EVE New Citizens Q&A

I was missioning tonight and scanning for combat probes as usual. I saw 2 at the edge of my scan range (14.3 AU). I continued to Dscan and clear the room as usual. Local lit up with criminal flags showing me somebody else got hit. They were all -10.0 criminals of a well known pirate corp. I started scanning quite intently and trying to clear the rooms really fast. Things were going well until I got 4 on my screen. Ok..... I dropped down to 8 AU and still got 4 probes. I dropped down to 4 AU and got 8 probes. This was a clear sign that it was time to get out of Dodge. As I was warping to dock up I got 8 probes at 2 AU. It's impressive how fast this guy was getting the lock in. I have two comments and then a question about this.

First off, this is why I don't fly some super blingy ship. I like them cheap, but effective. Secondly, I am absolutely certain my decision to warp off was the correct one. No matter what feedback I get here, I will always warp off when a mission spots starts to get compromised.

That being said, I was behind a gate and had micro jump drived 100km off the room's entry. If I wasn't paying so much attention to Dscan, how hard would it have been for a -10.0 pirate to hit me before they got Concorded?

If you are in high sec and not flying something blingy there is no reason to worry. It is not impossible that someone would gank you in high sec just not likely that they would go through all of that effort and expense to gank a cheaply fit mission boat.

There are people that passively scan ships jumping through gates in mission hubs looking for expensive fit ships. There is no way for them to know who exactly you are without warping to your mission space to see. They can however see what type of ship it is that they are scanning down so it is possible that you had the same ship as someone blingy.

As far as response time is concerned the -10 thing means nothing really. Typically -10 gankers will only sit in their pods until it's gank time then they warp right to the target and start shooting. Also I think when you are -10 it is the navy that shoots at you not concord but I could be wrong on that. If you are about to get ganked in high sec most likely you have been ship scanned and determined to be worth the effort and then a cloaky ship has scanned you down and entered your mission space to give the gankers a warp to on your location and a visual confirmation that you are said valuable target.

Concord's response time is longer with lower security rating. So in a 1.0 it's almost instant and in a 0.5 it takes I think around 20 seconds. You can look up the exact numbers but it's not how long it would take concord to kill them but how many gankers they'd need to get it done in that time.

So what could happen is that gankers see your ship and know your fit since they scanned you. They can do an eft load out and figure out about what your EHP would be versus your weakest resist and then divide that by the concord response time of what the local sec status is then divide by the dps of the cheapest ship strong against your tank's resist hole and then know exactly how many of those ships thus how much it would cost to blow up your ship in time. So the concord response time doesn't have anything to do with their ability to gank you just how much it would cost to gank you.

Warping off was the right thing to do... period. You ride out 10-15 minutes in the station, then head back in and finish. It's not complicated.

The alternative is to stay and maybe lose your ship... which, if a battleship, will take a lot of L4s to pay back.

Something to bare in mind although I guess not common place in highsec, is that a good combat scanner hunting another player can use dscan to pinpoint a fairly accurate area in space that thier target is in. I've scanned players with a single scan cycle and they were in Frigs, a BS would be infinitely easier.

Essentially this statement in incorrect.
Probes will always show up on D-Scan if you have them close enough to lock a target ship provided the mission runner is attentive to what is going on, they have the d-scan range set correctly and bother to check it more than once every 8-10 seconds.

I can say I had a ratting BC scanned down in a safe spot (in null) and warped in and tackled all within 60 seconds from the time I landed at the spot after warping away from an anomaly. I reloaded dscan 3-4 times during that 60 seconds and never saw the probes. But scanners this good are not common.

For my understanding, if you want to move probes away after a dscan run, you have to make the probes warp/retract, right?

Lol at most of the answers here.

OP... you were never really in much danger. While gankers do exist and it is a business... you only realistically need to take two precautions;

- don't use ungodly expensive mods (a little bit of Faction stuff is okay though).
- stay off the warp in points (so you have time to warp away if they come in)

Otherwise, you can remain fairly ignorant (though, I would not recommend doing so).

OP - I occasionally FC gank squads targetting mission runners.

Usually we'd only go after you if we had intel that you were blingfit, but sometimes there are other considerations. Particularly if we've just failed a gank, as FC I'd hit something I knew we'd kill to keep up fleet morale (rather than hit a more lucrative target we might fail).

And sometimes it's just about setting an example of someone to get money from everyone else. "Pay up, or end up like HIM (killmail link)".


You did everything pretty much right, except your D-scan technique could be improved.

Here's what I do if doing PVE in deadspace in dangerous space where bubbles aren't a factor (so lowsec, or highsec if I have killrights on me or active wars):

- Look at how hard I am to scan down. This is your 'Signature Radius' stat divided by your 'Sensor Strength' stat. 10 is trivial, 6 is easy, 4 is medium, 2 is somewhat hard and 1.5 will take most probers ages. Call this number X.
- Watch for probes within X AU.
- If you see 1 to 3 combat scanner probes - go on alert and recall drones/deployables. If you see 8, abandon drones and deployables and align out.
- If you have a microjumpdrive fitted, fire it off. Being further from the warpin point will help you.
- If you get neutrals or hostiles on grid, decide immediately "Can I fight them and an unknown number of reinforcements?". Make the decision and stick to it.
- If you flee the field, return in a totally different ship.
- If you fight, use rat AI to your advantage and minimize your use of warp scramblers/disruptors or webs (or other EWAR) - rats have a weird AI that sees those modules as super-threatening.


Edit to add one thing: There's no reason that being caught would be a 'really bad moment'. The most fun experience I've had in EVE was a fight I lost, that took place at a time and place and under circumstances of my opponent's choosing.

You can figure out pretty much where someone is with Dscan. Then it is just a matter of moving the probes on top of him and hitting scan then immediately moving them out of Dscan range and hitting scan again. Your three times 10-15 seconds thing is for someone being slow or lazy or not good at combat probing.