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Traveling Between Focuses

Once a focus finishes, there is a wait of between 12 and 36 hours before the next focus spawns. The new focus is generally in a different constellation, and there can be a large number of jumps required to move to the new focus.

Traveling in EVE Online, especially with expensive items, is not a simple task. Incursion runners make attractive targets to gankers because of the value of the items we transport.

There are three primary things you need to move between focuses.

  1. Your capsule/pod with your implants.
  2. Your incursion ships (battleships in general).
  3. Your expensive modules (faction, deadspace, abyssal, etc).

There are different ways to move each of these items.

Note: There is no such thing as 100% safe in EVE Online. The best you can do is minimize risk.

Capsule/Pod/Implants

If you're flying with us, we highly recommend (and sometimes require) that you use implants, not only will these improve your efficiency and speed when running with us, they will also make moving a lot less painful since you can warp so much faster in some implant sets. Take a look at the Implants page for more information on implants.

Although the implants we tend to use are quite expensive, there's very little value to gankers to killing you for your implants (except around Easter, where there's a 50% chance for each of them to drop for a killer to loot them during the Easter Egg Hunt event).

If all you're moving is your pod, move in a cheap quick aligning ship (a Shuttle is generally fine), do NOT fly through lowsec/nullsec, and do not autopilot.

You can combine moving your pod with moving either your primary incursion running ships and/or your expensive modules. When doing this, follow the same rules you would follow for the incursion ship or modules.

The Basics of Moving Safely

The basics of moving safely can be summed up as follows:

  • Avoid lowsec/nullsec. There's simply too many things that can go wrong here.
  • Scout ahead. If you can, send a second character (in a cheap ship - any faction Shuttle works nicely, though you may want something with a faster warp speed such as a Dramiel, Sunesis, etc) ahead to see who is in the system you're about to jump into and warp through.
  • Be an unattractive target.
  • Use out of game resources to plan your route and check for activity on the way.

Use the EVE Gatecamp Check.
Put in your starting system and your destination, choose “Prefer Secure” and then press Go.

Then look at Dotlan as well, looking for systems on your route with a high number of deaths in recent times. Pay particular attention to systems that are difficult to avoid, and systems that are 0.5 -0.6 security status. Look for any systems with any numbers in the Kills column (kills in the last hour).

If you think something looks suspicious, look at it closer. Click on the system name in Dotlan and go to the “Kills” tab which is powered by zKillboard. Look for freighters or other expensive ships dying, if even one has died recently it may indicate an active gank fleet.

You may be able to get intel from incursion chat channels about active ganking fleets during moving periods. Please do NOT advertise where or when you are moving your assets, as these channels are also monitored by gankers, and you WILL be providing free intel to potential hostiles.

Be an unattractive target - use a tanky travel fit. The idea here is simply to be worth less as a kill mail than the cost to kill you. Do NOT carry expensive modules on your incursion ship when travelling between focuses.
For all of our incursion ships, a travel fit involves removing expensive modules and replacing them with cheaper options - T2 armor plates, T2 damage control units, etc.

Use the MWD Cloak Trick if you jump through a gate and find yourself on grid with gankers (provided you have a cloak on your travel fit).

Move Bling Separately

Move your expensive modules (“bling”) in a “taxi,” a small fast-align ship. You want something with a small sig radius, extremely low align time and enough cargo space to carry your expensive modules. Tank is largely irrelevant on a taxi, the idea is to avoid being caught. If you get tackled, it's unlikely that you'll last long enough to avoid dying irrespective of the security status of the system you're in. The idea is avoid getting caught in the first place. Sub-1 second align time is ideal, sub-2 seconds is marginal. See below for more details and fit suggestions.

Travel Fit Your Battleship

Once you've stripped out the blingy modules, you need to move your battleship hull(s) separately, or together in a Bowhead. If piloting your battleship, put as much tank on it as possible: shield, armor, and hull. Use inexpensive T2 modules. Example travel fits can be found below.

Triglavian and Edencom Systems

As you travel you will encounter both Triglavian (Trig) and Edencom systems. To travel through these systems without being attacked by these NPCs, you will need positive standings with both. Edencom by default will not attack you unless you reduced your standings with them. Trigs will attack by default. You can increase standings with both groups at the same time by going into Pochven and killing a rogue drone or sleeper rat. That will give a slight increase to standings with both. Assuming your character has not engaged in Trig/Edencom content previously, this will be enough to be friendly to both, allowing you to freely move through their systems without them attacking you on the gates.

Insurgency Systems

The Havoc expansion (November 2023) introduced a new mechanism that allows certain highsec systems to be “corrupted” to the point where they behave like lowsec, and therefore would be unsafe to travel through. Unfortunately, so far there is no way to auto-avoid these systems. A highsec system that has corruption level 5 is effectively lowsec and there's no Concord response. There should be a warning if you try and enter a level 5 corrupted system, and it should also show up on your route as bright red. To find out what corrupted systems there are, open the Agency in game, then go to Encounters and select Pirate Insurgencies. Once there you can select “Insurgency Systems” towards the lower right of the window to see affected systems. Make note of any that are high sec and plan on avoiding them if possible while moving.

