10. How to escape a gate surrounded by warp bubbles

Previous:

  1. Why you should be living in nullsec
  2. How to avoid ‘catch bubbles’
  3. How to make gate bookmarks, and why
  4. How to safely enter nullsec
  5. The secret to travelling nullsec without dying
  6. How to travel like a Ninja
  7. How to get past a gate camp
  8. How to survive a wardec
  9. How to position your Local chat channel

 

Imagine you’ve jumped through a gate in nullsec and you arrive to discover you’re surrounded by a number of warp bubbles. OMGPANIC!

But make sure you get over your panic in just a few seconds. You’ve got 60 seconds to take stock of your surroundings before you decloak from the gate jump. This is what you need to be doing very quickly:

  1. Check local (see #8 above). If there’s no one in local you don’t need to panic. Just double-click in front of you and make your way out of the bubble before going to warp and continue on your way.
  2. However, in the two seconds it’s taken to check Local, if there’s a number of people listed there, move your eyes across to check your Overview. Are there ships around you? If not, they may be cloaked – but they might not be. They might be docked in a station. Since you don’t know just yet, move your camera view around so you can see the gate in front of you. Double-click in space next to the gate so that you will move towards the gate but slightly past it. If no one decloaks to attack you by the time you reach the gate, then there’s no one there. Keep going until you’re out of the bubble and go to warp and continue on your way. But now this is where it gets tricky, if there’s ships in your Overview…
  3. If there are ships in the Overview (or ships have decloaked once you’ve started moving), check to see how many there are, and how far away they are. If they’re within 12-24 km, then they’re close enough to tackle you and bring a world of hurt down upon you when they slow you down to a crawl. But what kind of ships are they? If they’re Interceptors, you’re probably screwed, but if they’re Cruisers or Battlecruisers, you might have a better chance. Chance of what, I hear you asking…
  4. Move towards the gate. Active your propulsion mod (afterburner or microwarpdrive) to increase your speed, followed quickly by any active defensive mods (eg. shield mods, Damage Control II, etc). Tacklers will disable your MWD, but if you have an Improved Cloaking Device II, you can try the Cloak + MWD trick (see #6 above) to prevent them from getting a lock on you. Do not attack anyone! The gate will prevent anyone who has fired their weapons from jumping through, so if you can make it to the gate before you die, then you’ll be able to jump through, but your attackers won’t. (Hope that they don’t have reinforcements waiting on the other side!)Note: if your ship is destroyed before you can get out of the bubble or jump back through the gate, then assume the crash position. Your pod can’t go anywhere, so you’re going to get a fast ride back to a new clone…
  5. If you have a Covert Ops cloak, you can move, activate your cloak, and then either approach the gate or move towards the edge of the bubble. But it might take a few seconds to get up to speed before you go to warp, and they might approach you and decloak you and prevent you from doing so. So the trick is this – move in a direction that you want your attackers to think you’re headed, activate your cloak, and then immediately turn around and move in the opposite direction, or a direction that will leave you free to move away from them while they’re searching for you. Leave the bubble and go to warp to continue on your way.

And that’s about it. Easy! *smile*

Above all, don’t panic. Panicking will not change the consequences, other than making it more difficult to do whatever you need to do. I know, I know… easier said than done! But the more experience you get at it, the easier it WILL be to do.

 

CONGRATULATIONS!

You’ve completed the series of guides teaching you how to travel safely in nullsec.

Make sure you bookmark this page so that you can return to it (and the menu above) at any time!

Now contact Black Claw in-game and tell him the first sentence of #4 above (on this page), and he will award you the Nullsec Travellers Award. Good job!