Science & Industry

If you have the cargo room to spare, you can try and obfuscate the value of your cargo by packing the excess room with as many different items as you can. It won't fool everybody, but the extra time it takes for somebody to compute the worth of your loot may make the difference.

Cargo scanners have a visible effect. Even if passive targeting is used, you can sometimes tell if you are being scanned just by watching closely.

Also: Whenever you are hauling cargo of little worth, take your time. Let the pirates waste their time scanning you. You may buy sufficient time for another hauler to escape. Next time they could return the favor.

Ive undocked at Jita and sat in one spot and had the same guy waste time scanning me twice (both times with passive targeting).

@Op

You should definitively aim for an Orca. Just saying.

I believe you mean a deep space transport like the occator / bustard / impel / mastodon, whom can be tanked decently to survive a few volleys from a ganker or two, while still hold a decent amount of cargo.

Blockade runners are the crane / prorator / viator / prowler, and they are built for low cargo size but extreme fast align and warp speeds for transporters. And they will not survive a gank.

oh yeah why wouldn't they? They can pop a shuttle in a outfitted ship that costs almost nothing. And a shuttle will pop damn quick. Gankers around trade routes are not generally going for tears but for profit. So if they can get more isk ganking you over how much their ship is worth they will go after you. Meaning if you were hauling for example 250m isk in implants just about any ship valued less than 25m (maybe even 50m isk, unsure of exact drop percents) will be trying to suicide gank you, since the chances of profiting from suicide ganking you is going to be much higher than the ship they are using.

The Prowler is an excellent ship for non-afk traveling. Align and cloak and nothing short of a smartbombing ship (or the lag monster) will get you on a gate - which is fairly difficult to pull off in high-sec.

Remember to bookmark the undock of the stations you're using and make insta undock bookmark as well, since the prowlers cloaking powers won't help you when you land 2000 meters of the dock ring in 4-4, nor when you undock from 4-4. With insta undocks (the P4 station in Jita works mostly as a near insta if you don't know how to make one) you'll limit the time available for people to scan you out and pop you there.

An additional plus for the Prowler is that it is nearly impossible to catch in low-sec and you can therefore use it to pick up cheap items in low-sec and haul them to Jita/Amarr. Just stay away from the generally camped systems like Tama, Rancer, Amamake, Egghelende, Old Man Star, etcs. In those systems you'll have a hard time getting out from the station itself.

Once you've grinded yourself up to a Fenrir/Orca you need to ask yourself what kind of cargo you're making money on. If it's low volume/high value go for the Orca, if it's high volume go for the Fenrir. Though remember that neither of these ships can be used in low-sec at all, where all they will become is tasty kills for a gatecamp.

Orca corp hangar can't be scanned by players yes, and that's what matters really, who cares about illegal items.


I hope CCP doesn't change that, the Orca is like your maximum security transport these days, as no one can see what's in the corp hangar.

In regards to tanking, the best way to tank an Orca, which is a very favorable investment compared to a freighter, is to fit for maximum shield and hull buffer with as much resistance mods as you can. This will give you mad EHP. However, do not, under any circumstance fit faction or officer mods on the Orca as that will be just asking for a gank. T2 mods are the most you can go without getting too much attention. The small problem is figuring out the right balance of resistance and buffer for maximum EHP.

Avoid using shield boosters. You will only be able to get one or two cycles of shield boosts before you get popped especially against a gank fleet of maxed-alpha-only Tornadoes. Not only that, the shield booster that's appropriate for the Orca takes up too much CPU/PG and leaves you little room for other mods that could help.

For your hauler, assuming you haven't done so already, I would also recommend training up your trade skills. My alt can do hauling in an Orca and its trade skills are pretty high at the moment and can do remote buy/sell orders on the fly from about 7 jumps away. That and the fact that it can do all that in bulk using skills related to wholesale and accounting. As my hauler moves along, I constantly look at my assets window to see which nearest station has my stuff that I don't need but can sell at a marked up price. If I can't reach the station because of the sec status of the system it's in, I just fire sell it as usually the parts I keep in those systems aren't expensive and are too common to try to mark up. At the moment, I'm trying to clear my assets list by going from system to system in order by number of jumps and picking up or selling stuff as I go. Much of the junk I accumulated was just that... junk. But it's nice to do a little spring cleaning every now and then and we capsuleers tend to be Hoarders Online much of the time.

So far, I managed to earn tens of millions of ISK selling off the stuff that I don't need. I even found nearly a hundred destroyers littered in a few systems and sold those off remotely for about 100million ISK more (marked up of course). It's amazing what you can find littered around the galaxy. I've been a messy pilot as I moved my based of operations from system to system.

I was moveing about a billion ISK worth of stuff for my mission Domi from Jita to Teon in a Mammoth, I was attacked 3 times on the return trip and got back intact. A well tanked Mammoth can stand up to suicide attacks. Having said that I won't be doing it again.

I use a Prowler now. Nothing beats a covert Ops cloak :) If it's a large m3 then it's my freighter.