A Pirates idea of Camping

Now in Oulley, there is not a lot to do. There are only 6 belts, 6 moons and a few anomalies.

There are two gates however. One leads to the Hi Sec system, Orvolle the other to a long chain of Low sec systems.
As such its a conduit to and from safe space, and sees a lot of passing traffic.

As such, its gate camped, often one or both, depending on the amount of people available.

You may be lucky however, so bring that Freighter along, any prime time you fancy. We will make you welcome. Honest. There may be cake.

Now, I log in and join some others on the Orvolle gate in my new shiny Proteus... I immediately get told to go away, and come back in a battle cruiser. It was not however that polite, everyone in the alliance is an adult and from about a dozen different countries. Some of the comments are quite inventive. This is after all EVE.

Now this is, apparently very sensible, as me being in a ship that costs the same as any 4 of theirs makes the gate camp a good target for a hot drop. and a hot drop is bad.

Hot Drop ---

If you are going to do one....

Fit a ship with a cyno field and tackle and some tank and drive around dumbly until you find a nice big target. Tackle them and activate (light) the cyno beacon. All your mates then appear and kill everything around. Nearly always will you lose the cyno ship, as once the beacon is lit then you cannot move or anything. Very dangerous for the cyno pilot. Use a throw away newbie frigate or a brick tanked cruiser or above.

If you have it done to you....
1. Die messily.
2. Kill the cyno pilot before it can activate.
3. Scatter at the first sight of one. They then have wasted the fuel. Then hide like quivering jellies in the station until they go.
4. Re-ship into a fighting ship and maybe die.
5. Wake up in a goo vat.
6. If not 1 or 5 then offer suitable praise to Bob.

Option 2 is preferred, but option 3 more normal.

So I nip back to station where one of the older and wiser members gives me a Gnosis. A 60 million ship, to play with. Free. Christmas. Early.Wow.

The beauty of this ship is that anyone can fly it, its easy to fit, any weapon system (except drones) works as well as any others, and its versatile.

Now i opted for
High Slots
5x 250mm Railgun II's with Fed Navy Antimatter (its cheaper out this way than the other variants)
Empty slot.

Medium
Tracking Computer II (Tracking Speed Script)
Faint Warp Disruptor
3x Sensor Booster II (Scan resolution script)
10mn Afterburner II

Low
800mm Reinforced Steel plates II
2 x Magnetic Field Stabiliser II
Damage Control II
2 x Energised Adaptive Nano Membrane

Trimarks in the rig Slots

and Hammerhead II's in the drone bay.

Now This is armour tanked, makes complete sense on a gate camp in low sec. In a fleet or for solo pvp or missions this I suspect would die fairly fast. Any damage is repaired in station.

Gate camps Oulley style often consist of 2-10 ships. Normally all Gnosis, but other battle cruisers are welcome. The idea is to sit at roughly zero on gate, and anyone who jumps into system gets targeted and shot. Then everyone has to warp out to avoid the gate guns fire, and return for the next one.
Rules
1. Do not shoot Blues.
2. Be on voice communication.
3. See 1.

Very simple.

Saying that it took me a while to hit anything.
The third target had just been killed when I realised that my safety interlocks were on green... I was stopping myself shooting. I was not impressed, and like all good workmen, promptly blamed my tools. Then threw them out of the pram and had a cup of tea.

Once fixed, I managed to hit and damage a Punisher, a Tristan, and two pods. I still missed several ships that I really should have been able to hit. This was still more kills than I had had for the last 6 months.

Overview issues again.
Gate Camps call for a specialised set up. So specialised that it warrants its own tab. Basically create a new tab with a right click. Call it Gate Camp or whatever floats your boat.
Then open overview options and uncheck everything. So nothing shows. Then check every ship in the ship section.
Then importantly on the next tab, exclude fleet and blue (so Corp and Alliance).
This will give you a blank sheet until something jumps in, and then the deceased is the only one to select from.... no messing with celestial's, drones, wrecks and other clutter to find your target. Seconds count.

Also pre activate your modules. Have the sensor boosters, tracking modules, damage control + any other active modules active. You will not have time to manually activate, and if you are at all cap stable there is no downside.

Now a trick.
Click on your weapons, your point/scram, web, ECM, whatever else you have that targets the hostiles. All these modules will flash and do nothing else.
When the target appears on your overview you mouse click it or hit the control key(depending on keyboard setup). This then auto targets and activates the modules as soon as they can be....

This is powerful, as you do not need to target, click weapons, click point, click web etc. (or key equivalents), one action does the lot.
Very good.
HOWEVER
It does this WHATEVER you click on. If on screen, you mouse over the gate to check distance, or a college to check you are out of smart bomb range and accidentally click on them? Well then they are then targeted, pointed, webbed and shot.
Its a way to win friends I suppose....

I did shoot the gate that way. Gate guns had me into armour before I could warp off.


Gate guns are the reason that you have to have a bigger ship and a tank. They seem to do about 350 dps (damage per second) to me. If your combat time and warp time is 10 seconds that's 3500 damage, so most frigates and destroyers will pop.

More later

And thank you for the comments via both the blog and eve mail. Its good to know people actually read this.

John