Warfare & Tactics

Bubbles are you biggest threat, you can use warp stabs to stop getting tackled, but unless you can fit a T3 (I'm assuming you can't) there is no real counter to bubbles. I've never gotten into exploration so I can't comment on the best ship but I would imagine the t1 or t2 frigate designed for exploration and scanning is your best bet (Heron/Buzzard for caldari) or the cruiser they gave away with the last expansion. A cloak and MWD is probably bet, you can align, turn the MWD on then cloak (which will de-activate the MWD). This way you move away from the spot you would last have been seen making it harder for people to decloak you.

The only other option I can think of is having a second account to use as a scout, but it also means double the sub cost and without a second screen it can be a bit of pain.

The 'Great Wildlands' is a nice quiet region for exploration.

Enter via 'The Forge'.

Not the right forum for this though surely?

Consider buying plex rather than subbing accounts, then using the income from your good account to keep going while you resub your other accounts.

Definitely keep your overview set up with a tab for everything that could decloak you off a gate -- celestials can be cleared off of this tab, but you'll definitely need corpses, cans, wrecks, drones, and other ships to start.

Keep swapping to your system map and warp to a celestial in range of the gate you're attempting to jump through. Use d-scan to peek towards that cluster and watch for drag bubbles. Consider warping to a celestial not directly in line with your next gate, since there may well be a bubble set up along that route.

Consider not panicking. As an example, I was out with a few buddies ganking farmers. On the way back, our group got split up and I was pursued by a Sabre and a Dramiel. The Sabre would bubble up as I jumped into the system and the Dramiel would burn at me when I decloaked. I burned perpendicular to his angle of approach and hit my afterburner before cloaking. The Dramiel would come within 2,100 meters at his final pass, I would burn out of the bubble, and I would change my course to shake my pursuit.

Navigating though null isn't easy, but your odds of survival are much higher with your head on a swivel.

Ignore the map statistics, they hardly reveal the big camps and they add an unnecessary layer of paranoia to your play.The only invaluable use is "pilots in space", which you should use to pick an unpopular region to explore.

Instead:
• work close to NPC nullsec so you can use their stations as loot dump.
• dump loot at certain value intervals
• tailor your fit to survive a bubble camp: nanofibers, mwd, cloak allow you to burst back to gate when bubblecamp appears
• make bookmarks around gates un your regular exploration route, at 200km from gate, to dodge drag bubbles

Just to make sure it's clear, this (the cloak/MWD trick) will not work inside of a warp disruption bubble. Turning on your MWD will make your signature radius bloom and make you easier to target though.

If you land in a bubble, don't panic. Check your overview for players; if you don't see any, they are likely cloaked, but there's a slim chance that the bubble is unmanned. You can then decide if you want to chance it or burn back to the gate. If you want to chance it, pick a celestial - the sun works, align to it, and pilot in that direction until you are free of the bubble at which point hit "warp to" like your life depends on it, if you're still in your ship or pod. If you decide to jump back through the gate, turn on your prop mod to speed up the approach and hope you survive that.

Fun times!

Perhaps I am missing your intention, but the cloak-MWD tricks work absolutely fine for bubbles ... in fact they are often lifesavers if you jump thru a gate into a bubble camp (and the campers are not too good).

Unless you are superslow in cloaking (hit the cloak first and then the MWD) your enemy is the fast decloaker ships MWD burning straight for you, often with a tail of drones following on.

If you're a conventional ship then you are damn slow under cloak and there's a lot of good reasons for not wanting to do this in a conventional ship. It's still a useful tactic for vanilla ships, but take great care in choosing when to use. if you're covops (including T3) then you move pretty well under cloak so this can be a very useful method. Of course if you're a T3 and also nullified then you're not slowed down an awful lot by the bubble anyways.

Get a fast ship like an interceptor and head to your prospective area, then proceed to make bounces off all the gates, this way you can always warp to the bounces first.

If you find yourself jumping into a bubble don't panic, best bet is hold cloak and asses the situation quickly with the tactical display up (so you can see distances and relative positions easier), 9 times out of 10 the best option is to crash the gate, if you want to stop the bubbler from jumping through and bubbling the other side just warp within the bubble, he will now be agressed giving you time to jump through and warp away.