Thursday, November 29, 2012

EVE Fitting Tool and Ganker Training

I raised a few eyebrows the other day when I gave advance notice that the New Order will create an army of ganking alts. Some of you may have a lot of experience with suicide ganking miners in highsec. Many others have never ganked a miner before. In any case, I suspect quite a few of you have never created an alt specifically for the purpose. Personally, I haven't trained any skills in three years, so I'm a little rusty. I have possession of an old Gallente alt that I haven't used in a very long time. He had nothing trained, and basically never undocked in his nearly seven years of existence. He is now training to become a suicide ganker.

If you repeatedly gank targets in highsec, your security status will drop quickly--and far more quickly after the Winter Expansion (everyone who aggresses gets a penalty equivalent to destroying the target). After a few ganks, you won't be able to travel freely through highsec unless you go to nullsec and grind security status. That's a boring, time-intensive activity at best, and it sets a limit on gankers.

Our mission is to remove all limits on ganking miners. That's why our army will be comprised of Catalyst pilots who can operate with negative security status indefinitely. No grinding required. The alts we create will do nothing but kill miners, one after the other.

Hopefully you have heard of EVE Fitting Tool (EFT), which can be downloaded via that link. It's a simple program that allows you to see the stats for ships with different fittings, and see how skills change those stats. EFT is useful for preparing suicide ganks in two ways.


One way to use EFT to learn how many hitpoints your target may have. You can load up a Mackinaw, for example, and set the skills to "All Level V" and see a worst-case scenario. Pictured here, a Mackinaw has 14,625 hitpoints when taking resistances into account. I have set up a custom "hybrid" damage profile consisting of 50% thermic and 50% kinetic damage, since that's what our Catalysts' guns will inflict.

Potential gank targets should always be scanned to see if they have defense modules (like shield hardeners) fitted. If so, you can go to EFT and plug those in and see how they affect your target's hitpoints.


More importantly, EFT can help you plan and evaluate your new ganker alt. Pictured here is the most basic setup. It's as simple as it gets.


EFT shows you whether or not you can fit the modules with your current skills. You can easily import your current skills via an API, and you can also change skill levels manually to see what affect they would have. Here, the ganker alt has sufficient CPU and powergrid.

In the Winter Expansion, Catalysts will have more CPU and powergrid, so the above numbers will be out of date. Based on the figures released by CCP, you'll be able to create a new Gallente character and fit the basic setup after you train Destroyers I, Propulsion Jamming I, and Weapon Upgrades I, II, and III. That's right--less than a day of training! Currently Electronics IV is needed.


Sadly, the Babby Ganker has little firepower at his disposal. The top number is average damage per second (DPS). The bottom number is the average amount of damage of a single volley. Both figures are helpful. If you know how long Concord (or faction police) response time is, you can look at your guns' "duration", figure out how many volleys you fire (remember your first volley is fired immediately), and have a very good idea of how much damage you'll do.

DPS is not as accurate, but it's a decent measure of how powerful your ganker alt is. Fortunately, even fitting only tech I modules, your ganker can do much more damage with proper training.


Training Mechanics III, Jury Rigging I, II, and III, and Hybrid Weapon Rigging I will enable you to fit the small hybrid rigs (which are cheap). Currently you'll also need Engineering IV to make them fit, but it looks like that won't be the case after the Winter Expansion due to extra powergrid. For this demonstration, I also added Gunnery III and Rapid Firing I, II, and III. We've already made significant improvement without having trained any level IV skills.


If you're willing to put in additional training, you can steadily increase your damage. Pictured here, the ganker has trained Gunnery IV, which allows you to train Surgical Strike I, II, and III for 3% more damage per level. Small Hybrid Turret IV gives an additional 5%.

The flames next to each gun indicate overheating. The ability to overheat is the first real nuisance to train so far. It requires Engineering IV and V, Science IV, Energy Management I, II, and III, and Thermodynamics I. The good news is, overheating raises damage by about 15% at the press of a button (remember to press it).

With 317 DPS, we've improved by 70% on our freshly-minted ganker. More damage means fewer gankers are necessary to kill the target. Fewer gankers required means it's more likely you can scramble up the numbers. And that means more frequent gankings. But now we have approached the limits of what you can do without training toward tech II guns.


