User:Sin tsukaya/Self Defense 101

This is a draft, in which I outline my draft syllabus for a class aimed at PvE-focussed players, teaching them the basic PvP mechanics and tactics they need to survive hisec.

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Re-working this, taking into account feedback, and a focus on streamlining.

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This is a PvP game. If you undock, you are PvPing. This will teach you some PvP skills - focus on avoidance and escape. To learn more, do some PvP, and go on the offence. It's the best way to learn to defend.

This is about hisec PvP. Can categorise the threats you face as:

• Baiting
• Scams
• Suicide gankers
• WTs
• Grief play

Overview. Do it. Pod Saver and colours at a minimum.

Defences: Baiting:

• Safety green.
• No, really. Leave it green.
• Don't shoot flashies.

Grief play:

• Is generally baiting. But can be an end to itself.
• Bumping. Can flipping. (Write it off, consider moving).
• Mission ransoming.
  • D-Scanning for Combat Probes.

Scams:

• If it's in local at a trade hub, it's a scam.
• If it's a contracts, it's probably a scam.
• If it uses the trade window, it's a scam.
• If it seems too good to be true, it's a scam.
• If it seems weird or unusual, it's a scam.
• Uni has a policy against scamming - members can probably be trusted.
• Margin Trading. Oversized courier contracts.

Suicide gankers:

• If there's an event called 'Hulkageddon' on, or 'Burn Jita', then don't fly a Hulk to Jita.
• Don't autopilot. (Cargo scanner, ship scanner, etc).
• Don't fly something that would look really shiny on a killmail (anything unique or very unusual).
• Don't be profitable to blow up.
  • Hauling more than your tank allows (perhaps 100m in t1 indy, 1b in freighter, tank-specific in shiny mission ships).
  • BRs and plastic wrap make you always a potential target. Fly defensively, or fly something else.
  • You can split up cargo into multiple runs. You can use Red Frog or PushX. You can send shiny modules in something safer (covops, BR, Freighter).
  • You can travel fit to make the thing you are in tougher (will cover later).
• Insta-dock, insta-undock.
  • Invaluable for covops.
  • How to make, how to use.

WTs:

• If you aren't in corp, you are safe. OOC Hauler alt. OOC Mining alt. OOC Eyes.
• If you aren't where they are, you are safe. Distant hisec, Solitude, [LS|NS|WH]C.
• You are in particular danger in trade hubs, on trade routes, in Aldrat region, and where they will know to find you (Incursions, AMC).
• If you talk about your movements, you are in danger. Nothing is truly secure, but Chat.E-UNI and the public Mumble lounge are the obvious worst options.

In a system:

• If you are operating in a system, watch Local (show my layout). If a WT shows up, *immediately* dock, or go to a safe if there is no station.
  • How to make a mid-safe
  • Missions (and only missions) are safes
  • Must watch D-Scan. Bounce between if probes.

Travelling: Intel:

• OpFort
• Liveintel.ILN
• +1s (OOC own or other, helpful other person, +1ing self in noobship)

Gate camps:

• Alpha (insta-dock).
• Points
• Following you through

Travel fits:

• Shield Buffer tank
• WCS
• Align time
• MWD
• MWD+Cloak

Gate camps:

• Don't panic, hold cloak, think.
• Focus is on escape, don't worry about to where for now.
• If you can warp off, do (frigates, WCS, MWD+Cloak). (Re)SeBo possibilities. HICs.
• Burn back to gate (select, 'jump', overheat all, activate all (MWD first). Do NOT attack.)
  • Aggression timers.
• If they follow, consider again. Burning back to gate *again* might be good.
• Pod Saver (escape not always possibler).
  • Align if obviosly dying
  • Always warp, never try to jump/dock.

Aftermath:

• Check local.
• Ask for advice in opfort. ('break break' - name, location, sightings).

Losses:

• Will happen
• Only fly what you can afford to lose

Time is isk:

• Not worth spending an hour to keep a 10m ship safe, if you could have reliably earned 50m in that hour instead.
• Consider spending more time learning to pvp, in order to protect your investments.

WSOP:

• We have one. Hopefully it now makes sense.

What now:

• Learn to PvP. It can be free, and knowing how the attacker thinks is essential to learning to defend.
  • Noobs on Patrol fleets
  • LSC. Option of PvE content, but in a dangerous environment.
• Get out there and do stuff. Better to die in fire than sit station spinning.

