Bumping: Ramming ships like the Romans did
Bumping is the bane of any Freighter pilot’s life. Essentially it means ramming a target ship with yours. This knocks the target off their alignment, and prevents them from warping. Importantly, this act does not trigger any suspect or criminal timer with Concord, meaning that a persistent bumper can keep a ship from warping effectively indefinitely.
-[EVE University Wiki]
Ships that bump should be fast, have high mass and good tank - and this is why the Machariel has been used for this tactic quite often and successfully.
Avoiding bumps e.g. as a hauler is not easy, but a webbing alt helps as does scouting and keeping eyes open. After getting bumped, you can immediately log out or have alt ships ready to counter the bumper and the gank fleet he is working with.Also see: Suicide Ganking (Eve Uni).
An interesting post by katherinesilens and the discussion concerning bumping and tactics to counter it can be found over at r/eve (reddit) and is reposted here with permission:
-[EVE University Wiki]
Ships that bump should be fast, have high mass and good tank - and this is why the Machariel has been used for this tactic quite often and successfully.
Avoiding bumps e.g. as a hauler is not easy, but a webbing alt helps as does scouting and keeping eyes open. After getting bumped, you can immediately log out or have alt ships ready to counter the bumper and the gank fleet he is working with.Also see: Suicide Ganking (Eve Uni).
An interesting post by katherinesilens and the discussion concerning bumping and tactics to counter it can be found over at r/eve (reddit) and is reposted here with permission:
About Bumping (katherinesilens)
As
a freighter pilot: it is fine.
I
don't get what is with all these salt threads lately. Here's the 3
most common arguments and objections to them.
Bumping is Risk-Free
It
is not. Any ship in space is at risk. Machariels are pretty damn
expensive, you know, even after insurance. Did you know that bump
Machariels are quite lightly tanked?
If
you want to verify this, use a ship scanner on a Machariel doing a
bump. Keep scanning until you catch the entire fit. It's quite thin,
you see? At least, thin for your average pirate BS tank.
Taking Advantage of Bumper Risk
Here's
an idea. Gank
the fucking Machariel.
It works pretty well. Remember Burn Jita? PL
killed off some bumpers,forcing
them to reship into stuff like Typhoons, which are vastly inferior
bumping ships. Some of the Machariels even dropped a decent amount of
loot too.
If
you don't have the pilots and dps to kill it (doesn't take a lot, use
Talos or Hecate) then you can even go suicide a tackle Daredevil into
it or something to stop it in its tracks while the freighter catches
a breath.
Fuck,
even get a 500mn Stabber or something and bump the bumper if you're
super spacepoor. If you're even poorer or newer than that and still
want to help, see the Counterplay section.
Bump Risk Reduction
This
is also a really ironic argument to make considering that bump and
gank is basically the only way to catch and kill a freighter in
highsec, especially for characters with low standing. In other words,
it is one of the few sources of risk for freighter pilots. Don't
expect to be able to fly lazily through space and not be
at risk.
The
process of bumping and ganking typically begins long before. You can
avoid bumping entirely. See Counterplay.
Bumping is Not Intended Gameplay
There
is a lot of gameplay that is not intended, but clever use of
mechanics that is allowed. In the end, players define what can and
cannot be done, and short of exploits and frivolous lag generation
(as a denial of service), what they do within legal bounds of game
mechanics is fine. If CCP didn't like it they would say so; all it
takes is for them to post, "Exploit Notification: Repeated Ship
Collision to Prevent Warp" and it'd all be doubtlessly wrong.
Furthermore, you're not CCP, so how do you presume to know the limits
of their intent?
Intent
also doesn't matter. Players have augmented the game experience by
taking advantage of intended game mechanics for unintended
consequences. Examples of unintended gameplay:
-
Travelceptors and travelcates. Much of their uncatchability stems from the 1Hz server tick.
-
Higgs rigged rolling. Higgs rigs were intended for mining aligned. Instead they are used for rolling wormholes with their extra mass.
-
Pipebombing. Even though this is smartbombs being used for the intended purpose of doing damage, I'll throw this one in there because I strongly doubt that CCP envisioned fleets of nothing but bombing battleships.
-
MWD-Cloak trick. Used for moving non-insta ships around with much lower risk. Takes advantage of velocity and warp mechanics.
-
Instawarp webbing. Don't know what it is? See Counterplay.
Bumping Has No Counterplay
This
is very very very wrong and I'm tired of having to explain this.
