ESS Robbing
ESSs
There are 3 main things about the ESS to remember; It's Deadspace, It's Got a Bubble, and It's an ISK Sink
It's Deadspace
When you warp to an ESS beacon, it brings you to a deadspace location with an acceleration gate (the In-Gate) next to the beacon. It's deadspace so you cannot be scanned down and warped to on this grid. Not even from the grid itself. You can warp to the beacon at range*, but if somebody tries to scan-probe and warp to you they'll just land on the beacon. If you burn off, and nobody can catch up to you, you are very, very safe. Sure, it's possible that with enough time and speed you could slow-boat to somewhere else in the solar system and get probed down there, I guess. I don't know how far the deadspace grid can extend, but somebody several thousand km off the beacon and traveling fast is pretty safe. You can also cloak up if you're outside the blue circle, 100 km off the in-gate.
- At range: The In-Gate can be activated from anywhere within the blue circle, which in this case is 100 km from the gate. So, should you warp to 100? Well, the beacon you warp to is a couple of km from the gate, and a warp-to has a margin of error of a couple of km too, so the chances you can warp to 100 and take the gate instantly are about 50/50 (if you warp in with a cloak, you have that same chance to be able to use it). If you warp in at 70 or 50 you can activate the gate as soon as you land. Most (lazy) people just warp to the beacon at zero. If most (lazy) people do that, should you? Well, you can't take the gate if you are pointed, scrammed, or bubbled**, and if you warp in at range you'll be at that range in the direction you were warping in from. Unless that hostile tackle is coming from the same direction and guesses right, they won't land right on you and maybe you can activate the in-gate quickly.
- bubbles on the in-gate: If you warp to the ESS, but someone has dropped a bubble on the beacon, you'll land on the beacon. If the bubble is not on the beacon, it will not affect your warp, even if it is directly in line with you. If the bubble is on the beacon, you'll be in the middle of a bubble and need to burn out of it in order to take the in-gate. If the bubble is anywhere other than the beacon, you'll be exactly where you warped to, and can likely take the in-gate.
That is, if you are larger than a destroyer but smaller than a capital. The in-gate only allows access to the inside of the deadspace pocket to cruisers through battleships. Anyone can warp to the beacon grid, but small ships can't take the in-gate, and neither can capitals. So, cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships only, with a marauder being the heaviest ship that can enter.
It's Got A Bubble
When you take the in-gate, you'll land in a deadspace pocket just inside a small blue circle that surrounds the ESS itself. The ESS stick generates a scram bubble out to 75 km. It also prevents cloaking within 150 km. Since this is a deadspace pocket, you can't warp to nor within it, just like the outside (see above). The bubble scrams MWDs, but afterburners work. Because you land on the close side of the blue circle, the fastest way out of the bubble is to turn around and align back out to the beacon. You can't warp back to the beacon from anywhere inside the deadspace pocket, though.
So, only afterburners work in the bubble, and everybody lands at zero. This combination drives many of our tactics (to be discussed later).
It's an ISK sink.
When you land in the ESS, you can hook up to the stick and start robbing it. You must stay in the blue circle (which is 2km radius around the ESS stick). There are 2 portions, the main bank and the reserve bank. Anyone can hook up to the main bank, but the reserve bank needs a special key. If you hook up to the main bank, a 6 minute timer starts. At the end of that 6 minutes the ESS pays out about 70% of main bank value in the form of bonds directly into the robber's cargo hold.
Where does the money come from? When somebody kills rats in the system, about 30% of their isk goes into the ESS; mostly into the main bank but a small portion* into the reserve. Every 2 hours 45 minutes, the ESS pays out from the main bank, back to the ratters that contributed. Then, over the course of the next 2h:45 it builds back up as ratters rat. Anyone can see how much isk is in the ESS (and who may be robbing it) by clicking the ESS button on the top left of of their screen. Also, anyone can see how much isk is in any ESS anywhere by opening their Agency window. Go to exploration, then Encounter Surveillance System all the way to the right. It is filterable by distance or region, amount in main or reserve bank, and whether the reserve is unlocked.
Why is it an isk sink? Well, first since some of your ratting isk goes into the reserve bank and they need a special key, it's unlikely you'll ever see that isk again. Then, the main bank can get robbed, and it may be dangerous to stop the scallywag, depending. Then, about 30% of the isk just evaporates when the main bank is robbed! Then, even if you manage to kill the guy who has robbed a bunch of ESSs, the bonds are items that have only a 50% chance of dropping. Finally, the bonds can be sold for face value to CONCORD, but some (lazy) people just sell them on the market and let some other sucker run them to hi-sec for the profit margin.
As for that reserve bank, well I'll have to leave it up to someone who knows more to expand (marked with *), so I'll just tell you my perspective: they are a blast! The keys are expensive *(I don't 100% know how you get one)* and region-specific. Keys are 15 minutes or 45 minutes, and while the reserve is open it pays out *an amount* every *time period, maybe 2 minutes?* split between as many people as are hooded up to it, up to a maximum of *a number*. Once open, this continues until the key's time is over, so anyone who interrupts the person who used the key and chases them off can then hook up and get payouts in the form of bonds.
