Low Sec Gate Camping – Part 2

Before I am going to write about my experiences running my camp, I want to give you a brief explanation of the two fits I am going to use. As mentioned in the previous post, I will fly a Svipul as fast tackle, a Gnosis for additional dps and a cloaky scout to watch the high-sec side of my gate.

The Svipul Fit

High Slots: 4 280mm Howitzer Artillery II and a single Rocket Launcher. The Artillery Guns have a good optimal range of around 11 km and do an overheated 370 dps. The Rocket Launcher adds another 20 dps, but only applies damage if the target gets closer to gate. With this setup you can nicely hit anything that decloaks on your gate.

Mid Slots: 2 Sensor Booster II with Scan Resolution Scripts to increase Scan Res to 1600 (1800 with heat). This is good enough to lock anything down to T1 frigates. Only thing you won’t be able to lock are interceptors but these mostly instawarp anyways. A Tracking Computer to increase your applied damage against small moving targets, since you only have 2-3 shots to kill your target until gate guns will tear you apart. Finally, A Warp Disruptor II ( 24 km range) to point your target.

Low Slots: 200m Steel Plates, an Adaptive Nano Plating and a Damage Control II for tank. This gives you 12k ehp in Svipul defence mode, which should be enough to be hit by gate guns for around 30 seconds. A Gyrostabilizer to increase the damage of your guns.

Rig slots: A Kinetic and Thermal Armour Pump I to increase resists against the gate gun damage. The gate guns are most likely the greatest source of damage, so I prefer to tank specifically against them. A Small Projectile Burst Aerator II to further increase arty damage.

Ammunition: Republic Fleet EMP/Fusion to shoot at shield/armour tanked ships. Usually you won’t have time to switch ammo before engaging, but I doesn’t hurt to be able to. Also carry scripts for the Sensor Boosters and the Targeting Computer and some Nanite Repair Paste to repair heat damage on your modules if needed.

How to fly it:

You basically sit in sharpshooter mode and all mid-slots running 0 km from the gate. When your scout sees a target land on the other side you overheat and pre-activate the Warp Disruptor II and your guns. By this, as soon as you lock anything, they will activate automatically on the target. When the target jumps through and decloaks, you lock it, shoot once and switch to defence mode to increase you resists and ehp against the gate guns. From now on you have around 30 seconds to kill your target, align and warp out to a bookmark further than 150 km away from the gate to avoid gate guns. If you caught a big target, it is a good idea to switch the Svipul to a bigger ship at a citadel to bring more dps to the gate while the Gnosis (see further down) keeps your victim tackled.

The Gnosis Fit

This fit is conceptually very similar to the Svipul fit above, only one size bigger.

High Slots: 5 x 720mm Prototype Siege Cannons with good range (28.8 optimal) and dps (513 dps with heat). A Information Command Burst II to further increase the scan resolution of the Gnosis but also of the Svipul which should be in the same fleet.

Mid Slots: Sensor Booster IIs and a Warp Disruptor II. Additionally the Gnosis has a Stasis Webifier, a Warp Scrambler II and a MWD. By this, the Gnosis can get close to the target fast and apply the web and scram to pin down a target and preventing it from jumping back through the gate.

Low Slots: A heavy armor tank (54k ehp) with 1600mm Plates, 2 x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II and a Damage Control II. A Gyrostabilizer II to further increase arty damage.

Rig Slots: a Medium Projectile Collision Accelerator I for more damage and a Medium Trimark Armor Pump I for more buffer tank

Ammunition: Republic Fleet EMP/Fusion against shield/armor tanked ships and Sensor Optimization Charges to boost scan resolution with the command burst module. Finally a set of Warrior II drones and some Nanite Repair Paste.

How to fly it:

The tactic is very similar to the Svipul. However, since the Gnosis cannot lock small ships fast enough, it depends on the Svipul to get initial point and then takes over to point the target if the Svipul needs to leave the grid because of gate guns. As soon as the target decloaks, you start to burn towards the target with MWD switched on. When in range, switch on the warp scrambler (10km with heat) and stasis webifier (13km with heat) to pin down the target. Since the Gnosis has much more tank, it can resist the gate guns a lot longer than the Svipul. Don’t get too close to the victim because the arty guns will not be able to hit anymore. Stay between 8-10 km off your target if possible.

