Abyssal Exploration Logs

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

The following 2 logs are being posted a few days late, I didn’t actually think to disseminate them when I first wrote them. But I figure they may be interesting to someone, and might lead me to some more ideas of what to try next.

Day 1

Got a wild hair up my ass to go exploring the abyss, don’t know what it is. Maybe the challenge, or maybe its because so little is known about it yet.
Set out with the ambitious, and possibly foolish goal of trying to map abyssal space, at least in-so much as it can be mapped. Trying to figure out if the filaments we use drop us off at more or less random incursion points, or if, as I suspect, the collective is guiding our entry points and travel through their space.
The first day of expeditions did not start out terribly well, I had a spare Gila laying around from a previous deployment, which I retrofitted with some equipment I had laying around, saw some initial success, managing about 30 dives total. Never terribly deep, sticking to calm and agitated areas while I got my bearings.
However near the end, not sure if it was exhaustion, or ignorance I ended up getting caught by a particularly nasty combination of triglavian ships, and couldn’t quite hold out long enough to finish them off.
I did have some minor successes though, I was able to collect roughly 100 triglavian data caches, the datastreams they contained where interesting, but not anything new or groundbreaking.
I also determined that mapping the systems is likely going to be harder than I first anticipated, with a little bit of brute force I was able to get my nav system to remain connected for a second or two which was able to get me a little telemetry. Enough to confirm that there seems to be 5 regions, and 8 constellations in the region I was in. However, again this seems to be information that was already available. And without being able to identify what system I am currently in, it is of limited use.
With the loss of my ship, I need to reconsider my approach, clearly just throwing myself blindly at this is not going to work. Will sleep on it and get back to it in the morning.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 2

I think I may be developing a problem, and not just because of the crash. What started out as fascination and curiosity seems to be quickly turning into an obsession. Over the past 12 hours I have made roughly 120 expeditions into the abyss, and the replacement Gila I had initially budgeted half a bil for, has now overshot its budget by an additional billion isk, and needed to have components shipped in from Jita on a rush order.
Have expanded my trips to include fierce and raging classes although I am steering clear of the dark matter areas for the time being since my ship is not well set up for those.
Not much progress was made in actually learning anything, I attempted to salvage some of the triglavian structures to no success.
I also attempted to ping the concord network to see if any more information could be gleaned from the comms records, but that ended up being a dead end. Clearly there is some way of tracking location within the abyss, since the public ship loss records do list discreet system names. However suiciding cruisers at it doesn’t seem like a good option, and won’t actually show any correlations between systems anyways. Will need to try and figure out a way to glean the system info, in real time. But thats a task for another day.
Besides that, i’ve been slowly becoming more comfortable in the space, have been able to fairly reliably finish with plenty of integrity left on my warp core, which means I will have extra time to run some experiments…. Not a ■■■■■■■ clue what those are gonna be yet though.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 3

Obsession isn’t the right word I don’t think, almost more of a compulsion. I wonder if it has anything to do with those videos the trigs have plastered all over every viewscreen. Maybe some sort of virus or something hidden in this suit i’ve been wearing for the past few months that got activated by it? I’ll need to have the techs take a look at it.

Anyways, today was overall fairly successful, managed to reach the deepest parts of the abyss, and made it through with only one close scrape. Dropped another bil on some more implants to optimize things a bit, and also to make a new loadout I came up with actually work. Its not ideal, but it should allow me to tackle those dark matter areas, at least well enough until I can get a different ship set up to handle them properly.

Spent some more time in the lower parts of the abyss, trying to build a stockpile of better filaments so I can give things a good hard push tomorrow. But that also ment my income for today was pitiful, would have been better off sending the mining crews to hit some damn veldspar or ochre. But i’m sure they appreciate the break, they have been busting ass the past couple months.

Still trying to find a solution to the system ID problem, I’ve heard that eve-scout may have a tool that could do the trick, but, without being a member I don’t have access to it so can’t confirm if it would even work. And I don’t think I have quite the… tempterment. For that organization. If any members are reading this though, I would appreciate it if you could reach out to me and at least let me know if the tool will actually do what I want it to do, because then I might be able to cobble together something that will do the same job.

Found myself getting rather distracted today, the abyss is oddly… peaceful, relaxing in a weird sort of way. Kind of like sparring can be relaxing when you just enter that, well, for lack of a better term, flow state, where everything is both heightened and softened at the same time, and you are acting on pure instinct. Almost like meditation I guess.
Downside to this is that I didn’t end up actually getting much in the way of research or experimentation done.
I did do some very basic testing on those data caches though, it seemed when I first tried unlocking them, that you would often get more telemetry out of them than you put in to unlock them. However I wasn’t certain on this, so today I collected up 100 of them, which required 600 units of telemetry, on opening them though I only ended up with 601 units, so it seems in the long run that they just break even. I did end up with a pile of those data logs though, which is bound to be worth something to someone… eventually… not something i’m going to focus on too much more unless I come up with some new ideas of things to try with them.

