Ninja Salvaging and Stealing

Ninja salvaging refers, precisely, to entering a mission-runner's mission and salvaging their wrecks for your own profit. It is also used more generally to refer to salvaging a mission-runner's wrecks and looting from them, either for profit or to provoke them into allowing you to blow them up (for fun and profit).

Defending yourself against ninja salvaging and effectively ninja salvaging both require a solid knowledge of the game mechanics which control flagging and aggression timers.

Note that University pilots are not allowed to salvage or loot others' wrecks without their permission. You can ninja salvage using an alt, but it must be impossible to trace that alt to your main character or to the University.

Also note that ninja salvaging is not an exploit. Pilots can decide for themselves whether or not it's wrong, and whether or not right or wrong apply to actions in a computer game, but CCP do not regard it as cheating.

Wreck and Aggression Mechanics

Running combat missions creates wrecks. These wrecks belong to the mission-runner's corporation or, if the mission-runner is in an NPC corporation, only to the mission-runner individually.

Both the loot in wrecks and the salvage that can be extracted from them using a Salvager module can be quite valuable. Mission-runners tend to regard both the loot and the salvage as theirs, and to factor in loot and salvage income into their profit calculations.

Salvage

As far as CONCORD is concerned, salvage is 'finders-keepers': if you own a wreck, and I salvage from it, I do not flag myself to you as a valid target or start an aggression timer. You will still be destroyed by CONCORD if you attack me in highsec space.

This means that -- even though mission-runners feel a sense of ownership attaches to the salvage generated from their wrecks -- it's perfectly possible for another player to take all of that salvage with impunity.

Loot

If someone who does not own a wreck takes loot from it, they flag themselves as a valid target for the wreck's owner (but not for all and sundry) for fifteen minutes. They will go flashy on the owner's overview, if it's set up competently. Flagging allows the destruction of the flashy's ship but not their pod.

If the wrecks' owner then attacks the flashy looter, he will flag himself back to them for fifteen minutes too. This means that they can escape, switch or replace their ship, find the owner again and re-engage if they want to.

If the mission-runner who owns the wrecks has responded violently, flagging himself to the looter and starting a fifteen-minute timer, it is possible for the looter to reset the timer back to fifteen minutes by shooting one of the mission-runner's wrecks.

This means that the timer can be effectively extended much longer than fifteen minutes. Extended timers are invisible to the mission-runner -- mission-runners who don't know about this aggro-extending mechanic frequently attack a ninja looter, dock up, wait out their visible aggression timer, and then undock only to be blown up because the ninja had invisibly extended the timer.

How Ninja Salvaging Works

Here's a rough outline of the process of ninja salvaging:

1. The ninja looks for suitable targets running L4 missions and gets a warp-in on one using combat scanner probes, possibly augmented with the directional scanner. This is usually in a popular mission-running hub system.
2. Marauders, T3 cruisers and faction battleships are popular targets since they're often fitted with valuable faction modules.
3. The ninja warps in in a fast and expendable ship (the Vigil, for example).
4. The ninja salvages. If the ninja just wants to profit from salvage with no risk, he will simply salvage wrecks and not flag himself.
5. The ninja loots from a wreck to flag himself as a valid target to the mission-runner. He might try to goad the mission-runner into engaging by taunting him in local or in a conversation.
6. If the mission-runner engages he will flag himself back to the ninja who will escape (with or without his ship) and switch to a powerful combat ship.
7. The ninja returns and destroys the mission-runner. This is usually easy, since PvE-fitted ships are not much use in PvP, and the ninja can take note of the rat type in the mission, and make sure that he is dealing damage that the mission-runner is not tanked for. A strong PvE tank is not usually a strong PvP tank!
8. The ninja scoops any valuable faction loot and possibly screencaps any mission-runner tears in local for posterity.

If the mission-runner engages and destroys the ninja, or forces them to run, and then docks up to wait out their visible aggression timer, the ninja can hang around in the mission pocket, shooting one of the mission-runner's wrecks every fourteen minutes to extend an invisible aggression timer. Then the ninja can engage and destroy the mission-runner when they return.

For this reason, if you do decide to shoot a ninja it may be necessary to set all the wrecks in your mission pocket to 'abandoned' before docking up to wait out your aggression timer.

How to Defend Yourself

If you find a ninja in your mission, you have a number of options.

Ignore Them

This is the most frustrating option, but it's also the safest. If you refuse to respond to a ninja, they can't attack you. The worst that will happen is that you will lose the loot and salvage for that mission -- you will still get the mission reward, Loyalty Points and some of the bounties.

Since many ninjas are motivated by the potential of easy, consequence-free PvP in highsec, valuable loot from your ship and amusing tears from you in local, refusing to respond will probably bore them into finding someone else to pick on. If you're unlucky you'll have met a ninja who's doing it solely for profit, and in that case not responding may encourage them to repeatedly salvage your missions.

Sic Rats on Them

It's possible to get rats to attack the ninja by warping out. Normally this isn't much use as any half-awake player will notice what you're doing. But in some missions with well-defined orders of waves which are triggered when you destroy particular ships in previous waves -- such as The Blockade and Gone Berserk -- you have a slightly better chance because you can stimulate the arrival of more rats. To do this, you should

1. Identify a trigger ship.
2. Check that no rats are tackling you.
3. Align to a celestial so that you're ready to warp near-instantly.
4. Blow up the trigger ship.
5. Warp out. The quicker you do this the lower the chance that the next wave will notice you and aggro you instead of the ninja; the more slowly you do it the less warning you give to the ninja that something's about to happen.

This seems to work best on inexperienced ninjas (but remember that some ninjas who are new characters are experienced players' alts) who don't have a firm grasp of aggro mechanics or the speed-tanking abilities of their small ships.

Some missions have a complex combination of warp-in, trigger and proximity aggro (some rooms in Worlds Collide, for example) and it's possible for ninjas to be attacked by rats in these. These missions are harder to control than ones which consist of sequentially triggered waves.

At the end of the day this tactic is not that likely to succeed, but it's still quite safe and considerably more satisfying than doing nothing. If the rats do kill your ninja, remember that they own their own wreck and looting it will flag you to them (just as they would want!).

Fight Back

Unlike the policy for dealing with can flippers, the University does not currently have an official procedure for responding to ninja salvagers. However, we advise that you only engage them if you have fleet backup, much as outlined in the canflipping policy.

Be prepared to lose whatever ship(s) you put at risk, and be prepared for unpleasant surprises. Ninjas' resources and experience vary, but besides their own combat ships they sometimes have

• Friends backing them up in combat ships
• Friends remote-repairing them
• Out-of-corp scouts, potentially in covops ships
• Out-of-corp Orca characters letting them rapidly switch ships in space

Whatever you do, don't engage using your PvE ship. This is precisely what the ninja wants. Your PvE ship is almost certainly expensive, expensively-fitted and badly fitted for PvP.

Even if you decide to engage on your own, at the very least warp out and get a PvP ship. This means a ship which you can afford to lose, with a thought-out PvP fit already in it. It does not mean something you grabbed from your hangar or from the market because it's large or expensive, and then fitted on the fly using modules you had lying around.