Catch Me If You Can

My daily routine is to check the map on eve-scout.com to see where the wormholes might lead.  I'm especially looking for links to the areas at the bottom center of the map around the Stain region - that's Sansha space where the most lucrative relic sites are hidden.

So last night when I saw there was a link to Catch - I jumped at the opportunity.  And jumped into my Stiletto interceptor!  The wormhole opened at GE-94X and I immediately found a Sansha relic site in that system.  that seemed like a very good omen.  I scanned it down and started opening the cans.  And, as I was racing through them, an Astero showed up in the system and threw out probes.  Another explorer.  But in a ship that could be dangerous to my little interceptor...

I finished 4 cans (for a measly 400k isk in loot) and left the final two when the Astero's probes had all clustered around the site I was in.  I expected the Astero to arrive at any time.  So I left the last two cans and in local wished the other explorer better luck than I had with the first four.

I headed off to the next system.  I had charted a course to the far end of Catch - the systems near K717-8 had very few jumps in the past hour so I was hoping to find some solitude.  I soon received a convo request from the explorer that I had seen in GE-94X:

Pococurante > Just curious: why did you leave the remains rather than the rubble?

I gave an honest answer, "I just grabbed the close ones.  Is there a difference?"  It turned out there is (Pococurante educated me on this - Thanks!).  The proper order is Ruins - Remains - Rubble to go from the ones most likely to have a large payout to the ones least likely.  That way when something scares me out of the site, I'll know I did my best to maximize the profits.  Pococurante and I chatted a bit about exploration and wished each other well.

I continued on and found Catch to be a very lively place.  Ships and wrecks were everywhere.  One system had 400+ capsuleers.  Many of the gates were littered with a dozen wrecks or more.  I came across a bubble or two.  Plus I found lots of ships of all sizes when I jumped through gates - that definitely gets the blood moving!

I continued my tour congratulating myself on the purchase of a Stiletto interceptor in Thera (at a very stiff markup compared to Jita prices - but now worth every penny).  Interceptors are immune to the effects of warp bubbles.  And they align very fast when equipped like mine - so they are almost uncatchable when traveling gate to gate in null sec.  Hope I didn't just jinx myself by saying that.

On the other hand, interceptors are not ideal for doing relic sites as they don't have bonuses for virus coherence or strength.  But it wasn't too bac - of the 6 or 8 sites I found in the tour of Catch I only failed once and blew up the can (a "ruins" can of course...).  Otherwise the interceptor worked fine.

Some of the relic sites were very lucrative (one can alone contained 65m in loot).  I only did the sites that were in empty systems - so I had to leave one or two untouched when the other occupant didn't move along.  In the end I returned to Thera with about 190m worth of loot in my cargo hold and an evening of excitement to remember.