EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey guys,

today i had my first experience that my ship was destroyed
Ok i was in low sec so i took the risk, and got over it 2,2 mil down the drain but hey i'll get over it.
Now is my question, is there a way how i can minimize my "Damage" or even prevent gate killing?
I really want to learn about this and how i could "possibly" avoid this beside the answer don't go low/null sec.

Learn to read the star map.
A system with a high number of ships killed in the last hour might be worth avoiding.

And while the vast majority of low-sec gates not camped, there are a few gates that are very often camped - usually low/high gates. Ask around which ones that are in your region and go a bit off the beaten path the get into low. Once you are in deep low, things are usually much quieter.

And then, flying an industrial in low-sec is always gonna be dangerous.
If you can, fly a blockade runner.
If not, learn the Cloak+MWD trick to evade gate camps (practice in high-sec).
And if you are carrying valuable items, use a scout in a cheap frigate to hop ahead. (Can be an alt or a friend.)

You were ganked on a lowsec border system. These are the most likely to be camped.

You can usually avoid these in 4 ways:
1- fit enough warp core stabilizers to offset the amount of warp jammers they set on you. In this case it would probably have saved you.
2- have a fast aligning ship that gets into warp faster than they can lock you. Won't work with haulers as they're too heavy by default.
3- have a tanky/fast enough ship that can travel back to the gate it came from and jump bacl (the agressors won't be able to follow you for 1 minute). COuld work if you had a propulsion mod and a tanked up ship.
4- cloak/microwarpdrive trick (look it up on youtube) - some haulers dont have the powergrid to fit this, though.

But as a general rule of thumb, avoid taking standard tech1 haulers into lowsec unless you know what you're doing or witouth someone else to scout the gates for you.

In addition to everything mentioned, learn to use d-scan to check gates from a nearby planet before you warp to them. It will of course only show you ships on your side of the gate, but it's nice to know if there is something there.

If you want to get to null and low while avoiding all the robots that camp gates, scan wormholes down and map their exits. Quite often a wormhole you scan down in highsec will have another wormhole connected to it that has a null or lowsec exit within. Your chances of dying in wormholes is drastically lower than trying to break the blockades on gates and also cuts your travel time drastically too. If you are successful, you can expect right around 1-2 jumps in wormhole space once you start in highsec and then suddenly you are in the back-end of nowhere nullsec. How's that for convenience?

In the in-game map you can show the number of kills in the last hour or 24h in each system. Systems with a lot of kills are often gatecamps. Some systems, like Gonditsa, almost always carry the risk of a gatecamp because they are popular routes or pipelines.

Travelling through low-sec can be tricky. If you're flying a frigate, you can take two approaches - fill out your low slots with inertial stabilizers or warp core stabilizers. Inertial stabilizers (reduce align time) will help you escape pretty much any ship but an interceptor, but leave you defenseless if you are locked. Warp core stabs may be the better way to go, as it will still be hard to lock you and you'll be able to warp away from one or two scrams.

With an industrial, the MWD+Cloak trick is the way to go. You may need to train up powergrid skills or invest in PG rigs to fit the appropriate MWD, but I have yet to be locked once using the MWD+cloak trick properly. You should still fit at least 2 warp core stabilizers.

If you're carrying particularly valuable cargo, scout out the route ahead. For smaller loads (<700 m3) use a ship like the Magnate or Probe, which can align fast as a frigate but can carry up to ~770 m3 with the proper rigs and no cargo optimizers in low slots.