How-to Guides for Travel and Survival

The following guides will help you travel and survive around the galaxy. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to talk with Alexia Morgan in corp chat, or send her an evemail with your questions.

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
10. How to escape a gate surrounded by warp bubbles

 

 

There’s a really good reason you want to be living in nullsec, or at least comfortable with venturing into it.

It’s because of highsec wars.

TOURING will become a target of wardecs (declarations of war) from ‘griefer’ corps that want to exploit our pacifist, loner ways. It’s only a matter of time.

The truth of the matter is that if we’re not going to attack anyone, and we’re flying alone in random parts of the New Eden cluster, then we’re not going to be flying in fleets with reinforcements. And being pacifist pilots, avoiding PVP, we’re not going to be combat specialists.

We’re screaming out ‘we’re a bunch of noobs and carebears that won’t be able to defend ourselves!’ Ideal targets for those corps that want to take advantage of it and increase the number of kills on their highsec wardec killboards.

But there’s one place these griefer corps never go, and that’s into nullsec. The reason for this is because these corps are filled with cowards and bullies, and they get their kicks by attacking the naive, the weak and the defenceless. They don’t want targets that fight back, which is why they would be excited to wardec TOURING.

And they certainly don’t want targets venturing into nullsec, which is where these griefers are afraid to go, because down there in the dark and lonely depths of space, they can be attacked by anyone. That’s not part of their plan.

So you’re a loner, a solo pilot, an explorer, a nomad…. Don’t be afraid to get down into nullsec and do what you do best. Not only will you avoid the risks of wardecs, should they occur, but you’ll also encourage these griefer corps to avoid wardecing us. There’s no point them wardecing a corp that lives in nullsec, because then the members are simply out of reach.

And any corp with members that live in nullsec is a corp that these wardec griefers aren’t interested in.

If you’d like to know more about how to venture into nullsec and live there, read the rest of these guides (particularly How to survive a wardec), and talk to Black Claw.

 

 

A catch bubble is a mobile warp disruptor bubble that is placed along a travel route between Gate A and Gate B. But it’s about 80-100km from Gate B, so that when you arrive, it ‘catches’ you in the bubble a nice distance away from the gate.

The way it works is that it catches anything that warps in within 120km of it, along a flight path that intersects it. You can place bubbles on gates or Customs Towers, or POSs (Player Owned Stations), so that they catch anyone arriving along a flight path from a distant starting point.

To avoid catch bubbles when you haven’t made any gate bookmarks (see #3 below), you have to make sure you arrive at Gate B from anywhere other than Gate A.

To do this, follow these instructions:

1. select your ‘outbound gate’ (gate B) in your overview. This will automatically move your view around so that the gate is near the centre of the screen.
2. Then move your cursor over the gate on your screen (not in the overview). A list will pop up that shows a group of planets and asteroid belts that are near that gate.
3. Right click on the planet you want to warp to in that group, and select ‘warp to within 70km’.

Your approach will no longer be along the flight path from Gate A to Gate B, therefore any catch bubbles will not catch you.

You’ll slip by the bubble trap that is waiting for everyone else, and you’ll jump out of the system and be on your way.

There will often be ships at the catch bubbles, cloaked or not, waiting for arriving ships to get caught in the bubble. Since they’re 80-120km away from you when you jump through the gate, they’ll let you go.

Any questions? Ask Black Claw and this guide may be updated to include answers to your questions.

 

 

First up, the why.

Gate bookmarks are to help you travel safely around the systems without actually landing on the gates. Travelling to a gate bookmark allows you to view the situation at the gate from a distance, and avoid any gate campers that might be waiting for you, or warp bubbles in nullsec. Warping around between gate bookmarks can be similar to warping around between safe spots. If you have enough of them, they’re not going to try and catch you.

However, make sure you make new bookmarks if you think your old ones might be compromised. If people see where you’re landing on a regular basis, they can come out in a cloaked ship and bookmark it themselves, so that when you come out there next time, they can warp to it and catch you. Always be prepared for stuff like that.

