Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Bi-solo and dual-ganking guide

There are two limits front of a solo ganker and both can be handled by having a second catalyst pilot on a different account than the main ganker and the scout.

The first is the 15 minutes long GCC. I'm not sure why this is implemented, a 5 minutes would be more than enough for everyone else in the system to realize that there is a ganker around. But it's 15 minutes, we have to deal with it. Bi-solo ganking is simply using alternating gankers for solo ganking. I've started my own secondary ganker back when I was with the New Order and finishing his training now. Having a second ganker is a great quality of life change. Waiting is the most annoying thing in EVE and it greatly decreases it. After one of them prepared Concord you can go out and gank instantly. After a gank you just dock, loot, find a new target and can undock again. Finally the second ganker helps if you failed to get the pod with the first ganker but it's floating there AFK. After docking the original ganker, you can undock with a T1 cata and volley down the pod with Concord on the belt.

To avoid inventory mess, only one ganker should have items and ships. He fits the ship for the other ganker and just trades it. Give the two gankers different UI color so you can identify them on a blink.

But there is more than saving time with two gankers. You can undock them both and hit a target too big for solo gankers. While a duo gank team can take on a perfectly tanked retriever, they cost almost as much as the target so it would be dumb. Exhumers on the other hand are great targets. A Mackinaw can get out of reach of the solo ganker with an Adaptive Invulnerability Field and a small extender or some rigs, while still being economical to gank. While dual ganking is much more complicated than solo and more risky, in lack of solo targets you should use it. I've performed a half dozen dual ganks after some alt-shoot practices to figure out the easiest way to manage two gankers at the same time:
  1. If "white knights" were making you some trouble, don't dual gank, that's asking for podding
  2. Place the scout normally
  3. Get both gankers into ships, set the target red. The main ganker should fit dual Sensor Booster.
  4. Fit the ships and group guns with shift-drag in the station. Load ammo and scripts
  5. Undock the weaker ganker
  6. Undock the main ganker
  7. Squadwarp to the insta-undock with the weaker ganker being the leader
  8. Solo warp weaker ganker to target.
  9. Switch to strong ganker, sebo, overheat, solo warp after 5-6 seconds behind the weaker
  10. Switch back to weaker sebo, overheat
  11. Arrive, lock the target with the weaker ganker, open fire, activate scram, use keep at range 1000
  12. Switch to the main ganker, lock the target, open fire, use keep at range 1000
  13. Start podding the target. Start locking, prestart guns.
  14. Switch to weaker ganker, get the pod out
  15. Switch to strong ganker, get the pod out
  16. Dock both gankers
  17. Undock the looter or send the scout to grab the catalyst loot.
This method is superior to squadwarping. When you arrive to the scene, the clock starts ticking for the faction police who may jam you before Concord. Upon firing, the clock starts ticking for Concord. Locking and destroying the pod takes 3 extra seconds. In a 0.6 system you have approximately 20 seconds. Imagine that the target can be killed in 36 seconds by one Catalysts. This way both gankers spends 18 seconds killing the ship, leaving 2 seconds to pod, which they'll fail. If one arrives 6 seconds behind the first, the first one will keep shooting all 20 seconds and explode before the target dies. So the second ganker only needs to put in 16 seconds of damage, leaving enough time to pod. If you gank in a fleet, always choose a dedicated podder, squadwarp the others, the podder should lag behind 6-8 seconds. As a bonus, if the first ganker runs into a trap (get jammed by white knights), the second can abort and run away with his ship.

Clarification of the WGBWC rule on second account (alt) ganker: he must provide 30 solo ganks or 10B any kills to stay. Why? Because if it's a problem for you, you should not have a second ganker, you aren't ganking intensively enough to warrant a second account.

You can use a Thrasher in dual ganks to break Therm-Kin tanked targets with EM resist hole.

The daily anti-tear:

PS: I've added a scanning method to the guide that greatly decreases scouting time. "Using dscan you can easily determine which belt cluster the target is. However one planet can have several belts or several planets can be in close proximity. Set your dscan distance to 300 million km. That's about 2 AU. Verify that the target is within this distance. Launch probes in pinpoint formation, centered on your ship, 2 AU scan range. You shall get perfect location in one scan, you can warp to it instantly."

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

This may be a dumb question but what is with the obsession in EvE of only destroying targets worth more than your ship(s)? If your goal is to gank people than the only thing that matters is whether you can afford to pay for your losses and since you really do not get loot based on the cost of the ship you're killing (when ganking afk miners) why does it even matter? What am I missing?

Gevlon said...

While I can afford ganking practically anything with 10-boxed tornadoes, most 99.9% of the people don't. I want to create and teach methods of economical ganking.

Lucas Kell said...

If you are dual boxing, you could also use T1s. 2x T1s is 4m, 1x T2 is 10m. And 2x T1s can take out a tanked retriever if you are using the cheap meta (2 or 3) guns rather than standard T1s in anything 0.7 and below.
If economy is what you are going for, then the obsession with using T2s is destroying that.

But then again, I thought the idea was to teach miners, not to teach gankers. Under your rules I thought the ganker already had to be established and self sufficient, so teaching them bad economics would seem to me to be counter productive.

Gevlon said...

Dual-ganking has much more possible errors, much more chances to lose your pod. Using 1xT2 is always preferable to 2xT1. Not to mention that with dual ganking, you can't gank for the next 15 minutes.

maxim said...

16m target value seems to be the point at which more frequent T2 ganking overtakes 2xT1 ganking in terms of KB / time (assuming both ganks go without mistakes for the ganker).

Need a few rule clarifications:

How much of the target's value does the ganker actually get to loot?
Are there many targets at 16m value and above?
In how much money would you estimate the risks of dual-box ganking?

Gevlon said...

@Maxim: an average gank provides 6M loot and half of the catalyst fitting.

Dual gank is easier to mess up (no kill, no loot, 2 cata losses) and chance of losing the 100M+ pod. So solo ganks are always preferred.

Lucas Kell said...

Except if you are running dual T1 ganks, your 2nd char can have a low SP pod with no implants. You can literally let him get podded every time at next to no cost. Just set his station in the same system. I'd always take dual T1s over T2, since T2's cost 5 times the costs of a T1. If you always squad warp using your main, then the 2nd guys makes it 9/10 times anyway.

Also remember that the miners can often get the loot, especially if they are prepped, so a T2 drops them potentially 4m average loot for them instead of 300k or so from a T1.

Von Keigai said...

Squadwarp to the insta-undock, group and load guns...

You can group and load guns in a station.

Fznamznon said...

Hello. Do you have any posts about security status losses? I mean, how can you save your pod in high sec if you have -10.0? And doesn't local police disrupts your gank ops?

Thanks.

Lucas Kell said...

If you are in a ship you have to stay in motion. If you stop for too long, faction police blow up your ship. Players can pod you, avoid them.
You can still gank as long as you don't hang about outside the station or wait too long before firing when performing the gank.