Exploring, in a State of War...

Had one last night of exploring before hunkering down into logistics mode for an upcoming wardec.

I shifted a stockpile of faction mods to the sinkhole of Eve known as Jita, and was a bit surprised to see the pithum c-type medium shield booster sold in under 2 hours. I'd put it up at about 10 million less than the lowest selling price.

So for now, the Tengu gets docked. It would not be reasonable to risk such an expensive pve ship on a wardec. I revert to my backup exploration ship, a reasonably well rounded drake, the Red Febtober.

As an explorer, I actually still use this ship fairly frequently. I will switch to it nearly every time I get an escalation, and I use it exclusively in lowsec for the final escalations of both Guristas Watch and Gurista's Vigil. It has a strong tank, and can fit a cloak.

I am expecting that this will still be a different bag of beans than just exploring in lowsec, because now there is a group of people who are actively out to find and hunt you down.

All the usual tricks still apply though, so there are a few safeguards an explorer can exploit.

That almost all combat exploration sites use gates is the biggest one. Every time I pass through a gate, I drop a missile in a can as soon as my ship stops. This way, if someone tries to come in cloaked, I have a chance to see them and engage, or GTFO.

I suppose this tactic could be used for missioners as well.

Keep a small supply of Gurista gold and silver tags. For Gurista Vigil, this will allow you to skip the entire first room, which will buy you some necessary time if some other explorer finds the site.

Its too bad that this doesn't work with Guristas Watch, but there is another tactic I've used there.

In the first room of Guristas Watch you are vulnerable as you warp in right ontop of the next gate (so does everyone else who follows you), and you really want to remain at the gate until you can get into the next room. One time, at Gurista's Watch Camp, there was this other drake who figured he'd do the site for me. I said no, and proceeded to shoot at all the officer ships in rapid succession. This caused the entire room's NPC's to spawn all at once. My Tengu's shields could tank it. The drake could not, and it warped out. I suppose in a desperate situation, if a war target jumped in here, you could use the same tactic and hope that the extra npc fire helps.

Next post, Gurista's Watch and Gurista's Vigil in depth (including escalations)