Avoiding Jita Ganks

OK, I’m here for some help. I’m currently with a fairly small wormhole corp. We run sites and small gangs. And yet, the most dangerous activity for me is hauling my loot to Jita. In the last two weeks, I’ve lost about a billion coming in and out of that hellhole. The first was my fault, I undocked, got lazy, and didn’t use an inst-undock bookmark. I was bumped and popped.

The second I don’t understand. I was hauling about 200 mil of sleeper loot in a Helios. I was careful to stay cloaked the entire time. When I warped to the Jita station, I was popped before I could dock. Because I was careful to stay cloaked, there’s no way they could have known what I was carrying until I showed up next to the station. How did they have time to lock, scan, and pop me?

If anyone has tips for how to avoid this kind of thing, please let me know. It’s incredibly frustrating to put in the time to earn the isk, only to lose it like this. Thanks.

1 Like

Use tethered docking at one of the player run trade hubs in Perimeter.

Just saw the kill report, 1820 damage taken to pop you.
Take advice from Salt, set up at a nearby player run hub with tether, if you insist on heading to Jita, have a buffered ship stationed there for the final step. If they want you, they’ll still get you, but at least you can make things a lil tougher.
Also, setup up an insta dock bookmark for the station.
Good luck.

2 Likes

use insta dock to not get popped.

maybe the guy was bored and just wanted to shoot an easy target. Maybe he mistook you for someone else.

3 Likes

As you are living proof of, shooting cloaked ships blindly as they dock in Jita is often profitable. Dude was just playing the lottery.

When you dock at a station you don’t always land close enough to do it instantly as you may have noticed, and often you spend a few seconds slowboating in, and due to proximity to the station and other ships you are often decloaked.

The solution is to make a insta-dock bookmark within docking range if Jita (or any station). Warp to that and set the station as your destination if you haven’t already, and engage the autopilot. When you land the autopilot will immediately dock you leaving you vulnerable only to a perfectly placed and timed smartbomb attacks.

This is probably the only proper use of the autopilot button. Alternatively, if you don’t have such a bookmark, docking at a public Upwell structure is safer because of the tether and you can just sell there or use a cheap courier contract to pay someone to move it the final jump.

10 Likes

To the op: precisely as Black Pedro detailed.

To add my own bit so I’m not wasting people’s time, there’s other stuff you can do. Honestly if you play EvE for any amount of time, it behooves you to have a character specifically trained in DST/BRs. I hope I don’t have to explain why it’s useful?

Anyway, once you do that, you have a plethora of options available for everyday hauling and specialty needs. For this specific situation, I’d advise you to use a DST, with a full rack of active hardeners and possibly overheated just as a matter of course, to move items between major hub spots (including Jita), and other systems that are a few jumps out. Usually 3-4 jumps is enough. Those systems will likely only have a dozen people in them, and it’s then very easy to scout the outside of a station/citadel looking for gank tornadoes or other potential hostiles.

Designate a station you like (possibly a station with a large docking ring - that’s always important) as your personal rendezvous point. Your hauler character is stationed there in their DST, and you drop off/pick up items there and contract them between characters. As a boon - if there are player structures between that point and Jita (or wherever else you go), you can dock or tether or free repairs, so you can pre-emptively overheat your DST’s tank mods (look up DST’s and play around with PYFA to see why that’s important) to make yourself damn near gank-proof. Active and skillful piloting still applies, but in general you need to be taking the most dangerous leg of the journey (to/from Jita system) in the strongest possible ship available for the job - the DST.

If you need things sped around the galaxy at a greater speed, your personal rendezvous point can also have a BR there, for quick shipping to anywhere in New Eden. Again, especially if it’s a system populated by only a dozen people and it’s a station you can very easily scout the docking area of, you can make sure you don’t get tornado’d on exit with the BR (also fit lots of tank to that - leave nothing to chance).

1 Like

If you cannot get into a tankier ship another, albeit a pain in the butt, option is to dock at one of the other stations in Jita and set up a public courier from one station to the main one.

Not an ideal solution but if you are often losing ships in that manner it is an option.

I personally have an insta dock right above the station so I am always in dock range when I land, ive not yet been ganked using this method.

2 Likes

Great advice here so far. Another obvious advice would be to simply not sell in Jita. Just pick one of the other tradehubs and if the price of the buy orders are not good simply put up a sell order. Takes some patients but in the end you will probably even make more money that way.