Obsolete version:

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Self-defense 101

EVE is full of people who would like to do bad things to you. An introduction to hisec pvp, aimed squarely at those who don't consider themselves pvpers.

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Insert standard class boilerplate. Dock up, mumble settings, questions in chat, introductions, et al.

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Motivation and philosophy:

This class is about PvP. It duplicates material covered in a lot of PvP classes, because it talks about a subset of the techniques and mechanics PvPers employ. This class is aimed at PvEers, and specifically those who choose to operate in hisec, and aims to teach you to defend yourself against potentially hostile PvPers. You are welcome to believe that you should not need to defend yourself - but the way this game currently is, you will suffer if you choose to ignore the threat posed - and it seems that CCP are not minded to change this, or to reimburse you for any resulting losses.

I will talk solely about defense. The reason is twofold: Firstly, if you are attacking, be it revenge, retaliation, opportunity, or whatever, you are willingly engaging in PvP. This is an activity I can attest to be enjoyable, but it is outside the scope of this class. Secondly, many effective ways of attacking another player in hisec involve getting them to attack you. If you never take an aggressive action, you are immune to whole swathes of potential attacks.

This discussion is limited to hisec operation. It is very possible to avoid or survive hostile attention in lowsec, nullsec and wormhole space - and there are many excellent reasons to do so, but they fall outside the scope of this class. The LSC, NSC and WHC all welcome PvE-focused players if you are ever curious about such places.

Your single best defense is avoidance. If you are not where the enemy is looking, or you do not look like an attractive target to them, an attack will never take place.

Your second best defense is escape and evasion. If an attack takes place, you are best served getting away, or at least into some temporarily stable state, and perhaps then seeking assistance or advice. This is generally incompatible with attempting to recoup your losses, but it is a safe generalization that anything you think you might have lost is gone, and you should avoid throwing good isk after bad.

Your third best defense consists of minimizing the impact of danger and losses. In the long term, losses are inevitable, so you should always make sure you can survive them. Conversely, some precautions cost more than they save you.

I will consistently make the assumption, as should you, that your opponent is experienced, well-resourced, well-informed, practiced at doing what they are doing, and also setting up some sort of trick or trap. This won't always be the case, but forcing an error by looking inexperienced or incompetent is a recognised strategy in many pvp stratagems.

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Why might people attack you?

There are three broad reasons for people to attack you: Isk, politics and tears.

It is perfectly possible to make a profit attacking people in hisec. Jita scams are an obvious example of this, as are suicide ganks of freighters. You can avoid these by not being profitable to attack.

Rarest of the three, there are groups who make unprofitable attacks in order to change the political or economic landscape, or to make a point. Hulkageddon, Burn Jita and Minerbumping are good examples of these. One rational choice is to avoid the targeted behavior while such movements are in place, which will avoid such attacks. If you decide to continue, then accept that you have willingly taken on risk, and take steps to minimize resulting losses. Treat such movements as a feature of the environment; it is almost certainly a poor use of your time to attempt to change them.

Those who seek 'tears' enjoy inflicting harm other people. Some are additionally looking for an acknowledgement that they have caused upset. For the most part, they are looking for the easiest targets, and you may avoid them by being less tempting, or less vulnerable than other people around you, or by avoiding their richest hunting grounds. I advise you to never communicate with them, especially if provoked.

Note, incidentally, that CCP place almost no restrictions beyond the game mechanics on how people might attack you - hacking your account, and certain forms of communication are about all they prohibit. There is basically no point in either launching or threatening petitions, and you should be aware of the theoretical risk of account suspension if you become sufficiently vulgar and abusive after suffering losses, quite aside from that being precisely what your attacker wanted.

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Flags, your Overview, and you:

Even if you never intend to join a university fleet, I recommend you take the time to set up your Overview at least partially to university standards (LINK) - in particular, the Backgrounds, the Colortags, and a Pod Saver tab. The first two will let you have meaningful conversations with other university members about the situation you find yourself in, the last will be invaluable for preserving ship and/or pod when attacked. Note that the settings will need updating since Retribution, even if you did this earlier.

In hisec, anyone appearing with an orange or red background may attack you freely. I personally suggest turning off the flashing of yellow backgrounds, since while you may freely attack them, unless you do so this will cost them their ship, and it is helpful to be able to clearly identify immediate threats.

Since Retribution, there are 6 flags that a player might have. I will discuss only how they work in hisec:

The two you will get, and can mostly ignore, are the PvP engagement timer, and the NPC engagement timer. They serve only to prevent logging out from being a viable way to avoid an attack.

