In my previous post I gave an account of stumbling across a malfunctioning bot and how I convinced it to explode and give me loot. I took an interest in this particular character and began following the bot into missions, repeatedly attempting to bump it or otherwise cause it to die at the hands of mission rats. The owner had replaced the Raven Navy Issue with an identical fit, and there was significant potential profit in finding a way to cause the bot to fail again.

Long story short, I was never able to achieve my goal. But in the course of staying in one place for a few days I’d noticed something. A large quantity of Raven Navy Issues were running missions here. I started scanning them and it quickly became apparent they were all using the same fit. I started making notes of patterns and became increasingly convinced that they are all owned by one person.

I quietly dropped a wardec on one of the three-member bot corps that I’d seen operating and waited. As the can-shoot time approached, I jumped into system with an active bot, entered his mission space, and idled a gate behind him while my uncloaked scout sat on grid. It couldn’t have been more obvious that I was present. Meanwhile my target was firing missiles at rat after rat. Clearly buttons were being pushed. What I mean to say is, I was clearly pursuing a bot.

I jumped the acceleration gate as soon as the war went live. The bot died quickly, but the pod warped away before I could get a lock. While I was clearing loot and getting out from under quite a bit of NPC-based dps, I noticed on the alt that provided a warp-in that the bot’s pod had returned to the first acceleration gate. It warped away and returned to the home station before I could catch it.

One jump out, another bot in another Raven Navy Issue was running another mission. It all of nine minutes from one kill to the next. Knowing how the bot would react to its death, this time I was waiting for the pod to return to the mission.

Returning to the mission hub, I set about hunting down the last bot. The hub is fairly busy; lots of bots in Ravens and Barghests cluttering up the scanners. At one point I thought I’d found him, but upon warping to the deadspace a short d-scan showed the name of a different known bot. I spent nearly 30 minutes trying to scan down this particular bot. Finally it returned to the hub, and I discovered that it was flying the RNI that was named for another bot. I suddenly had it confirmed that at least these three bots were connected with another three in another corporation.

The third bot died 74 minutes after the first one, and I found the pod exactly where I expected it to be. I then went about declaring war on another four bot corporations. I knew it was a long shot, but I was already up nearly 1.5 billion isk in loot. An hour after the shooting stopped, the corporation disbanded and its members formed a new corporation.

What followed was predictable. Now aware of my pursuit, the bot owner disbanded and reformed corporations over and over to avoid my wardecs. I’ve been documenting the activities of these characters for some time now and have identified a large pile of bots for future reference.