Missions & Complexes

What are the biggest risks to highsec mission runners? How do most gankers go about their 'business' and what are the best ways to deter their attacks and/or fend them off when they do occur?

Ummm have you ever done an SoE mission in Osmon or Apanake??? No, you must not have.

They will gank you with Cats and Tornados. They will do it in World's Collide, they will do it in Pirate Invasion, they will do it in Damsel. They will do it on your gate to the mission.

But the best way to protect yourself is set your DScan to 1AU and run your mission. Look every 30 seconds for ships. If you see a Tornado or Cat, or a spike in local, get the fudge out. (Use Bastion sparingly)

It is very unlikely T2 fits will get ganked and they work just fine, you will gain efficiency through using shiny modules but the more of them you use the more likely you are to get ganked.

Ask yourself the question: Does fitting my ship in a fashion that will make me a gank target make me enough isk to offset the losses as opposed to using a T2 fit and drastically reducing my chances of being ganked?

If the answer is no, then use a T2 fit.

If you still want to use a shiny fit, you simply have to use it with the understanding you are purposefully making yourself a target, this is not necessarily a bad thing if you are willing and know how to apply tactics that will keep you safe. Many of which have already been mentioned.

Fit faction damage mods and either nothing else faction or only cheap stuff. Anyone who wants to gank for a DG XL booster isn't a very good ganker

Also go mission in Ordion or something, like the SOE hubs right now are exactly where I would target if I were trying to make some isk ganking.

Basically if you are in a officer fit mission ship and you are in highsec you are just asking for getting ganked. If I could buy a ratting Thanatos fit or three for the price of your battleship there is something fundamentally wrong with that.

I appreciate everyone's advice. I should have been more specific: I understand obviously that making your ship blingy and expensive is just asking to get ganked.

My real question is: what are the various ways they can actually go about ganking you while in a dead space pocket, assuming, for what ever reason, they've decided to gank you?

So far, I see two potential ways:

- someone warps into dead space pocket with a suspect timer, probably by attacking your wrecks, you are foolish enough to retaliate (by attacking them) this gives a limited engagement timer with you which they will continue to reset by attacking you until you die, pay ransom or manage to escape

- they scan you down in a dead space pocket and warp to you with a scout and a ganking fleet (not sure if they can scan you down and warp directly to you while in a dead space pocket or are forced to go through all the potential warp gates...can someone shed some light on this?). Once they all land, they attack you all at once, and for their sakes, hopefully have the numbers and dps to gank you before Concord spawns and merks them all

Are there any other ways, using current EVE mechanics and the somewhat new timer system (still a little unfamiliar with all the timers and their consequences) that pirates could try to gank and/ ransom mission runners in highsec? Am I missing any? As far as I am concerned, the above methods are the only two options for gankers.

Which means, they really only have one option, to simply suicide themselves in the hopes of killing you as well; as, so far as I can tell, the first option requires you to make the mistake of attacking them and giving them the limited engagement timer thereby allowing them to attack you without concord getting involved.


Am I right here or am I missing something?

Thanks again for all the advice guys o/

There are a few methods but only 3 that I have an expierence with:

1. Get them to agress you/gain legal aggression. The old method was to steal the loot and then apologize and get a can and when they took it back they became a valid target. Not sure how it goes these days, but there are quite a few things that can cause one to go suspect and that accomplishes the same thing. So don't do anything that could flag you with a limited engagement or a suspect timer.

2. Suicide ganking, if you use insta bookmarks, don't hang out in near stations or gates and never autopilot you will be safer, but ultimately someone is gonna scan your fit and try to determine if it is worth it to lose lots of cats to get that loot.

3. The best one if the person fits this way is to wait for a marauder to smartbomb frigs in a mission and make fast or cloaked frig gets hit by it. This means the mission ship gets concorded and they scoop the already blue wreck. It seems since they added safteies that there are fewer people using smartbombs in missions but I know for a fact people still do, even if it isn't that many.

I have to admit though the best strategy I ever had not to get ganked is very simple: mission in Npc null and when a neutral enters local spam your Dscan for probes and let your relevant Intel channels know. If you see probes on scan warp to a safe and cloak. Obviously don't leave behind drones or MTUs or anything else that can be scanned down. Also if you are in range having a cyno on your battleship isn't the worst idea, since you can then just warp to a gate and bait whoever is trying to kill you.

They can not land directly on you, they will land at the very first gate and have to travel through every gate that you have traveled through. So D-scanning at a 1 AU range every now and then will alert you of people landing on your gate.

And yes, other than suiciding the only way to kill a missioner in hisec is to entice them into shooting at you first. Usually done by going suspect by shooting their MTUs or stealing loot. Shooting a suspect while you are in a missioning ship is of course a terrible idea. Not only because they are fit for PVP and you likely are not, but they will likely also have an off grid booster and possibly some neutral logistics ships on standby as well.

Smack talk in local attracts attention and gankers. Even an innocent hello. Avoid these.
Never give them a chance to scan your mission ship when you undock. Most scans happen at the undock, many are just too lazy to stake scanning ships at the gates.
Keep your eyes peeled for the tell-tale ship scan graphics effect while in space. Try not to zoom out fully or you'll miss it.



There is only one way. They need to scan you down first. Keep in mind, not all mission pockets are gated deadspace pockets.
To mitigate this, you need to watch for combat probes that comes within 6-8 AU of your location - setting dscan to 1AU as per posted by someone won't prevent cloaked ships/combat recon from scouting your position. Having your position scouted and bookmarked by gankers means you already lost half your advantage. This is bad mitigation.

Goto yellow alert if you see a set of 4-5 combat probes within 6-8AU. Narrow the range down to 4AU and see if the probes touches it. If it does come within 4AU, then he's definitely narrowing onto your position and may have already triangulated it. Your options is a) gtfo to a to safespot asap b) watch for futher development if your is a multi-gated mission and you're not at the entrance. That's pretty much it.

As to how they gain aggression or suicide gank in your mission pocket, that's all irrelevant. There are various ways, but it's unimportant to the above.

P.S. If they're really out for blood, they'll catch you at the gate with multiple Tornados.
Nothing you do can prevent your ship from going boom.

That's why I travel fit my mission tengu heading to the mission system... Being in high sec, basically no chance of getting nado blapped on a gate as long as your not slow on hitting cloak when you start your warp.