Warfare & Tactics

A few days ago, I was running a DED complex in a 0.4 security system and noticed that someone who had just hopped into local was trying to scan me down.

I had a few safe spots bookmarked that were maybe 20 AU apart from each other, though not very good ones, since they were on lines between celestials and probably too close to celestials as well. I started hopping between them, watching d-scan pretty carefully. There were a few people in local from the same alliance, so I presumed they were probably working together.

After a few minutes of this, I noticed that two of the safes seemed to have 8 combat probes showing up on D-scan, and one had two probes visible. So, I took a chance and warped near a celestial so I could drop another bookmark and add that to my rounds.

At some point, right as I landed at one of those spots, a Cynabal jumped in on me and pointed me, which led shortly to losing my ship.

My questions are:

1) I get the sense from what I was seeing on d-scan that maybe two of the people after me were scanning for me, because I was seeing multiple combat scanner probes near two different safe spots separated by 20 or so AU. Is there a common tactic for coordinating scanning between multiple people to flush out someone doing what I was doing? Or is it more likely that one person was just moving their probes around rapidly to locate a couple of spots where they'd seen me on earlier full-system scans? Or maybe they were aggressively using d-scans to make educated guesses about where I was sitting, in combination with their scan results?

2) Assuming for the moment that I didn't simply want to jump out of the system and take a break, which in this case likely would have saved my ship -- are there preparations I could make in terms of setting up bookmarks that might greatly increase my security?

I'm kind of interested in both ends of this thing -- what I can do better to avoid getting killed, and what I might be able to do on the scanning end of things in a small group to deal with a target who's doing what I was trying to do.

Edit: No whining here, it was an interesting experience. I probably should have hit up the people who got me for any info they might share about what they were doing (and maybe I still will) but I'm also interested in what tactics are common out there.

I'm not all that great with the PVP'r's tactics. I am more often on your side of the fight.

So I have no clue if they had 2 probers or not. Seems plausible. But good combat probers, i have found, are often really really good (I have been practicing).

one tactic that should help buy time is not warp to 0 to your safe every time. Vary it up. There is a better chance then if they get a lock and warp to it hoping to catch you, you will land outside point range and have a chance.

Ultimately IMHO, in your situation you really had 2 choices.

1. Try and leave the system.
2. Fit a cloak, safe and cloak up until they leave.

You can try and log, but if probes were already out, they would have a good chance of catching your ship before it logged.

best practice, use a throwaway ss, burn to a celestial and if busted, remove the bookmark.... better than burning all your ss by jumping about.

Thanks so much for the replies. It helps to get a sense for what's possible and what's not worth the effort.

When I have scanners trying to bust my ass (assuming I am somewhere that requires probes to locate) I keep doing my stuff until there are at least four probes within 1AU, checking DS regularly of course. Then I warp somewhere (safespot if I have one or just near a random celestial if not) and pop a semi-safe spot on the way. Then I head back to that semi-safe spot and hang there for a while.

If they're determined and I see probes starting to home-in on me again, I just repeat the process, building a set of disposable semi-safe spots as i go. If I am forced to re-use a potentially compromised bookmark then I warp-to not at zero, but at some distance ... just a little added safety margin.

Unlike other posters I tend to hang around if I have very determined or skilled scanners chasing me. I see it as a cat-and-mouse game heavily biased in my favour and in taking up their time, as they fruitlessly try and get a fix on me, I am doing a community service of having them not off griefing other ppl. That's my feeble rationalisation anyways :-)

The classic gotcha here is when they've pre-scanned the system and can warp directly to my site without deploying probes. When that happens I rely on my DS, seeing their ship, and my practice of trying to move away from the warp-in spot to run the site.

It's easy to make a ton of new BM's while in warp, so there's really no reason to ever reuse prior BM's. (even if you're only 100kk off, it'll take another probe cycle) When in doubt, warp to prior BM's at varying ranges to add that extra margin of safety, and keep in mind that you are at your most vulnerable when dropping OUT of warp (you're stuck in the same spot until you decelerate and align fully to somewhere else) and you're comparatively much safer when in a disposable safe and aligned to another safe.

Even with multiple probers after you, if you don't reuse safes (abuse celestials, especially moons, to create new safes on the fly if you need to, they won't have tackle at every celestial) and don't have any connection issues you're practically impossible to catch while at the keyboard. Of course this is :effort: which is why it's almost always better to log/cloak/leave, but if you're up for cat and mouse you can keep it up indefinitely.

If you are stuck with aggro and can't log off and only have 2 or 3 SS's to bounce from just create new ones each time u warp prior to landing at the original. You can then warp back to that safe spot at 100km and align out and do the same in the other direction.

Long as you keep moving they simply wont have time to catch you unless you are flying a dread or something ridiculous.

Renaming your ship does nothing to a competent prober as your ship sig ID will still remain the same until you log off. There are lots of little tricks but I'm not giving mine away to my WT's.

I will say tonight I was already sitting on your corp mates Tornado in Nenn prior to those Ruptures landing. In fact I was getting a kick at how long it was taking them to probe him out. I was just waiting on the gang you guys had on other side of gate to warp somewhere so I could shoot the Tornado with out any silliness of a gank gang ruining my fun . The tarded Ruptures ruined that for me..

Here you go:http://gallente.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12031712
They were definitely doing it wrong. And who are you calling "less than upstanding"?! In general logging off in space is a very bad idea, if someone has you on short scan after logging off it shouldn't take longer than 20-30 sec to find the ship with probes deployed.

How to avoid probes:

Fit your ship to be de facto unprobable (tengu is best, but some others work)

OR

1. Fit a cloak. A lot of ships can do this with little cost.
2. If you see probes on dcan, warp to a safe and cloak. Then go grab a snack. Only the most dedicated pirates will still be there. If they are, go watch a movie, and be sure to stop back every hour or so to comment in local so they waste their own time. A few hours of this and they will leave.

OR

As soon as you see probes, warp to station (low sec) or a safe (0.0) and log out.

Really the bear holds all the cards.