Don't be a fucking dumbass, freighter pilots, and you'll die a lot
less.
Active Bumping Counters
Let's
look at how bumping works.
In
order for a ship to warp, the component of its velocity in the
direction of its warp destination must be 75% of the ship's max
velocity.
The
goal of bumping is to ensure this never happens. Ram the target so
hard and in such a way that they cannot realign before you hit them
again. Freighters are fat and have terrible speed so this isn't too
difficult.
Webbing Alts
The
best way to avoid ganks altogether is to not be there. You can use
the same mechanics as bumping to get a freighter to warp in 2-3
seconds. Essentially, webs reduce max velocity, so if you hit a
freighter with enough webbing power, its max velocity drops to very
low. The tiny amount of velocity it has already accumulated in the
first second or two then becomes over 75% of its max, and it's
instantly off.
Generally
the threshold is 3x T2/meta webs from a normal ship, or 2x from a
well-skilled Serpentis ship. However long webs are generally prized
over strong ones because freighters will often be out of range
otherwise. The best ships for this in descending order are therefore
the Rapier, Huginn, Loki, Hyena, Vigil Fleet, Ashimmu, Enforcer,
Vigilant, Daredevil.
The
procedure is this:
-
Put your webber in fleet with the freighter, in command of it. Set the webber to not accept fleet warp. Start a duel if needed.
-
When you warp to a gate, both ships jump. Or you can make the freighter wait if you prefer checking first with the webber, and jump when it looks safe.
-
Webber reapproaches gate, turns on sensor boosters if it has any. Freighter does not move.
-
The webber selects the outbound gate, then switches to a dedicated overview tab with only blue freighters.
-
Pre-click all of the webs. Right click the outbound gate in the Selected Item dialog and select warp fleet. Then spam click at the very top of the overview.
-
The freighter will begin warp and decloak from the warp fleet command, and appear at the top of the overview where you are clicking. Because your webs are pre-activated, clicking on the freighter automatically begins the lock, and webs will apply as soon as the lock finishes.
-
Webs should hit almost immediately and your freighter will go into warp. If it is out of range (worst case) overheat and approach, spamming webs on. Then go train up for longer web range, scrub.
-
While in warp, remember to select "jump" on the freighter if you want it to jump on landing. Don't forget to warp your webber (it will not follow the fleet warp) and it'll have a weapons timer, so you may have to wait for that to expire in order to jump it through the next gate.
Note
that webs are offensive. Your webber and your freighter must be able
to shoot each other; this means you are in a 1-man friendly fire corp
together, you duel (most common), or if you're into it, a war between
1-man corps can work too. Always have duel auto-reject on the
freighter, and use the freighter to duel the webber beforehand.
Absolutely do not accept duels from randoms, like that "friendly"
neighborhood hyena conveniently orbiting you.
The
counter to web alts is having a suicide tackle (usually something
like a Blackbird) lock faster than the webber and disrupt before it
can go. You can get around this by having higher scan resolution than
the tackle so you lock faster.
If
you mess up and do get bumped, the webber is still helpful because it
can help cut velocity at critical times during the bump to reduce
effectiveness, or by burning forward for warpin. And even beyond
safety considerations, webs are nice because they cut out a big
portion of travel time--more hauling/hr for you.
Of
note here is the Bowhead and Orca. Although it's less safe, you can
travel decently fast with a 500mn y-t8 microwarpdrive. When you warp,
turn it on and off. When the cycle ends, you warp, so there's only a
10s window to bump you. Other subcapitals can add a cloak for safety
(google MWD-Cloak trick) but they're usually not subject to bumps.
edit: Mechanics
note.
I may have gotten the underlying mechanic explanation wrong, although
the observed effect is still an immediate warp!
Forward Pings
What
if you turn he game on its head so that the Mach is not bumping
you away from
where you want to go, but rather towards?
The answer is that you warp off instantly. Thanks, Mr. Bumper!
A
great way to do this is to have a whole bunch of bookmarks in every
conceivable direction around common bump-gank gates. Getting bumped?
No problem! Ctrl-space to cancel your warp. Just switch to Tactical
view and look at the little blue arrow for your ship velocity. Which
bookmark is it pointing close to? Try warping there. Even though
freighters are slow, a buffer of several hundred km is more than
enough to warp off before that Mach reaches you again. Bonus if you
have extra layers of even deeper bookmarks in case it does. In lieu
of bookmarks, you can also use celestials, other gates, and
structures like stations--the latter two of which are great because
you can generally jump/dock to safety. Honestly if the anti-ganking
community had any collective money the best thing they could do would
be to spam freeport raitarus in dead zones around gates, but mostly
they seem to sit around and do cringy RP. Or welp T3s.