The tech II Magnetic Field Stabilizers require Weapon Upgrades IV. The guns require Small Hybrid Turret V, Motion Prediction I, II, and III, and Small Blaster Specialization I. I threw in Small Blaster Specialization II since it's a quick extra 2%, and Rapid Firing IV.

Note the big jump in DPS of 70% from the last picture. (Also note the use of tech II Void S ammo instead of Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S. Never forget the ammo.) This is nearly triple the 186 DPS that the Babby Ganker had.

The tech II ganker's kit is more expensive and requires more training time. Ideally you want to have enough tech I gankers in your gang to kill a Code-violating Mackinaw. But if you're short on DPS, or if you want a little extra certainty that your target is going to die, having a tech II ganker in your gang will be very useful. If your alt has the skills to fit tech II, it's a good idea to keep a set of both tech I and tech II modules in station so you can swap them out, depending on the needs of your ganker gang.

35 comments:

  1. James, is there any disadvantage to ganking from our main character?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. Each time you gank, your security status will drop. After enough ganks, you will not be able to move throughout highsec without faction police (though not Concord) automatically attacking you. If your security status is -5.0 or below, other players can also freely attack you. However, you will still be able to move about highsec in your pod, since faction police don't attack pods, and you warp too quickly for other players to catch you.

      Delete
    2. How does faction police response time compare to concord response time? I already have bad sec status and don't mind dropping it more.

      Delete
    3. In the future I'd like to fully document response times for faction police and (spawned and unspawned) Concord in 0.5, 0.6, and 0.7. My understanding is that faction police respond somewhat faster than Concord will if Concord are pre-spawned elsewhere in a 0.5 system, but probably the same as Concord in a 0.7 system. If so, faction police would really be a factor only in 0.5 and possibly 0.6, shaving off part of your attack time.

      Delete
    4. Sounds good. I also am in FW so the faction police will be after me anyways. We can try it with this toon, and if it's not working I'll make a new one.

      Delete
    5. Check your evemail James. I've sent you a link from Tippia's blog, which has already covered Concord response times.

      Delete
    6. Thanks for the link. I'm guessing her times were based on when Concord is already elsewhere in system. I remember ganking in Arvasaras, a 0.5 security system. Concord responded in 12 seconds unless it was elsewhere, in which case its response was roughly what Tippia noted for 0.5's.

      Delete
    7. The times shown in the graph are the base response times. If Concord are already in the system somewhere, it takes approximately 6 seconds extra for them to respond. Take note that if Concord are on the same grid as you, but more than 150km away, they will respond as if you were somewhere else in the system.

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Unless the guardian population in highsec dramatically increases, not-so-GG. ;)

      Delete
    2. Guardians can be jammed with a cheap Blackbird fit. Also Guardians rep doesn't take effect until the end of the cycle & by then the barge would already be dead.

      Delete
  3. Don't forget that you can also get a small boost through implants (or get that extra cpu/powergrid if needed) because CONCORD will not pop your pod. Just be careful with what you buy!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. On this note: 3% small hybrid turret and 1% surgical strike hardwirings are under 1 mil each. I'm guessing the surgical strike is preferable to the equivalent rate of fire hardwiring because the former affects volley damage incase you happen to be ganking with alpha.

      Delete
  4. In the winter expansion, there should be enough powergrid to fly a Catalyst with neutron blasters instead of ion cannon. Check the appended fit: it is low skill (no tech II items), and therefore very cheap. (3.86m in EFT.) And it gets 382 DPS. This could be boosted considerably by using tech II or overheating, but tech II is expensive and overheating is skill-intensive.

    The downside of this fit is that it cannot fit a warp scrambler. There will be a bit more CPU on Dec 4, but not that much more. But we don't need everyone to scramble -- just a few should be fine.

    [Catalyst, Ganker]
    Gauss Field Balancer I
    Gauss Field Balancer I
    Gauss Field Balancer I

    [empty med slot]
    [empty med slot]

    Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
    Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
    Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
    Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
    Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
    Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
    Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
    Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S

    Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
    Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
    [empty rig slot]

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The boosts to CPU/powergrid definitely look like they'll open up new possibilities for the use of meta gear. Your fit provides a whopping 50% bonus to damage over its regular t1 counterpart. I agree with you about the warp scrambler, as well. Of all the things that can go wrong with a gank, the scrambler's probably the least likely--so less need for redundancy.

