Here’s another modification, on a different ship, with a warp transition time of less than 2 seconds. The result on this gate is similar.
Frigates designed for covert operations simply don’t perform their function…
It might be located somewhere in the system, performing the ship’s intended actions relatively safely, but during transitions (essentially the game’s core mechanics), you turn into garbage.
I’ve flown a Helios for many years and never got caught like that at a gate.
Your fit looks fine.
If you don’t use the MWD you should be fine.
However, I see you got caught in Ahbazon. That system is notorious and almost always camped by competent people, especially the one gate at the Jita side. I think they even use structure fighters to instantly decloak people there.
Do as I do and simply avoid that system if you can help it.
I occasionally run a covert blockade runner (bigger an easier to catch than an Anathema) through that system past the camp if I feel like taking more risk than necessary, but only from the other direction. From Jita to the south I take a longer route.
Search ‘Ahbazon’, rightclick and add to systems to avoid.
This Metamorphosis was caught not at a gate but at 1.8 AU from the nearest celestial, where I assume you were combat probed by the Hecate. Possibly you were distracted while hacking and did not pay attention to your directional scanner and overview.
Pay more attention while flying!
The problem isn’t the system, but that there are almost no options for resolving this situation. This isn’t normal. This kind of thing is usually called “imbalance” in the game. There are modules that prevent you from warping; you can install them in all available slots, with no limit on the number. But there are no modules that can counteract this with equal effectiveness. There are plenty of ships in the game for this type of activity. Variety is great, but there aren’t that many that are actually useful (so what’s the point of variety?)
I provided a link to a modification of the ship used as an example. The location of death is irrelevant; I didn’t bother looking for that specific defeat.
No options?
There are plenty of options each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
The Metamorphosis for example has built-in warp core stabilization of +2, which in addition to a warp core stabilizer for +4 makes it possible to easily escape a Hecate that isn’t prepared to catch such a ship. However it cannot be nullified.
Or a T2 explorer with nullifier can be used to ignore warp disruption bubbles at a gate camp, but they can be tackled more easily with enough warp scramble strength.
Now I scrolled through your deaths and see you managed to get tackled in a Metamorphosis by a Hecate pilot (who ususally flies with a single disruptor and double web - why not warp away?). And you managed to get your T2 covert explorer with nullifier caught in the bubble of a Flycatcher.
This isn’t a case of ‘no options’, it’s a case of learning to be a better pilot.
You died of your own mistakes.
It’s like I’m talking to a wall. I wrote above that I provided the link to death on Metamorphosis only so the ship’s fit could be seen.
After all, your claim that even with a warp time longer than 2 seconds, it’s possible to get past that ambush. In fact, many people, on various platforms, are claiming that it doesn’t work… 2.0, 1.96, 1.7 – all useless.
I’ll definitely make a video where they perform the actions you described. Exit the gate, press the nullifier, press the cloak, press warp. The result will be the best proof for everyone who reads this thread.
If only all walls could give such useful advice.
Maybe listen?
Yes, I have no doubt you got caught and killed.
I also know very well how explorers can get killed both in my role as explorer and from occasionally killing explorers myself.
I also know how to stay alive, which is a skill you too can learn.
The best way I found to learn to stay alive was to try and catch other explorers. A bomber with no target delay, a one-shotting Loki, it’s pretty fun. Give it a try!
Warping within 2 seconds (1.7 and 1.96 all rounds up to 2 while 2.0 rounds up to 3) is certainly going to increase your chance of survival a lot in most parts of space.
It’s just not infallible against the fastest and best gate camps, like the notorious one in Ahbazon with remote sensor boosters and decloaking structure fighters that’s pretty much always active when I pass by. Again, my suggestion is to avoid going that direction.
For covert ships align time is less important as you can be cloaked the same tick you decloak. This only fails if the enemy has a way to decloak you, like fighters in Ahbazon which is again why I recommend avoiding that place.
I apologize, I didn’t mean to be rude. I understand perfectly well what you’re advising, but it doesn’t work in some cases. You yourself wrote that the best way to avoid this problem is to kill other people scanning… Didn’t I write about this in my first post in this thread? I wrote that there’s no point in wasting time and effort scanning—you’ll get killed anyway, and there’s no way to avoid it with the current balance settings and game mechanics. Just change your activity. Isn’t that right? That’s not a solution to the “imbalance” in those situations. Changing your activity won’t solve the problem I described.
Not exactly.
To be precise I said that to learn how to stay alive is to try and kill other explorers.
You only get to kill those that make mistakes, not the better explorers.
Once you go over the options of killing and see what works and what doesn’t, you will have a better understanding of the limits of the threats you face as explorer when you fly a non-combat fit like an Anathema.
Once you know how to stay alive it’s very lucrative.
There are many ways to avoid being killed.
For now, I’m specifically interested in solving the ambush mentioned above in that specific location. I’ll run tests and record videos. Then I’ll upload the videos to YouTube and leave the links here. Maybe they’ll be useful to someone. I’ll definitely implement all the recommendations in this thread and see if it helps.
That ‘specific location’ is Ahbazon, notorious for it’s location as the only low sec system between the two biggest trade hubs Jita and Amarr and known for it’s almost permanent gate camps:
The people in that system know how to catch a fast aligning ship and know how to decloak slower players.
They’ve got fast tackle, a Keres to lock fast and far, lots of damage, etc.
And you blindly jumped into it using the most obvious route.
