhole systems are 0.0 space, with nothing discovered — no local, no stations, nothing. This particular system did not seem to have any belts in it — the typical place to find rats in known space — instead a quick 32 AU probe throws up all the sleeper spots in system, and there were several spots floating around. A quick note, since there is no local — EDIT: There is a local, but it is delayed, no clue on how long but I was there for a bit and none of the others in the system showed up — you do need to use your directional scanner to pick up any nearby probes or enemies that might be coming after you — it is 0.0 space and you’re not safe, from sleepers or players. Speaking of the sleepers — I warped in on a checkpoint of theirs. (I saw checkpoints and hangars on the map, warp to em directly, no gates or jumps) It took about two hits to destroy my untanked probe ship, they didn’t go after the pod. I wasn’t bothered — I had the wormhole I entered bookmarked — you must do this! — and I just wanted screenshots. At this particular checkpoint there were about 3 frigates, 3-4 cruisers and a few towers — given their strength I’d say a few pilots in cruisers or battlecruisers would probably be needed to take them out. These arn’t your pappy’s NPCs. The checkpoint also had some debris that might’ve been some asteroids, or just giant floating rocks, and a sort of small station like you see in missions — surrounded by some bright cosmic energy or something.
The wormhole system was different from the known space, it seems they have upgraded art for the back drops as well as some cool new effects — I saw what looked like another star in the distance, and it seems the environment had a harmful effect to shields — mine wouldn’t go above a certain, think it was around 75?, percent.
So, that was last night’s adventure — I’ll see about getting some corp group going to really give the sleepers a test sometime soon.
