EVE General Discussion

Funny gank anecdote first:

I took a stupid risk and undocked from my mission hub with a few oranges (kill rights) outside my gate. As soon as I aligned in my garmur, ding ... pop. I knew what had happened, even though it's never happened to me before.

I convo'd the ganker, they responded, and I congratulated him. I asked for his thoughts and how undock mechanics worked; he was very helpful.

I asked him how much he was able to retrieve from my wreck, as I had invested 400mil in mods and hull. He said only 20 million. I felt bad, so I tipped him 5 mil as both a consolation and a thank you for the advice.

Bet that doesn't happen too often in this game. :)

I set him to good standings and wave whenever I see him lurking for another victim. We chat when we see each other.

He reminded me to use insta-undocks. Until the gank I was both too lazy and underestimated the likelihood of being ganked in a frigate. The wake-up call was heard.

So now to my question. Understandably, I am still very hesitant to undock from my (hi-sec) mission hub when I see several oranges and/or yellows. (And especially reds.) I've got an insta-undock set up for 250 km out.

While I realize nothing in Eve is 100%, how much protection am I adding by always using insta-undocks sending me 250 or more km? Put another way, what is the probability that I *still* get successfully ganked, assuming I'm out of range of anything at 250km.

I hear there's a 10-second invul timer on undocking, to help give your client time to load the grid. Should it take beyond this (I've had black screens up to 15-20 seconds), and I get ganked, is there any chance of petitioning successfully to get my stuff back?

It's absolutely worth making 3+ insta undocks and a dock bookmark for your home station.

If someone is after you and you keep on using the same insta-undock bookmark, they will make their own in the same spot. By using a few different ones, its hard for an attacker to predict where you are going to warp to.

I tend to make a few between 400km- 1000km and then a couple 20000km+ if I use the station alot.

In my incursion days I would carry fast ship just for BMing stations current one is Minmatar t3d it runs just under10000ms stable so it dont need too much time to create insta that is off grid so that they can't even see where you go next.

Region i call home is all BM like this few on grid as well as docking BMs even stations I don't use.

Insta undocks aren't just for safety even. The above example of undocking from jita, try to align to warp and bounce off every single freighter making the warp just not happen. Or you undock in a station where your gate is the exact opposite direction from your undock direction so you hit warp and you start bumping the station unable to warp. Even if everything goes right otherwise, your undock speed is greater than 100% of your normal velocity, making the time to align immediately far worse than aligning from a standstill (in EVE acceleration and deceleration are different processes and happen at different rates.) So in general, undock bookmarks are not only safer, but also make things more reliable.

10,000 km+, grids can be 8000 km across since they were changed in 2015.

Relevant Dev blog

Edit~ it turns out that they may be much bigger depending on the local environment and whether or not grid-fu is being used

I only bother with undocks if I'm carrying valuable cargo, am in a small but expensive ship (like a Garmur rigged for burner missions) or I'm flying a blockade runner (since a lot of gankers shoot them on sight).

Any chance you got ganked at Lanngisi? I always see gankers hanging around there since so many people fly expensive burner mission ships out of there. That's one place I ALWAYS use undocks.

The trouble I found with Undock Instas is they change with Hull. I always test my instas and they will work on a Drake for example but not on a Bestower. They will be off just enough to create an align error and start the warp spool. At places like Jita 4 it starts the bump marathon and anyone that wants to alpha you down is going to.

That's a function of your alignment being off by a few degrees when you burned out to make your undock bookmark. A small, fast aligning ship can make the adjustment inside of a server tick. But a larger, slower aligning ship will take a couple of seconds to make the slight turn needed if your bookmark is off. When making an undock, you need to pilot your ship manually along the undock axis using the tactical overlay to get a good bookmark.

There are a lot of guides out there. Here's one from Brave Newbies.

Yeah, I figured. Lanngisi is a ganker's paradise because so many burner pilots fly out of there with blingy ships. You frequently see them hanging out on the station. They're not hard to avoid with undocks. There's enough low hanging fruit there that as long you make it marginally difficult, they won't bother to probe you down.