Greedy Goblin

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Business thursday: Traffic jam at Jita

Since EVE become more and more popular, more and more people are getting into Jita to shop. This makes Jita a busy place. It is usually full so you can't jump in. As the load comes from people in the space and the act of logging in being docking, simply removing chatbots doesn't help. Somehow motivating players to shop or PvP elsewhere would defeat the point of the existence of Jita. The shoppers want to come because this is where the stuff is, the traders want to come because this is where the buyers are, the gankers want to come because this is where the targets are. They could ban duels though, as that's consensual PvP and the parties could really jump one system away. Some other random stuff like manufacturing line and corporate offices could be removed too like they removed agents and belts. But the real solution is buying stronger hardware or optimizing the code.

However until some solution is implemented, businessmen face a nasty problem. So, you are busy hauling 25B cargo on average, all small items like officer and deadspace modules, skillbooks, implants. You have a transport Tengu which has 500K EHP with your non-perfect skills and lack of escorting fleet booster. It's cloaky, aligns under 4 seconds, never caused any problems. And now it sits on the Perimiter gate, unable to cloak or move, while you are spamming the jump button watching the midslot heat climbing up. Not a pleasing situation.

There isn't much you can do to prevent it, besides jumping to Maurasi to sit on the less camped Maurasi-Jita gate. It seems your fate is in the hand of luck, which isn't a good thing. Sooner or later someone will crack your Tengu open. Of course you could just split up the cargo, but that would mean more jumps in a gate what can hold you for 5-10 minutes. Or you can reschedule your real life to transport near downtime. Or set up 25 different Red Frog contracts and wait a day. Neither one is acceptable.

Now, your situation isn't that bad. You surely have a supercapital pilot in training with near-perfect armor tanking skills. You probably also have an Orca pilot. With these, in a month of training you can conjure up an armor-boosting Orca and the ship that will get you trough the traffic jam without ganks:
You have 8 minutes to jump in before the hardeners burn out. Armor hardeners have 20s cycle, so it is much harder to suicide-neut it than a shield-tanked Tengu. Finally, it has 147m signature, so the 400m resolution Tornado guns will do half damage on it. So its anti-tornado EHP is close to a capital ship. Anyone wants to suicide gank a carrier in a 0.9 system? Well, mine is there a few times a week, come and take it!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

To gank a 500k ehp cruiser a pretty substantial fleet is required - you'd notice on dscan.
And with 360° and max range you got enough time to leave.

The only security you'll ever get is NOT being where the gankers are.

Jumping all those hoops just for NOT watching dscan on a char that you shouldn't leave unattended for even a second anyways?

Gevlon said...

Dscan is a common myth among people, despite it's only good for one thing: spot if you are not alone.

Freighters regularly die to fleets which aren't even on LOCAL, because they get bumped or suicide tackled while the fleet jumps or logs in.

Anonymous said...

A warning about the signature resolution: This will not even enter the ballistics calculation if your transversal velocity with respect to the Tornado is zero, such as when sitting and spamming jump on a gate. Unless you are moving, it will not help you. Expect full damage in a worst case scenario.

Landor said...

Instead of Orca boosting, use Command Ship for boosting: Damnation gives 3% bonus to effectiveness of Armored Warfare Links per Battlecruiser Skill Level. And it can fit three Warfare Link modules to like Orca.

Landor

Anonymous said...

You should be orbiting gate at 1k though.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous is wrong, signature resolution is not related to traversal, hes confusing it with tracking.

Anonymous said...

Dscan is a myth amongst people Gevlon?

Time for another WH space article about how much they are doing it wrong!

(note: dscan is not actually a myth amongst people - it is vital and if properly used will save your life. Freighters die because they can't move, even if they get stuff on dscan. 36s align time on a fenrir - assuming a tornado takes 10 seconds to notice, leaving him 26s to get on target - 6 seconds to align, 2 seconds to lock the freighter leaves him 18 seconds travel time, at 3 AU/s he can cover 54 AU quite comfortably. Freighters die because they are slow, not because you think dscan is a myth).

Gevlon said...

@Last anonymous: you have any idea how many ships will be on your Dscan in highsec?

@Landor: yes, command ships are better but you have to learn them, while you already have an Orca or two if you are hauling

@Anonymous: you can't orbit the gate. You stop when you press jump, even if it fails.

Kobeathris said...

One anon is right, the later one is wrong.

Sig rad/sig res is a multiplied by transversal in the tracking formula. When transversal is 0, they have no affect on damage or hit chance.

Anonymous said...

Response to the following:
"Anonymous is wrong, signature resolution is not related to traversal, hes confusing it with tracking."

What is actually used in the ballistics formula is the fraction (TransversalVelocity*SigResolution)/(Tracking*SigRadius). See http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Turret_damage for details.

This means that you can compensate for signature resolution by tracking and vice versa, however if your velocity is 0 then no amount of sig tanking will make any difference.

Tithian said...

@last anon

In your scenario, the freighter wouldn't be able to align EVER, because any serious ganker would have another person bumping it, before even said Tornado was even in the system. It could take 2 minutes for the gankers to arive and they would still get a kill.

Dscan in highsec is useless, since in high traffic systems dozens of ships jump in and out evey minute. Even if the freighter pilot sees a ship on dscan (among the 300 there) named "I gank for lolz" and tries to leave, any serious ganker would have him bumped to oblivion way before he aligns.

Dscan in Wh-space is a different matter, strictly due to the lack of local.

Anonymous said...

@Chris K - of course people leave every minute. That is at least 3 dscans if you are lazy.

dscan + filter by overview settings reduces the list of hundreds to quite a lot less.

basically learn2dscan.

Anonymous said...

Thats basically it.

You only need Ships on dscan. And only certain ones at that.

Basically just Catalysts/Thrashers, Tier3 BCs and Mael/Tempest.

To gank Gevlons hauling Tengu you'd need a Fleet of at least 65 Nados. That should be quite noticable...


You'd need to plan a gank of this scale anyways, so why not just wait a few systems out, where System-Sec is not so close to 1.0? A single Vigil will blow up that Legions signature to 477m, a Hyena will web you to a crawl and scram you - then the Tornados go at it doing full damage.


I'd still stick to the Tengu - that 4s align may at least let you avoid bumps. With a 1.5m ISK TP frig signature won't matter anyways... And you'd need to fly that Orca alongside the Legion to be useful.

Tithian said...

Your last comment really shows that you haven't been to hi-sec for q while. That list of 300 doesn't other junk and it is, indeed, only player ships from a filter overview.

Go do a dscan on Perimeter and come back with your results.

Anonymous said...

@chris

The overview filter would be set by the smart pilot to only have certain ships on it.

So the pilot worried about his cargo being ganked would not have other freighters or indys on his d-scan