Bookmark
What is a bookmark?
Bookmark is a unique location in space defined by numerically x, y and z coordinates.
Where do we use bookmarks and why do we need them?
In Eve game system, celestial objects and star bases are already defined with coordinats. Other than those location already defined in astrometry charts, there are variable locations which you may want to identify so that you can return back later. Bookmarks are used to identify those location in game.
Bookmarks for Various Roles!
A miner ship has a limited cargo hold for ores. So miners usually collect ores in a can and left it in space. After they deplete the source they return back to their base of operation and come back with a hauler to haul their ores. These cans are a variable object floating in space and if you don’t bookmark its location. You cannot return back to that location and collect your ores.
Salvaging is one of the most profitable operations in eve universe. During your agent missions, you will probably left lots of wreck behind after engagement. A ship fitted both for PvE and salvage equipment will not be an efficient way to complete missions. Most of the mission runners bookmark their wrecks, completes their missions and return back to bookmarks for salvaging with a dedicated salvage ship.
If you are in a PvP or Military operations, direct approach to any celestial could create potential risks. You could end up in a trap, easily hunted down and killed. For that reason there sets of tactical bookmarks used for this kind of situation. Observation bookmarks, safe spots in space and for blockage running from a station, instant warp out bookmark.
Either you are a miner, explorer, a combat capsular or just a traveler; you will be in need of bookmarks for various reasons. From the first days of your capsular life, you could start creating your own bookmarks without need of any skills at all.
How do we create bookmarks?
There are two simple ways of creating bookmarks. First way is to use "People & Places" window and go to the "Places" tab. Select "Add Bookmark" at the bottom and you will bookmark the location you are at.
The other way is either right-click an item in space or on your overview and select “bookmark Location”.
The only major difference between those two are, in first way you bookmark your ships current position. In second method you are bookmarking an entities location in space other then you ships. You can bookmark cans, POS, wreck and various sites locations found during core probing.
Important:
You can bookmark many entities in space but if the location of the item changed by force or destroyed, the bookmark will only indicate the original locations coordinate.
Add bookmark command works both when you are dead stop or moving including warping. The coordinates you bookmark will indicate the exact location when you click the ok and confirm the bookmark.
Tips & Tricks:
Don’t try to write label and notes in strict situations, just take the necessary bookmark. The client will give an automatic label to the bookmark. Even you use same label for different bookmarks, because their coordinated are different, they won’t overwrite each other.
Types of Bookmarks:
There are many types of bookmarks, but all capsular should at least have some basic bookmarks to travel in space safely and avoid traps or hunts. Depending on your role or operation you could extend your repertoire to various bookmarks.
Station Undock:
Station comes with various sizes and types. For every station, there is different undock location where all ships undock at the same point. This is a constant location where all ships enter the space. If you bookmark your location, at the very moment you undock, you will end up with an undock location bookmark of that station. This bookmark is used to camp people undocking that station. If you want to engage or catch some one undocking from the station, you camp this bookmark to catch that target in optimal range. Also this in an offensive bookmark, it is strongly advised to be collected for every capsular.
Instant Warp-Out:
Instant warp-out bookmark is used for blockade running from a station camp. Pirates or various enemies could gate that stations undock location. With the help of various fits, they could instantly lock and warp disrupt/scram you ship. Instant warp-out bookmarks used to run from these blockades but using undock mechanics and a bookmark placed in at a distance at least 150 km away from your undock location on a straight direction.
At the time you undock, you leave the station aligned to a constant direction with you max velocity. In basics, if you place a bookmark at least 150 km away aligned to this direction, you could warp out almost instantly to this bookmark without being target locked. To create this bookmark, use a fast frigate or an interceptor with a MWD fit and as soon as you undock, hit you MWD without changing you alignment. Make some distance between you and the station at least 150 km and take the bookmark of the location. Next time, when you undock, warp directly to this bookmark. You will be instantly warped to this location without being target locked.
Important:
Always use different distances for your instant warp-out bookmark. If you use always same distance, they can wait you there as a trap.
Tips & Tricks:
Try to create off-grid instant warp-out bookmark so that you could not be detected instantly and followed. Always try not to warp at 0 to protect the exact location of your bookmark.
Safe Spots:
Safe spot bookmarks are one of the most important and creative way to use bookmarks. Safe spots are location on space where you bookmark at no particular object away from all charted entities. The only way to find someone in a safe spot and warp to that location could be done by successfully use of scan probes. Although you can be seen in the directional scanned, you cannot be followed unless someone scan your location with probes. There are three basic types of safe spots.
