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Blockade Runner Suicide ganking survival High sec space
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Gallente Citizen 54682487
Used Dildos Inc.
#1 - 2015-05-12 19:56:18 UTC
I am working my way to a blockade runner and wanted to get the nuts and bolts of high sec transport survival. Basically suicide ganking.

I am looking for very detailed game mechanics information.

I understand the microwarp cloak trick, but as a ship with a covert ops II cloak can cloak while warping I don't think it applies to my questions, but i could be wrong.

I will break it down into parts.

1. Can I be killed warping to the next gate? I come into a new system, it is clear so I engage cloak and warp across the system to the next gate. I will be cloaked, but can I be targeted and killed by gankers waiting at the other gate? If I am cloaked I would assume no, but if I run into an object less than 2k away from me I will be uncloaked. Do they have time to lock and shoot me before I use the gate?

1a. I know warp bubbles can be set up between gates in null sec, but could the same theory of use apply to putting an object in space to uncloak ships? IE. Instead of setting up a warp bubble, throw an object between two routes so any cloaked ships passing by get uncloaked before they reach the gate? Can you even uncloak other ships that are in warp?

2. Now I go through a gate and appear on the other side. I think you are invulnerable for 60 seconds? From targeted attacks anyway, I think bombs can still damage you correct? Or am I way off on this?

2a. Also will objects under 2k make you appear like uncloaking?

3. I safely pop out on the other side of the gate and nobody is in 2km of my ship, do I just hit the jump button and activate my cloak? Is that how simple it is?

3a I safely pop out on the other side of the gate however there is a ship within 2km of me. So I cannot cloak. What is the plan of action from here? Do I try and wait invulnerable for the other ship/object to move far enough away so I can cloak and jump?

3b The other ship fails to move away before my invun timer is up so I cannot cloak. What is the best plan of action to get away from a possible suicide gank?

Now keep in mind I will be using a max capacity fit, cargo optimizers and cargo expanders. That leaves 1 high slot open (covert ops cloak in one) and 2 mids (1 microwarp in one). What would be good mods for these slots for extra survivability.

I know these are technical questions, but learning the nuts and bolts of a game is huge and i really want to like this game. I just don't want to die a lot doing so. Thank you.
Paranoid Loyd
#2 - 2015-05-12 20:27:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Paranoid Loyd
1) It occasionally happens that you will be a few meters away from the gate when you decloak, you would have to be very unlucky to be caught, I don't know anyone who tries to catch BRs this way. Most are caught because they are not cloaking at all and it would be at the in-gate (while you align) not the out-gate.

1a) objects will not decloak you while in warp

2)You cannot be smartbombed while gatecloaked

2a) if there is an object within 2km you will not be able to cloak. This is best dealt with by burning away from the object and then cloaking asap

3)Yes, it is that simple

3a)Yes, this will work, most people are not patient enough to wait. The probability of this happening is very very slim.

3b)see 2a

Usually medium shield extender and adaptive invulnerability field

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Freya Sertan
Doomheim
#3 - 2015-05-12 20:30:17 UTC
Gallente Citizen 54682487 wrote:
I am working my way to a blockade runner and wanted to get the nuts and bolts of high sec transport survival. Basically suicide ganking.

I am looking for very detailed game mechanics information.

I understand the microwarp cloak trick, but as a ship with a covert ops II cloak can cloak while warping I don't think it applies to my questions, but i could be wrong.

I will break it down into parts.

1. Can I be killed warping to the next gate? I come into a new system, it is clear so I engage cloak and warp across the system to the next gate. I will be cloaked, but can I be targeted and killed by gankers waiting at the other gate? If I am cloaked I would assume no, but if I run into an object less than 2k away from me I will be uncloaked. Do they have time to lock and shoot me before I use the gate? - Yes, if you're not smart. But it's highsec.

1a. I know warp bubbles can be set up between gates in null sec, but could the same theory of use apply to putting an object in space to uncloak ships? IE. Instead of setting up a warp bubble, throw an object between two routes so any cloaked ships passing by get uncloaked before they reach the gate? Can you even uncloak other ships that are in warp? - Yeah but you can't anchor in highsec so it's moot.

2. Now I go through a gate and appear on the other side. I think you are invulnerable for 60 seconds? From targeted attacks anyway, I think bombs can still damage you correct? Or am I way off on this?

