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Travel Safely Traveling between focuses is one of the easiest times to catch an incursion runner off-guard and without logi. We are shiny targets and our fits are designed to have logi keeping us safe. Nothing in Eve is 100% safe and this guide is about limiting the risks. These are general good recommendations of how to Travel Safely. Travel Tip #1: Do not let anyone know when you are moving! WTM Incursions Channel is a public chat channel and anyone can join. We do our best to keep gankers out of the channel but it is impossible to keep all of them out. Travel Tip #2: Always travel fit and haul your bling separately. Travel fitting your ship makes it much harder to gank. Shiny modules in your cargo hold are just as likely to drop as they are fitted. Move them separately to lower the chances you get ganked/reduce the impact if you do get ganked. Travel Tip #3: Avoid Low/Null sec. It's just not worth it. Smartbombs, cynos, bubbles, and so many other things can go horribly wrong. A couple of quick definitions: Travel Fit: Removing your expensive incursion mods and replacing them with lots of T2 passive tank. This helps make you a less inviting target than those around you. If you are moving battleships using a bowhead, travel fitting is removing all of the expensive mods before stuffing your mostly bare hull into the ship maintenance bay. Taxi: A small, fast ship with just enough cargo to hold what you need. The goal is a very small signature radius (making it take longer to lock you) and a sub-1 second align time. Other General Tips Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose Don’t autopilot or go AFK - Keep moving! If you get caught, you are most likely dead. Buffer tanks are better than active tanks – Ganks are very quick, which gives active tanks very little time to repair HP. Thus amount HP repaired during a gank is usually less than the extra EHP you’d get from fitting a straight buffer tank. Use Eve Gatecamp check, scouts, the in-game map, or any other intel tools that you have at your disposal to see if gankers are currently active along your route. Sometimes systems with ganker activity can be avoided with a negligible amount of extra jumps. Sometimes you’re better off waiting until later to haul. When using Eve Gatecamp, make sure to select "Secure". Don’t fly on wardecked characters or with killrights. Turn off duel requests if you haven’t done so already and be careful what you click on. Occasionally, gankers try to send received random fleet invites from gankers to warp get warp ins or you away from gate guns. Don’t shoot gankers – neutral logi can’t rep you if you pick up a limited engagement timer. Don’t go suspect – (don't loot neutral wrecks on your route) logi can’t rep you if you go suspect. Keep aware of current events – Read dev blogs, watch podcasts, read reddit, and/or don’t socially isolate yourself. Don’t get caught with your pants down because you didn’t realize that a 90% loot drop event was going on (i.e. Trick or Treat). Burst Jammers will get you concorded. Don’t use them in HS. Using the MWD cloak trick can help if there is a gate camp. 500MN MWD trick - If your align time is greater than 10s, fit a T1/T2/Meta 500MN Microwarp drive. After taking a gate, hit jump/warp to your next destination, cycle the MWD once. Your ship will enter warp as soon as the MWD turns off, this works for Bowheads as well. Overheat your hardeners. Ganks last less than 25s. Overheating your hardeners will give you more EHP and may help you survive the gank. Align out and spam warp. If the gankers accidentally lose tackle, you may get off. Even in the event your ship dies, this will help get your pod off so you don't loose implants. Travel fitting your Battleships Basics of travel fitting: Take off all of the expensive mods and anything non tank related. Then, the more passive tank, the better. LSEs in the mids and Steel Plates in the lows. Apocalypse Navy Issue Hyperion Tempest Machariel Vindicator Nightmare Kronos Paladin Vargur Things to keep in mind when moving your battleship: Some people keep multiple sets of incursion ships strategically placed around HS, and use interceptors to get between areas. This means that they usually don’t have to move their incursion ships very far. It also means that they are far less likely to need to move their ships through popular ganking systems. This practice is probably even a better idea since the fall of Niarja. Note that killing gankers is not a viable strat. Yes, your double web vindi is technically capable of deleting catalysts from the field. But (1) it will also take you a relatively long time to lock them, (2) some gankers will actually fit remote sensor damps to their ganking ships, (3) they will likely use enough ships to kill you regardless, and (4) you will no longer be able to get reps if you are in fleet. Using a Bowhead to move your rigged battleship: Do not think that you’re too big to fail. Overload it with stuff at your own peril. Multiple rigged hulls can be moved in a bowhead. However, bling should still be moved separately. The MWD will reduce your align time to 10 seconds as long as you’re starting from a complete stop (i.e. just jumped through a gate). Initiate warp, toggle the MWD (turn autorepeat off), and as soon as the MWD cycles off, you will enter warp. Moving your Bling Sub-1 Second Align Time Taxi One of the safest ways to move the bling is using a sub-1 second align time taxi through High Sec. Just because you are in a fast ship does not make it any better to go through Low or Null Sec. Anything above 1 second warp time can be caught. Sitting on a gate idle will get you caught no matter what you are in. This is one of the cheapest Taxi options with enough cargo to get your bling in as few trips as possible. Yes, the drug is required and expensive but it is a lot cheaper than losing your shiny mods. There are other taxi options, but those can be discussed in other places in more depth. Blockade Runner Blockade Runners are great. They can be very slippery and hard to catch when they are flown correctly. All covops ships are susceptible to being to getting decloaked by “gate trash” (i.e. a large gank fleet causing a bunch of wrecks and faction police to litter a gate). And, gankers often pop blockade runners because they assume it contains juicy loot. But these risks can be minimized by using intel tools. Moreover, it is most certainly safer than flying bling around in a fat bottomed vindi. When flying gate to gate: Initiate jump on the next gate, as soon as you initiate warp, activate your cloak. Use insta-undock bookmarks to help with busy and/or camped stations. As always, passive tank (LSE's and Steel Plates) are key to minimizing the Tornado instablap. T3C Covops This example fit uses the different subsystems as the WTM fit. By switching out the Loki Core subsystem, it allows you another midslot for more tank. The main strategy used by the fit is to not get caught in the first place, but the tank can move you out of the engagement profile of smaller/less prepared fleets. Do note that T3’s can swap rigs without destroying them. Complacency Just because you got away with it before, doesn’t mean it’s safe. No one is too big to get ganked. Fleet numbers can rise and fall, and depending on when they scan you and how fast you move, they may even have time to reship into something that can take you on. Moreover, if you provide a juicy enough of a target, they may decide to actively hunt you. Covert ops capable ships are not uncatchable. They stand a fair chance of getting decloaked on gates where gankers have been active (they will be surrounded with wrecks and faction police), and are still vulnerable to smart bombs, lag, and DC’s. Ships with 2 second aligns are not uncatchable. They are vulnerable to lag, DC’s, smart bombs, and insta lockers. Bonus Safe Travel/Hauling Tips Use instant undock and insta-dock bookmarks when appropriate. If you web your freighter, always send duel requests to the webber, and never to the freighter. Everyone sees duel requests, and if they see dual requests going to the freighter pilot, they’re going to try to send him one in hopes of getting a limited engagement timer with him. Some guys will try to kill your webbing alt. But, better to lose that than the freighter. Be wary of corps that have friendly fire turned on, especially if they’re loose with their recruitment policy. If you can’t haul it safely, pay someone to haul it for you.