Ninjering 102: Ackbar

Ninjering 102 is not about how to probe mission runners, how to d-scan or how to fit a hilaricane. That would be 101. 102 is about some of the finer tricks of the trade. This one's about “Ackbar” ships and how you can bait and kill without needing to swap.

So, now that Retribution has failed to kill our profession and all the self-congratulatory bullshit is out of the way, it's time to return to our regular programming and talk tactics. Ninja salvaging with an eye to killing mission runners is a numbers game. Not many mission runners actually shoot at us, so the ones that do are precious. The most basic ninja tactic is to bait in a frigate, get shot at, warp out, dock up, grab a kill ship, warp back, then hope the mission runner is still there and will stick around long enough for you to get a point on him.

Shooty bears are precious!

Unfortunately, Retribution lowered the engagement timer to five minutes. That's not a lot of time. The mission runner is essentially in control of the engagement for the entire time until you're back in your death mobile and have him firmly tackled. All he needs to do is dock up for five minutes and the entire exercise has been futile. We used to get around that by fitting a point on our bait frigates and keeping the mission runner in place until an alt or a friend could bring us a kill ship to swap into. With the 60-second weapons timer now preventing you from ejecting, that got a whole lot harder (not impossible – but we're still working on that).

Project Cruiser and the Ackbar method

Way back in 2010, ninja celebrities Aiden Mourn and Solomar Espersei launched Project Cruiser. Mostly an exercise in finding a new challenge because Orca swapping was the near-infallible tactic of the time, Project Cruiser resulted in some very interesting fights that took mission runners by a whole new flavor suprise.

Oh no!

In ninja parlance, the tactics pioneered by Project Cruiser became known as “Ackbar”, after everyone's favorite space squid. Because it's a trap. You essentially invade the mission, loot the things, get shot, grab point and kill the mission runner with an all-in-one ship. It works fantastically well when it works, but it's a bit of a challenge. Cruisers – the only hull type with enough power to do this consistently while still looking fairly harmless – are generally easy pickings even for PVE-fit battlecruisers and battleships until you can tip the odds in your favor.

Revisiting Project Cruiser

Under Retribution's new Crimewatch system, Ackbar tactics have become a very desirable method of ninjering. Retribution also gave us some much-needed T1 cruiser overhauls. It's a perfect storm. As such, over the past weeks, I've been experimenting with new ships and fittings that can do the job. This has met with mixed success. So far I'm looking at four kills and two losses.

While both losses can be chalked up to pilot error (derp), they do show the weakness of the Ackbar tactic: it's hairy. Both Stabbers were lost just seconds before RR landed on grid, klaxons blaring and modules overheating – great fun but a bit too unreliable! You'll also note that both cruisers are fairly expensive for what they do on account of the Ancillary Current Router rigs required to cram far too much stuff on them. I've since switched to a much more Powergrid-friendly active shield tank and a rack of Gyrostabilizers and that looks much better on paper.

Can I Ackbar?

This post is not about specific fits though – it's about the basics of the Ackbar method. Once I get a few good fits hammered out, those will go in a post of their own. If you want to Ackbar you'll need the following:

1. High skills in Racial Cruiser, your weapon system of choice, fitting, capacitor and thermodynamics. Navigation helps too.
2. Deep enough pockets to stomach a few losses as you try out different fits.
3. A fair amount of confidence in your manual piloting and micromanagement skills. You need less of this if you have more of item 2).
4. Backup. Whether supplied by friends or alts, Ackbar ships really benefit from things like gang links and especially RR and cap transfer.
5. EFT-warrior skills. Remember that Meta 4 modules can often make a fit possible at only a slight loss in effectiveness over T2.

And that's *after* culling all the obvious failfits.

