How to properly use KRs for anti-ganking purposes

Communications Center Crime & Punishment
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Part 1 - Introduction. Basic concepts and related game mechanics.

Kill rights are a useful tool for fighting gankers that have good sec status, but it’s often underrated and underused because many players, mainly the victims of suicide ganks, but sometimes also those willing to fight the gankers, simply don’t know how to properly use them. The following series of posts are intended to address that for those who may be interested.

I won’t explain what a KR is nor how it works. If you’re unfamiliar with the basic concepts and associated game mechanics, you may learn about them here:

and also here:

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Kill_Rights

One thing worth noting that may not be mentioned there is that the system automatically sorts KRs available for a pilot by price, making the cheapest KR available to always be the one that can be activated, i.e. if you see a KR available at a given price, then that pilot has no KRs available to you at a cheaper price.

KRs can also be used for baiting/scamming, which I’m not going to explain here either. The UniWiki explains how that works both in the aforementioned article about KRs and in the one where they talk about scams in general:

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Scams_in_EVE_Online#Kill_Right_baiting

Finally, KRs are of no use against pilots that have lower than -5 sec status, not because there is anything wrong with KRs, but simply because those pilots can be shot without CONCORD intervention anytime anywhere already, so there is no point in using KRs against them:

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Security_status

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Part 2 - How to properly make KRs available for others to use

If you’ve been ganked, you may be tempted to make the KRs you got available to everyone for free or very cheap, in an attempt to make it easier for other pilots to go after the gankers. Well, that’s a really bad idea and the most common mistake that pilots make in regards to this game mechanic.

When you make a KR available to everyone, you also make it available to the ganker himself, which allows him to clear the KR by having an alt or a friend activate it and kill him while flying something worthless such as a rookie ship. Not what you want.

Thus, if you’re going to make a KR publicly available, don’t do it for free or too cheap. If you expect someone to eventually be willing to pay a relatively high price for the KR, you may do that, set a high price and try to get back some compensation for your loss that way. If nobody activates your KR after a few days, you may gradually reduce the price until someone does.

If what you want is your KR to be used as effectively as possible to disrupt the ganker activity, however, instead of making the KR available to everyone, you may want to make it available to someone that knows how to properly do that, but which may not be willing to pay that much to activate it.

I for one rarely activate a KR that costs more than I expect to get from the kill in the form of loot and/or bounty, taking into consideration that I may not even get the loot in all cases, i.e. I try to at the very least not activate KRs at a loss. Other pilots, however, especially if they don’t do this regularly and are mainly interested in the kill, may base their decision on the value of the kill itself rather than the drop value, and hence be willing to pay more.

If you’re going to make a KR available to some pilot or corp/alliance for anti-ganking purposes, check first that he’s really an anti-ganker and not some ganker alt in disguise. You may ask in the Anti-ganking chat channel if in doubt. Also, he may not operate where the ganker you got the KR for does. I only operate in Gallente and Minmatar space, for example, so if reading this makes you want to make a KR available to me, but you got ganked in Amarr or Caldari space, your KR could very well end up never being used.

Note also that when you make a KR available to someone, the ganker gets a notification that you did, but the pilot you made the KR available to, if any, doesn’t. He will just see the KR available when he sees the ganker in space, but with no way for him to know who that KR belongs to until it’s activated.

Finally, keep in mind that, as explained in the previous post, all of this is only meaningful if the ganker you have a KR for has higher than -5 sec status. Otherwise, he can be freely killed anytime anywhere already and there is no point in bothering with KRs for him.

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Part 3 - Things to keep in mind when using KRs for AG purposes

1. Don’t activate a KR if you don’t know whether you’ll be able to kill your target.

If you activate a KR, but your target manages to get away before being killed, he’ll dock, reship to something worthless such as a rookie ship, clear the KR by having someone kill that before the suspect timer expires, and the KR will be wasted.