      Delete
    2. I'm like -10 so fine doing this with my main anyway...I look forward to posts about how we will organize and manage the ganks with concord on our butts.

      Delete
  5. Faction police is not that big of a problem.

    There are several ways to do this.

    You can sit in a pod close to the ice belt docking a ship and go for it.
    Or undock the station and go for it.
    Or warp around and then go for it.

    You need to train yourself into the system but it wil tak just 2 or tries and then you probaly know how it goes.

    If we are going to do this we need some logistics providing ships ammo and modules.
    Neutral scouts that are cloaked and used for a warpin.
    Also we need to be in a fleet with a FC giving orders. And if the ship explodes the remaining suiciders could go for the pod.

    Ship scanners are also usefull.

    And you need to move you clone to the system for if you are getting podded.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Opportunistic traders will move ships, ammo & mods to the locations for you. You may pay more, but it beats hauling your own stuff around.

      Delete
    2. I imagine that in a gang of suicide catalysts, 1 or 2 will carry scramblers, maybe 1 will carry a web, and the rest will carry sebos to try and catch the pod. ?

      Delete
  6. You also need to factor in possible gang bonuses on the gankee side to be on the save side, when figuring out how much dps is needed

    ReplyDelete
  7. One of my shareholders has pointed us about this initiative... we want to provide help with the logistic part. We have to make some numbers, but I think we can provide Catalysts full fitted on any High Sec Station with enough advise. I'm thinking even to offer three different packs, a Tech I noob ganker Cat, a Tech I for more SP guys, and a Tech II, all with Faction Antimatter of Void S ammo.

    The packs will be offered at very good prices through contracts; may be will be a good idea to create a Corp for the gankers, so we can put one of our alts in that corp to offer corp contracts for the ships.

    Basically the pack will include:

    Catalyst
    8 guns
    Two rigs for weapon enhancement
    three lows for increased damage
    warp scrambler (this one possibly only in advanced Tech I and Tech II configuration).
    enough faction or Void S ammo for 4-5 fire rounds for each weapon (I do not think that will be enough time for more firing)
    a bunch of Tech I ammo (200 rounds, for example) just to have something if there is need to engage in 'normal' combat (against a miner defense party that engage first, for example).

    We have to round numbers, but count with really good prices. As a side note, we have enough hauling capability to move quickly even a hundred of them at once, using a freighter with a heavy cargo configured Iteron Mark V (30000M3 of cargo) in tandem for final positioning of the ships.

    James, I'll drop a evemail just to mention this post, feel free to ask any questions to me in game or here.

    Hail the New Order,

    Erikkha Desargues, CEO
    Desargues TechnoSystems Co.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting idea! I think perhaps the Tech1 ammo will be unnecessary, as most of the ganking alts will be operating with -5.0 and lower security status. There will be no feasible way to engage a 'miner defense fleet' in high security space - faction police will make that a disaster for the gankers.

      Delete
    2. I would also add that perhaps it would be better *not* to offer pre-fitted Catalysts in contracts. If there is no standardization of ganking character skills, it may be more flexible to simply offer individual modules for each individual ganker to mix-and-match as the situation (and his skills) allow. For example, depending on a ganker's fitting skills and his chosen midslot modules (scram or web or dual-sebo or nothing), he may choose a different mix of ions and neutrons accordingly. Just a thought!

      Delete
    3. Apologies for multiple posts, and this one is not directed towards anyone in particular:

      I wonder if there would be a use for ganking artillery catalysts, particularly in the higher-security systems where CONCORD response time is minimal. Once the skills for ganking catalysts have been trained, one needs only train Small Projectile Turrets and Small Artillery Specialization to use these.

      Delete
    4. ...I meant Ganking Artillery Thrashers*

      Delete
    5. Alana, you have done some very interesting remarks.

      Regarding Tech I ammo, you have a point, but still I think that may be is interesting to have it in the ship, just if... anyway, 200 or 250 rounds of Antimatter S is less than 10000ISK, which makes almost no difference.

