EVE New Citizens Q&A

it depends.

When you come out of a warp, assuming you have not activated anything or moved, your ship is temporarily invulnerable (<5 sec i think). the same happens when you land at a gate. The main difference is, when you click the jump button, your ship receives two commands to complete in order: A. warp to the gate B. jump through the gate (this command also breaks down into two, inseparable commands: move to the gate and the actual jump)

The nature of warping to anything, you will warp somewhere in a sphere about 2500m around its edge. With this in mind, when you click 'jump' (regardless of if it warps or not), your ship will move toward the gate.

In practice, if you land on the gate without any trouble (no bubbles or random bouncing off the gate model) the time between you exiting invulnerability and actually jumping is usually under the 2 seconds (i can explain the 2 second rule for locking if you don't already know) it take to lock and hurt you. An exception being smartbombs, which do not require a lock, and will cause their damage instantly.

Very rare cases when you will be vulnerable long enough for anything serious to happen. Usually caused by latency or some sort of technical skip.

And as I mentioned, some ships have potential to bounce off the gate. This is mostly an issue for super-capitals, and larger ships (freighters, orcas, battleships and regular capitals) that are in a ball from fleet warp. In those cases, its just a matter of where in the ball you are and how large your ship is, along with misfortunate placement in said ball.

For day to day use, especially if you warp yourself, I wouldn't count on any anomalous occurences happening enough for you to make special plans around them (unless your ping is dreadfully terrible).

Be advised, in rare cases the server will just go full dumbass on you and even though it says jumping, you will just sit there completely vulnerable. This is a technical glitch and not too common. I have heard (not confirmed) that in some cases you can get reimbursement for things like that, but I wouldn't count on it.

Yeah, when you arrive at 0 and jump, you're vulnerable for such a short time that the server lag and general internet lag take care of it (server has to report to the other players that you've arrived, so they don't see you till a bit after). That's why people use bubbles; they force you out of warp at some distance away from the gate, even if you choose warp-to-0 or "jump", with plenty of time for the enemies to lock you up and kill you.

Without bubbles, you are vulnerable once you've gone through the gate. You have 30 seconds of invulnerability so your computer can load up the surroundings and give you some time to make a decision, but after that, the slower your ship is the longer it takes to warp away. And even for covert ops cloaking ships or mwd-cloak tricks, you have to take off the gate invisibility to activate your cloak, and that's enough time for an interceptor to double-click your brief appearance in the Overview to fly to your position, and interceptors move so fast that he'll pretty much bump you and decloak you.

EDIT: In addition, aggression flags come into play at a gate. If you arrive, someone shoots you, and you manage to jump through, the gate will deny them access for a full minute because they have aggression flags. If you arrive, shoot someone, they shoot back, and you then try to jump through the gate, neither of you can jump through. If you hear the terms "station games", "undock games", or "gate games", this is what they're talking about, people using this game mechanic to escape pursuit.

I assume we are talking BRs or covops frigates here.

If so be aware it is actually possible to warp close enough to a gate to decloak when you land but not close enough to instantly jump.

This only happens very rarely but fit a MWD for burning to the gate to cover this possibility.

In theory, if you warp to an (unbubbled) gate with the "jump" command then there is no gap between landing and jumping in which you can be target locked. It is totally safe. Just plucking a number out of the air, I would say it works that way 99% of the time. The other 1% then lag, server hiccups or other gremlins may drop you a bit short of the 2500m jump range, or just leave you sitting there thinking "oops".

The one to watch out for is if you are in a high value ship and prone to disconnects. If you get a disconnect as you arrive at the gate, then when you reconnect EVE will warp you back to where it lost contact with you. This might be 3000m, 10km or any other highly inconvenient distance from the gate. For critical journeys, scout it first.