Ninjering 101: Flags and Timers and Such

Ninjering 101 covers basic techniques that all ninjas should master. Stuff like using scan probes, fitting a salvage ship and rudimentary combat. And not talking in local. Please. Never talk in local. This one is about timers and flags and such. Also, someone gets blown up \o/

Fighting in High Sec is a fairly unique experience in EVE, especially in the densely populated areas which we frequent. A bit of situational awareness and a knowledge of game mechanics go a long way towards making you a more proficient warrior in this battlescape. Or rather, a slightly less terrible player. Yesterday I fought a Scorpion Navy Issue and the outcome was decided by game mechanics rather than brute DPS. I'll take you through the fight blow by blow and explain what's going on. Grab a coffee. Pay attention. There will be an exam.

Sitting comfy? Let's get started.

Once upon a time in Aunia

The day found me in the lovely system of Aunia, stripping wreck fields in a triple-salvager Probe named Vicky. I was trying to work out how much ISK per hour a newbie might make in this profession (it's about 20-30 million) when a fellow by the name of Zarbow decided to take offense and throw a few cruise missiles my way. How rude! I promptly spooled up Vicky's warp drive to dock in Aunia's one station and fetch my trusty Cynabal Marilyn. As I landed, however, so did Zarbow.

Mechanics: Weapons flags and docking radius. Zarbow was under a 60-second weapons flag and unable to dock. We were both within docking range of the station.
Problem: Although Zarbow could not dock and get to safety for another 45 seconds at least, I was not in a combat ship. I'd have to dock, board Marilyn, undock and engage. He might warp off while I was docking and I would not be able to tell where to. If he stuck around, I would then have to melt Zarbow within the remaining ~30 seconds before he could dock. I would incur a 60-second weapons flag myself which could be a problem if any of the half a dozen neutral onlookers decided to take a swing at me.
Options: I could either get Marilyn out and try for the kill, or attempt to lure Zarbow back to a more favorable battlefield.

I really didn't want to engage on the station so I swung Vicky around again and returned to the mission. Zarbow had shot me once and gotten away with it – he would likely shoot me again. To my surprise he landed back in the mission very shortly after me, with three minutes left on the Limited Engagement timer. An engagement in a mission pocket was much more to my advantage. So I brought Marilyn out of the Aunia undock and promptly mis-warped her, landing 90km away from Zarbow. I cursed, kicked in the microwarp drive and burned for Zarbow as quick as I could. Zarbow opened up on me once more. That's when the mission rats decided they wanted to play too.

Mechanics: Mission rat AI and missile damage calculation. Missiles do damage based on the target's speed (slower target = more damage) and signature radius (larger radius = more damage).
Problem: The pocket turned against me and I was hit by a battleship rat and a statis webifier. This slowed me down significantly, while my MWD was still ballooning my signature radius. With Zarbow's own target painters adding to my signature radius even more, his cruise missiles were hitting me pretty hard and so were the rat's.
Options: Hang on and call for backup or break off and try again.

Although Zarbow had proven susceptible to being baited back into a fight (and had just reset our five minute LE flag), I had shown my hand by showing up in a Cynabal instead of a Probe and that significantly decreased the likelyhood of him sticking around. I called for backup and soldiered on. After landing point on Zarbow I got into orbit, switched off my MWD to get rid of that awful signature bloom, and started laying into his shields and capacitor.

Leffy had to jump two gates to get to Aunia and landed his Osprey 90km away from us. There was something funny about the warpin in this pocket. My shields were beginning to buckle. Zarbow 's active tank was breaking under my energy neutralizer, but he still had a battleship's worth of armor and hull for me to chew through. Marilyn – being only a cruiser, after all – would be fairly short work once her shields gave out. Leffy was closing in but not fast enough. I broke off as I hit 50% armor and approached Leffy for a few quick licks of RR. Zarbow warped just before I could re-establish point.

And I forgot to take screenshots, so here's a picture of a sexy ninja lady. That should up my Google traffic a bit.

Hah! Caught you Googling for ninja porn. Pervert.

