Two times now I’ve been at the final room of a 5/10 ded site that I got from an escalation and I get “one shot” scanned by these things, then the multiboxer shows up and helps himself to the loot. The only way to protect your escalation from them is to warp out any time anyone else is in the system (very tedious), and pray the escalation doesn’t spawn in a FW system. Surely I’m already taking enough risk by taking a ship capable of completing them into low/null sec and dealing w/ rat ewar (blood neuts are no joke). My understanding is that the drone lands data site escalation (Derelict Research Complex) provide combat scan immunity, why not all escalations?
Edit: If you come across this thread looking for a way to try and save your escalation, save yourself the time (the comments are assumptive and ignore details provided by the question). Your only option is to warp out of the site any time someone enters the system, enjoy the tedium.
Either pay better attention to probes or hide any time hostiles enter your system, especially when the name shows up on zkillboard as a known Lachesis alt.
Nerfing Sisters Combat probes won’t solve your problem at all, your Cyclone’s probe size is massive and even a new character with unbonused ship and T1 probes could have scanned you in one cycle after they had pinned down your location with dscan.
Also tell the guy to use better drones, Sister Combat probes have been surpassed by Satori-Horigu Combat Scanner Probes.
You have only one loss of an escalation runner on record, which is the Cyclone you lost a couple of weeks ago.
It is possible that you lost more but not recorded on zkillboard, so I won’t speculate or draw conclusions on what I cannot verify.
When you did get caught you got caught by a Lachesis pilot, a ship that is known for hunting escalation runners, by a character that had their 4 recent kills as Lachesis pilot as tackle for others.
Care to explain why the conclusions I draw on this information is bad?
Conclusion:
hide when you see a known Lachesis pilot in local
pay attention to probes on dscan. They’re there for about 6 seconds at minimum, see
I had two helpful suggestions. Three if you include my remark that nerfing Sister Combat probes is not going to solve your issue due to the existence of better probes and the lack of need of anything more than T1 to catch your cyclone.
You’re in low sec with an AB and PVE fit BC, that’s an incredibly risky thing to do to the point where if some newer player asks about it everyone in (rookie) help channel will tell them is probably a bad idea. It CAN work if you pay attention where the second neutrals show up in local you warp out, get safe and/or cloak up. If you’re unwilling to do so and just go “I’m PVEing leave me alone” even with neutrals in local or you simply can’t be bothered to pay attention at all then that’s bound to go wrong.
Several solutions:
pay attention, have a safe spot and fit a cloak to your ship
don’t do low sec escalations
accept the occasional losses
Just because you have a LS escalation doesn’t mean you’re somehow forced to complete it, it makes really good sense to go “yeah, no thanks” if you don’t have a super slippery ships to do them (sub 2 sec align Jackdaw is really good for LS escalations, just not for 5/10) and even then you can’t rely on “leave me alone”.
This isn’t about the dying, not once in my original post did I complain about dying. Very nice of both you and Gerard to assume though. Other times I haven’t died, they just show up and out dps me. I can’t kill the rats faster than 2 tengus.
It’s about you getting scanned. And you get scanned because:
you’re in low sec
you keep doing your site even though there are neutrals in system
you fly a massive high sig radius ship that’s easy to scan
If you let them scan you down because of one, or more, of these 3 reasons then you’re too late. The trick is… not getting scanned in the first place. Nerfing them won’t change that, as it won’t make up for your lack of effort.
My bad, I had not considered people do escalations in HS space or that people in HS tend to steal escalation sites.
You did not mention that in your opening post, so it was not part of my recommendation either.
I guess you could either try to run escalations outside HS to avoid such scenarios, or use a ship with much lower signature size to sensor strength ratio to make it harder or nearly impossible for them to find your spot with combat probes.
So this guy is running escalations in null or low sec, two Tengus show up after combat probing his site and instead of killing him… they start killing the NPCs?
I’d just warp out and be happy they didn’t kill my ship if that were the case!
It’s the just age old “I can’t be bothered to learn and put in effort, this is someone else fault please nerf them”. Whether or not it’s LS or null, if they kill him or just steal his escalation the root cause is the same: he let himself get scanned because he didn’t bother to actively get safe the second someone entered local.
The problem is there is no counter play to it. I’ve learned how it works, and there is nothing to be done. Except constantly warp out any time anyone comes into local, and that’s not fun. This is a game isn’t it …?
Also, if you want to do HS sites and escalations, don’t do it in Minmatar HS. It’s too small and filled too much with pvp focussed people, and since it doesn’t have too many local residents they will recognise your name once they realised you’re doing combat sites. And then every time they enter system and notice you, they will go for you.
You say there is no counter. And then you say there is a counter, but ‘that is not fun’.
I get it, sometimes you wish to continue doing your site. But if it were guaranteed that people scan down your site and kill you or steal your site if you do, wouldn’t it be more fun to hide instead and continue a few minutes later when they’re gone?
The reason you don’t hide is that not everyone in local attempts to scan your site. Often it’s safe to just continue doing the site with others in local.
You choose to take the risk to continue doing the site as it saves you time and is more fun, except this also means people might come and steal your site.
At least if you pay attention to dscan you will notice combat probes as a first sign of danger so you shouldn’t get caught.
Worst case is that your site gets stolen, but that risk was your choice by continuing doing the site with hostiles in local.
If you don’t want to lose the site you reduce your risk and hide in a safe spot any time hostiles enter system.
If your ship doesn’t show up on dscan they cannot find your spot in a single combat probe scan. They’ll spend a lot more cycles getting close to your location which should give you plenty of time to notice and get away.
I have no idea which escalations you do, but some may be possible in a Rook.
Regarding DED sites that escalate: while your opposition is combat scanning you down, that’s true; what is also true is they have to go gate to gate. So, if there are two or more rooms in your escalation, they have to slow boat to you, meaning they enter each room you’ve already completed. If you see pilots in local, you can always check your d-scan. If you see ships close to you, you know to get out. Don’t think they just magically drop down on you, like in normal space. Escalations have different rules, everyone travels through those gates. You’ve got time, to save your ship if you’re paying attention.
Of course, if you choose to leave, they have the option of completing the site, or following you. There are a few sites, which do require “keys”. But, many do not.
As, as aside, I’ve never heard of a combat site that provided “combat scan immunity”, where did you hear of this? I checked EVE Uni, this site in particular, and they make no mention of it.
I’ve experience this issue myself. I’ve done everything from leaving the site, to giving up, and…asking the pilot(s) who showed up to join me. As an option, I don’t think it’s exercised often, but I have had it work. In lowsec. On more than one occasion. Sure, I’ve done a loot split, afterwards; but, some loot is better than no loot.
This won’t work if they’re flying a d-scan immune recon though, especially one with long range warp disruptors like the Lachesis.
By the time you can notice it it is on grid with you and about to warp disrupt your ship.
A trick to see dscan immune recons coming when you don’t have an alt is to use combat probes yourself. Launch them at 0.5 AU and repeatedly scan for ships to ensure no Lachesis can sneak up on you through the gates.
It won’t stop hostiles from finding and ‘stealing’ your site, but it’s yet another form of counter play against people who hunt escalation runners, one that can save your ship if you don’t wish to hide any time hostiles enter local.