Mid-Point Safe Spots:
When you are traveling between safe spots, you can click on add bookmark and take bookmarks while warping. Any bookmarks created by this method, between two celestial objects called mid-point safe spots. It is the basic way to create safe spot in a system.
Un-aligned Safe spots:
Mid-point safe spots are in somewhere between the alignment of two celestials and it is easy to spot or find someone on a location like this. The much safer locations are un-aligned safe spots. The spots are not on an alignment between two celestial objects. There are two ways to create an un-aligned safe spots. First method is to bookmark dead space pocket when you are running missions in the systems. Dead space pocket are created randomly, and it’s very unpredictable to find. When you are running missions, always create bookmarks as safe spots.
The second method is to create an un-aligned safe spots through using two mid-point safe spots. You create two different mid-point safe spots. Then create another mid-point safe spot between those to mid-point safe spots. Then you will have an unaligned safe spots.
Tips & Tricks:
If your safe spot is out of maximum onboard scanning range, you cannot be detected in a directional scan. To easily confirm that, warp to your safe spot and use you directional scanner at maximum range. If you find nothing, nothing is in directional scan range.
Never warp to zero of your safe spots and always move rather than sitting still. This will reduce to chance being detected or compromises your safe spot location. Catching up a good point somewhere close to middle is difficult from the normal space view. Switch to map screen. Observe the celestials and define the most deviated alignments in different axis to create you mid points. As soon as you initiate warp to your target, watch closely the tag indicated you location and catch a good mid-point from the map screen. Because your velocity varies during warp sequence, if you do not check you map screen, you will end up very close to the celestial.
Important:
Unaligned safe spots are pretty safe but there is always a change that you could be pin pointing by probe scanning. As long as the duration you stay in a safe spot increases, chances of being pin pointed is also increases exponentially. Even you are far away from any celestials out of maximum onboard scanning range, your existence could be confirmed by your appearance in the local chat channels in high and low security space.
Deep Safe Spots:
These safe spots could only be created by a method known as Goonswarn method. Basically, deep safe spot is a far location beyond the reach of standard probes and could only be found by deep core probes. This method is used by advance roles and details could be find in this Ivy League Wiki link;
http://www.eve-ivy.com/wiki/index.php?title=Deep_Safe
Tactical Bookmarks:
There are various tactical bookmarks used for different roles but the basic tactical bookmark used by all capsular is the observation bookmarks.
Observation Bookmarks:
Observation bookmarks are used for tactical observation of star bases, POS and gates. Before you warp to a gate or a base, you may want to scan and check your destination from an off-grid location for any camps or targets you are hunting. In this kind of situation, observation bookmarks used to approach point of interest from a safe distance out off grid to scan the destination for possible targets or camps. A directional scan of the destination for an observation bookmark would reveal relevant information without detection from a safe distance.
Tips & Tricks:
In general solar systems are mostly rests on a plane. (Exception proves the rule). Try to create observation point perpendicular to alignments of the object, in basics above and below. This will reduce the probability of being detected by change.
Organizing and Managing Bookmarks:
By time, every player creates his own bookmarks and if you don’t organize and manage them you will end up messing up with you bookmarks. There are some basic for organizing and managing bookmarks. Although there are no strict rules on these formats, in principle their syntax is formed by various experienced players through time and you may create your own style accordingly.
Labeling bookmarks:
The most important point in organizing your bookmarks is labeling. In difficult situations you need to recognize your bookmark in a second and use accordingly. So the bookmark labels should have a standard easy recognizable format for strict situations. You may use directories to separate you bookmarks but the folder structure is kept in your computer but bookmarks are stored in game server. So if you lost your computer, you will lose the folder structure but your bookmarks will be safe. It is important to create an efficient way to label your bookmarks from the begging which will keep things neat and clear for you in future. Before labeling your bookmarks, you should familiarize yourself with the information stored with your bookmarks in places tab.
The location of the columns in this could be arranged according to your choices. Labels are the names you give to each bookmark. Type of our bookmarks is “Coordinate”. Jump indicated the distance of the solar system you bookmark rests in jumps. Sol, Con and Reg are for solar system, consolation and region information. Date indicates the specific EVE date and time bookmark created. So you may avoid using these details in your bookmarks to simplify the label.
Examples for Bookmark Labels
As an example for labeling is the Agony Style. It may seem a bit complex but after few practice it becomes very clear and easy to recognize the style.