Ackbar is not restricted to T1 cruisers. Faction cruisers like the mighty Cynabal or T2 cruisers (especially of the Heavy Assault or Force Recon variety) can do the job just fine too. Better even, except for two things: they're more expensive to lose and they're more intimidating so they might not attract as much fire. Flying Ackbar involves a lot of compromise in fitting to achieve a sweet spot between speed, tank, DPS, cost and perceived threat. Good luck!

The Rumors of Our Demise

The Den collects articles of general wisdom, from philosophical musings to the examination of game mechanics, to simple tales of great hilarity. This one is about Retribution and how it has not quite managed to kill ninja salvaging as a profession.

Well it's certainly been an interesting few weeks! Retribution brought many changes to EVE Online. Of particular note to us are the new Crimewatch system, killrights and bounties, and the new mission AI. All of these would bring about the long-awaited end to ninja salvaging. Of course that didn't actually happen.

Yes we will, Gloria.

Crimewatch

Perhaps the biggest deal in Retribution for us, the new flagging system means that when we yoink someone's stuff, we become a legal target to everyone in EVE. This opens the door for white knights to come to a mission runner's rescue and violence our boats. I wrote about that last month and my sage predictions have so far come true. Eath that, Jester :-)

What did change is that two of our old tricks – in-situ ship swaps and aggro extention – no longer work. The Weapons flag means you can't eject from your ship for 60 seconds after running a hostile mod, like a warp disruptor, and that means no more quick jumps from a Slasher to a Hurricane. The cleaner Crimewatch flagging system also means that odd loopholes like resetting the combat timer by shooting a wreck are gone. It's back to basics for us.

Killrights and bounties

We can be short about killrights – they don't affect us at all. We operate under Suspect flags, not Criminal flags (the sort that get you Concordokkened) so we don't generate killrights. And bounties? Well, if anything, they make people more inclined to shoot us which is a good thing. Former corpie and ninja icon Waagstrom gave us a 250 million ISK corp bounty for Christmas which looks very sexy on our avatars. Thanks!

The predictable wave of frivolous 100k ISK bounties that has washed over New Eden in the new system has resulted in some great tears, mostly from people who don't understand the system and believe it makes them legal targets in High Sec. The common response to such complainers has been to put more bounties on them. They've become an excellent, cheap little trolling device.

Thank you Morbo.

New mission AI

I'm still not entirely sure how this thing works. There was a lot of brouhaha about different levels of AI in EVE and a sophisticated signature radius-based target selection system being implemented. Judging by the patch notes, somebody said "fuck it" and just slapped on the Sleeper AI instead. This has made mission rats jumpy and unable to focus. They switch targets seemingly at random, though they do seem to reserve a particular hatred for drones (with more rivers of salty tears emanating from lazy Dominix pilots who can no longer go fap while their drones finish the mission for them).

Yeah, it's a little tricky when a full room decides to direct its blind anger at the little ninja Slasher that just showed up, especially when EWAR is involved. But we've dealt with rat aggro before and a good speed tank, or a quick warpout and return, remains an excellent counter.

Odds and ends

Some other bits and bobs changed that weren't immediately apparent from the patch notes. One thing that's slightly hard to quantify is the new default overview settings for Suspects and people in a Limited Engagement (LE). The former is now flasy orange: not nearly as aggressive as the "corp red" of the past, this makes us somewhat less intimidating. Whether that's a good thing or not is hard to judge. People have been shooting us regardless. And the LE display color is something called "dark indigo," a friendly-looking greenish blue that inspires no sort of terror whatsoever. I suspect it will make the unwitting more likely to stick around in their missions after taking a shot. After all, that soothing dark indigo isn't going to hurt anyone, right?

But... It was indigo!

And then we come to perhaps the most exciting and somehow overlooked change in Retribution: legal pod killing. A Suspect, Criminal or LE opponent can now be podded without sec status hits or CONCORD intervention. As such we've been separating triggerhappy mission runners not only from their pimped-up boats, but also from their expensive old clones and shiny implants. Make sure you add "biomass" to your overviews, folks – CCP gave us an early Christmas present!