Note
that this is countered by combat scanner probes. However, not a lot
of bumpers have them on hand. Even if they do, it's a pain to keep
scanning and chasing you down, and if you have a webber alt, you can
make it nearly impossible to hold you because you will have very low
effective align time.
Edit:
apparently a lot of Machs have them. Personally I've never been
scanned down so maybe they're just bad with them?
It
takes some time to prep but if it saves you, it's worth it. Also,
anyone can help! By flying a fast frigate or well-positioned cloaky
ship, you can become a living ping that a freighter can warp to.
Players fresh out of the tutorial can even contribute in this way;
get in the freighter's fleet and just keep flying in the direction
the freighter's being bumped in with a microwarpdrive. It's a common
interceptor role in nullsec.
Suicide Alts
This
isn't so much a bump counter as a gank counter, but if you get a
cheap ship (even a corvette will do) and tag along with the
freighter, you can reduce the time window of the gank by a few
critical seconds.
Set
safety red. If you see a gank fleet landing or on very short dscan,
just pop a shot off at the freighter. It'll pull CONCORD on grid
earlier or force a gank fleet to re-pull CONCORD. Of course you die,
so dock up to reship and log onto another character on the account
for the 15 minute criminal cycle so they can do the same thing. Since
Corvettes are free and you can cycle free characters, this is a very
cost-effective solution Combined with logi to rep up between failed
ganks, you can stay alive like this.
JK,
CONCORD is single-target. Not worth unless you're dealing with very
small gank groups, like triple cat. Thanks for the correction!
Combat Logging
If
you log off, you emergency warp 1m km off and disappear. Some
freighter pilots elect to log off when bumped and it works sometimes,
but you're essentially at the mercy of the bumper and there's plenty
of counter to it. They can welp suicide corvettes into you to keep
you timer'd up, and I think there's even something about fleet
tagging that prevents e-warp.
If
you must do this, safelogging is the best way to do this. Stop your
ship if you're issuing a navigation command, and right click your
capacitor > Log Off Safely (near the bottom). You're still at the
helm, and it'll count down. At the end of which, you just disappear
and I don't think anyone can stop you. This process can be aborted by
either suicide tagging or locking you. If you are being locked, you
can't do it. Log back in when it looks clearer.
Taking Advantage of Others' Misery
Gank
fleets have finite amount of power. If another freighter is being
bumped off of gate and there's no bumpers on the gate, well, just go
through. They're probably preoccupied with their target. Take
advantage of the fact that someone less tanky and more expensive than
you is about to be a target to make your getaway. ))
Gank Avoidance Begins In Station
What
follows from here is basically Freighter Piloting 101 because not
dying is pretty fundamental to getting things moved.
Even
though CODE likes to roleplay about highsec domination, the
fundamental driver of suicide ganking, like most activities in EVE is
fun and profit. You can at least ensure it is not profitable to gank
you. On a similar note, do not pay ransoms to bumpers; if you're
worth ganking, they have no incentive to honor the payment.
Limit
your cargo. The
value that drops is 50% of your cargo and fittings. Don't fit or
carry more than you can afford to lose. If you're new to freighters
and doing public courier contracts, an easy way to do this is to
simply not have the isk to accept too much collateral. Send
extras/profits to your alt or something so you won't be tempted by
that 5b contract you're not ready for. I recommend new freighter
pilots filter contracts that carry no more than they can while fit
with 3x Type-D Restrained Reinforced Bulkheads (430k km3 for Obelisk
IV, 470 km3 for Obelisk V), and limit their total collateral to 1.2
billion.
There
are only three cases where value goes out the window.
-
Burn Jita. If you haul during BJ, make sure you're right at downtime or in some backwoods system.
-
Don't get on people's shit lists, be nice. Remember that salt is a valuable commodity, don't drop it.
-
Don't be at war/suspect/facpo'd/permaflashy either because, spoilers, freighter vs anything, the freighter dies.
Tank
yourself. Fit
the greatest tank possible for the volume of cargo you carry. Every
time I see a freighter with three cargo expanders die to 10 bombers
while hauling a handful of blueprints, a part of me dies inside.