How did it go?

I fitted my ships in Jita and shipped them over to Nonni, the last high sec system before my target system of Aunenen. I also bought a bunch of other ships like two Brutix, a ENI, a Megathron and an Armageddon to switch into if more dps was needed. From there I flew the ships over to Aunenen when the gate was not camped by another party.

The first thing I noticed was, that the gate is very frequently camped by the local pirate group SEV7N-SINS, that were usually camping it in a bunch of Gnosis. Looking at their killboard, these guys do not much other then to camp the three major high-sec/low-sec gates in the region (Tama, Mara and Aunenen). However, with a little patience I was able to find free time slots when my operation could take over from theirs.

I spent about 8 hours camping the gate in sessions of 1-2 hours. In general, the gate is quite busy with 50-100 ships passing through per hour, of which maybe half are travel interceptors that are impossible to catch with my setup. This still leaves a healthy 25-50 ships jumping through per hour that were possible targets. Many of these guys seem to be high sec players who just just pass through the system without any idea that they are leaving the safety of high-sec.

Within these 8 hours I managed to kill 27 unlucky guys worth 2.3 billion isk in total. Some highlights of these were this ratting Gila that engaged my Gnosis on gate, this brawling Brutix that gave a really good fight and finally this badly fitted 1.3 billion isk Badger. Many of the other kills were more badly fitted Industrials, explorers and the odd cyno ship that was passing by. However, additionally to these kills I had a bunch of good fights against target that I couldn’t kill. There was a Armageddon that was playing games with me for a while and there was even a guy jumping his Rorqual to the gate to brawl with my two backup battleships. Strangely, there are quite some mission runner battleships that jump into Aunenen that a bigger camping party could destroy.

Now to the bad part: the losses. As I said, SEV7N-SINS camp Nonni gate frequently and tried to kill me a couple of times while I was on duty. They tried different tactics from brute force Gnosisis warp to me to a cloaky Stratios pointing me after I aggressed a target. That is how they eventually managed to kill one of my Svipuls. In the end I simply did not camp whenever more than three of them were in system, which looks like it is the critical number for them to be active. One other loss happened when I engaged a ship and while I was fighting my victim a hostile fleet landed right on top of me killed my Brutix.

So in total I lost 140 mil isk (120 mil after insurance) in ships during these 8 hours. However I was able to loot 1.3 billion isk from the wrecks of my victims, mostly from a single Excavator Mining Drone dropped by one of the haulers. But even without that drop, the remaining 300 mil in loot easily replaced my 140 mil in losses. Even without the lucky drop this would result in around 19 mil isk / hour after losses, which is not bad considering most people think PVP activities cost instead of earn isk.

To sum things up, I think low-sec gate camping is a very nice activity to do with a few friends or even alone if you have at least two accounts available. With an active gate like the Nonni gate in Aunenen this can sometimes even escalate to challenging small gang PVP. Since I have all my gear in place now, I am sure I will revisit Aunenen again to see if I can score another lucky drop from a high-sec care bear.

Disclaimer: No Excavator Drones were killed for this blog post.

Low Sec Gate Camping – Part 1

After I covered the most common PVE activities in the last three posts, I got a little tired of shooting red dots and decided to start my first PVP activity to lose my newly gained riches.

I decided to start with gate camping, which is a quite easy and chilled PVP activity that – when done right – results in easy kills and can even make you a little profit on the side.

The basic idea is to wait on a stargate in low or null security space and destroy whatever ships jump through. For this guide, I want to focus on camping low sec gates, which has slightly different mechanics than camping null security gates.

Low Sec Gate Mechanics

To understand how to camp a low security gate, I will first give you a short summary how the game mechanics around shooting players on these gates work.

