Warped to Low Sec Data Site @ 100, Instapopped

[Perpetual Pilgrim]

Been gone some years, before AIR and all that.
So I've been working on the air progress a bit.
Part of that is doing low and null sec exploration, sigs and hacking and gas sites.

Found a low sec system with lots of sigs and few in local.
Made my bug outs, scanned down the sigs, hit the gas site, and then warped, @100km, into the data site.

And every single cache had a tower attached to it with red bubbles everywhere.

Now, I only spent a few months in null before I took my sabbatical, so I'm not overly familiar with everything you might find. But I had never encountered red bubbles everywhere or so much aggro in a data site that wasn't ships.
Worse, warping in @ 100 put me within 50km of several of these towers and bubbles.
But I saw no target locks and decided to glide away while I decided what to do, trying to see if there was any cache I could reach while staying out of reach of the towers.

After all, I'm just in a little Probe made strictly to scan, hack, and bug out(2s align/warp time). I have some drones to handle small fish or distract, but the general mo is jump out, come back later or abandon if trouble hits.

Within moments of aligning away from the site and gliding away at a measly 200m/s, I get the kill report. No locks, no shots fired that I can see.
The only thing I can think of is the red bubbles are mines that don't show up on z-s's "main" tab?

Is this a thing? Is there a counter to mines if it is a thing? What happened to me? lol

[Perpetual Pilgrim]

*update, it was apparently a "heavy gunstar."
Still, I noticed no locks, not even attempts to lock.
Advise on how to approach low/null sec sites in the future to at least have a chance at avoiding a repeat?

[Ryeloc]

D-Scan the site down before you warp in

[ZynXao]

my guess is you warped to a 'AEGIS Secure Transfer Facility' which is indeed pretty dangerous. especially if you expect a normal data site. the sites you are actually looking for are all the pirate ones. so 'Local Sansha...., Local Guristas...' for high sec, 'Regional Sansha..., Regional Guristas...' for low sec and 'Central (whatever pirate faction)...'. these are the ones you want to do. stay away from 'AEGIS', 'SCC', the faction warfare ones in low sec 'Caldari/Minmatar etc. Operation Center', the 'unsecured' and 'forgotten' sites in wormholes (hint, they are neither unsecured nor forgotten) and everything with 'covert' in its name is ghost site and failing a hack can explode the cans which might kill a t1 explo frigate.

here's the summary from the wiki: https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Relic_and_data_sites#Is_this_site_.22safe.22_to_warp_to.3F

if you just go for the normal pirate named sites you are good to go (always keep an eye on dscan if you have people in local of course).

[Perpetual Pilgrim]

Originally posted by ZynXao:

stay away from 'AEGIS', 'SCC', the faction warfare ones in low sec 'Caldari/Minmatar etc. Operation Center'

I don't recall, but I think I read the gunstar towers are in the AEGIS sites, so that tracks. Seems like it was definitely something from my time away, the faction stuff is new to me and I don't recall AEGIS being a thing(possible I just never heard of it).
Much appreciated on the info.
I noticed there are sleeper sites in low/hi sec? Has that always been a thing, I thought those were wh only?

[ZynXao]

yeah, the AEGIS stuff dropped at the end of 2021 I think. not sure how long you've been gone but also be careful with Triglavians. they will aggress you in high sec. you do get a warning if you try to jump into a Trig system though.

the faction ones are an addition from the faction warfare overhaul. they drop new faction materials but also spawn pretty tough npc's.

the sleeper caches in low/high have been a thing for quiet a while. if you manage to find a 'limited' sleeper cache you should check it out. there wont be any combat npc's but you have to have both a relic and data analyser to get through the site. there are also toxic gas clouds that will damage your ship if you fly into them. I actually really like these and they can be done in t1 explo ships if you avoid the clouds and explosive barrels. actually a fun site imo.
the 'standard' and 'superior' sleeper caches are way tougher. I recommend to check a tutorial for these as they take quiet some time and can be pretty rough on your tank. they arent the usual wh sleeper combat sites though.

another thing are data sites in dronelands (Oasa, Kalevala Expanse etc.). these are a bit different as they dont explode if you fail the hack twice but spawn npc's. they are pretty weak though and can easily be killed. the site does have the possibility to escalate to another data site though so you can kinda 'chain' them.

again, not sure how long you've been away but also check out filaments. there are abyssal filaments to do the abyss pve content but there are also 'signal' and 'noise' filaments which will take you to a random null sec system. signal puts you in a busy place while noise puts you in a quiet one. the noise ones are great for exploration. I can just undock in Jita and yeet with a filament into deep lonely null and go for sites.
now to make it even better there are also 'pochven' filaments. these spawn you in the new pochven region. this is where the triglavians live. so if you dont have any good standing with them, they will shoot you. now the fun thing about pochven is that there is a good chance that you find a wormhole directly back to high sec. so I'm in deep null, activate the filament, land in pochven, scan one hole and I'm back in high sec with my loot. I recommend doing these explo yeets in something cloaky though.

[Perpetual Pilgrim]

Originally posted by ZynXao:

I think the last time I played was 2016ish. I remember Trump memes, lol.
But thanks for the lookout.
I'm going to stick with the ole fashioned way of things for the moment, get back into the feel of it. But good to know what to look out for.
Especially that limited sleeper site. I would just have avoided them entirely because I'm not geared up for dealing with all dat yet.