Science & Industry

I just want to become a hauler and just wondering, how often do hauler get killed? Assuming I'm on a Charon that is. And maybe you could share some tips on how not to get suicide ganked except for the usual of keeping your cargo low ISK. Thanks, and that's all.

Avoid Uedama, Niarja, Sivala, Jita.

Just don't auto pilot with a lot of expensive crap. Right there will save you from most ganking.

Fly smart and think about what you are doing as if you wanted to gank someone.

Example: Should I undock from Jita in an Itty 5 with 3 hulks in my cargo, and try to warp to the gates off to the right?
Your answer should be, no.

search battleclinic for gank fits and run the prices compared to the value of your cargo. usually you want to stay 10-20% below what it would take to 'lode your ship if you want maximum gank avoidance.

that said, there will be unlucky times when people (me, for example :) ) will just feel like gank something for the lols and you happen to be the target. No ship or cargo value will be safe in that situation. :p

I don't want to share this info actually

There are gank squads out there that try to scan every possible freighter going in and out of trade hubs. Using a passive targeter they can lock and scan you with a scout without you ever knowing.

If you have enough value in your cargo hold to be worth ganking and you get scanned chances are you are dead no matter what you do.

That being said there are several ways to minimize the risk.

-Do not auto pilot, warp directly to gates and jump, they will have less time to scan you, freighter ganking is not random,
it costs to much.
- If you have an alt that can scout for you jump them through the gate first to check for a gank squad.
- if using a scout, equipping a web or two on the scout to use on the freighter can help you get into warp faster
after jumping through.
- Insta warp book marks. You make a book mark 300-500K straight out from station undock.
When you undock you will be going full speed and should insta warp to that book mark before anyone can target you.
- systems like Jita have multiple entry points, try to use less often used gates when possible. This may require 1-2
extra jumps but avoids the most commonly camped gates.
- Freighters EHP is mostly hull points. plug in a implant that gives a 3-5% boost to hull HP.
If you do get ganked that extra buffer may be enough to save you.
- Implants with ship agility bonuses also help as it lets you algin and warp faster. The less time you spend sitting at a gate
waiting to enter warp, the less chance someone will have a peak at your cargo.
- Rename your ship. having your ship show on the overview as John Does Raven instead of John Does Charon will
often have the gankers pass over you at busy gates.

Freighter Ganking has become much more common since the changes to mining ships. While there are many ways to minimize the risk, most freighter ganks are done for profit. If you regularly fly around with over 5 bil in your cargo hold eventually you will get ganked. But if you always fly around with less than 1B in your cargo you can most likely auto pilot all you want with very little chance of getting ganked.

A fleet of 8-10 Talos can kill a freighter in under 1 minute. this costs them 650-800M for the fleet depending on the doctrine they use. If the freighter they gank drops over 1B worth of cargo they make a profit. Say the gank fleet cost 1B to buy and fit all the ships. They then get 200M in loot and salvage from the concorded gank ships. The fleet then cost them 800M. Now say the freighter they ganked drops 1.2B in cargo as loot. It is very common to get a drop like this. The gank made a profit of 400M and took less than 5 minutes. Even split between 8 ganker pilots that is 50M each for 5 minutes work, or effectively 600M per hour. There are very few activities in game that can make that kind of isk.

Considering there are still freighter pilots dumb enough to fly around with way over 1B worth of cargo, I have seen ships get ganked with over 10B worth of cargo, that isk per hour for the gankers can get much higher if they get a lucky gank on one of those overloaded ships. Even if they are not good gankers and only manage to gank 5 freighters per hour, and only make 10M each average off each Gank, they are still making as much as most high sec mission runners. And that would be a minimum payout, chances are they will make closer to 500M per hour then 50M per hour.

Can you see now why so many gankers target freighters? Not only do they make isk, but they make more isk then any other combat activity in high sec would make them. Do you see now why everyone says not to carry more than 1B in your cargo hold at a time?

I am amazed that T1 indy are not ganked more often. Most max cargo fit itty 5's will hold about 40,000m3 and can be ganked by a single blaster catalyst. cost about 20M to buy and fully T2 fit for max DPS. or about 2M for a basic meta 0 T1 fit. Even throwing 2 Catalysts at it with a total of 5M invested into them can reap huge rewards if the ship has 100M worth of cargo and drops half of it. it is very common for itty 5's to have over 100M worth of cargo.

1) Each gank takes a minimum of 15min (due to GCC).
2) You're excluding the time you have to wait before you get a target.

1. True, but they can just bump the juicy target on the other side of the gate while movinging your Taloses across.
2. Noobship+Civvy gun = 15min timer. More than long enough to bump you out of the 250km of a Concord spawn's insta-gib radius or to reset the spawn. (You want to bump the Freighter away from the gate anyway to avoid Gate guns if you're using Taloses).
3. Sure, but you can bump an atk freighter indefinitely too.

I suspect it's not used often because most pilots don't try to logoffski anymore, so there's no need to. If they do logoffski, you have a minute to land that first hit.

I'm not saying being ATK isn't a good idea. I'm just saying that I don't think it changes the odds of being ganked much compared to the "don't be a piñata" rule.

Oh, almost forgot double wrapping. By removing the ganker's ability to directly value your cargo, you join the shell game along with every PUSH/RFF load that's not worth ganking.

True but the point still stands. Even one gank per 15 minutes or even one per half hour is good isk, especially if you consider only ganking two freighters per hour you will be spending more time finding worthwhile targets, ganking ships that will give you far more profit. Not to mention gankers usually use alts, and you can have more than one alt to avoid the 15 minute GCC. I would say 500-600M/hour is doable ganking freighters, perhaps not likely, but doable. For sure you can do better than the 50-60M you would get from running missions.

My point was ganking freighters can not only be done for profit, but can be more isk/hour than most other high sec activities. You are a GOON. If you have participated in these ganks you know this to be true. It can be verified by looking at the kill boards. I have seen many many freighter ganks where up to 10 billion in loot dropped. I have actually seen very few where less than 1B dropped. Although I do not know how big of a cut your corp/alliance takes of the top.

But then again this could be used by the anti gankers to call for change. Why should Ganking be amount the most lucrative high sec activities? Considering it is based on players being stupid enough to undock with way to much value in there cargo hold, there is really not much CCP can do about it without breaking the game.