Low security gates have two so called gate guns placed around them that will start to shoot any player who engages another player who is not a criminal. These guns do 440 dps in mainly thermal and explosive damage, have a range of 150 km and will hit you very well even if you are in a fast frigate. If multiple players engage a ship, the gate guns will start to fire on the first player who takes a shot, but will switch to another player after less than a minute. If a player warps or moves more than 150 km away from the gate, the guns will stop firing at this player and will also not start again if the ship comes closer again.

Shooting a non criminal player will make yourself a criminal for the next 15 minutes. This means that if you are attacked by a hostile player in low sec, the gate guns will not start to shoot your opponent. Furthermore, players will even be able to shoot you in high sec as long as the criminal timer lasts without concord protecting you.

Another point to mention is the loss of security status when engaging a non criminal player. Each time you will loose around 0.1 security status for shooting a ship and about 1.0 for shooting a pod. The exact number depend on a number of factors and are described nicely in the Uni Wiki. As soon as you security status gets below -2 the faction police will hunt you in some high security systems depending on the security level of the system. This effect gets worse the lower your security status becomes until you reach -4.5, when you will be hunted in all high sec systems. With a security status of -5 even other player will be able to shoot you in high sec without concord protecting you.

How to set up a gate camp

To successfully camp a low sec gate you need several things covered.

Tackle: You need a ship with a fast lock time, a Warp Disruptor and optionally a Warp Scrambler to lock and stop your target from warping away once it decloaks. This ship must also have enough tank to be hit by the gate guns for some time until the unfortunate player who has been pointed is dead or another tackle ship takes over. Hence cheap T1 tackle frigates are not ideal for this.

DPS: You will need enough damage to kill your target. If you tackled a frigate or destroyer, this might not be a big deal, but the amount of DPS required to kill a battlecruiser or battleship is much higher. So bring plenty of dps ships if you can.

Stasis Webifiers (optional): These are great to slow down the enemy ship to apply more damage and to prevent it from flying back to the gate and try to escape on the other side. Especially fast ships with MWDs can burn back to the gate or out of point range very fast without webs on them. The web ship should also have a fast lock time to apply the web quickly.

Logistic Ship (optional): A logistic ship to repair your tackle ship while under gate guns or the damage done by your target.

Scout (optional): It is a great plus to have a scout on the other side of the gate you are camping. The scout can tell you what kind of ships are going to jump through and warn you if there is a proper fleet or other dangerous ships landing on the gate. If possible, the scout should be cloaked. Otherwise more experienced players will suspect a gate camp on the other side and not jump through.

Where to Gate Camp

Now that we have the basic roles required sorted, you need a proper location to set up our gate camp. The most common gates to camp in low sec are the ones that lead from high into low. These gates get a lot of traffic by players that are on their way into null sec, explorers and PVP players. Especially border systems into factional warfare territory have a lot of traffic in small ships coming through. To check the traffic of a system, Dotlan offers good statistics about the number of jumps into a system. I prefer systems, that have at least 100 jumps per hour.

One problem with these gateway systems is, that they are very often camped by the local pirate groups that also often live in these systems . So it is a good idea to check if the gate is already camped by somebody else before forming your fleet and go there. Other good systems are so called pipe systems in low sec, which have only one entry and one exit gate. These pipe systems usually get a lot more traffic, since often they are the only way to cross a region.

Let’s start with the action

After looking for good systems on Dotlan for a bit, I decided to set up my camp in Aunenen, a low sec system in Lonetrek that borders high sec.

Aunenen is a quite busy system that gets a lot of traffic by people travelling into northern part of null sec. Furthermore, it has a public Keepstar Citadel right on the gate that leads to high sec, which is quite handy to repair your ship or switch ships if needed. Also logistics are quite easy, since you can just transport the necessary gear through high sec to Nonni, which is the last high sec system before Aunenen just 5 jumps away from Jita. Since, I am a member of Horde atm, Aunenen is also far away from friendly space, so the targets will most likely be neutral for me. A big problem of camping gates close to friendly space is, that most traffic is friendly, so although you get a lot of traffic, the amount of targets is rather low.

