Surviving a gate camp
Silly bubbles
Having resided in 0.0 space for nearly two years, I can tell you that it is not as scary as you may think. The most intimidating thing for players trying to catch some of the action is getting there. If you’ve been thinking about moving your corporation or yourself, the initial jump into the lawless regions of New Eden is usually guarded by an angry host. Gate campers come in almost every class of ship, from all types of corporations, and their goal is your cargo and your wreck. So how do you get past this initial hurdle? Here are a few basics that could help you survive a bad encounter with a shiny bubble.
Scouting – Gate camps are pretty constant, especially along the pipes that create a choke point around important systems or lead to empire space. If you’re taking yourself through for the first time, it is a great idea to hit F10 and open up your map. Show the number of players active in the past 30 minutes and note the amount in the system you are about to enter. Then show the number of ships destroyed in the past hour. You should get a pretty good idea, based on those two statistics, if the gate you want to travel through is camped. Smart campers use a covops or an alt of some sort to scout for them, remaining silent on the “friendly” side of the gate to warn them and provide intelligence on what is coming through. Sometimes this character is easy to spot, such as a newbie ship flown by a rookie hanging on the gate. Other times, like a covops, it is nearly impossible to find. Always assume that someone is watching you unless the system is empty. Once you feel pretty certain that a camp exists, what do you do?
You can bring your scan alt to the fight if you wish. Hop on another character and just jump through and see what is on the other side. Loosing your scan alt won’t be too much trouble, and you should be able to gather good intellingence as to the nature of the camp, number of people in local, etc. If that is not an option, get in a shuttle and go through. Why a shuttle? If there is a bubble on the other side, shuttles are faster than a pod and you can power to or away from the gate quicker than your pod can. They also warp very fast and are easily replaceable if destroyed.
Getting Through – When you’re ready to go through, see if some poor unsuspecting soul goes through before you and follow them. If there is a camp, they will uncloak first and probably get targeted first. That might buy you a few extra seconds. If you are the only one traveling that day and you go through and find yourself in a bubble, the best thing to do is stay cloaked. You have 30 seconds of cloak time and can look around to see what the camp looks like. Where are their ships? How big is the bubble? Where are you in relation to the hostiles? Using the initial time you have to gather intelligence is vital to your survival. It will allow you to make a calculated decision either to power re-approach the gate (kick in the MWD and go all out) or head for the edge of the bubble and try to warp away.
Since power re-approaching is pretty self explanatory, let us talk about getting to the edge of the bubble. Look for the edge of the bubble and see what point is not only closest, but is also relatively close to an object you can align and warp to. You do this by using those few precious seconds to zoom out so you can see the entire camp and the edges of the bubble. You want to find a planet, belt, something along the intended path so that once you hit the edge, you can warp relatively quickly.
Now, put your finger on the hotkey for your MWD or AB and get ready to double click in space. Go! Click on the celestial object you picked and start spamming the selection to warp to a distance (it’s a guessing game for them and can buy you time if you use a random distance rather the most common 0). Spam it, spam it, spam it. If you have EWAR, use it on anything that could be carrying a scrambler, disruptor, or webifier if they begin to target you. If you warp, congrats! You made it this far, so keep going.
Hitting that celestial object – On your way in warp, start looking for another place that looks easy to warp to and create a midsafe along your travel path. Why? Someone is probably coming after you and you want to keep moving. Get ready to warp someplace else and spam, spam, spam that command! If you get away again, they probably will give up. Make midsafes along the way and keep yourself moving until you feel comfortable that you’ve lost them. Then move on with your day and enjoy your time in 0.0.
Last but not least, don’t forget to stay calm! Loosing your mind and crying yourself to sleep on your keyboard will only get you killed. If you use these basic techniques, your odds of survival will increase. There are plenty of tactics and gate camp busting setups out there that can help. Don’t fly without doing your research and don’t forget to update your clone.
That’s great advice. Another thing that I’d add is when travelling along don’t assume that you can just warp to the next gate. There may be a bubble on the gate or a sucker bubble behind it that could ruin your day. Instead, warp to a nearby celestial and scan the gate to make sure its clear. Warping in from the celestial will also help you avoid sucker bubbles and other bubbles placed on the obvious flight path down the pipe.
For those who don’t know. Sucker bubbles are placed behind the gate in line with the gate you would be warping in from. Becuase they’re on your warp path they still pull you out of warp behind the gate.
Oh, and finally, if you’ve got one, a covert ops ship is definitely the best way to make your first foray into 0.0 space. You can make some bookmarks that will help you when its time to move in with your combat ships.
Since you’ve touched on bubble traps (or sucker bubbles as you call them) I’ll touch on them in a future post. There are a few conditions that must be met for your ship to be trapped by the bubble and plenty of ways around them to ensure safe travels.
Appreciate this immensly. Always been to scared to venture in but now with this, I feel in time i should be able to make the jump.
Great post. I’d add that if you’re in 0.0, you should ALWAYS fit an MWD. It may well save you in situations like this where you have to burn back to the gate and GTFO. An afterburner won’t cut it.
A very good guide dealing with gate camps. Thank you, sir.
Can you define the term “spamming the selection”, please?
Sure! Select the object you want to warp to and constantly click WARP TO AT X [distance] as you approach the edge of the bubble. This is “spamming” the WARP command. That way, as soon as you are at the edge, you will warp. Minimizing your time in the camp is the idea, and this will save you a precious second or two. There are pros and cons to each method of selecting WARP TO (on overview, right clicking the object in space, or right clicking in space) but the idea remains the same.
You’ve been pimped by Massively my friend!
whee! bubbles! good ol’ times in the north with insurgency. great write up on bubble camps – i’m always frightened by those scary ‘large mobile warp disruptors’ on scan, they’ve caused me a few deaths.