2a. Also will objects under 2k make you appear like uncloaking?

3. I safely pop out on the other side of the gate and nobody is in 2km of my ship, do I just hit the jump button and activate my cloak? Is that how simple it is? - Yes.

3a I safely pop out on the other side of the gate however there is a ship within 2km of me. So I cannot cloak. What is the plan of action from here? Do I try and wait invulnerable for the other ship/object to move far enough away so I can cloak and jump? - You can or you can just jump and cloak. If you're fast enough you can't get locked.

3b The other ship fails to move away before my invun timer is up so I cannot cloak. What is the best plan of action to get away from a possible suicide gank? - Hit Jump, hit cloak.

Now keep in mind I will be using a max capacity fit, cargo optimizers and cargo expanders. That leaves 1 high slot open (covert ops cloak in one) and 2 mids (1 microwarp in one). What would be good mods for these slots for extra survivability. - Straight answer is a fit that isn't cargo focused but again, it's highsec.

I know these are technical questions, but learning the nuts and bolts of a game is huge and i really want to like this game. I just don't want to die a lot doing so. Thank you.


All of that worry for highsec travel seems a bit excessive. I fly a Crane in highsec all the time and all I *ever* do is jump through a gate, hit Jump, hit cloak, wait.

New Eden isn't nice. It isn't friendly. It isn't very hospitiable. Good thing there are people here to shoot in the face.

Want to make New Eden a nice place? Try this out.
Paranoid Loyd
#4 - 2015-05-12 20:53:17 UTC
Freya Sertan wrote:
All of that worry for highsec travel seems a bit excessive. I fly a Crane in highsec all the time and all I *ever* do is jump through a gate, hit Jump, hit cloak, wait.
I agree, but if understanding the minutia saves you even once, it is worth it.

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Gallente Citizen 54682487
Used Dildos Inc.
#5 - 2015-05-12 20:56:22 UTC
Paranoid Loyd wrote:
1) It occasionally happens that you will be a few meters away from the gate when you decloak, you would have to be very unlucky to be caught, I don't know anyone who tries to catch BRs this way. Most are caught because they are not cloaking at all and it would be at the in-gate (while you align) not the out-gate.

1a) objects will not decloak you while in warp

2)You cannot be smartbombed while gatecloaked

2a) if there is an object within 2km you will not be able to cloak. This is best dealt with by burning away from the object and then cloaking asap

3)Yes, it is that simple

3a)Yes, this will work, most people are not patient enough to wait. The probability of this happening is very very slim.

3b)see 2a

Usually medium shield extender and adaptive invulnerability field


Thank you very much for the information. I had one follow up question, how long does the timer last for gate cloak?
Azda Ja
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2015-05-12 21:08:06 UTC
Gallente Citizen 54682487 wrote:
Thank you very much for the information. I had one follow up question, how long does the timer last for gate cloak?

One minute.

Grrr.
Paranoid Loyd
#7 - 2015-05-12 21:08:16 UTC
Gate cloak is 60 seconds.

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Timers

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Azda Ja
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#8 - 2015-05-12 21:10:13 UTC
Paranoid Loyd wrote:
Gate cloak is 60 seconds.

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Timers

Beat you by 1/6th of a gate cloak P.

Grrr.
Paranoid Loyd
#9 - 2015-05-12 21:21:34 UTC
Only cause you didn't include the fancy link with all the timers. P

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Memphis Baas
#10 - 2015-05-12 21:33:13 UTC
From the point of view of the suicide ganker:

1. Ships often warp to 0 (no autopilot), so they get right on top of the gate, and then jump through. There's very little time to shoot them.

2. Once on the other side, the ship is positioned at some distance from the gate (15 km) and is gate-cloaked, which is actually complete invulnerability, so that a slower computer can load the solar system and the immediate area by the gate and show you what's going on.

3. As soon as you move or the gate-cloak expires, you become visible. At this point slow ships also take quite a while to align to the next gate. This is where the vulnerability is; you can be warp-disrupted (can't warp), you can be bumped (can't align), or you can just be alpha'd (one volley kills you).

3a. You cannot activate your cov-ops cloak while gate-cloaked. You must cause your gate-cloak to expire, by moving or by giving the order to warp, before you can activate your cov-ops cloak. Because of server lag, there is approximately 1 second of being visible in-between your gate-cloak and your cov-ops cloak.