Gate bookmarks are absolutely essential for avoiding catch bubbles. If you’re frequently flying through nullsec areas, make sure you create gate bookmarks at every gate, so that you can warp to them instead of to your destination gate. That will allow you to avoid any catch bubbles on the gate (see #2 above) and get past them safely.

Now, the how.

Move your ship either up or down, away from the gate. If the system is safe (no one else in local) then activate your MWD so that you can speed up this process, but make sure you re-activate your cloak as soon as someone appears in Local again.

The reason you want to go up or down is so that you avoid going in a direction that is aligned with another celestial object, otherwise your bookmark can be compromised*.

Make your way to 200km from the gate and then click on Add Location in the Places tab of your People & Places. The naming convention I use is “[gate name] 200km”. This is so that I can easily see which bookmark is for which gate when I’m right-clicking in space to select one of my bookmarks.

That’s it. Now you have a gate bookmark! Make sure you do this for every single gate.

Bonus tip – make 500km bookmarks from station exits by letting your ship just continue on its path when you undock, and then place a bookmark at 500km. The reason for this is so that when you undock from a station that’s camped by hostiles, you can immediately select your “[station name] undock exit 500km” and warp away to safety. Do this anywhere in New Eden to ensure you’re safe from hostiles (including your station in highsec, to help you get away from wardec hostiles).

* There was a time when I was a pirate and I found someone who set a 200km bookmark along a path between the gate and a planet and then went AFK. So I warped to the planet and back to the gate at 100km. I created a bookmark. I then warped back to the planet and then back to the bookmark at 100km and landed right on them. They died. That’s why you should avoid making bookmarks that are aligned with other celestial objects.

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Every nullsec entry point is considered a ‘chokepoint’, and its often religiously guarded by whichever alliance owns or lives there.

This usually means they have cloaked scouts on the lowsec side of the gate, alerting the fleet on the other side about the ships about to jump through the gate.

The nullsec side of the gate will have ships waiting for you. All the gates leading out of this nullsec system will likely have warp bubbles on them (see the guide about How to Avoid Catch Bubbles), ready to ‘catch’ you should you escape their fleet and try to make your way to another gate.

So how to escape them?

Make sure you have a MWD and a cloak fitted, along with as many warp core stabilizers you can fit into your low slots. Every two ‘stabs’ you have will protect you from one ship trying to prevent you from going to warp. Don’t bother with 3 stabs, you either use 2 or 4. If you’ve got a third slot free, put a nanofiber into it to improve your maneuverability.

Upon entering the nullsec system, don’t panic when you see the ships and drones buzzing around you. You’re cloaked for 60 seconds, so you can use that time to evaluate your options.

You’ll probably have a route already selected, so your next system in the route will show as yellow on your overview. Click once on it. Your camera view will realign so that the system is in the centre of your screen. Move your cursor over it, and hopefully it will show a number of other celestial objects in the ‘group’ around the gate. One of them should be a planet.

Right-click on that planet and select ‘warp to within 70km’, and then activate your cloak so that you cloak as you start moving.

Your enemies will think you’re warping to the stargate, so they’ll go there – but you won’t be there.

If that gate has a catch bubble on it, you’ve just avoided it.

From here, can modify your Directional Scanner down to 15-30 degrees, have the gate in the centre of your screen, and use the Scanner to see if there’s anything or anyone on the gate. If it’s busy, you can wait until the gate is clear and then warp through.

If the gate didn’t have a nearby planet in its group, then choose another planet somewhere to warp to instead. This avoids the catch bubble traps.

If there’s no planet near your destination gate, warp to any planet (except the planet near your arrival gate) and then to your destination gate – it will ensure you don’t arrive within the flight path that’s intersected by the catch bubble.

See also the guide on How to Get Past a Gate Camp.

 

 

This is a secret rule. Don’t tell anyone, or everyone will be doing it.

Take your time.

That’s the secret. If you rush, you’ll make mistakes.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got 200 jumps through the darkest of nullsec. Don’t rush. Don’t think you have to do it all in one night, and you’ll succeed.