Scouting

If you just have 1 incursion ship to move, the simplest way to move is travel-fit it, and have your bling in a separate, ideally sub-1 second align, taxi. With 2 omega accounts you can self-scout: have one character enter a system ahead of the other to check that it's clear to enter. If a system looks bad, you can dock up and wait for a better opportunity to slip through. Sometimes if gankers are in a system you can slip through right after they've ganked someone else and are on their cooldown timers (red flashy).

Scouting With One Omega Account

If you only have a single Omega account or are still Alpha, you can't have a second character on to scout yourself. In this case, you have 2 options: ask someone to scout for you, or self-scout using “delayed scouting,” a slightly less reliable way to scout for yourself.

Delayed scouting:

  1. Log in your scout character, enter the next system with it, dock up and log off.
  2. Log in the character flying the hull and move to that system, dock up and log off.
  3. Log in the taxi alt carrying the bling and move the taxi to that system, dock up and log off.
  4. Rinse and repeat until you are to the new focus.

Incursion Ship Travel Fits

Battleships

For all battleship travel fits - Ignore the rigs listed, use the rigs you normally fly with. If you want to fly a truly passive fit, replace the two Multispectrum Shield Hardener IIs with a EM Shield Amplifier II and a Thermal Shield Amplifier II.

Travel Kronos
[Kronos, Travel Kronos]
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II

Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II

Large Hybrid Burst Aerator II
Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Travel Vindicator
[Vindicator, Travel Vindicator]
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II

Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II

Large Kinetic Armor Reinforcer I
Large Thermal Armor Reinforcer I
Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Travel Paladin
[Paladin, Travel Paladin]
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II

Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Large Shield Extender II
500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II

Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Large Energy Burst Aerator II
Travel Nightmare
[Nightmare, *Nightmare]
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II

Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II

Large Explosive Armor Reinforcer I
Large Kinetic Armor Reinforcer I
Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Travel Nestor
[Nestor, Travel Nestor]
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II
1600mm Steel Plates II

Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II

Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II

Other Travel Fits

Whilst it's important to move your ships between focuses, as your ship fits become more valuable, moving the “shiny” bits becomes critical too.

*NEVER* move a ship with its incursions fit between focuses, even in highsec. Some of the modules we use are very expensive, and will make your ship a large and juicy target for gankers.

Blockade Runner

A correctly flown Blockade Runner can be hard to catch (please do NOT make the mistake of thinking it's impossible - a well/badly placed ship or container or any item in space can REALLY ruin your day), the important things you need to do to fly it correctly:

  • When warping gate-to-gate:
    1. Click the jump button on the next gate to initiate warp
    2. As soon as you see your capacitor level drop indicating initiation of the warp, click your cloak
  • When undocking from a busy, camped system (e.g. any trade hub), you should have an insta-undock bookmark which you use immediately and cloak as soon as it catapults you forward. Otherwise you will be vulnerable and unable to cloak for several seconds in which a gambler playing the “Blockade Runner Lottery” can gank you under the assumption that most Blockade Runner pilots are carrying something expensive.

You should, if possible, fit a Large Shield Extender (Compact Meta4 usually) to your BR along with some passive shield amplifiers. These will help prevent you getting instablapped by a Tornado/Talos on an undock.

For your lows, simply fit sufficient Nanos to reduce your align time to a reasonable level. For rigs, Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers are excellent for those super fast warps.

Taxi

“Taxi” is a nickname for a ship designed to safely move relatively small volumes of expensive modules across space in as safe a manner as possible.

Please Note: We do NOT recommend traversing lowsec or nullsec systems with your incursion ships or modules. There are additional tools that attackers get in lowsec and nullsec (free use of smart-bombs in lowsec and nullsec, warp disruption bubbles in nullsec, just to name two) that can entirely negate your ability to safely warp away with your cargo intact.

In general, if gankers get a lock on your ship, they can put enough firepower into it to destroy it and loot the wreck before Concord ships arrive. So, really, what you want to do is avoid being locked to start with. Conventional wisdom has a few suggestions around this:

  • Use a Scout. This is always advisable, but knowing who's ahead of you is not fool-proof. Whilst if there's obvious ganking activity in a system you'll likely see it, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” - just because you can't see gankers around doesn't mean they're not there.
  • Use a small ship (or a ship with a small signature radius). The smaller your signature radius, the harder you are to lock up (more specifically, the longer it takes to lock you up).
  • Use a cloak. Once cloaked you cannot be targeted until you're decloaked. If you're using a T1/T2 or meta/faction cloak, you cannot warp when cloaked, and your sub-warp speed (the speed your ship can move when not in warp) is significantly slower than normal (noting you also cannot cloak and activate a microwarp drive or afterburner to increase your speed, though you can potentially use the “MWD Cloak Trick”).
  • Get into warp quicker than someone can lock you. In highsec, this is truly the only way to avoid being caught (at least directly, it IS possible for gankers to use smartbombs in highsec, but it's low accuracy and easily avoided if you're careful and do things like not warping gate to gate to disrupt not only the timing of your warp but also the direction from which you land on the destination gate).