The Suspect flag means that anyone else can attack you, and that gate guns on grid with you will attack. In a populated hisec system, this generally means a lot of people are about to shoot at you. The Criminal flag means that CONCORD will shortly come and destroy you. This is a death sentence. You will ensure you never get either of these flags. Many ways of attacking you will cause the attacker to gain one or the other. It is safe to assume that they know this, and have a plan for dealing with it (possibly 'buy another ship'). These show up as yellow and red flashing skulls in Local.

The Limited Engagement flag means that you have taken aggressive action against someone, and they are now allowed to attack you without consequences. Without pvp experience, you should never do anything to acquire this flag. It lasts 5 minutes.

The Aggression flag is gained whenever you take hostile action against someone, and will prevent you from docking, or jumping, while it lasts, which is 60 seconds. You, as someone inexperienced at pvp, should again never do anything to acquire this flag - but you should understand that it means that someone who has just shot at you is unable to follow you through a gate.

There are situations in which it is useful to take aggressive action to defend yourself. I strongly suggest that you do not do so until and unless you have decided to learn more about PvP, and can properly identify them for yourself. Until then, they will mostly serve to limit your options at best, and actually lose you your ship at worst.

In Retribution, there is a 'safety' system. Left on the default green, it prevents you from taking any action that would gain you a criminal or suspect flag. As a default, assume that any action that requires you to change this setting is going to cost you your ship (also some sec status). One legitimate exception that you may see: If you fly logistics, then repairing a friendly ship that has engaged in pvp may require you to set your safety to orange. If you are part of a fleet, your FC may instruct you to do this.

Note that anyone in your corporation or fleet can attack you freely. As an E-UNI member, you can rely on university rules and procedures to deal with the former. To prevent the latter, never join a fleet with anyone you do not have good reason to trust.

A Kill Right results from someone criminally attacking you. If you never set your safety red, nobody will ever have kill rights on you. When a kill right is activated, the target becomes a Suspect so everybody can shoot at them. Anybody shooting at them will, of course, gain a Limited Engagement flag, and may be shot back. This is, needless to say, frequently a trap.

Bounties, by the way, never make an engagement more or less legal. They simply act as a way to 'tip' the next person to destroy a target. They can affect the mathematics associated with ganking for isk - but will never affect flags, CONCORD, etc.

Finally, and by no means last. War Targets. These are people who have, effectively, bribed CONCORD to ignore their attacks on you in hisec - no Suspect or Criminal flags will result. They will show up with a white-on-red flashing star in Local, and flashing red background on your Overview. They can and will attack you if possible, and will suffer no penalty for doing so. You can, in theory, attack them - but shouldn't.

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Avoidance

In this section we look at avoiding attacks. This will be broken down by the three motivations you might see for attacking - and will close with a discussion of the additional methods that can be used against War Targets.

Those ganking for political reasons can be avoided very simply: Don't do whatever it is they are targetting. Every campaign I know of has been either localised or short-duration. Keep half an ear to the ground, and do something else, or do it somewhere else.

Those ganking for isk are looking to profit from your destruction. They want to blow up your ship, losing their own ships in the process, and make enough from the wreck that they come out ahead. Their potential haul runs to: 50% of your fitted modules, at random, not including rigs. Plus 50% of your cargo, at random. If you have a bounty on you (probably via the University), they will additionally earn 20% of the total value of your ship.

If blowing you up costs them more than they expect to earn (or even slightly less; they have to worry about the chance of failure, and maybe repairing their sec status), then it is a safe bet that they won't attack you. The question then is 'what is a safe threshold?'. This is something that you will have to research for yourself - and will need to stay current on. The Hauling page on the wiki suggests that 3M isk per 1k EHP is your limit, but that was written before Retribution, which changed the rules in several ways. 1B is the accepted 'safe' limit for Freighters.

If you have an especially expensive ship - let's say it's fitted with officer or deadspace mods for missions and/or incursions - then that can be just as worthwhile to gank for isk, since the expected drop can be very high (and many mission ships fit an active tank, which means relatively low EHP).

Autopilot makes you substantially more attractive - firstly, they have plenty of time to use scanners on you (a typical gank has someone sitting a gate or so ahead of their kill zone, scanning passing ships - and if you slowboat in from 15km out, they have more than enough time to scan you). And secondly, they will get to spend more time shooting at you, and won't need to bump you or similar.