I have three characters available to setup my camp and decided to use them in the following setup:

The first character will be used as fast tackle and dps in a Svipul and sit on the Nonni gate in Aunenen .
The second Character will provide additional dps in a Gnosis battlecruiser and also has a Stasis Webifier fitted to slow down targets. This character will also sit on the gate.
The third character will be in a cloaky interceptor off the Aunenen gate in Nonni. This character will be my scout and also can be used to switch into a logi ship and jump into Aunenen to provide repairs.

This setup is far from ideal, but covers most points mentioned above. The dps of this setup is not great and not enough to kill battleships and battlecruisers. For this, I will stock additional battlecruisers and battleships in the Aunenen Keepstar to switch into if there is need.

These are the fits I am going to use:

Svipul Fitting

[Svipul, Low Sec Gate Camp]

Adaptive Nano Plating II
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
200mm Steel Plates II

Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Warp Disruptor II
Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
‘Arbalest’ Rocket Launcher I
[Empty High slot]

Small Anti-Kinetic Pump I
Small Anti-Thermal Pump I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator II

Republic Fleet EMP S x500
Republic Fleet Fusion S x500
Caldari Navy Inferno Rocket x200
Nanite Repair Paste x50
Optimal Range Script x1
Tracking Speed Script x1
Targeting Range Script x2
Scan Resolution Script x2
ECCM Script x2

Gnosis Fitting

[Gnosis, Low Sec gate Camp]

Damage Control II
1600mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Reactor Control Unit II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Gyrostabilizer II

Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Fleeting Compact Stasis Webifier
Warp Scrambler II
Warp Disruptor II

720mm Prototype Siege Cannon, Republic Fleet EMP M
720mm Prototype Siege Cannon, Republic Fleet EMP M
720mm Prototype Siege Cannon, Republic Fleet EMP M
720mm Prototype Siege Cannon, Republic Fleet EMP M
720mm Prototype Siege Cannon, Republic Fleet EMP M
Information Command Burst II, Sensor Optimization Charge

Medium Projectile Collision Accelerator I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

Warrior II x5
Hammerhead II x5

Republic Fleet EMP M x500
Republic Fleet Fusion M x500
Sensor Optimization Charge x300

With these fits, I will end this first part of my low sec camping guide. In the next part I will further discuss these three fittings and tell you the story of my hopefully successful camping trip to Aunenen.

Anomaly Ratting

Ratting in Combat Anomalies is by far the most popular ISK-making activity in the game. You can find them in almost any system by just opening the Probe Scanner window (ALT+P) and filter for anomalies.

You can warp to an anomaly directly without scanning it down first and there will never be an acceleration gate to enter it. Anomalies come in two flavours: combat and mining anomalies. For the rest of this guide only combat anomalies will be considered, since these are the ones used for ratting.

All combat anomalies have a difficulty level, that is not visible in the probe scanner window. The only way to tell how difficult they are is by using third party info-sites, like Eve University’s combat anomaly overview:

Combat anomalies can be divide into 10 different classes, which again have different difficulty levels inside the class. The easier ones only appear in high security space, the harder ones in low and zero security space and the most difficult ones only in zero security space.

For ratting in null sec, you should best run Forsaken Hubs, Havens and Sanctuaries (Lv 8 to 10), because these spawn the most battleship rats with the highest bounties and are relatively easy to finish in an inexpensive ship.

Of these three, Forsaken Hubs pay out the best ISK/hour when run in a cruiser. However, Havens might unlock a high rated special mission, called an escalation, which offers you access to another even harder combat site in a different system. In these escalations the NPCs might drop very expensive deadspace loot and blueprint copies, which can be worth hundred millions of ISK. Forsaken Hubs also can result in an escalation. However the ones received by Hubs are a lot less valuable. Havens come in two variations: The Rock Haven and the Gas Haven. Rock Havens are much easier to finish, because the NPC waves are relatively small, while Gas Havens have big NPC groups that require much more attention and target selection to finish.