3b. If the attacker (ctrl) triple-clicks you in the overview during this 1 second, his ship will try to target-lock you AND will move towards you. If he target-locks you, you cannot cloak. If you cov-ops cloak before he can target-lock you, he is still moving towards your exact position. If he has a fast ship (interceptor), he will intersect your last known position before your slow(er) ship can get 2km away, and he will decloak you by proximity.

The MWD-cloak trick is an attempt to move fast so you can get more than 2km away from your last visible position; it doesn't always work.

4. Objects or ships placed around the gate WILL decloak you or prevent you from engaging the cov-ops cloak. Some gate campers do it with a combination of containers, corpses, and their own ships positioned around the gate.

5. Lowsec has the additional danger of smartbombs, and 0.0 has the much bigger danger of bubbles, which will either pull you to a specific killzone, or prevent you from warping away right away.

Here's a guide.
Paranoid Loyd
#11 - 2015-05-12 23:10:14 UTC
Also, keep in mind, while it may not hurt as much to be ganked while empty, your chances of being ganked are the same as if you are carrying billions as you cannot be cargo scanned so you should also be cloaking every jump even while empty.

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Gallente Citizen 54682487
Used Dildos Inc.
#12 - 2015-05-13 00:30:28 UTC
Memphis Baas wrote:
From the point of view of the suicide ganker:

1. Ships often warp to 0 (no autopilot), so they get right on top of the gate, and then jump through. There's very little time to shoot them.

2. Once on the other side, the ship is positioned at some distance from the gate (15 km) and is gate-cloaked, which is actually complete invulnerability, so that a slower computer can load the solar system and the immediate area by the gate and show you what's going on.

3. As soon as you move or the gate-cloak expires, you become visible. At this point slow ships also take quite a while to align to the next gate. This is where the vulnerability is; you can be warp-disrupted (can't warp), you can be bumped (can't align), or you can just be alpha'd (one volley kills you).

3a. You cannot activate your cov-ops cloak while gate-cloaked. You must cause your gate-cloak to expire, by moving or by giving the order to warp, before you can activate your cov-ops cloak. Because of server lag, there is approximately 1 second of being visible in-between your gate-cloak and your cov-ops cloak.

3b. If the attacker (ctrl) triple-clicks you in the overview during this 1 second, his ship will try to target-lock you AND will move towards you. If he target-locks you, you cannot cloak. If you cov-ops cloak before he can target-lock you, he is still moving towards your exact position. If he has a fast ship (interceptor), he will intersect your last known position before your slow(er) ship can get 2km away, and he will decloak you by proximity.

The MWD-cloak trick is an attempt to move fast so you can get more than 2km away from your last visible position; it doesn't always work.

4. Objects or ships placed around the gate WILL decloak you or prevent you from engaging the cov-ops cloak. Some gate campers do it with a combination of containers, corpses, and their own ships positioned around the gate.

5. Lowsec has the additional danger of smartbombs, and 0.0 has the much bigger danger of bubbles, which will either pull you to a specific killzone, or prevent you from warping away right away.

Here's a guide.


So you cannot cloak if you are targeted? I did not know that.
Paranoid Loyd
#13 - 2015-05-13 00:36:07 UTC
That is correct, however, the tick that you can be locked is the same tick that you will be cloaking, so the chances of being caught if you are on the ball are very slim.

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Lost Greybeard
Drunken Yordles
#14 - 2015-05-13 00:59:32 UTC
All the tricks are nice, but honestly in high-sec your safety should be primarily a matter of strategy, not tactics. If you haven't scouted around and added known gank systems to your avoid list, you've already lost.

That said, running a blockade-runner makes you de facto invincible in high and low sec. MWD-cloak is unnecessary and will actually get you killed when you screw it up. Just warp to then click the cloak button and literally nothing can lock you down before you're gone unless you get unlucky on an acts-of-god, lottery-winning, struck-by-lightning three times level.
ergherhdfgh
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#15 - 2015-05-13 01:42:08 UTC
when you come out on the other side of the gate you will be 12 km from the gate in a random direction and that is 12km from where the edges of the gate are rendered not the center of the gate so bigger gates have a larger area. There are some tricks to try and decloak a cov ops cloaker on the out gate, it's not exactly an easy thing to do but if the gate is bubbled and they pay attention to where you were when you cloaked it is definitely possible that they could decloak and catch you. Burning back to the gate is always an option to keep in mind.