Blockade runners are special, in that their cargo can never be scanned. This means that they may be targetted no matter what value of cargo you put in them, and are effectively never safe. Orcas used to have this property but no longer do. Double-wrapping your cargo similarly obfuscates it, and suggests it has high value. You probably want not to send such risky signals unless the value of the cargo is genuinely high enough to attract undue attention anyway.

The other thing about these gankers is that they are almost always found on well-travelled routes. Typically between trade hubs, or on the undock of trade hubs. A 0.5 or 0.6 sec system between two trade hubs is a particular blackspot. Travelling other routes will keep you away from them. You can set your map to display the number of recent kills in a system - that can also help you avoid dangerous systems.

If you lack the EHP to move the cargo safely yourself, consider outsourcing the problem. Red Frog, PushX and others will move it by freighter for a fee - and in the case of expensive modules on a mission ship, consider sending them separately by a safer means.

Those ganking for tears will be going for easy targets. By following the advice in the section above, you will have avoided becoming an easy target, and should never be targetted. The exception there is if you fly a sufficiently notable ship that it would make a nice 'trophy' killmail. A unique ship, for example. At any rate, they are again likely to be found in populated systems.

Finally, War Targets - they are effectively ganking for tears, but you are a valid target for them. Chances are, they will be looking for easy kill somewhere they know they can find lots of targets. Many of them will wardec multiple PvE-centric corporations at once, and then hang around populated areas looking for easy kills. Trade hubs, major trade routes, and anywhere they can identify as a hub of uni activity, are the most likely place to see them as a result.

To avoid this, you shouldn't casually make your university character vulnerable anywhere they might reasonably be looking. So in general, you'll want to avoid trade hubs and major trade routes, avoid mining or missioning near to Aldrat, and make sure that if you are at AMC or joining Incursions you have taken precautions.

Happily, you can create multiple characters - and those not in E-Uni aren't subject to the same wardecs. Thus the out-of-corphauler alt. 9 hours is enough to get a fresh alt into a t1 industrial, and they can then make shopping trips of over 10,000 m3 for you (enough to move a packaged cruiser, or enough modules to last you for weeks).

Red Frog aren't subject to wars, so you could contract them to move your stuff - or you could ask or pay other unistas who have such hauler alts to move things for you. Given how cheap and easy they are, though, getting your own is often worth it. Much fancier hauler alts are possible - picking up better t1 industrial ships (the Iteron Mark V is the king of these), or perhaps a freighter, an orca, or even going to the lenghts of a carrier or jump freighter. Typically the more exotic options would be associated with a separate account, so as to not slow down training your main too much. Similarly Miner Alts are possible if you wish to mine near Aldrat in relative safety.

You can also move your operations somewhere WTs aren't looking. Use Jump Clones to mission and/or mine in remote areas, far from Aldrat, perhaps go to the lengths of moving to Solitude, which is a hisec island that is rarely bothered by WTs or any other sort of gankers, but has a Uni outpost. You can also move to lowsec, nullsec or wormholes - which will generally leave you free of war targets, but instead facing other challenges.

So, in conclusion - don't be profitable to kill, don't be in the most populated areas, and don't be where war targets are looking for you.

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Escape/evasion

Local -just the name list -show my setup

OOC eyes

D-Scan -Probes

Gate-cloak

Crashing camps

Burn back to gate

Points

Alpha

Travel fits -Buffer tank -Stabs -MWD

Cloaky -MWD+Cloak -Limitations

Insta-undocks/docks

Intel -Liveintel -+1 -OpFort

Calling for help

Pod Saver

Safes

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Surviving losses.

Eggs, basket, etc.

A word on effort, laziness and opportunity cost: Many of the things I will suggest to keep you safe will cost time, isk, or both. Your time has a value, and not taking the precautions I suggest will cause an increased risk of loss. But consider, if you can earn 100m isk in an hour of missioning, then if you spend an hour taking precautions, those precautions had better be worth at least 100m isk 'worth' of risk - otherwise you have just done yourself a disservice. If by carefully scouting the Aldrat to Hek pipe, you reduce the chance of losing a cruiser as you move down it from 12% to 2%, and the cruiser was worth 20m isk, you have just saved yourself an average of 2m isk. If that took you 20 extra minutes, you should probably have just spent the time missioning instead. If, meanwhile, a precaution is very quick to take, and you don't, then it is fair to attribute any resulting losses to laziness.

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WSOP and you

Pertinent points, and how they all stem from above

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Conclusion

(bullet point list to take away)

Learn PvP, it's fun

Questions.