Aggression Details

Aggression vs. Players

Committing a hostile act starts the aggression counter. The aggression counter defaults to 15 minutes and during that time, you and involved parties will be left to fend for yourselves without CONCORD interfering.

Aggression can be caused by stealing, supporting aggressors or through unprovoked attacks.

Stealing

If someone steals items from your can, they are considered fair game and gets a red background (assuming you have the default settings), meaning that they can be shot at by any of the members of the victim's corporation.

Do note that at this point it still counts as an unprovoked attack if they shoot at you. The choice is yours to initiate aggression or not, which is almost always what the instigator wants you to do, to allow him to fight you. See can-flipping for more details.

Should you or any member of your corporation decide to engage in combat with thief, normal rules of aggression applies and CONCORD will stay out of it.

Supporting Aggressors

If you remote repair an aggressor or in any other way, directly aids them, the aggression is passed down to you as well. Which means that the one fighting your friend, and members of his corporation, can shoot you without interference from CONCORD.

Unprovoked Attacks

Anyone who does an unprovoked attack in high-sec gets aggression from CONCORD. They will show up in a few seconds or longer (pending on the security status of the system) and disable and then blow the aggressor up.

If the aggressor undocks in a new ship for the duration of that aggression (the usual 15 minutes), CONCORD will promptly blow that ship up as well.

If there are several aggressors, a small fleet of CONCORD-ships will spawn for each aggressor, targetting them with webs, neutralizers and scramblers to render them harmless and eventually destroy them. This means that a group of people engaging in unprovoked attacks on a target will not buy themselves more time by increasing their numbers. They will however still do more damage due to their increased numbers, but CONCORD's response time to each and every one of them will be the same as if they had been alone.

Advanced PvP Aggression Mechanics in Low and Null Sec

These mechanics apply to low-sec and null-sec combat.

Aggression in PvP as a factor for Gate and Station combat

Aggression mechanics are also key to both killing enemies at gates and stations, and also surviving enemy camps on gates and stations.

If a player does not have an aggression timer, they are free to jump through a stargate or dock at a station. However, once you have aggressed, you cannot jump or dock until after you de-aggress and wait out a 30sec aggression timer. Note that you remain aggressed even after you unlock an opponent if your drones are still deployed! This trick can be used to trigger aggression from player with drones deployed, even if they have only targeted you ('yellow boxed'); if you attack them, often their drones will attack you, and they are then aggressed against you.

The gate and docking aggression timer is used to catch enemies at a gate and prevent them from escaping by jumping out. If you can get an enemy to red box or aggress you, you can kill them before they have time to de-aggress and jump out if you can bring enough DPS to bear on them before they de-agress and wait out their 30sec timer. Similarly, if you are playing 'station games' and get an enemy to aggress you, if you can tackle them and focus enough DPS quickly before they can dock, you can kill them.

In this case, very quickly bringing overwhelming DPS to bear is critical--bridging in a stealth bomber fleet using a covert cyno is often the key to a successful kill on a station, as jumping into the system and warping often gives the enemy enough time to de-agress and dock.

Aggression Lexicon

Typically, when you say you have aggressed, it means you have attacked another ship. To avoid the confusion of 'I'm aggressed' vs. 'they're aggressed,' most fleets now use the terms yellow boxed for when you have been targeted by an enemy, and red boxed for when they have actually attacked and therefore cannot jump or dock until they have de-aggressed. In the case of low sec combat, when an enemy red-boxes first, they may also gain a criminal flag and gate/station guns will shoot them, and/or they become a criminal that can be shot without consequence until their player aggression timer lapses.

Knowing when not to aggress

If you are attacked on a gate or station, you had better not shoot back until you know that the attacker doesn't have a lot of backup. Often, you can easily dock or burn back to a stargate and jump through to safety if you do not attack back.

If you are on a stargate, it's often best to wait until the entire gang attacking you has an aggression timer, which means that when you jump, they won't be able to follow you and tackle you on the other side of the gate.

If you do attack and are jumped by a larger group, or if the battle starts to go against you, de-agress and keep moving towards station--the enemy will both try to bump you off jump range, and also focus DPS on you (if you have been primaried) to kill you before you can jump. If you have active defense mods, now would be a good time to overload them.

Similarly, if you are on a station, make sure you remain in docking range and don't aggress unless you have backup or are certain the attacker doesn't have backup. If you attack and are jumped by a larger group, de-agress and keep moving towards station--they will try and bump you away from the station and kill you before you can dock. Note that the docking range of different stations varies trem

Aggression and Tackling

If you are a tackler and/or bait and are trying to get an enemy to engage you, the general rule is you don't call in the cavalry until the enemy has both red-boxed you AND you have a point on them (a warp disruptor or scrambler). That way your support will be able to either engage a flashy red aggressor who can't warp to escape, or have a chance of killing the enemy(s) before they can escape by jumping or docking.

Low-sec Aggression and CONCORD criminal flags and standings

In low sec, if you choose to aggress first against either a non-war target or a non-criminally flagged pilot, you suffer two immediate consequences: 1) You receive a reduction in your CONCORD standings that translates into a drop in security status, which can prevent you from entering high-sec systems, and eventually turn you into a 'red flashy' pilot that is a 'free kill' for other pilots. The size of the security hit depends on the sec status of the system and target, as well as your own current sec status. Higher sec systems and targets cause a greater negative impact. Actually destroying a ship, and actually podding a pilot, have even larger negative sec status consequences. 2) You receive a criminal flag that remains active until 15 minutes after you have stopped all aggression. This means that gate and station guns will shoot you, and that any other pilot can also shoot you without being flagged a criminal or losing sec status.