Some examples for the bookmarks we discusses above:
Syntax: [prefix: Planet-Moon-suffix@Distance] Definition Prefix: Alliance or Corp Tag Suffix: NPC Corp Tag
An example for an Instant Warp-out bookmark for Eve Uni Aldrat HQ; Prefix: E-UNI Suffix:PTS (for Pator Tech School) Definition: IWO (instant warp out) Distance:1200 Km [E-UNI:IX-PTS@1200Km] IWO
Or for an undock bookmark for Caldari Business Tribunial; Prefix: non Suffix: CBT (for Caldari Business Tribunial) Definition: UNDOCK (Undock) Distance:2500m [VIII-M1-CBT@2500m] UNDOCK
Safe Spot Bookmarks Syntax: |--No: Closest Object @ Distance --| No: Number of the safe spot in that system
|--04: (VII)@16Au--| is the forth safe spot in the system 16 Au way from the closest celestial, which is planet VII. Planet indicated by Curvy brackets, bases by rectangular brackets and gates name are written as they are.
|--05: Balle@21Au--| is fifth Safe spot bookmark in the system and closest celestial is Balle gate21 Au away from the spot.
|--01: [E-UNI:IX-PTS]@8 Au--| is first Safe spot bookmark in the system and closest celestial is Eve Uni Aldrat HQ 8 Au away from the spot.
More detailed explanation of this system could be found at Agony Unleashed web site; http://www.agony-unleashed.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.17
Important:
Define you own style and stick with it to avoid any future confusion between you bookmarks!
Tips & Tricks:
Try not to use information already available in places tab for bookmark labels and keep it as simple as possible because you may need to find you bookmark in an instant in case of an emergency or a strict situation. You may sort you bookmarks according to their jump distance. By this way those will be available on top of the list. The bookmark in the current system is always highlighted with green to help you separate them better. You may reach your bookmarks through right-mouse menu in space. Only the bookmarks in the current system will show up in this menu.
Bookmark Folders:
Folder is the simplest way to organize your bookmarks. But if you change computer or somehow you have to reinstall you client, you will lose all the folders in your computer. Depending folders on organizing you bookmarks will end up you in a great mess. Other than that you could use folders to arrange you bookmark according your style.
Tips & Tricks:
When you use right-mouse menu to reach your Bookmarks in space you will also observe you folders in this menu. You may place all bookmarks to their folders and left only most important bookmarks in root folders in just a two click range.
Sharing & Copying Bookmarks:
You may share you bookmark with others in game but in most situation this is not recommended because acquiring bookmarks is very difficult and if you share you safe spot bookmarks and etc. then they will become public and you may be compromised. You may share you bookmark with you Corp mates but consider these bookmarks as compromised.
Copying Bookmarks:
To copy your bookmarks, open the places tab and select all the bookmarks you want to copy. Multiple selections could be done by using shift key for in-between selection or ctrl for one by one selection. Copying could be only done to your items or cargo hold. Hold shift key while clicking and dragging the bookmarks to your hangar or ship's hold will copy your Bookmarks. You can copy maximum five bookmarks at a time.
Sharing Bookmarks:
You could Share you bookmarks through trade and contracting in a station or through cans in space. Once you receive bookmarks, you will see them in your cargo hold or items window. Dragging and dropping them in to you places tab will do the trick for adding these copies to your bookmarks.
Important:
If you think that you bookmark is compromised or you share it with your mates and then separated from them with any reason, just trash you bookmarks that you share with them. Also thrash the bookmarks you used with a fleet, because everyone in that fleet learn your safe spot.
Tips & Tricks:
You can recycle your compromised or old bookmarks. Use the mid-safe technique that described above in safe spot section but this time using you safe spots rather than celestials to take mid-point. By this way, you will be able to generate more un-aligned safe spots from your older ones.
Conclusion:
Whatever role you carry out in EVE, bookmarking is one of the most important aspects of the game. Although it seems very tiresome, at least if you want to survive and avoid dangers, you should create the basic bookmarks for your own safety.
If you are considering PvP or military action, you must at least create these bookmarks for your operation area. Your survival in low sec and Null sec, highly depends on your bookmarks and you personal skill to use them.
Always remember that bookmarking requires no additional game skill, it’s just a time consuming action. If you start bookmarking in the early days in your game life and spend few hours every week or month, you will cover most of your operation area in few months.
Each time you run for an agent mission, hauling something, docking and undocking a station, approaching a gate and flying with a fleet, try taking some time and creating some bookmarks. If you use all the opportunities, it is much easier then it seems