2. Don’t assume your target is fitted the same way it would for ganking if he expects you to activate a KR on him.

If the ganker expects you to activate a KR on him, he may be in an unfitted and fully insured ship intended to make you waste the KR killing something that causes no real loss to him. Or he may be in a ship fitted to be able to get away before you may kill it.

You may get an idea of how the ship is fitted by physically seeing the guns mounted on the hull when your target is in space, but if knowing that is not enough, you need to somehow ship scan his fit first (and keep in mind the fit may change every time he docks and undocks again).

3. You may end up being killed yourself while trying to kill your target.

While this should be obvious, it may become a not so obvious problem when combined with the previous point. If the ganker expects you to activate a KR on him, he may have fitted his ship for conventional PvP to fight you, instead of for suicide ganking.

4. Your target may still be able to gank something while you’re trying to kill him.

If you cannot kill your target fast enough or somehow disable it before a victim appears, the KR may make no difference to him. You need to do something to ensure that he won’t be able gank anything after you activate the KR.

5. Don’t be hasty in the use of KRs.

Just because you have a KR available doesn’t mean you have to activate it at the first opportunity. Try to avoid behaving in a predictable way. Activate the KR when the ganker doesn’t expect. Let him have to deal with the fact that you may activate the KR at any moment without him knowing when or even whether you’re going to actually do it.

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Part 4 - KR glitches and Phantom KRs

Unike other character attributes that are immediately loaded and always kept up to date by the EvE client, the KR data is fetched separately the first time you see the pilot in space, then cached by the client and updated with delays that may be of several minutes.

A consequence of this is that you may observe KR glitches and inconsistent KR info being displayed, such as pilots with KRs on them not showing the KR tag in local until you see them in space.

The most notable of such glitches is pilots showing a KR on them that no longer exists because it has been cleared already, maybe several minutes after the pilot stopped being suspect even, i.e. a phantom KR.

If you try to activate such a KR, nothing will happen, you’ll get a notification saying that the KR couldn’t be activated because it no longer exists, but the pilot won’t go suspect and you won’t be charged for the KR either.

You have to be careful before trying to activate the KR again, though, because the client does update its KR cache at that point and if the pilot still shows a KR, that’s another KR, which may have a much higher price than the one you tried to activate at first…

You need to check the price shown for a KR before trying to activate it every time. Don’t mindlessly try to activate a KR without checking, thinking it’s still the same KR that you saw the last time you checked.

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Example 1 - Tornados at trade hubs

Here you need to ensure your target won’t be able to dock before you kill him after activating the KR. Otherwise, if he docks after you activate the KR, he may undock in a worthless ship, get himself killed while suspect, and the KR will be wasted.

There are two ways to accomplish that: (1) 1-shot him right after activating the KR, or (2) bump him out of dock range before activating the KR.

Also, regardless of whether you kill him or not, shooting him creates a limited engagement timer that allows him to shoot back, which means that if he docks, he may pick another ship he may have ready, then undock in that to try to kill you. How likely this is to happen depends on the ganker and how crowded is the trade hub, i.e. how likely it is that other pilots there may engage him while suspect and whether he’ll be able and willing to manage that.

There are two points at which session change timers (SCT) could play a role here. One happens when/if you kill the Tornado. If you do kill it before he can dock, then he has to wait a 10 sec SCT before he may dock in his pod; otherwise, no SCT is created by merely activating the KR or shooting him, so if he’s still in his ship when he tries to dock, he may do so immediately. After docking, he has to wait the usual 10 sec SCT before he may board a new ship and undock in that.

Now, with that in mind, typical Tornado gankers at trade hubs can be easily 1-shot with another Tornado or an artillery battleship such as a Maelstrom or a Machariel, the latter being the best option for this with 7 x 1.25 = 8.75 effective guns for 1-shooting purposes… Except the Tornado you want to kill may not be the typical one… The ganker may have fitted it differently if he expects you to activate a KR on him, and in particular it may have enough EHP to survive a 1-shot attempt…

So you need to scan his fit first to check whether you can really deal enough volley dmg to 1-shot him. And if you finally decide to go for it, consider the convenience of warping away to some safe spot as soon as you shoot if you’re concerned with the possibility that he may undock in another ship to try to kill you as explained above.