If you find a gate that’s always camped, come back online in the 10 minutes after downtime, when no one is around.

In busy locations, always make sure that you move when everyone is asleep.

When there are fights, stay out of the way. Say nothing, do nothing. Don’t bring attention to yourself.

Always fly ships with covert ops cloaks, like Stealth Bombers, Recons or T3 Strategic Cruisers.

If you can afford it, a T3 cruiser is your best choice, because you can configure it to fly with a covert ops cloak and an interdictor nullifier, allowing you to go to warp while stuck in a bubble.

Maximise your options for survival, take your time, don’t bring attention to yourself, and avoid fights. This is how you can travel nullsec without dying.

I’ve travelled probably over 400 nullsec systems since 2011, but that was the last time I died. I survive because what I teach you actually works.

 

 

A long time ago I used to practice the martial art of Ninjitsu. One of the tricks I learnt was how to be ‘invisible’.

There’s this interesting thing about human nature, that most people are so caught up in their own little world of internal thought that they have very little ‘processing energy’ to anything outside of their own mind. It’s not until someone comes into their little sphere of awareness that they might pay attention to them.

So the trick to remaining invisible as you travel the streets is to avoid making eye contact with people. You just don’t appear on their ‘radar’ because you’re not looking at them, you’re not interacting with them in any way whatsoever. Keep your head down, keep walking, withdraw into yourself, and no one will notice you.

I’ve tested it many times. It works. It only fails when you raise your head and look someone in the eye. Suddenly you’re visible to them, you’ve intersected their awareness.

You can be a ‘ninja’ in Eve too. When you’re travelling solo, don’t talk. Say nothing in local. Don’t bring yourself to people’s attention.

They’ll assume you’re afk and ignore you. If they’re roaming and looking for a target, you won’t be on their radar because you’re ‘invisible’ to them.

People who talk in local, especially the ones who think that ‘smack talk’ is really cool, will instantly come to an aggressor’s attention. They’ll want to find you, especially if you tell them they’re losers ’cause you’re cloaked and they can’t find you.

Then they’ll want to take your words and shove them up your ass, so they’ll organise secret gate camps around you with interdictors, interceptors, and battlecruisers. Before you know it, you’re fucked.

All because you were stupid enough to open your mouth and come to their attention.

Be a ninja. Stay quiet, stay under the radar. You’ll travel far without anyone even noticing you.

 

 

You’ve jumped into a lowsec or a nullsec system with your ship and find yourself surrounded by ships and drones that you just know are going to toast your ass as soon as you decloak. This is where your heart starts racing, and your anxiety level goes up a few notches!

But don’t panic. Panic is your enemy. Stay calm and you’ll get out of this alive.

The Cloak + MWD trick

This is often regarded as an exploit, but it’s been in the game for many, many years now, so CCP seems to think it’s actually a feature. The only people who don’t like it are the ones that you escape from because of it.

This is something that is worth mastering, to help you travel in a little more safety.  It won’t guarantee your safety, but it can go a long way towards avoiding being attacked by multiple ships in a gate camp.  It is a method of gaining speed whilst you are cloaked during one cycle of your microwarpdrive.  As your MWD cycle comes to an end, you drop your cloak and warp off instantly.  Ideally you will be vulnerable for less than a second as you break the gate cloak, and then the next time you drop cloak you instantly enter warp.

To make this work, you will need an Improved Cloaking Device II (you don’t need to worry about this trick if you have a Covert Ops cloak fitted), and an appropriate microwarpdrive fitted to your ship – 1MN for frigates or destroyers, 10MN for cruisers or battlecruisers or industrials, and 100MN for battleships. To fit a 10MN MWD on an industrial requires a ton of powergrid fitting mods.  This MWD-cloak trick won’t work on an Orca for reasons I’ll go into an a minute.  This trick will also not work with a prototype cloak, it will not work with an afterburner, and it will not work with a microwarpdrive that is too small for the ship.

