Ninja Salvaging and Stealing
"Ninja salvaging" is defined as entering a mission-runner's mission and salvaging their wrecks without their knowledge or permission for your own profit. The term is also used more generally to refer to salvaging any wreck which does not belong to the person salvaging. While game mechanics allow anybody to salvage a wreck without any form of criminal flagging, doing so is still considered theft by a significant proportion of the community.
Stealing (also known as "Ninja Looting") on the other hand is taking items from a wreck without permission, and will flag the thief as a suspect, either for profit or to provoke the owner into allowing you to blow them up (for fun and profit).
The two terms are sometimes confused, or classed together, even though the penalties for each are different (stealing results in a criminal flag, while ninja salvaging does not.)
Note that University members are not allowed to salvage or loot from other peoples' wrecks without their permission.
Wrecks
A wreck is the remains of a ship that has been destroyed. Wrecks can be either NPC or player ships, and EVE does not differentiate between them. A wreck is visible on the Overview. The Overview icon denotes whether the wreck has items inside it which can be looted.
Wrecks that belong to you or your corporation will be white. Wrecks that belong to someone else are yellow, and those wrecks that have been abandoned (and are therefore available to everybody) will be blue. A player can take items from any wreck that is white (except in the case of a player who is in an non-player corporation who takes from another player in the same non-player corporation) or blue without penalty from CONCORD. A player who takes items from a yellow wreck will be warned by the game (if the player has not disabled this warning) and if they take from the wreck, they will be flagged with a suspect timer, allowing any player to shoot at them for a limited time (15 minutes). Taking items from yellow wrecks is considered stealing.
According to CCP, items within a wreck belong to the player, but the salvage is owned by no one. As a result, players can legally salvage yellow wrecks without being flagged. However, players must realize that most mission-runners consider salvage to be part of the perks of mission-running, so while you may not receive a suspect flag, you may antagonise the mission-runner with all of the likely consequences.
Stealing from a wreck
Stealing from someone else's wreck is very much like looting your own wrecks. Get close enough to the wreck, and then open it. However, once you do so you better be ready to fight or run away, since the player you steal from now has rights to kill you. Furthermore, they may call for a fleet of ships to come in and help them.
Salvaging a wreck
- Main article: Salvaging
To salvage a wreck, you need to possess a salvager module on your ship and need to have the 
Salvaging skill. To salvage, click on the wreck and select "lock target". Once the wreck is locked, fly within 5000m of the wreck and activate the salvager module. You can use tractor beams to move white or blue wrecks, but not yellow wrecks, so it is best to just move close to the wreck to salvage it.
Warning: If you shoot at a yellow wreck CONCORD will consider this an act of aggression against the owner (even worse than stealing), and will give you a criminal timer, which will cause CONCORD to destroy your ship in high-sec. If you have weapons and salvagers on your ship be sure to use the right one on the wreck.
Aggression
When someone steals from you, they get marked as a criminal and you (or in the case of a player-owned corporation, all members of the corporation) have rights to kill them. They will become red and for 15 minutes afterwards, you can retaliate without CONCORD getting involved.
However, if you shoot at them, you will receive an aggression timer yourself, and they will be able to kill you without CONCORD getting involved. Like Can Flipping the person who is looting your wreck is usually trying to provoke an attack, often because they think that mission-running PvE ships are no match for their PvP-fitted ship (however, this sometimes backfires.) If you are flying a PvP-fitted ship, and think you can take them on, or you have a bunch of corp buddies waiting to pounce on them, then this might be a good time to take the player up on their provocation.
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 globally) 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 wreck's owner then attacks the flashy looter, he will flag himself 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 looter, dock up, wait out their visible aggression timer, and then undock only to be blown up because the looter had invisibly extended the timer. This invisible timer is not currently confirmed by CCP as either intended, or a bug - as such you may be able to have a ship lost due to the invisible timer reimbursed. Do not count on this.
This invisible timer can be extended for up to 4 hours 15 minutes by the ninja carefully managing aggro on your wrecks. 2 hours on the wrecks, one or more of which is salvaged near the end of the 2 hours. 2 hours on the cans which then appear from salvaged wrecks. 15 minutes for the timer to expire.
How Ninja Salvaging/Looting Works
A rough outline of the process of ninja salvaging/looting:
- 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.
- Marauders, T3 cruisers and faction battleships are popular targets since they're often fitted with valuable faction modules.
- The ninja warps in in a fast and expendable ship (the Vigil, for example).
- The ninja salvages. If the ninja just wants to profit from salvage with no risk, he will simply salvage wrecks and not flag himself.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
Ninja Swarm
Some corporations or groups of players have taken Ninja Salvage and Stealing to the next level. They form fleets of ships which move into a system, scan for missioners and then jump into the mission deadspace for each missioner and ninja salvage or loot. The effect is similar to locust moving through the plains, in that it causes mass-grief for all missioners in the system. These fleets usually move on or get bored, so this activity is very rare.
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.
While ninja looting will result in a criminal flag and you can choose to fire at them or not, ninja salvage does not result in a criminal flag, so if you fire at them, CONCORD will come in and attack you. Often times, with ninja salvage, this is the best approach, though it may not be fun.
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.
Take a Friend
Bring in a corpmate to help with the looting/salvage, so that while you are fighting the baddies, your corpmate is busy clearing the space of wrecks. This will dissuade a ninja looter/salvager, since there are two or more people who can attack them if they try anything, but it may not keep everyone away. Using fleet and loot logging helps, as you can then split the proceeds of the adventure.
Shoot Your Wrecks
Blowing up your own wrecks stops the ninja from profiting from them. It also hopefully indicates that you don't value your wrecks that much, and might not be easily baited into fighting them. Watching someone blowing up wrecks and refusing to respond to your smacktalk can be quite boring, and this may persuade them to find another victim.
Leave the Site
Warp out of the site and leave them to it.
When you warp out, it's likely the rats in the pocket will switch to attacking the ninja. Normally this isn't much use as any half-awake player will notice that you've gone and realise what's going to happen. 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, especially if you can spawn a wave of warp scrambling frigates on them. To do this, you should
- Identify a trigger ship.
- Check that no rats are tackling you.
- Align to a celestial so that you're ready to warp near-instantly.
- Blow up the trigger ship.
- Warp out. Provided you pre-aligned this should happen instantly, meaning the next wave won't have a chance to lock you, so if it has warp scramblers they won't be able to pin you.
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 aggression 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 blow up their ship, 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!). Even if the rats don't kill the ninja, they will probably force him to leave and prevent him from stealing any more loot or salvage, which will defeat a profit oriented ninja. It also clearly shows that you're not going to attack him, which will cause a griefing ninja to move on as well. Do a different mission or just leave it a few minutes and come back and you'll probably find your site clear again, most likely with the wrecks still there.
Fight Back
Unlike the policy for dealing with can flippers, the University does not currently have an official procedure for responding to ninja looters. However, we advise that you only engage them if you have fleet backup, much as outlined in the canflipping policy. Never, ever, fight back against a ninja salvager, as doing so will result in not only them getting kill rights on you, but CONCORD will show up and have their way with your ship too.
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.
