Drifter Rats

[Remi_Lacroix]

basically if you are in null you are using multiple characters. If you are not but are part of a big group, you’re just an f1 monkey looking for scraps to feed on.

It’s feast or famine, and you need a pack in order to feast.

[Glenduil]

I’ll take “Things they never tell you before-hand” for a $1000, Alex.

I really appreciate it. Looks like I’m heading back to the life of a High Sec drifter.

Whitesnake - Here I Go Again '87 (Official Music Video)

[Tessa_Springfield]

I do not miss when hobgoblins thought long fluffy hair made them sexy.

[Glenduil]

Haha yeah, but the music was awesome!

[Anabella_Rella]

Now it all makes sense why CCP wants to drive players to go to null; they want everyone running multi accounts. Doh! Can’t believe it took me this long to realize…

[Tessa_Springfield]

Blame CSM’s for 2 decades for that.

Multiboxers make more isk anywhere they are in game. Null is just the easiest.

[Eternus8lux8lucis]

@Remi_Lacroix

I guess i also need to add that according to Tessa, if you start the smartbombing and anyone in the same alliance knows about it they will log alts in enemy fleets to try to hot drop you. That’s one reason he left null. He had been feeding some industry people cheap ice and ore but then quit mining completely and went to smartbombing and magically, out of nowhere, an enemy hotdropper fleet was popping in and out of the system he was in while blues all around completely ignored them and wouldnt report them to intel. Suspicion is the industry people he was feeding and then stopped got upset and logged their counterpart red characters. This happened for a couple weeks before some other situations from within that corp made him want to leave.

This happens with any account, character or alt you have that people find out earns isk. Someone will come to ruin your parade, and often it is blues playing both sides. Welcome to Eve.

[Antihrist_Pripravnik]

I’m not entirely sure which specific rats are you talking about. Here’s the breakdown:

• Diamond rats:
  • Spawns as mining fleets in belts and haulers at stations
  • Mining fleet will not touch you, unless you attack them. If you do, they warp out and a defense fleet warps in.
  • When you are near a diamond hauler at the station, it will warp out and the defense fleet will warp in. You don’t need to aggress the hauler, they will attack you on sight.
• Drifters
  • Usually present in systems with Jove Observatories (don’t know if they are present anywhere else)
  • They are guarding drifter wormholes, but are not always there. If you wait a couple of minutes, they will de-spawn, and re-spawn again after a while.
  • If you attack them and you manage to survive, they will follow you until the next downtime.
  • Their endgame is a doomsday. Dreads have died to it.
• Autothysian Lancers
  • Peaceful drifters that are scanning everything around them
  • Can warp to pretty much anything except DED complexes, signatures and mission locations
  • Will trigger drifter defense fleet if you attack them
  • Even if they are the only ones on the drifter wormhole when you are on it, if you are decloaked and stick around, they can get aggressive. I don’t know if they try to attack immediately or there is a delayed attack, but they did follow me several times when I crossed path with them on drifter wormholes.

The thing is, you don’t need to fight them. I’ve never fought them and don’t feel the need to. It’s just something you see occasionally and act accordingly. The short version:

• Drifters: Don’t go through drifter wormholes when they are on grid. Use cloak, or if you are traveling in something that doesn’t have cloak, use a scout. Go through the wormhole when they leave the grid. MWD-cloak works too, if you are skilled enough to pull it off, because their locking time is insane.
• Diamond rats:
  • Just ignore them in belts if they are just miners. If there’s a hauler or a defense fleet - warp out.
  • If you meet a hauler on the station, dock up or warp off for a minute or two. The defense fleet should be gone (if no one else engaged it)
  • If you meet the defense fleet directly, dock up. It will be gone shortly.
• Autothysian Lancers:
  • Ignore them everywhere completely except on drifter wormholes. Even though they will not attack immediately on the wormhole, it’s best to play it safe and not be on the same grid as them decloaked for a long time.
  • If they do have a pick on you, they will not follow you around like drifters do. Just stay away from them until the next downtime. That’s pretty easy, since the only way you can encounter them is by accident.

[Dark_Lord_Trump]

@Akkar_Kardashev

You must have previously attacked them. They remember you, and not fondly.

The lancers are chill until you mess with them. Their drifter big brother hates everything and everyone. Clearly the OP has joined a bloc with some damn fools who keep poking the drifters.

I honestly don’t think you can solo multiple drifter battleships in anything sane. A dread will get disassembled by the drifter DD. IIRC they DD caps on sight and subcaps when you break their overshield.

[Remi_Lacroix]

Technically you can kite them with carriers. You dont even have to use the sensor array, but the fit is a little weird and you might need a few flights.

[Tessa_Springfield]

I was not aware that drifters show up in normal null space, other than the lancers. When I lived in delve and then more recently, I never saw them outside of wormholes.

Is there something that needs to be done to get them to spawn and wreak havoc? I got popped by one of the battleships at an unidentified wormhole (on overview, not scanned) so fast that I didn’t even see what happened before I was in my pod.

I would not mind fighting them, but I can’t find a lot of information that would make me think fighting them would be worth the risks and eventual losses.

[Tessa_Springfield]

@Remi_Lacroix

Bomber Praxis fit is as follows. 580m isk each (market variation)

High Slots: 7 t2 smartbombs to match the rats in your area

Mid Slots: 7 t2 cap rechargers

Low Slots: 1 true sansha large armor rep, 2 t2 cap power relay, 1 reactive armor hardener, 2 primary rat dmg t2 armor hardeners, 1 secondary rat dmg t2 armor hardener

Rigs: 2 large cap control circuit 2, 1 large cap control circuit 1

Should end up 26% cap left with everything on, 87% primary resist, 78% secondary. With reactive you’ll be over 90% on both.