I followed Zarbow to the station and saw him warp away again as I landed, this time towards the Auvergne stargate. Marilyn may not tank missions very well but she aligns like a boss and I caught up with Zarbow on the stargate, both of us still under about 30 seconds of weapons timer. This left us in a similar situation as earlier on the station, except now we were both low on our tanks.

Mechanics: Weapons flags not only prevent you from docking, but also from using a stargate.
Problem: There was only a short while left on the timer and Zarbow had had the opportunity to recharge his capacitor and get a few shield boost cycles in. He might be able to tank it out.
Options: Engage Zarbow on the gate and hope that he'd either break before the timer ran out or re-aggress. Alternatively, sit there staring at each other and see what his next move would be.

Zarbow had now felt the sting of Marilyn, seen Leffy's RR, and fixed himself firmly on bravely running away. His options were many. He could jump the gate to Auvergne, warp to a random moon where I'd be hard-pressed to find him, or even warp back to station and dock. Under these circumstances I chose to fight it out on the gate. To my delight he shot back – resetting his 60-second weapons flag and sealing his fate.

Indeed there was.

Conclusion

Not every mission runner gank is a clean story of warp in, grab point and melt bear. In more complex scenarios it pays to be aware of game mechanics such as suspect flags, weapons flags and how they limit the options available to both yourself and your prey. CCP has made this relatively easy by displaying the flags accurately and prominently in the top-left of your screen, and by providing a very thorough devblog on how they work. So here's your homework, kids: read that devblog carefully, think of how it affects our line of work, then read it again and again until you know the flags by heart. Some day it's going to make the difference between blowing up a shiny faction battleship and being left stranded on a stargate.

Ninjering 101: Fearless

Ninjering 101 covers basic techniques that all ninjas should master. Stuff like using scan probes, fitting a salvage ship and rudimentary combat. And not talking in local. Please. Never talk in local. This one is about not being afraid of getting your ship blown up.

Baby's first kill

When I took my first steps on the path to hilarity, I started asking for fitting advice on kill ships in the Ninja Dojo public chat channel. I got some fits linked to me and noticed a lot of T2 modules. It would take me months to train for all that. Wide-eyed, I asked: "Can I fit it with T1 mods instead?" The response: "LOL nothing works with T1." I, however, was undaunted. Well OK, I was a little daunted, but I spent my hard-stolen ISK on a Harbinger anyway, threw the best T1 gear on it I could afford, and lo and behold – I killed my first Battlecruiser the next day.

Baby ninjas are kinda cute, no?

Not long after that, I lost that firstHarbinger. It hurt. 60 million ISK represented pretty much my entire liquid capital at the time and I was decidedly space-poor once I had replaced the ship. But I had learned some important lessons about this silly profession of ours which convinced me that carrying on was the right thing to do. And from the dizzying heights of mediocrity where I now dwell, I'd like to pass those lessons on to you.

Being on top

What you want to keep in mind is that nine times out of ten, the mission runner you're baiting is not prepared for a fight. His ship is not equipped for it. His mindset is not suited to it. He has no friends to back him up and, frankly, doesn't really understand what's happening to him in the first place. By taking advantage of your prey's shortcomings you can punch well above your weight. And I mean well above. If you have a couple of months of skills in the right places, you can go toe-to-toe with 2004-born characters in faction battleships and come out victoriously.

It's all about getting your kill ship set up for the task. Suddenly Ninjas alumni Solomar Espersei once wrote a fine (and still valid) guide on the Hurricane, which remains the go-to ninja kill ship today. 9/19/2012 NINJA EDIT: CCP Fozzy has just announced a significant nerf to the Hurricane's powergrid which will make Solomar's fit impossible. Click here for MN's thoughts. But any Battlecruiser hull fit properly can do the trick because your advantage over most mission runners is just unbelievably huge. Here are the things you'll need:

• Tackle. This includes first and foremost a warp jammer. Most ninjas favor the Warp Disruptor for its extended range, but a Warp Scrambler can work too and has the added advantage of shutting down a target's Microwarp Drive. You'll probably want to bring a Stasis Webifier as well to prevent the target from outrunning you, especially if you're in a slow ship like the 'Cane or the Harbinger.
• Propulsion. You can't tackle very well if you can't get close to your enemy, so make sure you throw at least a 10mn Afterburner on your ship. If you can fit it, a 10mn Microwarp Drive is even better.
• Neuts. Most mission runners have active tanks (ie. Armor Repairers, Shield Boosters, or – in some hilarious cases – Hull Repairers.) These are very cap-hungry and a pair of Medium Energy Neutralizers can effectively shut down their ability to absorb damage. Notice that neuts are cap-hungry devices too, so getting your Energy Emission Systems skill up to IV should be a priority.
• DPS. Damage Per Second, that is, the amount of hurt your weapon systems throw out measured over time. This is actually not as important as you may think. A fairly modest amount of DPS will kill a passive tank given enough time, and an active tank should already be down because of the aforementioned neuts.
• Passive Tank. Given that you'll often be fighting bigger, heavier-hitting ships than your own, a solid buffer tank (ie. Shield Extenders or a big Armor Plate, supported by a Damage Control Unit and relevant resistance enhancers and rigs) is needed to give you the time you need to burn your opponent down.
• Cap Booster. Running tackle, neuts, weapons and probably a propulsion mod (afterburner or MWD) is going to drain your capacitor in a hurry. Don't compromise too much on your own tank or firepower by trying to fit a lot of capacitor mods: just drop a Capacitor Booster a mid slot and be done with it.

And that's it. Don't fit anything on your ship that does not aid one of the roles above. Don't try to be cute with ECM or Nanofiber Hull Upgrades or Sensor Boosters. They have their place in more advanced or experimental ship fittings, but for a basic kill ship, the above set will be fine. You can, however, add drones to taste. Getting your drone skills up to the point where you can operate Tech 2 scout and medium drones is a surprisingly short train for a surprisingly large improvement in DPS.

Pew pew! Zap!

Be fearless

The final thing to do is to take the fear of loss out of your mind, and to focus on getting your kill ship fitted out as soon as possible. Don't fret over T2 mods, run with T1s where you need to. You'll do fine. If things do go south in a fight, just warp off! Proper mission runners never fit a warp jammer of any kind so you're free to leave whenever you want. And if you get caught by a PVP ship? Well, that's your one out of ten. It happens. Re-ship and carry on.

To make things a little more interesting I would like to announce the following competition to all new Suddenly Ninjas members: the first one's on the house. That is, the first one of you who's been in corp for less than three months and gets his kill ship, fitted to this article's specifications, blown up by a mission runner will have it replaced by me. All I require is your lossmail and a little write-up of the incidet sent to my EVE-mailbox.

Now get out there and get shot at!

Ninjering 101: Probing

Ninjering 101 covers basic techniques that all ninjas should master. Stuff like using scan probes, fitting a salvage ship and rudimentary combat. And not talking in local. Please. Never talk in local. This one is about using probes to scan down mission runners. And it has video!

A thousand words

This is a lazy post. I could go on and on about the finer points of using scanner probes, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So a movie must be several million of them. My good friend Leffy produced the following scanning tutorial using the most up-to-date technique, the seven probe method:

Watch it in 1080p full-screen.

There are a number of things I should add for your understanding:

• A lot of the material on probing you'll find out on the internet today is out of date, based on older iterations of the system. There were weird mechanics whereby using four probes gave you better hits than using six, or where hit brackets would already give away the type of signal you were after. All that is now bunk.
  
  
• Make sure you either switch off any scan filters you have, or set them up sensibly. Using a bad filter will cause hits to disappear from your scanner if their type is identified as one you're not interested in, resulting in you chasing ghosts.
  
  

  

  Right-click that button to open the filter settings.

  
  
  
• You may have read things about using the D-scanner to check hits before warping to them, or ship-scanning and tracking mission runners from their mission hub to their destination before probing them down. I would advise you not to waste your time on such things. Quantity has a quality of its own and the best way to get lots of hits is to sit in a busy system and just probe, probe, probe.