The method is this:  after you jumped through a stargate and loaded grid on the other side, you align to your target, which breaks your gate cloak.  Immediately you activate your cloak and microwarpdrive.  Preferably both at the same time, but if you have to do them one after the other, activate the cloak first.

When your microwarpdrive cycle is almost complete (with less than a second to go before it ends), drop your cloak and hit the warp-to button.  You will enter warp the instant your MWD cycle finishes.

This works because the speed required to enter warp is always three-quarters of your current maximum speed.  When you have a microwarpdrive and an improved cloak active at the same time, the maximum speed bonus from the MWD (+500% to +625% depending on your skills, but it also depends on the mass of the ship) and the maximum speed penalty (-75%) from the cloak combine to give a maximum speed of about 40% to 90% higher than your unbonused speed.  So you accelerate towards this higher maximum speed whilst cloaked.  When you drop your cloak and your MWD at the same time, your maximum speed goes down, whilst your current actual speed remains the same.  This current actual speed will be more than three-quarters of your current maximum speed, and so you will instantly enter warp.

This is also why it doesn’t work with prototype cloaks (their speed penalty is -90%, making your maximum speed whilst cloaked and MWDing lower than normal) – and why it doesn’t work with afterburners or wrongly-sized MWDs (their speed bonus is far less than a proper-sized MWD).  It doesn’t work on Orcas because their huge mass means they get a much lower speed boost from a 100MN microwarpdrive than a battleship. In actual fact it can sometimes work with afterburners. You would definitely need to test this with your ship though, because it depends greatly on the mass of the ship in question.  It’s unlikely that afterburners would work on industrial ships because of the mass of the industrials.

It’s a trick that is worth practicing in highsec in peacetime with the ship/fitting you intend to use before you go into lowsec or nullsec. Get it right before you need it in a time of crisis.

Here’s a video that shows how it’s done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uBcK_c8Gy4

Good luck!

 

 

One of the joys of being in a player-run corp is dealing with declarations of war, or ‘wardecs’ as they’re known. But don’t worry, I’ve had lots of experience with surviving and winning wardecs made against the corps that I’ve run.

Wardecs are usually made by griefer corps against naive and weak victim corps who make easy targets. To win a war we need to change the rules on them so that they’re fighting it on our terms instead.

One of the advantages TOURING has over many other corps is that its members have no base of operations. So there’s no one area all our members hang out in. Our members are individuals in many different areas of the New Eden cluster. It makes it difficult for wardec fleets to go roaming around the entire cluster looking for lone pilots. It usually becomes a complete waste of their time.

However, there will be times when they’re determined to find someone (anyone) and get a kill or a number of kills, to justify their war. That just might be you.

So how to avoid being a wardec target?

Go to nullsec.

That’s it. ‘Wardecers’ are bullies. They like to operate under conditions that allows them to always win. They won’t follow you into nullsec because they no longer have the immunity that highsec gives them. In nullsec, anyone can attack them and will.

If you don’t want to go to nullsec, however, and want to continue mining operations or missions in highsec, then you have a choice.

Risk being the naive victim that they will look for and destroy, or create / use an alt that’s not a member of the corp, so that you can continue doing something while avoiding the war.

Leaving the corp is also an option, but not one that’s recommended. Every member who leaves the corp becomes a victory for the wardecers. That’s what they want. Don’t give them the pleasure.

Support your corp and learn how to survive. It WILL enhance your gaming experience! Wars can be lots of fun if you play them right.

 

 

As you travel around, you’ll want to make sure that your Local channel is where you can see it at all times, so you can constantly monitor it for people in your local system. Knowing who is in the same system as you is extremely important.

Grab the Local chat tab and just drag it up and it will separate from the other chat channels. You can position it wherever you want.

This is how I’ve got my screen set up (click on it to expand):

You can see that I’ve got my chat windows at bottom left, with the Local chat above them. Overview over to the right, and Directional scanner underneath it. This allows decent area in the middle to still see whatever needs seeing.