Seriously it's not fucking hard. There are a few main modules
freighters should even consider fitting.
Jump freighters have some more but if you're into JFs you should know
what you're doing. Here are the modules in descending order of
priority:
-
Reinforced Bulkhead II. These offer the greatest tank. They cut your cargo volume, but they're your default fitting. A triple bulked freighter is much a harder target than a triple expander one.
-
Type-D Restrained Reinforced Bulkhead. These offer the next best tank but cut your cargo capacity less. If you need a touch more cargo, consider swapping an RB2 for one of these.
-
Adaptive Nano Plating. True Sansha/Dark Blood if you can, Refuge or T2 if you can't. Increases armor belt resists, so better tank. Not as good of a tank bonus as bulkheads, but no cargo penalty.
-
Type-D Restrained Expanded Cargohold. Moderate tank penalty, but expands capacity.
-
Expanded Cargohold II. Greatest capacity bonus and greatest tank loss. If you fit these you better be sure about it.
Carry
a small freight container with 3x of each. Fit the combination that
maximizes your tank for the capacity you must carry. You may have to
mix and match bulkheads, expanders, and plating; note that there are
some fits that are strictly inferior to others (less tank and less
cargo). Because I'm a tryhard I made an in-game fit for every
possible combination of fit and listed them by their cargo capacity
and ehp, so whenever I need to expand I can just look up the optimal
combination. This is not necessary but makes refitting easier and
more accurate.
But
an easy rule. Need more cargo? Move a fitting down a grade. Have more
than enough cargo? Try move a fitting up a grade. Eventually you
arrive at something satisfactory.
Train
tank skills. Mechanics is a big one. Your armor belt is next best, so
skills like Hull Upgrades and the compensation skills are great. The
Masteries tab for a freighter is pretty on-point if you need more of
a guide.
If
you're flying an Amarr freighter or JF, one option is a deadspace
plating fit with high-grade slaves. Costly, but you get Bulkheaded
levels of tank with no cargo reduction. This however is a special
exception.
A
note on travel fits:
Do
not fit nanos. If you fit nanos to your freighter you're dumb and it
deserved to die. Nanos kill hull tank, which is your main tank.
If
you're looking for autopiloting speed (which is unadvisable) then the
most optimal combination is 1x Inertial Stabilizer II and 2x
Overdrive Injector System II. Neither of them kills your tank, and
Overdrives cut your cargo, but you shouldn't be hauling much if
anything while autopilot-speed fit. If you're at the keyboard, have
no webber, and just want to move, 3x Inertial Stabilizer fit is your
best bet. Warp gate to gate and don't stop. Personally though I don't
care about speed and if I need my freighter moved empty somewhere, I
go with 3x Bulkhead and autopilot while I go do something
entertaining. I know the risk and I accept it, and I would rather go
replace a freighter than babysit it for the very small chance it
dies.
Plan
your route. Keep
in mind that safe planning includes making a safe route. Do not
expect to go safely through fucking lowsec or null/wh in a freighter,
unless it is your space and you have immediate backup. If you do so
and die, don't say I didn't warn you.
Always
assume that you have been scanned. That everyone and their mother
knows your fit and cargo. Use insta-undocks and webbers to reduce
your chances, but fly like everyone knows.
Make
multiple trips if you have to. The annoyance is less than that of
losing a fully loaded freighter.
Keep
an eye out for 0.5/0.6 systems on your route, especially around
Niarja and Uedama. Don't be afraid to go the long way around or wait
until it's less risky. Watch the killboard and note not only the
day's killboard activity, but also the time on previous days. If you
have a good idea of when certain bumpers/gank groups/gank multiboxers
are active it helps. You can also get easy intel by creating an alpha
account with characters parked permanently in systems of interest;
just log off the freighter and log in the eyes whenever you want to
check.
If
you're not there, you can't be bumped or ganked.
A
note on citadels:
Also
worth mentioning here is citadel couriers. If you're thinking of
taking a courier contract with collateral and one of the endpoints is
a citadel:
-
Dock at a source citadel before accepting contracts from it.
-
Make sure you absolutely, without a shade of doubt, trust the desto. Check the owner every time to make sure it isn't an imposter, and check the services to make sure it isn't closed to docking.
tl;dr bumping
is fine, git gud
edit:
oh yeah, safelogging is a thing, derp. Thank you all for
contributing.
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