- You are vulnerable until you actually enter in warp.
- You fit way too much value in your ship for the amount of tank you had (you were a loot pinata).
- Just because you got away with doing something stupid before, that doesn’t mean it’s safe.
- Ambushes typically happen without warning, and you already know that everywhere outside of being docked is a PvP zone. So, I’m not sure what you expect in terms of a warning. All is working as intended.
Additionally advice for avoiding ganks:
- Use instant undocks and insta-dock bookmarks when appropriate.
- Don’t go to Jita during burn Jita.
- Don’t autopilot.
- Don’t go AFK.
- Fit buffer tanks against gankers (the amount of EHP repaired during a gank is usually less than the extra EHP you’d get from fitting a straight buffer tank).
- Don’t haul on characters that a wardec’ed.
- Make sure that duel requests are turned off for your hauling pilot.
- If you web your freighter, always send duel requests to the webber, and never to the freighter.
- I have occasionally received fleet invites while in a hauler (presumably to warp me away from gate guns, idk). Regardless, always be very careful about what you click on.
- Don’t have your haulers in a corp that allows friendly fire unless you and your alts are the only people in that corp.
- One hauling strategy is to fit enough tank that the ships required to gank you would cost more than the value of your expected loot drop.
- One hauling strategy is to be as slippery as possible (usually best for moving small, high-value cargo like BPO’s). This is achieved through things like 2 second align times, covert ops cloaking devices, and the MWD cloak trick.
- Use Eve Gatecamp check, scouts, the in-game map, or any other intel tools that you have at your disposal to see if gankers are currently active along your route. Sometimes systems with ganker activity can be avoided with a negligible amount of extra jumps. Sometimes you’re better off waiting until later to haul. Sometimes you can count on being an unprofitable gank target. Do note, however, that figuring that your tank is more than the gank fleet can take on is a risky gambit. Fleet numbers can rise and fall, and depending on when they scan you and how fast you move, they may even have time to reship into something that can take you on.
- Traders are constantly overloading their haulers and/or compromising their tank in order to increase cargo hold capacity and decrease travel times because they get lazy and impatient. This gets them killed. Always use the most appropriate ship for the haul, and always use best practices. If that means waiting, then wait. If it means making two trips, then make two trips.
- Do note that anything can still be ganked. A small gank fleet may have to watch your 700 EHP bowhead pass by today, but large gank fleets do regularly form. Moreover, if they see you flying a loot pinata, they may decide to actively hunt your ass. On top of that, covert ops capable ships stand a fair chance of getting decloaked on gates where gankers have been active (they will be surrounded with wrecks and faction police), and fast moving ships are vulnerable to smart bombs, lag, and DC’s. So don’t think it can’t happen to you.
- Just because you got away with it before, doesn’t mean it’s safe.
- Don’t haul what you can’t afford to lose.
- If you can’t haul it safely, pay someone to haul it for you.