Science & Industry

I have never been ganked, but then again i don't carry stupid loads either. It is all about making yourself difficult to kill and not profitable to kill.

One thing not mentioned here is the safe log off. It takes 25 seconds of not being agressed & you don't have to worry about bumping. #2 has to time it right or have multiple noob ship alts while the DPSgets set up.

How often? Hmmm.... every day.

if your corp takes more then their fair share, as in taxes your loot and adds corp tax then you need to find another corp alliance pronto.

(edit part V)

the numbers I dont remember exactly but it goes something like this.

in .5-.6 systems 6-8 Talos are best used.
the cost of the Talos fully gank fitted is about 110M isk (don't quote my exact numbers) - or 80M isk for the Hull and 25-30M isk fittings.
the Talos, salvaged should yield about 20M~ isk on average and half of the fittings drop so another 15M isk in fittings drop average.

That means, each 110M isk Talos investment, if looted and salvaged really costs the ganker 75M isk.
6 Talos 450M isk / 8 Talos 600M isk.

A salvaged freighter, I don't know what the average is, but lets say 50M isk more into the gankers pockets.

So, in 0.5- 0.6 systems, your cargo cannot exceed 400 and 550M isk to be completely immune to profit seekers.

---

Point is, calculate exactly how much the Gankers have to lose and that's the cargo limit.

Ok, So 500-600M was more an ideal max based on what I have seen dropped by freighters on the KB's rather than a sustainable income. I was speaking of what a single fleet could obtain though not multiple fleets.. 500M/hr for a 12 man fleet would only require 4 ganks per hour at 1.5B profit per gank. Say the gank fleet costs 800M (GOONS have claimed in the past that a freighter gank only costs 650M) after considering loot and salvage from the ganking ships, that only requires an average drop of 2.3B which is very common on the kill boards.

I don't know the exact doctrine the GOON gank squads use. But say you have a fleet of 12 including a scout or two. the scout scans freighters until it finds one WORTH ganking. This will not take long. There are loads of very dumb freighter pilots hauling loads worth several billion isk out of Jita constantly. the scout follows the freighter letting the fleet know its course. The fleet sets up for the gank in a appropriate 0.5-0.6 system. 5 minutes the gank is done. The scout then has 15 minutes to find the next high value target while the gank fleet waits out the GCC timer. And that is only if the gank fleet does not have other gank alts to switch too thus avoiding the 15 minute GCC.

So you should be able to pull off about 4 ganks per hour, most likely more using multiple alts to avoid waiting for GCC cool down. with 15 minutes to find the next target you will be hitting ships for maximum profit. conservatively say 1B profit per gank as you are probably hitting freighters with at least 4B in cargo. So at 1B profit per gank, your fleet should make about 4B profit per hour. Divided by 12 fleet members that is still Over 300M/hr per fleet member, and should be well attainable for an organized fleet not using multiple alts.

Even if you believe that to be still much higher than realistic, considering a mission runner typically makes 40-60M/hr. Even making 100M/hr ganking freighters should be easy, still making it one of the highest paying activities in high sec.

Yet with the amount of freighters on the kill boards that have dropped more than 2B in loot, a well organized gank squad, that does use multiple alts so you can gank the next target before GCC wears off. Combined with good competent scouts, and a little luck finding freighters with more than 4B in cargo, 500-600M/hr is possible, even if not regularly attainable.

Or are you GOONS denying this only because you fear this high paying high sec activity will get nerfed, or freighters will get buffed, making this easy money go away?

So, exactly what I said.

You are not going to get a 2.3b drop (avg scanned value 4.6b) coming through a gate every 15 minutes.

If you're using multiple alts, you need to account for the cost of them as well (as in divide the payout by all accounts being used in the operation) to come up with comprable ISK/hr numbers (otherwise the Wis mining ISE is the best ISK/hr in the game).

It also takes more than 12 fleetmembers (btw, the Hauler is also on a 15 min cooldown now) to run a gank squad.


In other words you are making a ton of absolutely ridiculous assumptions (all making errors on the side of making ganking seem more profitable) in order to come up with all of your over the top "estimates."

