EVE New Citizens Q&A

There is nothing you can do to keep from getting ganked if someone wants to gank you. Yes, extenders are nice and you might want to plug some shield holes with amps (not fields as they deactivate going through a gate). But really, the way you minimize ganks is to not carry anything too valuable. The exact number varies depending on who you ask, but if you carry less than 200m isk worth of stuff you minimize the folks who will want to gank you.

The only real way to mitigate the risk of getting ganked in your hauler (apart from not carrying anything too expensive) is to minimize exposure. Jump manually and fit some inertia stabilizers (so you enter warp quicker) so you are not open for attack for extended periods of time. Use mid and rig slots for best shield buffer + (passive) universal resists you can get.

Auto-piloting in a slow ship like an industrial is also painfully... well, slow.

I strongly suggest you do not auto-pilot on your hauling runs. If you dislike them so much, better avoid them altogether if possible.

Ganking consists of mainly of two methodologies: an alpha attack (one strike doing enough damage to blow up a ship) or an attack that does enough damage before CONCORD steps in.

You can tank a mammoth so that it has over 23,000 ehp and a tank of 260. You could probably do better than that but I threw this together as a bit of a giggle when I was out in 0.0 for a bait mammoth.

[Mammoth, Bait Mam]
Damage Control II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

With all level 5 skills, it has 23,140 EHP.

In a 0.7 system, it takes CONCORD roughly 12 seconds to respond. That means it would take just under 2,200 DPS to destroy your mammoth in that amount of time. In a lower security system, CONCORD reacts slower so that is a consideration based on which systems you are going through.

2,200 DPS is four tech 2 catalysts (destroyers) for a cost of ~60 million (estimating 15 million per catalyst) or two tech 2 taloses (~180 million).

In a 0.5 system it takes roughly 15 seconds (I'm being generous) for CONCORD to respond.

That's roughly 1800 DPS to destroy your mammoth.

With a fit like that you are, basically, safe from a single ship but if you are carrying some worthwhile cargo (valued at over 200 million) then you may be a value target for a group of gankers. But, usually, there are easier targets for them to hit so you may get the pass. Still, I dunno how worth it is.

If you are going to do some AFK hauling I would suggest to at least get yourself a mastodon. Then you can fly with over 82,000 EHP.

No one is safe in EVE and everyone (other than station traders that never ever leave station) will be killed if someone wants you dead enough.

EVE is actually ridiculously safe (if you want it to be) for an "open PvP" game. Regardless, we are not talking about the possibility of avoiding risk, we are talking about managing it, and your comment is not helping in that regard.

No offense taken. I decided to start off hauling because I know I'll stick around for the PvP and wanted to first build a nest egg with minimal effort. That as opposed to the typical route of starting off PvP and then working on ways to earn ISK later. But those ganks hurt and I'm looking for some more security at this point -- and was hoping to be able to tank enough to survive a typical gank in high-sec while I'm afk. I'll look into the Niarja system (as I know nothing of such things at this point). Anyway... glad to be your hero.

A couple things have come to my attention.

The first, and probably most important for my purposes here, is the prospect of hauling during off-peak hours. This makes a ton of sense to me and seems like it would dramatically reduce my chances of getting ganked. Is this correct? And with Eve being an international thing... when are those off-peak hours?

Second... I've been able to work out a low-skill Mammoth fit with over 10,000 EHP in passive tank. What kind of ships could this amount of tank generally survive?

Perhaps with both these factors combined I would be relatively safe hauling in high-sec? As long as I stayed below... 100 million ISK loads?

Off peak times is a good suggestion. I don't do tons of hauling but occasionally need to move stuff around. I don't like taking the risk of autopiloting but boy just staring at the screen for an hour as I slowly tug along can be excruciating. What I do is semi afk haul. I minimize my windows and set them side by side and use the time to check emails or whatever else I need to do on the internet. That way I'm still easily able to manually warp from gate to gate which is safer and faster and get something else done at the same time.

the magic words. If you are afk, dont fly with anything expensive. do more trips instead, you are afk so time doesnt matter right? only time i fly afk in my charon is when it only has like 200 mill or so. then i reaaaaaally cant be arsed to manually pilot from goinard to jita. and that is a freighter so it has way more EHP then a t1 industrial.

am I paranoid? Yupp, but i ganked enough haulers to know how easy they pop after all ^^

I doubt many professional haulers are pretending to do so for the sheer thrill of it all. But it doesn't seem the worst way to earn enough ISK to pay for a PLEX.