For all those reasons, bumping the Tornado out of docking range and then activating the KR to kill him may be the preferred option if given a choice (which may not be the case if the geometry of the station makes it unpractical, for example). That way you may take your time to kill him and not have to worry about being able to 1-shot him. You still want to scan his fit first to be sure he hasn’t fitted enough tank and warp stabs to get away after you activate the KR, though.

Finally, it goes without saying that you need to also keep in mind the possibility that you may be ganked yourself while doing this…

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10 reserved posts for a thread on killrights wtf :rofl:

The thread could have started with and ended with the wiki

Another thread of small brain ag thinking starting off well :joy:

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There are several ways I could have done this, including a single post or no post at all, the latter being what I had done so far. And then, much of what I’ll say in those posts is of course going to be obvious to experienced players and hence unnecessary… for them… only this is all intended for players for which much of this is new, not for the ones that already know it all…

And finally, yes, 10 posts is a bit too much, and in fact I only have material for 6 posts atm, the 4 already posted and a couple practical examples, but I decided to reserve a few more just in case this causes some discussion that makes me realise I should add something I didn’t think of at first, and will delete the unused ones when I’m finally done…

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Useful info here. Much thanks.

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Such a good effort …
… wasted on the forums.

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There is plenty of room for him to provide instruction on how to do KR scams. You know . . . for academic purposes only.

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You can also farm killrights in creative ways, one among them…

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Good info, those glitches are really nasty. Best are those “casual gankers” who hop back in their mission running ship the next day. Locator agents are your friends. :stuck_out_tongue:

There is a nice option for new players to earn some ISK on the Jita undock. Put a double wrapped package in a shuttle and either undock from Jita 4-4 and wait or warp to Jita 4-4 from Perimeter gate with autopilot and wait.

Because Jita station gankers will regularly clear their killrights, you can make an easy and fun 10-25M per gank… and waste the gankers time.

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Hello there,

This is a nice informative post with accurate data regarding KR (I`m not trolling or joking). The only problem I see is that it misleads ppl in thinking the use of KRs is an effective anti-ganking technique. It is not and while I wont present you the correct solution, let me give you a few pointers:

  1. Most professional gankers do not use main characters, but alts. This is relevant to the topic because: they will not really care about kill/death ratio on zkill and, second, the alts will never fly any kind of expensive ships that will hurt when lost to a KR, they simply cant.
    My corp has ESI link to zkill, so you can check the k/d ration and compare it with ISK ratio.

  2. The cost of a ganking aggression: ship/ships + sec status repairs (if applicable) + losses to a KR (if applicable).
    So, losing ships to KRs is a minor inconvenience (15 min timer, which can be bypassed by using multiple alts) but otherwise it is just counted as operational cost.

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No, it doesn’t mislead people into thinking that. That’s exactly the purpose of these posts, to show that KRs are an effective anti-ganking technique when used properly, which I know is the case because I do it myself all the time, this is not something I’m theorising about.

This is irrelevant.

Now, this is relevant, but misleading and an oversimplification.

For starters, not all ganking ships are cheap, Tornados in particular aren’t. But then there is more to it than the mere loss of a ship, there is also when you make that happen and having a continuous stream of KRs to be able to keep doing it over and over, not just once…

BTW, for those interested, I’ve updated post #6 with one of the examples I intended to provide.

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I guess we have different opinions on the meaning of “effective”, in this particular context. vOv

30 KRs available to you will it be a good stream? A typical ganknado is 100m, so you will be capable to inflict 3b damage and 7.5h of ganking downtime on that particular alt.