Anchor ship he uses is a porpoise. Fit doesnt matter but you need the fleet formations skill level 5 for relative formation. Then you just have to get positioning right. The anchor ship (your main) warps to 0 on a rock haven, bombers will be around 10km and should drop out of warp right in front of the middle of the non functioning gate in the middle of the rock haven.

Praxis should be in formation already set before you warp to the haven so that they will always warp to the same position based on your anchor ship.

The praxis ships should be landing just in front of the gate and spaced around 4km away from each other with the rough shape of an 8 sided dice if you are using the 7 characters total for max profits.

If you are only using 3, 1 will be anchor, 2 praxis should land in right in front of gate, 1 above and 1 below gate horizon with a rough distance of 4km between. For using 3 though, your anchor ship does matter and isnt just there to drop mtu’s. You’ll want something that can alpha a battleship rat that gets out of bomb range.

I’m on the phone for unrelated stuff and he’s just explaining it quickly as I type. If any of that doesnt make sense you’ll have to wait for Tessa. Personally, I can verify it works well because we were on discord and i had to teach him how to stream it and he showed me. He’d spend about 6 hours a day doing it unless a hostile fleet came through. Was plexing an account every day and sending isk to my group for projects.

Edit to include once you relative warp to the rock haven, you go through your bombers and run your fingers over f1 through f7 and watch everything except your team die.

This is correct information, for those that are not aware of that isk faucet. I would like to correct some information as it seems i did not relay it correctly.

My porpoise has 2 armor bursts and 1 skirmish burst, 1 is Rapid Repair Charge, 1 is Armor Engineering Charge and I use Evasive Maneuvers charge . They are not necessary, but are used to create some buffer for mistakes and potential drops. and for when the dread spawns.

Max skilled, my praxis alts take around 6 seconds to get off field, every bit as fast as the much more expensive machariel smartbombers. I was able to avoid getting popped on my first dread spawn, as my overview did not show the dread. It also helped me avoid more than a dozen attempts for a helios hotdrop.

@Remi_Lacroix

You’ll want your own dread to take care of it, and sometimes you’ll get a faction rat alongside the dread. Those are where the isk really comes in. high grade implant bpc’s and faction modules drop like candy.

Where I was, the rats are sansha. I was averaging 10 true sansha spawns a night but only spawned maybe 6 dreads. Most of the true sansha drops are junk armor hardeners or laser crystals. The more expensive drops do not drop like candy.

@Remi_Lacroix

For using 3 though, your anchor ship does matter and isnt just there to drop mtu’s. You’ll want something that can alpha a battleship rat that gets out of bomb range.

You’ll want to use high alpha combat that is not using missiles as the smartbombs will pop the missiles. They will also pop drones, so I would not suggest using them unless you know how to manage them well enough to prevent them from flying directly into your smartbombs.

[Tessa_Springfield]

@Remi_Lacroix

I guess i also need to add that according to Tessa, if you start the smartbombing and anyone in the same alliance knows about it they will log alts in enemy fleets to try to hot drop you. That’s one reason he left null. He had been feeding some industry people cheap ice and ore but then quit mining completely and went to smartbombing and magically, out of nowhere, an enemy hotdropper fleet was popping in and out of the system he was in while blues all around completely ignored them and wouldnt report them to intel. Suspicion is the industry people he was feeding and then stopped got upset and logged their counterpart red characters. This happened for a couple weeks before some other situations from within that corp made him want to leave.

Thats from within sigma grindset alliance, a blue neighbor to the swarm.

I would have preferred to not bring this to the forums. I had issue with how some things were handled and how some things were communicated far too often, building a negative environment.

I like the people in Sigma and in Yamato, and infact, for me to get into smartbombing I was generously loaned plex as I did not have enough isk to plex my accounts after buying the praxis bombers. I made enough isk to fully repay those loans within a week due to the smartbomb ratting I was guided to begin doing.

You can have as many ships in fleet and on grid as you want, which will further increase your tick income and ESS buildup. However, the number of bombers and the anchor is the sweet spot that will let you bomb rock havens to completion in approximately 2 and a half minutes. Most of that wait time is the initial time for rats to start spawning.

[Asgidur_Hurtini]

That has been discussed for years.

The side against lost miserably, it was not even a fight.

The best way to play EVE is to grasp at the reality of the game. Either you go full throttle and pull some schema to PLEX your accounts. Or if you have pocket change to spare put into the game fully knowing you gonna be blop’d sonner than later.

And while you paying top dollar the people blopping you are playing for free for years.

You gotta read that statement until you are in peace with it, otherwise you gonna lose your mind at some point, lying to self only leads to disappointment.

At some point you gonna appreciate Safety, while they are not doing it from the bottom of their hearts, they end killing a lot of bots in the process. It’s kinda cool.

[Glenduil]

Aye indeed. I just traveled back to HS. Time to play recreationally. Eve is not my job.

[Asgidur_Hurtini]

You sir, you reached PEAK EVE.

Only the ones that do not care are free.

PS: Now tell me how to do that amount of ISK in HS… You know, for reasons…

[Glenduil]

When you want something, PLEX and buy it. That is all.

[Tessa_Springfield]

Do you really want to know how to make a trunk load of isk in highsec or being sarcastic?

[Asgidur_Hurtini]

I’m always interested in making trunks of ISK so I can buy the bling for the first time in my life.

I don’t think I have the skills tho, it can’t be that ez.

[Remi_Lacroix]

well, you’ve got 8 days left to make a bil per character that runs 125 lvl 1 security missions. if you have the time, 3-4 characters a day is easy and very few skills are needed.