Filament activation strategies

It came to my attention that a player will be quite vulnerable after completing an abyssal site, especially if you’re in Null or Lowsec, but true even for getting Ganked in Highsec. You leave a trace behind and give ample time for opponents to gather a fleet at your exit and after the site is completed. And if you manage to complete it, your ship will undoubtedly have some loot that may be worth ganking over.

So what are some strategies to combat this risk?

Obviously, activating the filament at a ‘Safe’ is the bare minimum, but these can easily be scanned down.

Filaments need to be out of range of Gates, Stations and mobile depots by 100 km, but this should not limit Combat sites or even within a Plex or mission sites.
Any idea if the restrictions apply to Acceleration gates?
Activating a filament within such a site may be a better idea than even a safe since there can be NPCs to harass any gankers and can lead to unattractive movement times to reach the site.

The other question I have is if it is possible to activate these sites while you are being kicked out of a large space body. So warp to a safe inside a sun or planet and then activate the Filament. If it works then the Filament trace may be unreachable, and you will be safe when kicked out.

Can anyone confirm on the viability of the above method, or have any methods of their own? (other than camping allies at your exit)

There are several methods of securing your Abyssal signature location.

Use a mobile scan inhibitor to obscure your location and mobile micro jump drive at the entry point. When you leave the Abyssal instance, you have an invulnerability timer. Use that time to activate the mobile micro jump drive the instant you exit, which will place you 100km away from any attempted gank.

Use an alt in a heavily tanked DST or similar ship with a fleet hangar at the exit. The instant you exit the instance, transfer your cargo to the DST. They may get your ship in a gank attempt, but they won’t get whatever loot you found in the Abyss.

Use the filament in the middle of a rather nasty L4 combat mission.

4 Likes

Excuse me, but this is a bad idea.

A single mobile scan inhibitor is equal to holding up a humongous sign …
… IN RED LETTERS ON YELLOW BACKGROUND, BECAUSE EYECANCER …
… “HEY, LOOK, I HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE! COME CHECK ME OUT!”

Anyone intending to hide himself, or something else, needs to drop at least a dozen. That way anyone interested needs to check out every single one of them first, buying you time until he hits you anyway.

4 Likes

You have personally tried any of these?

An achorable structure in range should prevent opening the filament (confirmed for depots). Also you don’t spawn at zero but it’s similar to wormholes, so you have to be lucky to be in 2000m range of something parked. You can be bumped while still invulnerable, as can every alt waiting for you.

Start the filament inside a gated deadspace looks valid, though no confirmation yet … if so, I will make buzz to get it changed.

Recon 3 of 3 best lvl 4 mission to do that in, guaranteed enemy ship explosions.

1 Like

Just read in another thread, that you can‘t activate filaments in deadspace. But you can in anomalies … so the same tactic as placing an ESS can be applied here, so solo hunting Nullsec runners is mostly off the table sigh.

After the session change transition, isn’t the ship also invisible during the invulnerability timer?

No, it’s like a cyno jump, no “gate cloak” but invulnerable, or more precise unlockable.

1 Like

Has anyone actually been suicide ganked coming out of abyssal deadspace yet? I see lots of handwringing by carebears about it, but has it actually occurred?

There have been hundreds of billions of Abyssal cruiser ganks already. Gilas and Sacrilege getting popped left and right…

Someone should really be selling a guide on how to fit your Abyssal cruiser to not be ganked…

Ganking Abyssal Gila and Sacrilege should be pretty easy. Most players are going to run the same setups, or close to it. So you will already know what resists they have, how much EHP, etc…

I’m just glad someone is doing the lord’s work

I don’t know about the lord’s work. Bob’s, maybe…

And here’s the latest one…

https://zkillboard.com/kill/70327873/

I almost made it onto that list (though for different reasons). Got complacent running a Fierce Dark, lost track of the time and forgot which room I was in - then realized I had to clear 12 Drifter cruisers to get out of dodge with less than 4 minutes on the clock. Praise Bob for thermodynamics! You know you had a good run when you leave the abyss with fully 80% of your modules in the red!

Pyrolancea - don’t undock without it!

2 Likes

Nice to see the ganks, also only in the usual systems, hope it’s profitable to keep it going.

I have no idea why people would run them from those systems, I would go and find the most out of the way hisec and run them. But as I am in nullsec I will run them in the most defended alliance system with a Falcon alt ready to jam anyone who tried to do anything, as well as a horde of blood thirsty Aussies wanting something to kill. Result, zero risk… :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

It was fun seeing a bunch of filament traces just outside of Jita 4-4. I think that lasted a grand total of 1 day.

1 Like

It is good to open many T1-3 portals in one 0.9 or 1.0 system, in a trading Hub system. It makes harder to scan somebody and prepare multiple ganks.

No. It’s not so profitable and soon will turn gankers away. The time and resource preparation for a gank isn’t low and it doesn’t matter what to gank - a T5 portal explorer or T4. T1 and T2 Abyss can be done in a 100M ISK vessel and that defines everything for our bookkeepers (gankers).