Needlejack filaments
Needlejack filaments are a type of filament that allow transporting one or more ships into a randomly-chosen null security system. Needlejack filaments can be received from daily login campaigns or found in data sites in the form of blueprints.
Mechanics
Needlejack filaments come in two main varants: "noise" and "signal".
- Noise filaments transport pilots to a randomly-chosen system with low activity.
- Signal filaments transport pilots to a randomly-chosen system with high activity.
What counts as "activity" for the filaments is not fully known, but it is believed to be related to PvE activity such as ratting and the running of combat sites. Some reports from empirical tests suggest that PvP action is also considered "activity", but is weighted less heavily, and that active mining might attract noise filaments, but these are only player experiments, not developer comments.[1]
The landing point in the target system will be a few tens of thousands of kilometers from a randomly-selected planet.
Needlejack filaments come in three varieties, "5", "15", and "25". The numbers indicate the number of ships that can be transported. 15 and 25 needlejacks can still be used to transport smaller numbers, and sometimes price fluctuations make it cheaper to buy large filaments even to transport small numbers of ships.
Restrictions
Needlejack filaments are subject to the following use restrictions:
- The transported ships must be in a fleet together. If just one pilot uses the filament, they must still be in a fleet.
- Transported pilots must have their safeties set to yellow or red, not green.
- The filament must be activated more than 1000 km away from any gate, station, player-owned structure, or anchored entity.
- Filaments can transport ships up to and including battleship hulls, but will not transport capital ships.
- Filaments cannot be activated for pilots who have a capsuleer log-off timer
- Using a filament gives all transported pilots a 15-minute capsuleer log-off timer
Uses
Needlejack filaments let small gangs and individual pilots easily enter nullsec. Usually pilots use them to try to find content such as vulnerable ratters or quick-response fleets from local sovereign nullsec alliances. They can also be used by pilots who want to raid Encounter Surveillance Systems for cash. Pilots can use wormholes to get home or, at the cost of a bit more time and money, they can use Pochven filaments to get to Pochven and then into normal lowsec or highsec.
