Returning after 4 years, this is not a complaint. If 2 or 3 battleships are setup around a gate with bombs is there anyway to get thru the gate or jumping in. How can you scout the system with out getting killed. I am talking about covert ops and small scout ships. I know if you used a bigger ship with tank you could survive but you cant scout in a big tank ship. I remember getting bombed in route to a gate but never on the gate. I am not complaining I am a pirate and shoot anything not blue so no tears here 
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Usually the smartbombers are sitting on a spot in line with another gate or the gate where the most traffic comes from. It is not unheard of but smartbombers covering the entire spawn sphere with smartbomb ships is not a common thing.
In order to avoid the smart bombers, best thing to have is a (or several) warpable boomarks around gates that not in line with any other gate. If you don’t have that yet, warping to 100 km or warping to an out of line celestial or a moon/asteroid belt behind your next gate/out of line from your current gate’s warp in direction helps as well.
Generally, it is very advisable to have ping bookmarks in popular smartbomb systems like Rancer.
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how about when you jump in to the system can you be bombed then or do they have to wait until you move ?
You can be hurt a few seconds after you enter system.
You can be bombed while aligning (even if cloaked using a covops cloak), however it’s quite unlikely you’ll be in range of the smartbomb when you spawn.
Smartbombs do not beat the invulnerable timer.
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That’s what I meant, a few seconds after (that timer is up).
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most often you are smartbombed when you LAND on the outgate, not when you jump into a new system
several tricks for me:
- have safe bookmarks as already told
- if you don’t have bookmarks, open your probe launcher and the system map, pass your mouse cursor on the outgate in your overview, it will highlight the outgate location on system map. Select a celestial close to the outgate, warp to it, and you will be able to 1) dcsan the outgate with a narrow angle (10-20°) (if you see several BS on dsdcan on the outgate, you will know…) and 2) warp to the outgate from another direction than from the ingate and probably not being smartbombed
- fit your ship for more tank (i have been said that most SB BS use EM SB, i have not checked it, but it could be worth tanking mainly EM…)
Wyk
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Basic tank should let you survive one BS worth of any T2 smartbombs and you should be able to fit enough tank to survive even two if you are willing to dedicate everything to survive those bombs. (use mobile depot and reconfigure after getting in place). So you need to be extremely unlucky to jump through a gate and die due to smarties if you are prepared for that. But you should obviously try to not warp TO a smartbombed gate - for that, SS works best. Have one say 500 km from the gate (but not directly behind the gate in the most typical travel direction), see if it is empty or constantly flashing due to smartbombs, then warp on the gate and jump if clear.
Now, tanking.
T1, meta and T2 smartbombs are all the same, no matter damage. 300 damage for meta and T2. But for faction and officer stuff EM > therm > exp > kin.
Say for faction smartbombs, EM has 7500 range, 375 damage. Therm 6750/338, exp 6500/325 and kin 6250/313. The same holds for fancier stuff.
Therefore, you have to tank EM somewhat more than the rest due in case gatecamp uses fancy stuff instead of cheapo alternatives.
Simple tanking would be like eanm + apc + 400mm RT plate (200mm should fit easily instead and still offer enough protection to survive a single BS). Alternative is the F-S9 MSE + apc, preferably with active EM+adaptive hardeners, though passive EM hardener should be also enough to survive a blast.
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you most likely will run through a 8-faction BS, that is 3000 EM damage per cycle.
I don’t think they have the time to launch a second cycle when you land, that means 3k ehp per BS.
You should know how many EM EHP your fit has. if you have travel in low, assume everyone is a BS at the next gate. eg if your fit has 9.5k EHP EM, then you MUST use a ping to the next gate if there is more than 3 pl in local( besides you dooh )
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