I couldn’t find much information on these things on EveUni, so I’m asking here.
So please tell me if my impressions are wrong.
SCC sites are scattered throughout New Eden. These give keys.
In Nullsec there are banks that hold part of the bounty money as warpable beacons. Main banks don’t require keys and reserve banks do.
So if I wanted to help a corpmate get bank money from a specific constellation, I could find the keys, and then find a WH to that specific constellation, and then send him there? Once this is done, the locals will come after him very angrily for stealing the money (but they could have just emptied the bank themselves and prevent this…). The key site would just be a data site, so standard hacking, and the bank site has no NPCs, but will soon have a lot of angry PCs coming. He then sticks around in a ship and then flees.
Or maybe we can just form a WH camp on the LS side of a WH that goes to the NS constellation I want and then laugh when they funnel out.
So I probably got something wrong, but spending time of google didn’t give me too many useful screenshots. Please correct me on any mistakes I made.
As far as I remember (from reading, haven’t tried either the ESS reserve bank or the key sites yet, so I may very well be wrong about some details):
If you have a key, you will need to stay within the ESS for 15 minutes or 45 minutes (depending on an option you select, longer stay is bigger payout) during which time you get part of the payout every few minutes or so.
Locals will be angry, bloodthirsty and be preparing their Marauders, combat recons and AB ESS combat ships to warp into the ESS to fight you and then steal all the value of the bank that you were so kind to open for them with your key.
So unless you can steal it while the locals are sleeping or are busy with something else, you’re going to get a lot of people chasing you after you send a regional-wide ping when you start opening the reserve bank.
Next, the keys.
The keys are not a ‘regular data site’ but do require two hackers to navigate through a minefield (one wrong move and you blow up) and then hack two things at the same time while your third buddy in a Marauder gets ready on the acceleration gate that you’ll open for him. When both the hacks succeed at the same time, your Marauder buddy can go through and fight some challenging PvE stuff to grab the key.
I didn’t know a stationary ship was going to be effective against a thief trying to run away.
Well, if someone attacks one of their ratters, they’ll probably pile 10 tp 30 BLOPs on someone in local who lights a cyno to avenge the ratter, or even fast enough to land in local and warp to the ratter. At least that’s what happened the last three times someone tried to get some solo killmails by roaming. I didn’t do the ESS thing before, but my theory crafting says the thief can get help with his buddies sacrificing a Heretic on each of the gates to block everybody and an extra one in system just warps to anyone who tries to light a cyno in local and stop everyone there.
Of course to get to this stage, the keys need to be obtained.
Man that’s a pain if the reward isn’t some valuable loot for industry but in fact keys needed to start a main event involving PVP.
Thanks for telling me about this and warning me about the data sites.
Looks like we’ll just have to get the keys on when a number of us is online and just save them for a chance when the stars align.
The way the ESS works is that the thief has to stay in the middle of the ESS area for a period of time to get a payout.
Once you take the gate to the ESS you land at the bank in the middle of large warp bubbled area where microwarpdrives are disallowed. And only cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships are allowed in, cynos and cloakds are prohibited.
Any new ships entering the ESS that take the gate land right next to the thief, in the middle.
So if the Marauder doesn’t manage to shoot the thief while he’s trying to burn away, he’ll be certain that the thief won’t be able to steal something if he burns away to save himself.
(Of course they don’t always bring Marauders, another nice trick is to send a d-scan immune combat recon like the Huginn through the gate first. The thief won’t see him coming until the ship lands in range, at which point the thief becomes webbed long enough for the rest of the defence to warp in and help killing.
Of course the thieves could instead of run, fight back, but for that they need a decent afterburner-fit cruiser fleet (or battlecruisers/battleships).
Dictors on gates may slow down response ships but that may not buy you enough time to get the ESS payout.