Drugs are wearing off now, time to go pass out for a bit then probaby get right back at’er

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 4

Spent most of the day getting checked over by the techs and docs, still waiting on the results of that. Frankly i’m starting to wonder what the hell i’m doing out here, I ain’t no scientist, hell I barely understand half the ■■■■ thats been stuffed into my head through the plugs. But until I get some answers, may as well just keep at it.

All the experiments I tried ended up being pointless, started by trying out a probe launcher Aura helpfully warned me that the drones would probably be destroyed by the abyssal forces… and she was right, second they tried warping to position they popped. Probably shoulda listened, but you never know till you know right.

Next experiment was to try hitting things with an entosis link, see if I could maybe pull some extra data from them or something, but it seems their tech isn’t vulnerable to our tech, at least not in that way. Tried hitting the extractors, the data caches, and the gates with it. Although I somehow never thought to try the towers, don’t expect anything different, but may as well try it some time.

Tried out that dark matter refit, it works well enough but as expected its far from ideal. Probably going to need a different ship entirely if i want to go much further into those ones. But that will have to wait, got a nasty message from my finance manager earlier asking how i’d managed to blow through 2 carriers worth of isk in less than a week. At his advise i’m gonna focus on some of the deeper levels for a bit, try and get isk positive at least before I think about throwing even more money at the problem.

Keep seeing those proving ground gates, and weirdly it seems that might hold some answers as to why i’m out here. I say that, cuz i’ve never been particularly keen about one on one combat, I like my ships big and of the capital variety. But this… Intrigues me… i’ll have to figure something out that will let me hold up to both the threats of the abyss as well as other capsuleers, hopefully without getting another scolding from my accountant.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 5

Are there gods within the Abyss? If so, clearly I have upset them. In order to streamline things a bit, I entrusted one of my more skilled retainers with the task of exploring the calmer areas and attempting to find more filaments for me while I focused on the deeper areas.
Everything was going smoothly until after an hour or so when she contacted me saying that she had entered a pocket without any hostiles at all, but a gate that remained locked. I told her to try and get it open by any means necessary, after about 10 minutes without success I opened a video feed and began a report to concord about it. When she approached the gate itself to get more telemetry the landscape suddenly changed, and she was floating in… nothingness. No structures, no rocks, just the wreck of a retribution and a floating corpse floating in front of her. Seconds later the abyss crushed her.
Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been directly connected to her feed when it happened.

It seem that whatever gods may exist there, did not appreciate me passing off my “duty” on a lackey, and as if to drive the point home, on my very next expedition before the very first gate, I was destroyed by some drifters, a configuration that I had gone up before several times with little difficulty this time absolutely destroyed me.

Hopefully they are satisfied with their pound of flesh, and things will go smoother from here on out. I am immensely curious about that strange area my retainer found, part of me almost wishes it had been me who stumbled into it so I could have checked a few things out.

If there are gods out there, I wonder what relationship the trigs have with them, if any at all. They are obviously a spiritual people of some sort, at least the way they talk about the flow and all that ■■■■ would seem to indicate that. I wonder if its a formal faith like the amarrians have, or something more animistic like in our tribes, or somewhere in between? Really wish i could communicate with them, I have so many questions. Should probably start by learning their writing system, will work on that.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 6-7

Haven’t had the chance to sit down and write one of these in a couple days, or any real reason too. Since there hasn’t been all that much to report on progress wise.

Yesterday I did manage to find the construction room, tried to fight off the ships even long enough to access the cache, but that just wasn’t feasible against that sort of firepower. Barely made it out with my ship intact.

After that happened I had to sit down and re-think my approach, the brute force method I had been using was simple, and worked “well enough” but this isn’t the first time i’ve ran into a situation where its limits showed. So I spent some time theorycrafting and simulating some new concepts, one of which showed promise, and the parts for that refit have been ordered in.

In the meantime though, it seems things have been falling apart a little bit in my absence, the lines at the shipyard where running out of materials. Some of my planetary governors have been reporting work stoppages and strikes, and there was a moon that I needed to supervise the mining of… something my mining director was saying about “we can’t work if you keep stripping critical modules off our ships” or something, I dunno, she was yelling and it kinda turned to noise after a while. On a completely unrelated note, I should probably order in some more adaptives so I don’t need to keep swapping them between fits.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 8

This log is going to be fairly short. And I am putting it up early, since I may not be in a state to write anything come morning.

It’s been just over a week now, and supposedly I have successfully completed over 500 expeditions. Am now comfortable enough in the deepest areas that it almost seems like a waste of time to plumb the shallows.