Some tactics, ideas, and other considerations.
There is deadspace and there is a bubble. Lucky us! We don't have to bring a lot of tackle, because the bubble does the tackling for us! The deadspace aspect makes an ESS the safest place in the whole game if we use it to our advantage. You get to make the guy ratting in half a dozen Ishtars mad at YOU in particular because he sees you linked up with your smiling portrait grinning back at him.
But seriously, fitting afterburners instead of MWDs frees up some fitting space for guns and tank (unless you over-prop). Knowing exactly where somebody's gong to land and that they'll be scrammed in the bubble is nice too. There are a few ways to look at this. All those super close range but high damage weapons like blasters, autocannons, and HAMs are useful if you have a couple dozen guys right at the landing point. Alternatively, with sufficient range you could shoot from a position outside the bubble, where you are free to warp off while someone entering is after-burning (or slow-burning if mistakes were made) out. This also means that cheap t1 cruisers can punch above their weight, if they are well set up. Assuming an at-zero fleet, the enemy is landing in perfect range of every gun, missile, web, neut, nos, jam, etc. as soon as he's lockable. Even if there are multiple baddies on the in-gate, they are not likely to land all at once, making the first guy in, the first guy to be primary.
Still, who likes seeing some goon steal a third of his ratting money? That Horde guy should definitely jump his PvE Vargur into there and just clean up those five little bees in t1 cruisers and battlecruisers... Wait, what? There were twenty more in the next system/waiting in a wormhole? Hey look, they're landing at zero. How unfortunate.
That's how we like it to go, and sometimes it does. Then again, sometimes it does not.
One of the issues we constantly run into is guys jumping in and smartbombing. Now all the drones are gone and goons at zero are being damaged. Orbiting the target beyond smartbomb range and using sentry drones that get dropped some distance off of the ESS are ways to alleviate smartbombers. Less common, but a serious problem for the would-be pirate is a long-range battleship of some type sitting well outside of the bubble. They can plink you, doing so even better if you try to go towards them, they can MWD another 100 km off at will, and can be aligned to warp off whenever they want. An Arbitratror to cut down their range and/or a Celestis to damp their targeting range are good counters.
Being very fast when your afterburner is on is always quite helpful, of course. Rapid Deployment Skirmish Boosts can help your get-up-an-go, and the battlecruisers that fit them can sometimes run the 100MN over-prop. So can cruisers, but that is a big fitting sacrifice, so tends to be for non-combat rob-and-run fits. There are ships, like the Sansha ships, that have bonuses to afterburners. They are great inside the ESS, assuming they are not webbed down as soon as they land ... and they are kinda expensive for what they are ... As such I have not tried them for ESS robbing, though we have killed a few Nightmares. Perhaps someone else can comment and educate me on their merits.
We have tried alternative play styles, like using recons, bombers, and other cloaky stuff. Bringing a sabre along to keep the beacon bubbled has worked quite well in the past. Bringing tackle and small stuff along is also OK. Think about it; if there is a pile of isk in the ESS, someone is actively ratting in system (or at least has been in the last couple of hours). If the fast tackle can find the Ishtar, or Paladin, and point him, the ESS cruisers designed to hit at zero can warp in.
There are always trade-offs though. A filament fleet is max 25, so every tackle, logi, or anything else, really, is a substitute for something else that isn't there. Which brings us to ...
Needlejack Filaments
There a number of types of filaments. The ones that bring us to nullsec systems are the Needlejacks. They come in two types, Noise and Signal, and can take a maximum number of ships indicated in their name, the largest being 25. Noise (think "just background noise") bring you to any random system in a random nullsec region. Signal (think "we've found a strong signal Cap'n!") bring you to a random system in a region which has *activity* that is *above a criteria*. I do not know CCP's algorithm, Signals seem to bring us to either red or blue space, fairly reliably.
In order to light a Needlejack, the fleet commander (not boss) needs to use it. Everyone in the fleet has to be within 6 km of the Fleet Commander for it to work, so is someone is not with the fleet or joins late, it won't light. It won't light within 5000 km of any structure. It won't light if someone in fleet has their safety set to green. It won't light if someone in fleet has a capsuleer log-off timer (a "red timer", not just a weapons timer like you get for boosting) and lighting it gives everyone a log-off timer - 15 minutes until another can be lit. If at any time someone in fleet shoots or is shot at or aggro'd in PvP in any way, that 15-minute log-off timer has to run out before another Needlejack can be lit.
It can be lit on a safe, with the entire fleet timer-free, present, and ready for action.
The FC and Backseat should have a few of each type of filament, since the random Noise-25 are cheaper than the Signal-25 that bring the fleet to Horde space. Line members can always bring a couple Signal-5 in case they need to log off and go or if they are part of the remnants of a shattered fleet.