As far as landing on a gate a warp bubble can only pull you out of warp if it is on grid with where you are going to land. But if the warp bubble is in line with your warp path and anywhere within 100km of your planed warp bubble collapse then they can pull you out of warp this is how drag bubble mechanics works and they can put something to decloak you right where you will land.

The kinds of questions that you are asking here are huge and there is way more info than can be covered in one or two forum posts. However I can give you some topics to look up. Look up gate camping and declaoking cov ops, Jester did a decent blog on this once. Look up a video that I believe was done by agony empire on interdictors I was almost 2 hours long but talked a lot about warp and warp bubble mechanics I would say a must watch for anyone planing on spending time in null. Basically you want to find out as much as possible about what people will be doing to catch you to try and avoid that.

Practice the warp and wait one second to hit the cloak trick in high sec. You will find that sometimes you land < 2500 meters and > 2000 meters so that you don't get uncloaked by the gate and can't jump. In those cases sometime it helps to manually uncloak and jump but you will have to get a feel for that.

Want to talk? Join Cara's channel in game: House Forelli
Jonah Gravenstein
Machiavellian Space Bastards
#16 - 2015-05-13 07:56:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Jonah Gravenstein
Memphis Baas wrote:
3. As soon as you move or the gate-cloak expires, you become visible.
Further to this, when you move the decloaking animation may still show you as cloaked in your client, you will however be visible on the overview and thus targetable.

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

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Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
#17 - 2015-05-13 14:36:23 UTC
Paranoid Loyd wrote:
Also, keep in mind, while it may not hurt as much to be ganked while empty, your chances of being ganked are the same as if you are carrying billions as you cannot be cargo scanned so you should also be cloaking every jump even while empty.

Excellent basic info and I agree with the cloaking for every jump even in high sec however in the interest opf being completely accurate with new / newer players there is a small correction needed here.


All 4 of the blockade runners are immune to cargo scanners period. The cloak plays no part in this it is a role bonus they were given with the last balance pass.
Oraac Ensor
#18 - 2015-05-13 14:46:54 UTC
Donnachadh wrote:
Paranoid Loyd wrote:
Also, keep in mind, while it may not hurt as much to be ganked while empty, your chances of being ganked are the same as if you are carrying billions as you cannot be cargo scanned so you should also be cloaking every jump even while empty.

Excellent basic info and I agree with the cloaking for every jump even in high sec however in the interest opf being completely accurate with new / newer players there is a small correction needed here.


All 4 of the blockade runners are immune to cargo scanners period. The cloak plays no part in this it is a role bonus they were given with the last balance pass.

I'm a bit puzzled here. What exactly are you correcting?

Loyd has said quite clearly "you cannot be cargo scanned" in a blockade runner and explained why this makes cloaking essential whatever you may or may not be carrying.

Have I missed something?
Paranoid Loyd
#19 - 2015-05-13 15:30:38 UTC  |  Edited by: Paranoid Loyd
I was not trying to infer that the cloak is necessary to not be scanned, the point is due to the fact that you can not be cargo scanned, gankers will shoot you just to see what is inside if you are being careless. We refer to it as BR roulette. If you are not cloaking and I can scan your fit and see that you have no tank, I can use a 15 mil isk cruiser to kill you. Sometimes you win big, sometimes you get nothing.

If you cloak every time right when you start to align you can not be locked and therefore can not be ship scanned or ganked.

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#20 - 2015-05-13 17:28:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Tau Cabalander
Simple rule: If you are uncloaked, assume you will be attacked.

Example: my last loss of a Crane happened because I made a mistake, and warped to Jita 4-4 instead of the insta-dock bookmark I have. One volley from an artillery Tornado was all it took. I had no cargo at the time [BR roulette]

So yes, you will want bookmarks for docking and undocking. [Tip: Jita 4 Moon 1 is aligned with the Jita 4-4 undock.]

Otherwise with gate travel, I've never had an issue, except when you emerge close to another ship (even a CONCORD vessel) and can't cloak immediately.
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