Suicide ganking: Difference between revisions

As [[CONCORD]] will always react to destroy any ship which earns a [[timers|Criminal Timer]], the aggressor is guaranteed to lose their ship - hence the term "suicide ganking". However, [[CONCORD]] does not react instantly, giving the attacker time to try and destroy their target. The aim of suicide ganking therefore is to destroy a higher value target than the value of the ship or ships being used to gank. Frequently, this manifests in a maximum DPS destroyer destroying a [[Mining Barge]], a cruiser destroying an [[Industrial]], or a swarm of destroyers destroying a [[Freighter]].

Suicide gankers tend to have a target or type of target in mind when ganking, and as such the most common types of suicide ganking can be broken into several categories. Roughly from the most basic to the more complex:

'''Jump Freighter Hunting''' - The hunting of Jump Freighters. 99% of this involves trying to catch the nigh uncatchable [[Jump Freighters]] using tricks, social engineering, or praying that Jump Freighter pilot got lazy and complacent.   

Ships used for suicide ganking tend to prioritize damage over tank, and try to do as much damage to their target for a given ship cost. Ships that are typically used include:

* [[Catalyst]] , [[Coercer]] and [[Thrasher]] are the basic cost effective ships that do high damage for low cost.

* [[Talos]] , [[Purifier]] , [[Hound]] and [[Tornado]] for more advanced, higher DPS but higher cost ships. The Tornado is utilized for its high alpha strike to quickly kill a target.

* [[Vexor]] , [[Caracal]] , or [[Maller]] to suicide gank industrials, as ships with some tank are required to tank the Sentry Guns that are present on gates and stations.

* [[Heron]] , [[Blackbird]] , [[Gnosis]] and [[Nereus]] for use as support ships, to scout, scan, scoop loot, or suicide point targets so they can't warp off

* [[Industrial]] , [[Deep Space Transport]] and [[Freighter]] to be used to loot the wreck after a successful gank

The table below gives very rough calculations of the total damage applied by typical gank ships (as per the fits above, with max skills) in various sectors, assuming [[CONCORD]] is already on grid elsewhere in system – i.e the maximum possible time is available for ganking.

Industrials vary vastly in EHP, they can have anywhere between 4,000 and 25,000 EHP. Blockade Runners are slightly more tanky, capping out at around 39,000 EHP. Deep Space Transports can have hundreds of thousands potentially, capping out at approximately 500,000 EHP.

Freighters on the low end have approximately 240,000 EHP at the weakest, and can have up to 750,000 max tanked and with implants (freighter pilots often have implants). Jump Freighters can vary anywhere from 400,000 to 1,100,000 EHP with implants.

The moment an individual is in a non Capsule ship with a Criminal Timer (whether you've undocked in a rookie ship while having the criminal timer, jumped into highsec with a criminal timer, or gained a criminal timer via shooting an illegal target in highsec) the game will send an available CONCORD spawn to the offending ship. If there is already an available CONCORD spawn in system and within 150 km, the CONCORD spawn will nearly instantaneously lock up and disable the offending ship. If there is an available CONCORD spawn in system, but outside of 150 km of the offending ship, that CONCORD spawn will despawn, and then respawn next to the offending ship, resulting in an approximately 6 second longer response time than if there was no CONCORD already in system. If there are no available CONCORD spawns in system, CONCORD will simply spawn and give you the standard time listed in the charts above before they disable and destroy your ship. The key bit of information to note, is that a single CONCORD spawn can only respond to a single ganker at a time, meaning that if you had ganked an industrial with 3 people, you'd have 3 CONCORD spawns in system, but if later you ganked an industrial with 6 gankers, the first 3 that fired would get the 6 additional seconds from having a CONCORD already in system, but the latter 3 wouldn't get the additional time as there wasn't an available CONCORD in system for them to move. Basically, if you want the additional 6 seconds, for every ganker you have you need a separate CONCORD spawn for.

**Tethering: Fleets can tether off Citadels for remote repairs and invulnerability so long as no criminal timer is held. This allows faster response time for gank fleets.

When looking for a gank location, you are essentially looking for high traffic, or high value traffic, and also for low security status which allows you the most time to execute the gank before [[CONCORD]] responds.

The key regions of Empire space (Amarr space, Caldari space etc) tend to be linked via “pipes” of systems with single entries and exits through which all ship traffic between these regions must pass, without a huge detour. More specifically, freighters travelling between Trade Hubs (the most frequent destinations for cargo) MUST pass through these pipes without going through low-sec (very dangerous particularly for Freighters), or adding on 20 or so more jumps to go around.  

*Systems surrounding any of the above. Many of these 0.5 pipe systems have other 0.5 or 0.6 systems either side, for example Sivala (0.6) next to Uedama (0.5), which are often also used for ganking where targets may be less prepared and aware.

*[[Blockade Runner]]s – Blockade Runners carry some of the most valuable cargo around, and also carry very small tanks. However they are extremely fast, and generally always travel under a covert ops cloak making them challenging to gank. The most common way they are caught therefore is on the undock of trade hubs, if they are slow to issue the warp command, or around the docking radius where lazy pilots use the “dock” command rather than an instant-dock bookmark, and land outside of the docking radius. Also many Blockade Runners used to be killed upon undocking from a station before they could warp off, but with CCP nerfing the align of the Jita station, this is far less common.

*Freighter Undocks – Most freighter pilots try to avoid ganks on the undock by using an instant-undock in dead space from where they prepare their actual trip. If an instant-undock is known, or can be scanned down, then the freighter can be ganked in dead-space, with a lower [[CONCORD]] response time than on gates. This requires a considerable fleet to successfully gank before the [[CONCORD]] response in systems like Jita, Amarr, Rens, and Dodixie.