So, it is your choice if you rather want the steady income of Forsaken Hubs or the additional random escalation based income, running Havens.

Finally, sometimes you can find so called officer spawns in the last wave of ships of a combat anomaly. These special rats might drop pirate faction modules, which again can highly increase the payout of an anomaly.

The backbone of null sec ratting: The Vexor Navy Issue

By far the most popular ratting ship in null security space is the Vexor Navy Issue aka VNI. This fine ship can run – properly fitted – all difficulty levels of combat anomalies. With good skills you can even run most sites semi-afk, only watching the screen every couple of minutes.

The VNIs best weapon system for ratting are heavy drones. Because the highly rated combat anomalies consist mainly of battleships and battlecruisers, heavy drones apply their damage very well. Drones can also attack the enemy ships without the need to lock them manually or activate the weapon on the target, which means you can finish sites with minimal clicks and attention. Becaues the four different heavy drone types inflict four different damage types (Preator -> EM , Wasp -> kinetic, Ogre -> thermal, Berserker -> explosive), you can pick the drone that deals the correct damage type against the local pirate faction.

There are a lot of different fits people use to run combat anomalies. On of the most popular is the following “shield-buffer-high-speed”-fit, which costs about 100-120 mil ISK in JIta.

High Slots: We only use a single Drone Link Augmentor (T I or II) to increase drone control range.

Mid Slots: Two Large Shield Extender II for a shield buffer tank. A Drone Navigation Computer to increase the speed of our rather slow heavy drones. Finally, an oversized 100mn Afterburner. This is a module that is normally used by battleships. Fit to a cruiser sized hull it brings you to a speed of over 1000 m/s. The drawback of an oversized afterburner is a highly increased align time (25 seconds+) to get into warp.

Low Slots: lots of Drone Damage Amplifiers to increase damage. I like to use a Damage Control II to further increase my buffer tank and to give me some extra hull tank if I screw up and the NPCs break my shield tank. Finally, we fit a Omnidirectional Tracking Enhancer to increase the tracking of our heavy drones. This will make it easier for our drones to hit smaller targets like NPC frigates, destroyers and cruisers.

Rig Slots: a mix of Medium Screen Reinforcers, which match the two damage types the NPCs mostly deal . In my case this will be Guristas which deal kinetic and thermal damage.

Drones: 5 Heavy Drones of the correct damage type. For Guristas these are Wasps, because they have a weakness against kinetic damage. Use the T2 version if you can. If not, use the faction version, in this case Caldary Navy Wasps. Additionally, bring a set of ECM drones if you get tackled by something big and a set of Warrior II drones to fight small tackle ships.

How to run a combat anomaly

Running sites in a VNI is as easy as it gets. First, you warp to the anomaly at 20-30 km range. When you land on grid, there will be an asteroid or another object close to the center of the site, which you start to orbit at 30km with your afterburner switched on. The VNI will then slowly get up to speed orbiting the object. Don’t orbit an enemy ships because you will stop orbiting when it is destroyed. Your orbit speed should be more than 1000 m/s, which is too fast for the battleships to hit you properly.

You launch your drones, which should be set to aggressive mode and to focus fire.

Finally you can drop a Mobile Tractor Unit (MTU), to collect the loot and bookmark the location of it to come back later when the MTU has finished scooping all the loot. This bookmark is also great to come back to your site, in case you need to warp off for some reason.

As soon as the NPC ships start to shoot you, your drones will engage a random NPC automatically. However, I recommend to kill the cruisers and battlecruisers first. After that, kill the frigates and finally the battleships. Since the battleships cannot hit you when at full speed orbiting your rock, you can let the drones just kill them in aggressive mode. Some anomalies, like for example Rock Havens, can almost be run completely afk without killing small ships first.

Eventually, the next wave will spawn – either by finishing off the previous wave or killing a certain trigger ships – and you start to kill cruisers and battlecruisers again. Repeat this, until all waves have been cleared and warp to the next anomaly. If you get into low shield, just warp off, regenerate your shield at a structure and get back into action using your MTU bookmark.