A combination of all these methods can also be helpful, because if one of the methods isn't 100% successful in keeping you safe, the others may be, and you'll warp off safely.

Sub one second align taxi

The safest option is to have a ship that can enter warp in < 1s - this is (effectively) uncatchable in highsec (unless you sit idle on a gate and your post-jump invulnerability times out - nothing will save you then).

Although there are a number of ships that can get to < 1s align, you also need to be able to carry enough cargo to move your incursion modules in a single trip, and we believe the Hecate is ideal for this. A similar configuration is possible on a Jackdaw - it gives more tank (as it's a naturally shield-bonused ship), but requires implants to get to < 1s align.

Hecate Taxi - Cheap(est) < 1s align ship with 500m3+ cargo
[Hecate, Hecate Taxi]

Shadow Serpentis Inertial Stabilizers
Shadow Serpentis Inertial Stabilizers
Inertial Stabilizers II
Expanded Cargohold II

Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
EM Shield Hardener II
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints II
Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints II
Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints II


Quafe Zero Green Apple

This is the cheapest (currently lists @ 241m ISK including the Quafe Zero Green Apple booster - if that sounds like a lot, consider what it will cost you to lose a single set of incursion ship modules to gankers!) fit for a < 1s warp Hecate that does not require special implants - the Quafe Zero Green Apple Booster *is* required (you need to consume it before the trip, and if it runs out, use another!) to ensure align time is kept below 1s. Note that you will also need to keep the Hecate (or Jackdaw) in “propulsion” mode to be able to enter warp in < 1s - if you change to defensive mode to land on a gate, make sure you change back to propulsion mode first before you warp away from the next gate!

Variations of this fit are possible - if you're willing to use a “taxi clone”, you can use “Nomad” implants to lower your align time and reduce the number of Inertial Stabilizers or Low Friction Nozzle Joint rigs the ship needs to keep the align time below 1s. You could also increase the EHP by using faction or deadspace shield modules (although using shield extenders increases your sig radius, as long as you keep the align time to < 1s, the sig radius really doesn't matter) - this is especially true if you choose to use a Jackdaw due to its natural shield tank capabilities instead of a Hecate.

Sub two second align taxi

If you cannot afford a <1s align ship, we recommend that you use a courier service (see the section below on Public Hauling Services) to move your items, with appropriate collateral on the contract to protect your items. If your align is greater than 1 second, you CAN be caught - here's a loss mail for a 1.87s align Sunesis with ~3B isk of stuff lost:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/88587483/

A single stealth bomber can do over 5,000hp of damage in a single hit, and a single T2 artillery Tornado has an alpha strike of over 10,000hp from over 100km from its target. Cloaks don't help enough to de-risk this sort of thing sufficiently.

Bowhead

Welcome to the world of freighter travel. It's a dangerous world. You don't have a cloak and if anyone decides they really want to gank you, they probably can!

You should be carrying the assembled rigged hulls and nothing else in your Bowhead, all the mods should be going separately via Blockade Runner/Taxi/etc.

Before transitioning to using a Bowhead to move your hulls around you should make stashes so that you can avoid the main gank pipes (Udeama and Odin/Ohide being the worst two) The nature of a Bowhead is that a ganker scanning the ship can see what hulls you have but not how they are fit. That has lead to them killing Bowheads going through the pipe to find out if they have expensive modules on the hulls.

Bowhead Max Tank 707k EHP
[Bowhead, Max Tank]

Reinforced Bulkheads II
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Damage Control II

500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II

Capital Transverse Bulkhead II
Capital Transverse Bulkhead II
Capital Transverse Bulkhead II

Public Hauling Services

A more risk-free approach is to use a hauling service such as PushX or Red Frog (or one of their subsidiary's). Being able to set a collateral value on your items all but eliminates the risk of hauling it yourself, however this will cost you in both ISK and time, as these contracts can take 1-5 days to complete, as well as a not-insignificant service cost. Restrictions will also apply on the value of contracts these services will accept, so you may find yourself needing to make multiple hauling contracts.

A Note on Abyssal DCU's

Some pilots will use an Abyssal DCU on their Bowhead. There are benefits to doing this, namely it makes it very difficult for ganking entities to determine the amount of ships required to kill you (due to not knowing the resist profile of the module). The downside is that it can make you a more attractive target, and gankers may just use an overkill amount of ships to make sure the job gets done no matter what.

guides/travelling-between-focuses.1702581841.txt.gz · Last modified: 14/12/2023 19:24 by teb_ozran

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