Warfare & Tactics

from http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2012/12/the-hans-slide-explanation.html

So yesterday, there was a bit of a false alarm. We received a Fweddit jabber broadcast to be careful, that there were reports that Hans Sliding (also known as gate sliding) had been fixed, that it was no longer a mostly full-proof option for getting into plexes unmolested.

I immediately went to Twitter looking for some further confirmation. I got it from someone I consider exceptionally trustworthy, one of the few people you can trust, without question, in EVE Online.

So without further fact checking, I posted a blog proclaiming that the Hans Slide[1] was no more. I was still curious, though. Seemed odd that CCP would be making server-side changes during the holidays. But then, maybe someone was bored and had some time to kill. When I saw that Erlendur was up and at 'em on Twitter I asked about it:
So I removed my blog post. Edited a forum post. And removed a couple tweets. Obviously my announcement was a tad premature. I needed to figure out what my trusted friends had actually been doing. So, before I logged for the evening, I asked how they tested Hans Sliding.

Turns out they didn't know what a Hans Slide is, because they definitely weren't testing for it. What they were doing was parking a cruiser at an acceleration gate, having a frigate pre-lock the cruiser, then have the cruiser activate the gate, then have the frigate apply its point. When the cruiser dropped out of warp, they assumed the Hans Slide had been fixed. Except that's normal gate behaviour. They weren't testing Hans Slide functionality at all.

Now that I've learned that not everyone knows what a proper Hans Slide is, I figure maybe I should revisit the topic. A tutorial for old and new alike. Along with a bit of semi-technical explanation on what causes it. (If anyone from CCP wants to give a complete and thorough technical explanation, that would be welcome.)

So what is a Hans Slide? It is an anomaly that happens when you leave warp on approach to an acceleration gate and then immediately enter warp on that acceleration gate. It makes your ship immune to everything, even your own commands. When you're properly in a Hans Slide, you cannot CTRL-Space (cancel) out of it. (Under normal acceleration gate behaviour, pressing CTRL-Space will cancel the warp, but not so if you've successfully implemented a Hans Slide, there is nothing that can get you out of the warp, which is what makes you immune to targeting from enemies and the like.)

So, how do you implement a Hans Slide properly? First of all, warp to all acceleration gates at 10km. This still puts you at 0km from the gate (because the acceleration gate ellipsoid is quite large). You should never warp to 0km, because in some instances you will get hung up on gate geometry, making a Hans Slide impossible.

As you're warping onto the grid with the acceleration gate, select the acceleration gate on your overview and then start spamming the 'D' key (this is the activate gate hotkey.) Start spamming before your HUD shows you leaving warp, this is very important. What will happen is that as soon as you leave warp, the server will immediately process your activation request, and you'll enter the acceleration gate warp.

It is this transition between warps where the server-side weirdness occurs. Basically, the server transfers you from one session (the session in which you're warping in to the acceleration gate) straight into another session (the session in which you warp via the acceleration gate.) Ninety percent of the time (maybe higher), you'll have performed a successful Hans Slide. There is no way to know if you're in a Hans Slide or not (if you're tackled and pointed, dropped out of warp, then you'll know definitively that you did not perform it successfully.)

The reason why a Hans Slide might not implement successfully is that the server did not transfer you from one session to the next immediately. A 1-second (or more) gap happened between the session changes. The server performs all actions at 1-second intervals, thus if it does not catch your activation request (the spamming of the 'D' key) in time, it might not make the immediate change between warp sessions that is necessary to make your ship immune to all action.


[1] Why is it called a Hans Slide? Back during the summer, DurrHurrDurr, who's experience prior to faction warfare was all in nullsec, was convinced the Hans Slide was a bug that Hans Jagerblitzen, one evening, was exploiting. He brought his accusation straight to Reddit. I dubbed the artificial uproar Accelerationgate. Hans, though, wasn't exploiting anything. The phenomena was well-known by faction warfare players and by CCP. People normally called it a gate slide, but Fwedditors started calling it the Hans Slide as both an inside joke among faction warfarers and as an ongoing troll.

I defended Hans during Accelerationgate.

But calling it Hans Sliding is fun, nonetheless.

It's a "Hansploit", not Hansliding.

Gate sliding (or Han sliding but that sounds almost dirrrrty) is also pretty much essential to allow plex mechanics to be utilised by outgunned/shipped FW'ers to somewhat control engagements etc.

OP this is a decent guide on how to 'perform' a Han slide

a lot of text for a former bug which is now a feature.

well that explains one terrible blog post...

This mechanic applies to all acceleration gates not just to fw its been known for years by most pilots the OP is just hot wind after already opening this very topic in another thread 2 days ago repeats himself again for that feeling of self importance than we all know poetic needs.... if ur going to call it by its name its actually the Hansploit also who really ever gets past the first few lines of any post you write poetic? honestly

I know that. I talked about this back in August during Accelerationgate. And called BS on Fozzie when he described it as intended behaviour. Which it is not, since it's existed well before FW, and it's only in FW where the wonky behaviour actually makes sense.

I think I may have done this accidentally once when I was tanking the final stage of the maze. Once I realized I had activated the correct gate to the final room, I was unable to cancel warp and had quite a scary encounter with my gang far behind. I believed this was a feature of the final room of the Maze, as I had been able to cancel the gate activation for other parts of the complex.

My question is this: You managed to explain how to use the Hans slide in its practical application of avoiding players camping FW gates, but is it possible to replicate this behavior if you're not coming out of warp? For example, if you're 50 km away from a gate, can you implement the bug-that-is-actually-a-feature? Or does this ONLY work when you are exiting warp within activation range of an acceleration gate?

BTW, it wasn't very helpful to put your "explanation for newbies and veterans" halfway down your post.

you need to land within activation range of the gate for this to work. otherwise you just start approaching tha gate as normal.


As for the guys whining about hw the OP is trolling or complaining about the mechanic I suggest you train reading to lvl 5 first before mouthing off. If you actually read the post AFTER you remove you tinfoil hats you will see that it a post to clarify what gatesliding is and how to do it to clear up some mis informed members for their corp/allaince.