The most dangerous part of this process are enemy players. Whenever a hostile player enters your system while you run a site, you need to warp off to a safe spot or a friendly structure immediately. The VNI fit is not designed for PVP and the enemy player’s ship will be strongly focused on killing VNIs, so there is no point in fighting roaming players. If your alliance or corp has an intel channel, watch it closely for information about enemy players that are close to your system.

If an enemy player should manage to tackle you in a site, don’t panic. If you are in a fleet, report to the fleet that you need help and the system you are in. Maybe somebody is close enough or even in the same system to help you. Secondly, align out to a friendly structure, overheat you afterburner and spam the warp button. Maybe you enemy will lose point and you can just warp off. Finally, abandon your heavy dones and launch your spare set of ECM drones and send them after your enemy. If you are lucky, they will jam him and you can just warp of. Alternatively, if you are only tackled by a small ship, you could launch your Warrior II drones and try to simply kill it or at least make it warp off.

My personal experience

With all this good advice I gave myself, I bought a VNI for 110 mil ISK in Jita and shipped it to the Pandemic Horde staging system system, by PH’s courier service. Ratting in the staging system itself is not a great idea, since local chat is very crowded with people and usually also contains some neutral players. So I moved two jumps out to a quieter system and started running sites.

In total, I spent about 5 hours ratting over a couple of nights and finished 5 combat anomalies (4 Havens, 1 Forsaken Hub and 1 Sanctum). In total, I got 169 mil in bounties + 65 mil ISK in loot, which comes to around 45 mil ISK/hour. Most of the loot came from a single Dread Guristas Stasis Webifier that dropped in one of the Havens. If you exclude this lucky drop from the total, I still made 36 mil ISK/hour. This value includes all travel time to get to the ratting systems, time I spent docked up when a neutral player entered the system and Pandemic Horde’s 10% ratting tax.

Horde’s ratting space is actually very busy and lots of neutral players roam the systems in search of easy targets, so I needed to warp off quite some times and sometimes even had to stay docked for a couple of minutes before the neutral player left the system. The only thing I lost however, was a single MTU that I left in a Haven.

In general, ratting in a VNI is mainly an afk activity. Just watch local for neutral players and manually kill battlecruisers and cruiser if a wave contains too many of them. It only happened once that I needed to warp off to regenerate shields. The number of NPCs in a wave is a little random and occasionally there are big waves, that contain a lot of ships and need manual target selection.

The loot from the wrecks is only 3-5 mil ISK for each site. So it might not be worth to risk an MTUs for that. However, if you get a random faction NPC spawn and don’t notice it, the MTU will collect your expensive loot automatically (which happened to me btw).

After my first experiences, I had the idea to multibox VNIs with three characters, which turned out to be not too hard. The two new VNIs cost another 230 mil in Jita and I started to run Havens with three ships in the same anomaly. This requires a lot more clicking, because now only the drones of the VNI that is attacked by the NPCs attack automatically. The other two sets of drones need to be controlled manually. Another problem with three ships is to warp them out fast enough when a neutral player enters system. It takes a while to go to all three screens, recall your drones, select a friendly citadel and then hit the warp button. I lost one VNI against a neutral tackle interceptor followed by a cloaky Loki that way.

However, with a little more than 3 hours spent ratting on 3 characters I made 280 mil ISK in bounties and 40 mil ISK in loot (9 Havens in total) . This comes to 105 mil ISK/hour, so the income scales very nicely with three characters compared to one without faction spawns and escalations. You can finish a Haven in about 15 min if you can do it without interruption.

But on top of that I managed to get two “The Maze”-escalations which were quickly sold to Hord’s escalation running team for an amazing 445 million ISK in total.

If you calculate this into the hourly rate, it goes up to 255 mil ISK / hour.

I want to finish my report with that staggering number. As you can see VNI ratting is a great way to make isk with little investment. Even as an experienced player with multiple accounts, there it still is a good amount of isk to be made relatively safely.