Warfare & Tactics

I'm planning to spend some time in Null, and while out there I lost my Cheetah and pod to an insta-locking Sabre. Right as I left an NPC station, no less.

Annoyed muttering aside, I'm curious as to what others have to say with regards to what to expect while flying solo in Null. I'm very inexperienced to Null, and while I will be taking this as a harsh learning experience, it would be good to get information from more experienced people out there.

What to expect can be certain ships, types of camps, and perhaps certain players that are more ideal to avoid than others(although I normally try to avoid everyone with a 30-lightyear pole).

P.S. There are certain pirate factions I would like to build standing and LP with, so that I may start making a business from the BPCs out there. Any advice on this, as well? Not looking for any locations in particular, because that would just be silly. And dumb. Very dumb.

One time bump to fix forum.

I LOL'ed.. ****** :). But I must say I found you pack very helpful in the arc and for later use :)

As others have said, there's a lot to say on the subject and people neither know everything nor have the patience to type everything they know in one response. Scipio's reply was good, however I'd like to add something that hasn't specifically been mentioned yet: It's the importance of not warping directly between stargates while travelling, in order to avoid the most deadly threat to single ships in Null space - Gate camps.

If you've spent any amount of time at all in Nullsec you'll probably have already figured this one out, but not warping directly between stargates in a system is absolutely critical to your survival. You can make a weak argument that using D-scan, Probes or Local to see who's in system is about as effective as setting up good warp points, and can even say that your efforts are futile because its not the gate camp in your system, but the next one, that will kill you. At the end of the day it doesn't matter. If you carelessly warp from one system to the next by travelling between stargates, sooner or later you'll lose your ship, and probably also get podded, because chances are that they'll have the gate bubbled as well.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you'll still lose ships. It's the nature of Eve. While my number one recommendation for traveling in nullsec would be to get a second account and use it to scout one system ahead of you in a cheap t1 speedy frig, the advice I present here is going on the assumption that you neither have nor want a second account.


What your process for jumping into systems should look like:


1. So you've just jumped into a system. If the gate is camped:

Don't panic, it won't help anything. You might be totally and utterly screwed no matter what you do, depending on what you're flying, but the first thing you need to do is assess the situation. There are too many influencing variables for me to list, but your only three possible actions are:

A. Burn back to gate. If the gate you're on now is bubbled and you aren't flying something really fast that can MWD out of the bubble fast enough to avoid being locked up and scrammed, then burning back to gate is probably your best option.

B. Burn out of the bubble/camp and warp to a celestial in system. Be super careful on the next jump, and recognize that you were lucky to survive.

C. Fight.

You need to decide which one of these you want to do, depending on what your surroundings look like. Experience will dictate your actions, and you may have to lose a few ships in order to learn what those correct actions are.

Note: Encountering a gate camp is a lot like what they say about taking down a POS; With enough determination and effort, that ******* POS is coming down no matter what, and it doesn't matter what defenses they've got. Similarly with gate camps, it is possible to make a camp unsurvivable to any ship, and the only determining factor on whether you live or die is the amount of effort the campers are willing to go to in order to guarantee that they kill you. There are too many factors that can influence your survivability to list here. A few of those factors include the amount of uncloaking cans they drop, how many bubbles are up, how big those bubbles are, how much tackle they have, how many interceptors, etc etc. Cloakies are not safe in determined camps. Neither are nano or stab fit ships. This is just one fact of Eve that you have to understand. No matter what you do, if you play in Nullsec long enough, you WILL lose ships and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

So now that you've either evaded a gate camp, have made it into a new system or have just jumped into one that isn't camped, these are the steps you should take:

A. Assuming the gate isn't already camped and that there aren't any ships or cans (Or anything else that can decloak you,) within 2km, you've got a 30 second cloak. Use this window of time to do the following:

B. Quickly check your surroundings (Overview) to see what's on grid.

C. Look at local. If there are people in local, you have to be careful. If there aren't, you're probably alright but still be careful.

D. D-Scan. If there are people in local, are there any ships within 14 AU? What ships are there? Look for bubbles.

E. Open map. Look at both your current gate and the destination gate. How far is it, would it be better to approach from another celestial in system that is at a different angle?

Now that you've got a general idea about what's in the system, Warp away from your gate to a celestial. Do not warp to your next gate.

Note: The idea behind travelling in Null is that you want to make your movements as unpredictable to your enemies as possible. People EXPECT noobs to travel from gate to gate, and so the space directly between Gate A (Origin) and Gate B (Destination) will ALWAYS be bubbled, if there are any bubbles present. You can often expect to see alternate approaches bubbled as well, but if the campers only brought 3 bubbles and there are 5 directions of approach, then only 3 of those approaches will be bubbled, with the most likely avenue of approach being bubbled first.

Warp at range to your destination gate from an unexpected point of approach. Get eyes on the gate before you jump through it. there may have been something you didn't think to look for on D-scan that may indicate a camp in the next system.

Set up "Observation Points" at different orientations to the gate. One above, one below, basically on the different cardinal points. But this is usually only necessary if you're planning on staying for a while.

If and when you decide to jump through the next gate, warp to it from a different (safe) approach than you did the last time when you got eyes on. When you're in the next system, repeat the step's I've listed here and try to stay alive. Nothing is foolproof 100% of the time, but caution and common sense do go a long way.