      Regarding the modules fitting, I have thought about it, but still I see a point in full-packs; first, because it simplifies greatly the whole logistic aspect, it is easier to procure and handle predefined packs; also, one full pack occupies only one contract slot in the Corp (there is a hard limit of 500 internal open contracts for a Corp). Secondly, I have to play more with EFT, but till we see what will be the base CPU and PG of the catalyst after 4th Dec, seems that there is only an small difference (the time to train Eng to V and Elec to V) between the basic configuration (that possibly will allow to put one or two Light Neutron Blasters) and one with 8 LNB; I have no make any computation with meta 1+ turrets, because cannot be produced and procuring them in enough quantities can become a hell experience.

      To summarize, my proposition is simply a mean to facilitate the logistics of the full operation, with scalability and price demands on first line; with such kind of packs we can organize the procurement of many hundreds of full fitted catalysts per month at good prices, minimizing the work to be done for that task.

      Erikkha Desargues, CEO
      Desargues TechnoSystems Co.

      Delete
    6. "To summarize, my proposition is simply a mean to facilitate the logistics of the full operation, with scalability and price demands on first line; with such kind of packs we can organize the procurement of many hundreds of full fitted catalysts per month at good prices, minimizing the work to be done for that task."

      I like the sound of that!

      The revised base PowerGrid and CPU for the post-Retribution Catalyst will be PG 70 and CPU 178. Please see my comment in this blogpost:

      http://www.minerbumping.com/2012/11/advance-notice-of-notable-project.html

      Delete
  8. @ Erikkha, that's what we like to see, the recognition and the grabbing with both hands of a good business opportunity. If you can pull it off, you have a customer right here, it'll save me time when reshipping into a new gank ship and you'll be providing a valuable service to other members of the new order.

    Good business acumen at work right there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment, Casa.

      Indeed, I can offer a tentative first quote for the basic fitting (cata, LIB x8, aerator, accelerator, mag field sta x3, Cald Antimatter S x48, AntimatterS x250) for 2175000ISK at any High Sec station, provided enough advance and a sizable order (say, at least, 10 packs). Drop 75000ISK more for a warp disruptor I.

      Working on other fittings, and details for the distribution.

      Regards,
      Erikkha Desargues, CEO.
      Desargues TechnoSystems Co.

      Delete
    2. You will need more than 5 rounds. Even at fairly lows skills, the cycle rate is 1.91 seconds for Ion Blasters, or more like 2.23 for Neutron Blasters. (With all level V skills, it is 1.70 and 1.98 respectively.)

      We should have 10, 14, or 19 seconds before Concording, for 0.7, 0.6, and 0.5 security. All +- 1 sec. Plus 6 if we draw off Concord which is trivial to do using one Agent in a rookie ship. Anyway these are what I am reading at Tippia's blog on it.

      With 26 seconds to fire you might use up to 14 rounds per gun with Ion Blasters. That's low skill. With level V skills, the pilots in the tech II fits could be pumping out 16 rounds. The numbers for Neutron Blasters are 12 (low skill) and 14 (max skill). All number would be a bit higher using Mag Field Stabs II.

      Delete
    3. Putting 40 to 80 more rounds will only add between 20000Isk to 50000ISK...
      but, if it is real that response time for CONCORD... I think I must start right now a double production line, one for Catalysts, another for mackinaws... this can be Mackaggedon; only three Catalyst can destroy a Mackinaw without tanking in 0.5, five will do the job disregarding its fitting!

      NICE!!! Lots of ISK to be gained...

      Hail the New Order

      Erikkha.

      Delete
  9. I've been killing people in Kamio so the population might be less than it was before you left.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The M18 cordless ½-inch hammer drill/driver highlights 0-450/0-1,700 RPM, and 29,000 BPM originating from a frameless engine that puts out a hard-hitting 550 in-lbs of torque. best tool kit in india

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks for blogging and i enjoy the blog posting so no public comments.,,,,,,,,,,, www.trainingroomsg.com

    ReplyDelete

Note: If you are unable to post a comment, try enabling the "allow third-party cookies" option on your browser.