And finally, I still never paid my ::tenbux::

Oh, and mission running income is not absolutely dependent on the idiocy of other players. You're acting like you think gankworthy freighters are spawned by NPCs.

thankfully, the agility skill is becoming a prerequisite to train in to a freighter now.

then again if a few seconds off your align time, or a few thousand more ehp will save you then you're being ganked by terrible players.

I did some statistics on Freighter Ganks in Uedama last month...

There were 50 ganks between the 3-31rst of March. 48 seemed to be suicide ganks. 4 were ganked empty (due to bad standings with goons), 4 were ganked because they had double-wrapped packages, 4 were ganked with a cargo between 0.4-3b isk.

In general, your chances of getting ganked are very slim... and if you carry under 1b isk in cargo, your chances are extremely slim (i.e.you'll have a better chance of being struck by lightening!).

With this in mind, there are a few points I suggest above and beyond the "don't be a loot pinata" rule. If you are carry a blingy load, the options below help reduce your risks:

A.) The safest means when carrying valuable cargo is to use a web-to-warp scout. You need to be traveling at 75% of max velocity to enter warp, and webbing your ship instantly reduces it's max velocity, but doesn't instantly reduce your current speed. Using 60% webs (t2 or meta 4 or various faction), 2 webs will reduce the max velocity of a freighter from ~100 m/s to ~19 m/s, and 13 m/s with 3 webs. 75% of this speed is 10 m/s, which takes only a few seconds to achieve. Carefully timing the webs allows you typically enter warp before anyone can bump you... but can be inhibited by a suicide tackler.

B.) Another method is to enter suicide gank systems in an unexpected manner. For example, if you're traveling to Amarr from Jita, you generally go through Niarja. The autopilot typically has you travel Amar -> Ashab -> Madirmilire -> Niarja. Don't jump directly from Madirmilire to Niarja... but instead go Madirmilire -> Bahroma -> Niarja. You could still get ganked in Niarja, but usually scouts don't "follow" your progress (yet), so they will generally be setup on the Madirmilire gate rather than the Bahroma gate in Niarja, Which allows you to bypass their suicide camp.

C.) Another method to use is to dock up prior to entering a suicide gank system. For example, if you're traveling jita to amarr through Niarja, set your destination to Kaaputenen and dock up there for 15 minutes or so. In general, your ship's assets are scanned earlier in the pipe so suicide gankers have time to prep an attack. They generally gank in 0.5 systems, as concord takes the longest to respond in these systems. By taking the break, they may assume you dropped off goods, or took a different route... and may write you off as a target. The longer the break, the more effective this technique works... and if truly AFK hauling (while at work, or asleep), breaking the trip into 2 parts (Part 1: Amarr -> Madirmilire, dock up/log off. Part 2: Log on, manually fly through Niarja, Autopilot to Jita), you're unlikely to be a target as no-one will have recently pre-scanned you prior to entering Niarja.

Meh,

I autopilot freighter loads all the time. It is something I can easily do for 12+ hours when I'm working from home. Never had an issue. I keep my loads under ~ 1bil value. (keep in mind collateral =/= value).

If I'm going to go through the trouble of actively flying the beast with a webber alt, I'd go do one of the other far better isk/hour activities I can do.

Keep flying those freighters...

Me?

When I am doing a high value run, I jump into my crystal clone and my Hauler orca, 248k ehp and dual x-large ASB's.

Bring on the 10...or 12+ Tier 3 BC's please. Nope, I can't haul 900k m3 of cargo,but I sure can haul a bunch of billions in smaller stuff.

Never been bothered yet.

I also stay away on weekends and avoid peak player count times. Oh dark hundred is a great travel time.

Of course I have been tracking the high gank count corps and have them all set as "unfriendly" so if local looked really bad I might dock up but haven't had to yet.


If it's a really high isk haul, I bring command ship(s) with serious boosts escort..heck pushin almost 300k ehp.

If it is a "gamebreaker" load, I have suicided a couple of guys at the key gates just to get concord there.


A load of plex's is just stupid, mixing up your load (unstacking stuff so there is TONS of crap to look at) can't hurt either.

I have personally never bothered with the double wrap thing, and have hauled over 10B loads in the orca.



They are not set up for a serious defense Orca when waiting for freighter ganks