Here’s a neat trick I occasionally use, use the lesser travelled gate into Ahbazon if you’re coming from Amarr, the green route instead of red:
In other words, don’t gate into Ahbazon from Shera, where you got caught, but do an extra jump into Lor before entering Ahbazon. That gate usually is empty in my experience.
Or, just avoid Ahbazon altogether, it’s dangerous.
Thank you. I’ll definitely take this advice if the game mechanics don’t allow me to pass this ambush. In your experience, which ship and what module loadout would allow me to pass this ambush? Could you please provide a link or a text version of the loadout for such a ship?
Any covert ship with a reasonably low align time (sub 3 seconds) is what I would take through that way, but safer is to not enter that system at all. And from the other direction there’s only one entry point, so I’d avoid the system.
Usually I would also recommend to equip a nullifier, but as this system is low sec that’s not needed here. Warp core stabilizers, while occasionally useful, will be countered by the well-prepared gatecamps in this system so for this case I wouldn’t bother.
Once in the system make sure you do not warp straight to the gate at the other side.
Instead, warp at range to some celestial near that other gate to get an unexpected angle to it, then warp at 100km to one of the structures at the Jita gate, make a couple of bookmarks while in warp right before you land. Pick one bookmark preferably 1000-500km away from the gate so you can see the gate from it, set expiry to ‘never’ and give it some descriptive name like ‘watch Hykkota’. You’re covops and should be warping while cloaked all the time, so you can repeat this a few times until you get a nice bookmark.
Next time you enter that system you can warp to that bookmark any time you want to safely observe that gate.
Warping straight to the gate could land you in the middle of a bunch of smartbombing battleships, which are a significant danger for small covert ships with low hitpoints.
But as these smartbombers are on the line straight between the gates you should be able to avoid their small range by warping from your bookmark to the gate. If not, try setting a bookmark in a different direction: it should not be anywhere near the path between two gates.
I understand that. I’ve already bookmarked it in the system. I’ll still repeat my request: could you please send me the loadout for a ship that, in your opinion and experience, will pass the ambush at those gates? Based on what you wrote above, you’re 100% certain that it’s possible to pass that ambush. I’ll simply do everything you described earlier and use the ship and loadout you selected.
The Anathema you linked earlier would do fine. It has a covert ops cloak and from a look at those low slots I guess an align time below 3 seconds.
Just do not use the microwarp drive!
That’s it, you should now be in warp to a safe spot.
I can give no guarantees that it works, so don’t load your entire fortune into one ship, but in the many times I did this with a fair amount of cargo I never got caught yet.
Okay, thanks. I hope it works this time. I wouldn’t want to be proven right, but I hope I’m wrong and the game mechanics still allow me to get past this ambush.
I tried to skip a similar camp but on a different gate. The result was the same. Exiting the stargate, pressing the warp button (I don’t enable mvd), immediately disables warp (dis/scram) and leaves a corpse. Simply useless. Not intended by the game.
There generally is no ‘immediately’ when it comes to disabling warp.
The game works in server ticks and the earliest they could disable your warp is after a number of ticks it takes to lock your ship.
The only way to immediately disable your warp is if you’re inside a warp bubble. You were caught in low sec (Miroitem), which is not corrupted by faction warfare at the time so a warp disruption bubble is not allowed there.
That leaves us the question how you got caught by that solo Gnosis.
The Gnosis fit that caught you was this (I found a loss of your killer):
[Gnosis, Gatecamp Gnosis]
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Tracking Enhancer II50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Fleeting Compact Stasis Webifier
Warp Disruptor II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
425mm AutoCannon II, Barrage M
Information Command Burst II, Sensor Optimization ChargeMedium Targeting System Subcontroller I
Medium Targeting System Subcontroller I
Medium Transverse Bulkhead I‘Integrated’ Hobgoblin x2
Hornet II x3
And has 1329 sensor strength at max skills, which should lock your Anathema after about 1.4 seconds. (Or 0.7 seconds if your MWD is on, so don’t do that!)
It is fast enough to tackle your uncloaked Anathema before it warps within three seconds, but a sensor strength like this is by far not enough to catch ships that warp within two seconds.
It should not be able to lock your Anathema if the Anathema is cloaked already at the first tick after you start aligning.
So what happened here?
Did you not cloak immediately? Did something block your cloak?
The center of an Electric Metaliminal storm could block the usage of cloaks, but I currently don’t see any metaliminal storms anywhere near Miroitem so they cannot have been there either four hours ago.
Did the Gnosis pilot have containers or drones scattered around the gate that you were within 2km of? That would block you from cloaking and stop you from warping.
If you see that happen, it could be a good idea to instead make a run back to the gate. If they aggress you they cannot follow you back through so if you make it to the gate you’re safe.
If you didn’t see that happen, are you sure your overview shows containers, drones and other decloak objects? It might be they were there but you simply didn’t see it.
I recommend always having the ‘show all brackets’ option for the overview. It doesn’t put all objects on your overview itself, but makes objects visible in space so you know you’re near anything while flying a cloaked ship.
But long story short, it did not happen ‘immediately’, locking you took two or three seconds during which things went wrong you could have handled differently.
I’m not stupid enough to press two buttons – invisibility and warp… Everything was done correctly, but the result is the same. I’ll just ignore the ambush systems or leave offline characters there for testing.
It’s not for nothing that people say they still get killed even with a 1.7-second warp time.