I operate from wspace as well and I have my trusted backoffice-alt in one of the other kspace tradehubs. I just drop of the loot, get new supplies there if I have a connection nearby and do all the sell and buy orders with him.

1 Like

sb can’t be activated within range of a station.

2 Likes

You should have a docking bookmark too that’s in dock range. What happened was you landed and they popped you before you got into 0m of station. Easiest way is to undock in Jita and make a bookmark right outside the hole.

1 Like

Don’t know if it’s been mentioned as I haven’t read the entire thread, but bookmarks are your friend here.

You need bookmarks for insta-undocks as well as insta-docks.

The way you use insta-docks is you initiate warp to your bookmark (that is hopefully within docking range of the station), set your destination to the station you wish to dock at, then initiate auto-pilot.

What this does is warps you to your bookmark in docking range, and activates the docking command at the very next server tick. If you have to haul in and around Jita, this is the method that will best keep you safe.

Edit: Just noticed that BP mentioned the exact same tactic. This is the best strategy other than being too risk averse to sell in the major trade hubs. Game mechanics, when used in your favor are your friend.

3 Likes

Also remember that the corps that buy blue loot at the best price are npc run, it’snot necessary to haul it to jita. When you scan down your hisec exit, pop out and open up market to se if anywhere nearby buys the goodies in question at 250k, 500k or 1mil. Then haul to there instead.

1 Like

THIS. For Jita 4-4, it’s even worth having several of these so nobody knows where exactly you’ll warp in/out. Used correctly they make it almost impossible to be ganked, unless you lag out, d/c or are extremely unlucky.

Also, (like anything else in EvE) make sure you train for and use the correct ships and fit them properly. Haulers already have plenty of cargo space so take advantage of that and fit modules that make it faster to align and warp instead of fitting cargo expanders to whatever hull you have at available.

You wouldn’t try to pvp in a mission running ship or a hauler (unless they were “bait fit” of course) so, similarly don’t use the wrong ship when transporting assets and don’t neglect to fit it properly.

Using other trade hubs if possible is also good advice as they rarely have suicide gankers, except for Amarr.

Finally, consider making several trips. Too many people accumulate billions in assets then try to transport this in a single trip. By making more frequent trips carrying fewer assets each time, you spread your risk and hence limit your losses.

[1] Use instas when undocking AND docking
[2] Fly appropriate, properly fit ships
[3] Spread your risk

1 Like

IMHO they can pop you on the warpin path quite a bit away from the station. I have never done this but I hear this is a thing.

2 Likes

This is a thing because you appear on grids once every second when you warp. IF two ships with same warp acceleration do the same jump one after the other, they will use the same places.
Source : when you travel, sometimes you load the grid of someone missioning for 1s.

eg you can jump with an astero from perimeter gate to jita, and press “ctr+b, enter” every second and you will have all the places someone can appear on from . If you are in the grid of one, youwill also have sight on ppl going there
I’m not sure a SB can be placed on anything but the last, as it seems to me ppl are “invulnerable” in the tunnel - not in the deceleration phase (2 AU max)

As others have said, having dedicated haulers setup near Jita (and Amarr) is very useful. Take the time to setup insta dock bookmarks. Also bouncing off a planet is a great way to mess up anyone anticipating your arrival route. But we tend to do something else too, have scouts sitting in local before your arrival. Watch the gate and the station. I keep alts in jita and amarr, just to provide eyes in local before we get there. Jumping through blind in highsec is asking for trouble.

There’s no need for that! It’s possible to put a disco fleet on the warp path of a hauler!

Two bookmarks have to be created with a ship that matches a targets warp speed. One to see the hauler passing through on grid with a scout watching, the other created “one second later” (server ticks, fuck yeah!), with the disco fleet engaging as soon as the target appears on the scout’s overview.

There’s a video about that somewhere. We’ve all speculated that it should be possible to disco a ship in warp for YEARS and eventually someone actually tried to figure it out, succeeded, and posted a video with explanation on reddit.

How’d you coordinate that with a whole fleet though … no idea. Technically speaking it would only be possible to pull off with all people being in the same room or someone using input broadcasting. The unavoidable delays when communicating, combined with reaction time, make this technique practically impossible to pull off over the internet, for anything that can’t be ganked by a single battleship.

*sips water*

1 Like

that’s what I answered to pedro.

crapbaskets. i did not continue reading. vOv

same, I feel so bad when I agree with someone.

Here, have a cookie, you can punch him if you want <3 :cookie:

However I did not say it works, I said in theory it could, if you are not invulnerable during warp.