Totally OT, but this made me giggle. I could only imagine this being a game meta:
Imicus: Flies on grid
Other ship: “WTF…is that a…kickstand?..”
Imicus: explodes
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Dude…you’re flying salvage and data cores and such…make a sub 2sec align atron add as much tank as you can after its sub 2sec align and don’t even bother with guns. Use bookmarks for docking and undocking and you’re fine. As long as you don’t go into lowsec you won’t have to really worry over smart bombs and no one will get a chance to scan or lock you in highsec. You could literally carry over a billion like that and never get ganked…
Basically you won’t die unless you happen to disconnect and someone already had it in for you.
Once you sub…which with what it sounds like you’re making you could do with isk to plex in game…train cloak and use an astero with covops cloak and never worry over tanks again.
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If you know what you can put into your ship to not be interesting target for gank you can use autopilot safely. I ran 200 trips by autopilot on 3 chars yesterday in untanked max cargo bestower and didn’t lose any. AND even if I lost one, it would not matter to me, the possible loss of one or two were calculated in it. As long as you won’t fill more than 30mil into cargo you will be fine with autopilot. Still, if you can fit any tank on ship, do that, it is rare but sometimes some lone guy or two tries it, if completely untanked they break it easily. With at least some tank they might fail.
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In b4 code follows your toons around ganking you all day just because…auto pilot lol
That was my initial plan. But I thought it might have been too easy.
Anyway, considering how conflicting views are, I’ll still move it one bit at a time.
Still, thanks for all the advice!
Well, I’ve made the hauling. I actually did it in two separate trips, hauling about 250 millions each time just to be extra sure.
I used two Type-D Inertial Stabilizers and 3 Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints. The rest was a Damage Control, a pair of Small Shield Extenders I and a MWD (although if I use this fit for travel, I don’t think I’ll need it).
It went swimmingly. I saw some destroyers and BCs in systems near Jita, but no one even tried to scan my cargo.
Even if they did though, I would have been gone before it finished, which I think means they wouldn’t have been able to scan it. Am I correct?
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Btw fitting shield extenders will up your signature making it quicker for someone to lock/scan you 
but I guess if your under 2 second align time then it doesn’t really make a difference.
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learn to fly an occator too. This reduces gankrisk as itsa pain to kill a tanked occator. It is a balance between speed of travel and cargo volume of course. I use a taxiceptor for fast travel and occator for general hauling. Always watch the value of you cargo and get a feel for how much you can safely haul before becoming a pinata.
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Ops, forgot about that 
Still, it’s the only way I have of improving tank, even if it might not be that useful.
Basically, the thing that “confuses me” is that if in highsec a cargo scanner is needed, and in order to actually scan it must run a full cycle, then if you never stay on grid long enough nobody should be able to scan you and thus would risk targeting an empty ship.
But that would mean that small frigates are basically ungankable in highsec. But if that were true, why am I not seeing more of them?
Anyway thanks to the information I got from this thread I learnt how to safely haul bigger, less valuable stuff (like ships) in slower haulers without fear!
There are a fair few travel interceptors everywhere in the game, including HS. You generally don’t see them much because they only spend 2s on a gate then they are gone
As for shield extenders (and inertial stabilizers), as long as you warp out fast enough, it is not much of a worry. And it is good to have some kind of a tank against smartbombs.
Also, you can’t tell if someone good is cargo scanning you: They will have a passive targeter so you will not see that they are targeting you. And about scanning possibility, I’d say test it with a friend. I haven’t tried. But it is possible that the info is acquired when you turned it on, but only displayed when the cycle finishes, which would make it possible to scan fast frigs if you do things right.
I think this may be the case, and that gankers have scouts a few jumps out on the main pipe routes to warn the gank crew of incoming pinatas.
Yes, they definitely have scouts. Usually in T1 exploration frigates (I think those improve scan speeds of all scanner types?) with insta-lock.
Incorrect. They only need to lock you. Then even if you are long gone from the grid, cargo scanner will finish its cycle and provide full and correct result.
Great to know, thanks! Then I guess my best bet is to get to Jita in busy hours, where many ships pass through gates at any given time and I figure frigates would be low priority.
Mmmh… I knew about the passive targeting, but I said that because I didn’t see any blue beam thingy about my ship, which I saw when a BC scanned my hauler a few days ago (then realized I wasn’t carrying anything valuable). Would a passive targeter also hide such effects?
No, even with a passive targeter the beam from the scan module still shows…
erm…
Follow the Code?
Couple of extra ideas:
Avoid 0.5 systems.
If you’re a piñata and you get scanned, don’t jump through that gate. Dock up and then take some time to plan your escape.
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I’ve done a lot of ganking, and also frequently move compact high value items like blueprints.
I strongly disagree with your advice here. Combat ships are far superior for hauling blueprints - and interceptors are better still. Brick tanked T3 cruisers can be hard to crack - Marauders are harder still. (I FCed a gank attempt on a Marauder in highsec a while back, we had 28 people, and we failed - they tanked the damage as well as the mission rat damage they were also taking).
My default approach is as follows:
<2b (e.g. unresearched Dreadnought BPO): Carry it in an interceptor. If going through low or null, refer to the starmap for ‘Podkills within last hour’ and avoid all systems where that number is >3. (4+ podkills in the hour is a fairly reliable indicator of a smartbomb trap, the only thing that can kill an insta-warp interceptor). Always avoid Tama and Rancer.
If the goods are not compact, an Occator (or other deep-space transport) with X-type hardeners, a cloak and a MWD is one alternate option. The other option is a freighter with an escort (see 5b+ for escorts)
2b-5b (e.g. highly researched carrier BPO): Carry it in an interceptor. Avoid all lowsec systems, except the lowsec alternate route to avoid Uedama.
5b+: Scout ahead in an interceptor on an alt, alt stays one jump ahead and carries bait that is of obvious value and renders them ‘worth’ ganking (e.g. 250 PLEX). The valuable blueprint also goes into an interceptor.
I make damn certain that I do not tell anyone about these moves.
If anything sets off my danger sense, I dock up and log off for at least 2 hours.
Lowsec is fine for these moves - it’s often better than highsec because lowsec is so empty and you have a scout.
The other top defense against ganking is to conduct ganks yourself. You will learn a lot from doing so - learn how we operate, how we select targets, and what strategies frustrate us.
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You can also load up billions in a super tanked maller let your self get scanned dock up unload the cargo and go through to your destination let them gank you they get nothing loose stuff, repeat a few times till they put you on ignore list then your fine and have an advantage next time you do it. But Id still be careful afterwards just lowers the chances a bit
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