While Exploring the other night I got blown up. No big deal. But I thought I had this whole escape thing worked out. Two warp core stabilizers and under 3 sec align. Nope. Got warp scammed anyway.
How many warp stabs does it take? Should I give up my under 3 sec align? My thinking is that I have a choice. Get blown up because I can’t align fast enough to tank the damage or, get blown up because I get warp scrammed. Thoughts?
Addition: It looks like the pilot had both a warp scrambler and warp disruptor does that make +3 to my +2 stabs? Could also be I was out numbered 2:1
Fly a cheap ship and just live with the fact that it will go boom at some point. You need to be under 2s and lucky to have a chance and that costs a lot of ISK.
the ability to fit stabs is limited by the number of low slots you have. When you fit stabs you handicap your ship in other ways. Moreover, they can always bring ships that have more points then you have stabs. HICs, recons with faction points, etc. . . And yes points stack. Lets say you start at 0 and you add one stab so now you are at -1. they have one scam which has a +2 strength so you add that to your -1 and get +1 so you cant warp. If they had a disrupt as well that would be another +1 of strength so it would be +2 total. (Which means that for a scram and a disrupt you would need 3 stabs total to get away.)
In short, forget stabs. Learn your environment and use dscan often. Further unless, they are using a stealth bomber, there is an uncloak delay on targeting which you can use to burn out of range or to try and warp off.
Finally in general dont do exploration in systems with stations. People live in those stations, and they will often have the sites probed down. Which means that you will not have any warning before a cloaked ship pops up on you.
I HIGHLY recommend using Thera to run Null sites from HS…super fun and profitable…tricky and it will really test your metal but if you are smart about it, you never have to deal with gates…
You are correct in that each Warp Core Stabilizers counters 1 point of warp disruption.
Regarding the things that cause warp disruption:
Warp Disruptors (light blue) apply 1 point of disruption
Warp Scramblers (dark blue) apply 2 points of disruption AND shut down MicroWarpdrives and MicroJumpdrives.
There are faction/deadspace variants that add an additional point of warp disruption.
On top of this… there are two other forms of warp disruption:
Warp Disruption Bubbles: Only found in 0.0 space and below, they are an Area of Effect Warp Disruptor that applies “infinite” warp disruption to any ship within its sphere. MicroWarpdrives and MicroJumpdrives still function within it.
Focused Warp Disruption Generators: Only available on Heavy Interdictors, they are basically a “long range” version of a Warp Scrambler with “infinite” warp disruption strength.
As for whether you should fit Warp Core Stabilizers to your ship… the following adage applies:
“Warp Core Stabilizers may save you today, but they won’t save you tomorrow. Or ever again.”
(translation: they are an unreliable means of avoiding danger and there are other ways that can keep you just as safe without cutting into the effectiveness of your ship in other areas)
I typically hunt explorers with a faction and a regular scram. To escape you would need 5 warp core stabs, which is impossible for hacking frigates. Forget the stab, fit for align instead and pay attention, that is your best defence. Against a covert ops ship, you have 5 seconds (targeting delay after decloaking) plus lock time to get away, with a fast aligning ship this is plenty.
Focus on this point when you are in null/wh/low (Even works in Hi-Sec). The Heavy Interdictor ships can fit a script that has 99 warp scram/disrupt strength. No amount of warp core stabs will help you there.
However, I did notice a silly module on the market that gives +99 warp strength but it gimps your ship completely. Being back in the game after so many years and doing some research on all the new stuff and changes I just shake my head when i see stuff like that.
2 warp core stabilizers give you an additional 2 points of security from warp disrupting effects. So, 1 longpoint (1 point strength) will not be enough to hold you, nor will 1 scram (2 points)
There’s a few different ways you can still be caught despite stabs:
Faction scrams have 3 points of strength, so 3 points of stabs are needed to counter it.
Warp disruptor + warp scrambler would have combined 3 points.
Scripted HIC points have 99 strength, which is effectively uncounterable
Bubbles in general don’t care about your warp core strength
Maulus navy issue has a bonus to scram strength, the only ship (as far as I remember) with a bonus of that type
Throwing stabs in otherwise unused slots on an exploration ship is generally a good idea, but stabs shouldn’t be a priority on any fit. Having under 2 second align and being extremely quick on the trigger to warp off is the best way to do it. Your setup doesn’t sound that bad, you just got unlucky.