Overall, not isk positive, yet. Paid off that first ship I lost though. But apparently I have expensive taste when it comes to these ships, speaking of, I have now put together the second refit I spoke of earlier.
Been putting it through its paces today.
The result of those tests are.
Gamma storm: slight increase in efficiency, shaving off roughly 2-3 minutes per expedition. Need to be more careful in flying and picking targets, but that will be true regardless with this ship. I’d say there is a slight edge to the new one.
Firestorm: not yet tested
Exotic: clear time seemed about the same, however I found myself needing to focus MUCH more on staying alive than I did with the older ship. I will need to test it more since the two are so close, but I suspect the older model will win out.
Dark: hahahahahahahaha… no… the older ship would do “better” but I still ain’t doing that ■■■■.
Electrical: holy ■■■■ the new model is a ■■■■■■■ god in these. Clear time was improved by roughly 5 minutes. And even under heavy neuting pressure and full fire from 3 vedmaks and 2 leshaks while stationary, it could have held out for hours. This Is, hands down, the winner out of all the options and ships I currently have.
So much so that I invested a billion in filaments just so I could chain them.

Was a shorter day today though, been invited planetside for drinks with some fellow capsuleers. In the shuttle there as I write this in fact.
Assuming I am not so hungover that I’m likely to die, I do have some more ideas for a couple experiments I’d like to test tomorrow. As well as putting the new one through her paces.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 9 (delayed)

So the lab reports came in. Had to swing by the med wing anyways, due to hangover related difficulties, so I checked in on those. Good news is, suits clean, and aside from a minor case of alcohol poisoning i’ve been given a clean bill of health, physically and mentally, or at least 'as stable as we can expect one of you to be"
Bad news is, this obsession is either one of my own making, or something else undetectable, but I am leaning towards the former.

Stumbled across the shipyard room again, but the ship variant I was flying at the time wasn’t able to break the leshaks, thankfully i’d learned from last time and decided not to over-commit, so was able to slip out easily once it was obvious I was about to break.
I really need to work on a strategy to take on that room, it is a hell of a lot of battleships though.

Rest of the day went fairly uneventfully, that relaxing feeling has been intensifying though, hell I even managed to stop my crash habit since I found it was putting too much of an edge on my enjoyment of being out here. Not sure why, but I got the urge to take a bit of a "spacewalk" as it where, and eject from my ship so I could feel what its like out here with only the thin skin of a pod between me and the abyss. Managed to get quite a nice picture out of it as well. Might have to do this more. Even through the thick shielding of a pod the electrical charge of this area is palpable, like a tingle running all over your skin. Or maybe thats all in my head as well. Either way, it was one hell of an experience. Bonus points for not spontaneously exploding, which I realized after was a very real possibility.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 10-11

Gonna combine these entries because there isn’t enough to make a full one on their own.

Things started out great, very first site of the day was the construction room. Managed to clear it with plenty of time to spare, less than 5 expeditions later I managed to do it again. So i’m now sitting on semiosis conductors for both perun and veles, just need to track down a svarog one now and i’ll have the full set. Also managed to take some rather nice pictures while in there as well. Will try and get more.

This is where things took a turn for the worse however. Encountered a third room, but this time they had a lot of energy warfare, far more than I could take on, and I think on some level I knew I should have ducked out while I could. But riding high from my previous success I tried to take them on anyways. And lost, not only a rather expensive ship, but also an expensive implant set.

That wasn’t the end of the world, i’d pulled enough value from these sites over the past couple weeks to easily pay for a replacement, just means i’m back to neutral instead of being ahead like i’d have preferred.

But then, brand new ship comes in, very first trip, and I forget to load up on ■■■■■■■ drones, lost another right on the heels of the first. THAT loss hurt the wallet, gonna take some work to recover from that. So I think i’m going to take a break for a few hours at least, gonna take at least that long to get the new parts in and the ship replaced anyhow. Maybe rethink my overconfidence and start taking it a bit more carefully for a bit.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

Day 17

not actually sure how I should be dating these, since there was almost a week there where I wasn’t actually able to get much done exploration wise. I figure I’ll probably just go off what the actual length of time is. maybe I should switch to a stellar date system? might help me keep better track of these if nothing else.

anyways, after loosing those two ships back to back, admittedly due to my own stupidity, I had to step away from my project for a while to focus on my industrial interests, moons to mine, ships to build, planets to manage, the daily grind that keeps me living cozy. although during that time I did receive a message, two actually, one from celes, the other from perun. not sure if they where sent to me intentionally, for being in posession of their semiosis conductors, or if they where intended for another recipient and simply intercepted. Either way, the contents of those messages has been well disseminated and discussed in the channel dedicated to that topic so I won’t go on about it here, other than to say I really need to get my hands on a svagor conductor.

I have been spending the past week wondering what avenue of experimentation I could undertake next, my preliminary, and rather foolish ideas led, quite predictably, no-where. I have been somewhat curious what the actual salvage rate of filaments is across the different strengths of abyssal space are though, it feels to me like I’ve been able to salvage the most from the mid tier depths at least numerically, with that ratio going down the shallower, or deeper that I go. I have been buying most of my filaments so self-sustainability of the filaments hasn’t been of major concern, but I have been accumulating a good number of the gentler filaments and have been looking for an excuse to explore them more, this seems as good a reason as any.
on the plus side, while its a rather simple process, its also one that will likely take quite a long time, at least in order to get an adequate sample size.