Warfare & Tactics

mwd-cloak trick
google it, practice it, cease to asplode.

There are 3 main types of gankers. If you understand how all three work, you should have no problem defending properly:

(1) Blobbers. The way blobbing works is that the gang has many cheap, high dps ships, like Catalysts. They have a scout looking for pilots that are auto piloting through space with valuable cargo, or a valuable ship. When they notice such a ship they follow it until it enters their system. They already have a bookmark to the place where the autopilot will land the target. When the ship enters the target system and goes into warp, the gankers undock and warp to their bookmark. If they time it right, they will land right on top of the slow boater and blast him with short-range, high-dps weapons. This is how the Uedama blobs work.

Defense: This tactic only works on ships that are on auto-pilot. As long as you jump to the gate you are safe. Warp scrambling an auto pilot ship is tricky because they do not know where it comes out of the gate and you have to be within a short range to scramble somebody. Also, you would need a non-outlaw scrambler to hang out at the gate. In theory you could use a few non-outlaw tacklers to try to scramble an inbound ship for a blob, but I have not seen this happen. They always seem to go for the autopilot warp in which requires no scrambling at all.

(2) Hunters. In this case, a scout finds a target auto-piloting through space and chases him. Simultaneously, one or more ganking ships, which must be fairly powerful, try to rendezvous with the target and scramble it when it comes out of warp or when it slow boats to a gate. This generally works only against an AFK auto-pilot.

Defense: If you see somebody following you, suspect a hunter-killer group. If you are in a valuable ship and a red flashy appears at a gate with you or appears in local repeatedly, it is likely he is after you and you need to dock or evade immediately. To evade, warp to whatever is in front of you to minimize align time and land 30km 50km or 70km randomly from the destination. Then warp again and dock.

(3) Snipers. The way a sniper works is they have a friend or an alt passive scanning ships that are entering a system (or undocking). If the ship is worth more than about 250M, they will target it. The sniper is a ship with heavy guns optimized to shoot a target coming out of cloak or undocking from a station. They only get one shot in 1.0 system, so they have to get a perfect hit. The sniping ship, typically a Hurricane, costs about 70M. Since half the stuff in the target gets destroyed, it needs to be worth 250M or more to be worth it.

Defense: Tank up ships carrying more than 250M so that they cannot be one-shot by a Hurricane. So, for example, I have an Epithal which has a Damage Control II, Steel Plates and two active armor hardeners plus an Invulnerability module plus a bulkhead reinforcer or something, I forget exactly. Whenever I undock from Jita, enter Jita or enter any system that might be dangerous I activate the hardeners. I have the DC2 running 24-7. This gives the ship insane defense, like 30,000 hit points or something like that. I did the calculations and you need like 3 or 4 Hurricanes to kill it which would cost 250M, thus I am safe carrying up to 500-600M. If you are carrying 1B or more, try to get your tank up to 50,000 hitpoints or more.

Other Tactics:

- learn the MWD-cloak trick
- use side routes that do not take you through heavily trafficked gates
- split up cargoes so you are not carrying more than 1B at a given time

The key thing to remember is that it is cost-benefit game: avoid situations where somebody can kill you for less money than they would make by doing so.

This stuff, and t2 haulers....they sport a down right impressive tank.

To the uneducated eye maybe, I could rip quite a bit of that apart, however I've given up on correcting his shitposting. Just take it with a grain of salt.

One... do not undock without looking at the map.
-- The map offers immense amounts of free intelligence gathering.
--Number of players in a given system. Avoid high traffic systems as often that indicates a blob on a gate in an otherwise quiet system.
--Number of ship and pod kills in the past hour/24 hours. If there is a huge red blot on the map, avoid that system. A high success rate of ship kills either means a large fleet fight, or a camp picking off people that aren't shooting back.
--Number of jumps recently. If you can see that there is a lot of traffic moving thru a system, so can campers. They will be attracted to high traffic areas. Keep in mind these areas can change as intel on other camped systems alters people's travel routes.
--Obviously, pick your route carefully. Just clicking Set Destination will take you on an easily predicted course anyone can figure out.

Two.....do not cross security status borders any more than you must.
--Most camps are found on borders between security status. Your biggest threat going from high sec to low sec (or low to null) is that initial jump in. Once you are into low/null sec, you can often go a dozen jumps and not even see another player.
---It's better to live in dangerous space than take day trips there. Leave your important ships where you use them, and travel in something cheap and fast, like a Ceptor. If you need to move cargo- Blockade Runners, friends with a Blops and a covert cyno, hire someone else to move it, sell it locally.

Three...keep up on who is shooting whom at the moment.
--pay attention to things like....is this low sec area currently a hot spot for FW conflict? Is there a sov war raging in the region I am thinking about flying thru? Because chances are good there is a ton of fleets, alts, spies, and cyno traps all over that place.
---To a lesser degree, keep an eye on Incursions. For one the rats are replaced by much tougher rats during an incursion...gates, belts, etc. But also- Incursions are magnets for gankers.

Four....intel channels.
--learn them, pay attention to them, contribute to them.

Five....do your homework.
--Who is active in that part of space?
---look at bios, what TZ are they in? If a bio is all in Cyrillic, chances are you are looking at a Russian TZ group. If it mentions wallabies as legitimate war brides- prolly Aussie TZ.


Game mechanics are game mechanics. Max nav skills, ships fitted specifically for travel, MWD+ Cloak tricks....all well and fine. But real success is in avoiding camps entirely.

I understand OP's question is specific on hauling? Then I can help.

First off, training for a T2 industrial (blockade runner / deep space transport) is well worth it. Yes I know, it's a 15 day train. But worth it.

Then what?

The BLOCKADE RUNNER can fit Covert Ops cloaks, and thus allow you to cloak up after jumping a gate and warping. Your main defense strategy will rely on getting out as quick as possible, hence rigging your ride with polycarbon engine housings or similar alignment-speed improvements is a big plus. The lows can either contain more intertial stabs (to warp off before anyone can lock or decloak you) or warp core stabs, in case some pesky interceptor does manage to land a longpoint.

The DEEP SPACE TRANSPORT is a different animal. Others said it and I'll join the choir: 50Mn MWD + improved cloak. Gets you out of most situations, along with a considerable tank (against ganking) and +2 warpstabs off the bat (built-in). Deep Space transports aren't meant for lowsec per-se, but they manage. If fitting permits, you might fit a 10Mn AB to burn back to the gate. Also overheat your invulnerability field when needed - it's bonused to do so.

Tech I industrials? Don't bother using them with expensive cargo or out of highsec. They just don't cut it. The cloak/micro still helps, but you're basically gambling your ship at every gate to shave off 15 days of training.


On a side note, when not flying haulers: TAKE YOUR TIME after jumping. You can DScan, you can weigh your options (eg: burn back to gate, get off 1 cycle of MWD, get the other guys aggressed before jumping, ...). You have 60 seconds of gatecloak. Use them when you feel the need.

many gatecamps happen only on certain routes due to geographical bottlenecks, popularity of certain systems, gate sizes, sec lvl borders etc.

often you can just fly around popular camps

for high-value, low volume hauling, i choose a Mail Truck fit interceptor.

Ares:
Highs: Cloak
Mids: MSE, EM + Thermal amps.
Lows: 3x Inertial Stabilisers, 1x Expanded Cargohold.
Rigs: 2x Cargo rigs.

total of ~170m^3 of space, <2s align and enough tank to survive a smartbomber (two or three smartbombers on the other hand....).

I've only lost one of these and it's 100% because I screwed up.