User:Erwin Madelung/zkillboard draft
ZKillboard (short: zkill) is a public killboard. That means it collects killmails and publishes them for everyone to read. The Eve Online community uses it for many purposes. Probably the most common purpose is to check how much was destroyed in a fight thus who the "winner" is. Further it is often used to gather intel and check out what fits people use.
How does it work
For a killmail to be registered on zKillboard one of the entities that can access the killmail have to give zkill the right to access it in its name. A killmail is sent to the victim, the pilot who landed the killing blow, and their corps [1]. As zKillboard is the most popular killboard most corps or individuals do so. Because of this zKillboard isn't only important in its killboard function but also as a killmail database that can be accessed through an API.
Searching on zKillboard
zKillboard provides a search function. You can search and thus filter for
- character, corporation, and alliance names;
- ship types and classes;
- solar systems and regions. (But afaik not constellations.)
Where reasonable you can narrow down to kills, losses and solo.
Further it is possible to filter for certain categories. Known categories are: awox, ganked, npc, highsec, lowsec, nullsec, wh,...?
Those kind of filters can be combined if you maniulate the url. Let say you want to know all Velator losses by the uni. You search for EVE University [E-UNI] and the result will have the url https://zkillboard.com/corporation/917701062/ because 917701062 is the corresponding corp ID. The search for Velator results in the url https://zkillboard.com/ship/606/ because 606 is the ship ID for the Velator. If you now combine those two urls to https://zkillboard.com/corporation/917701062/ship/606/losses/ you will see all Velator losses by E-UNI. The reverse order https://zkillboard.com/ship/606/corporation/917701062/losses/ works too. "losses" has to be at the end though. Further it is possible to search for several things of the same kind. For example https://zkillboard.com/corporation/917701062/ship/601,606/losses/ gives you all Ibis (601) and Velator (606) losses by E-UNI. Of course you can do that with more than two things and not only with ships but also other categories like systems. Just go ahead and experiment which combinations work. But keep in mind that some combinations require a certain order while others not.
As you can access zKillboard through an API. You can in theory apply any filter you may wish if you care to program.
Intel Gathering
zKillboard can be used in various ways to gather intel. You can check out an alliance what kind of ships (and fits) they like to fly and their common online times. If you face a certain target you can search for the pilot and his losses in that specific hull. Most pilots stay with one fit and it gives you a good idea how to fight it. You can even click on export -> EFT and copy & paste the fit into Pyfa.
Footnotes
- ^ really corp or is it alliance?
