Two Ships Two Gate Camps

Sometimes Starwalker regretted being in space, especially when suffering losses from gate camps. If the gate campers knew what they were doing, were fitted appropriately with fast lock and high alpha, it was almost impossible to survive.

Starwalker waited, hoping to escape, and then decided to crash the gate immediately both times but it didn't work:

1. This Daredevil in Black Rise didn't stand a chance. The Daredevil did have one claim to fame before it was destroyed - it caught this pod, without a scrambler. At 2.75 billion ISK that was an expensive pod loss for Maelgar
2. This Hawk ran into a smaller camp in Metropolis but did not fare any better and even the pod was caught. The third ship (Legion) in the camp was too slow and didn't get onto the killmail, clearly it was not sensor boosted

Emerging from the clone vat in Covryn, Starwalker upgraded his clone and plugged in a new set of implants. He decided not to undock again as he was feeling a little jaded, perhaps it was time for a holiday.

Firetail in Double Trouble

Starwalker had fit the Republic Fleet Firetail with a gank and tank in mind and consequently had fitted it with a medium shield extender.

The Firetail had chased a Tristan in a complex, which had simply warped away as the Firetail closed in. That had meant that the Firetail was nearly 100km away from the warp in point when two Merlins entered.

The Merlins appeared to be fighting as one scrambled the other but as Starwalker approached to around 70km he could see that they were not firing at each other. Since they were also both hugging the warp-in point there was no chance to separate them. As he stopped and observed them one of the two Merlins warped away.

Decisions, decisions - was there enough time to kill the Merlin before his buddy returned? Starwalker decided to try it wishing that he had gotten a little closer than 70km. He burnt in and engaged the Merlin but the timing was terrible as the other Merlin came in very soon afterwards and with two webs applied he could not escape. The proud Firetail exploded into a million pieces of shrapnel.

A little while later Starwalker was back again in another Firetail and spied a Merlin in a another complex. He decided to go in and found the Merlin at point blank range but it was not alone, a Bantam decloaked around 18km away and then started to repair the Merlin. Starwalker had already engaged the Merlin and should have disengaged to kill the Bantam but instead he fruitlessly hammered at the Merlin and a second Firetail was destroyed.

Having suffered double trouble already in Ouelletta Starwalker ranged a little further in yet another Firetail and promptly lost it to a gate camp that was spread on both sides of the gate, he survived on one side but jumped back into more trouble on the other side and could not escape again. Starwalker returned to base in his pod and decided to relax in his quarters with his exotic dancers instead of returning to the space lanes of New Eden.

Surviving Gate Camps

There was a time that Starwalker was almost guaranteed to have his ship destroyed by a gate camp and he had lost various frigates and cruisers over time. His flashy red status or security status of lower than -5 meant that anyone could engage him in sight of sentry (gate or station) guns without any CONCORD repercussion. Brilliant for a gate camp - it could simply wait and pounce on the flashy pilot.

Long experience, including a more recent Daredevil, had burned in some lessons and he now seemed to be generally surviving the simpler or more ad-hoc gate camps. His general approach was:

• On entry to a system with a gate camp or ships at the gate - hold cloak
• Just because ships were on the star gate it was not always a gate camp. It could be a fleet waiting at a gate or ships about to jump through or warp away
• Take time to check the type and position of the gate camp ships
• Usually it would be 12km back to the star gate
• One or more ships would be less than 20km away
• After about twenty seconds align to the entry star gate and burn back, using overheated propulsion
• One key reason to wait is to let the session timer expire to be able to jump back through the gate
• If locked, turn on defensive modules (damage control, boosters or repairers...)
• It might be a gate camp but they want a bigger or shinier ship.
• If not locked, when at the gate, align to the out gate and warp away
• Watch distance to gate and hit jump when less than 2.5km from it

The key decision - commit to return to the entry gate. On the occasions that Starwalker had attempted to make a run for it or to warp to the out gate or a nearby celestial - he had been caught. When he had been caught it generally seemed to be too late to try to burn back to gate. Those vital first few seconds mattered.

Even so, crashing the gate was not guaranteed to work, in particular:

• Insta-locking ships with high alpha or simply a single volley destroying the ship
• Stasis webifiers being applied very quickly and preventing the timely to return to the gate
• Neutralisers removing the capacitor charge and completely disabling the ship
• Ships on both sides of the star gate that are part of the same gate camp

Security status tags offered Starwalker an alternate approach to surviving a gate camp - raise his security status above -5. It was also a treadmill to maintain it above -5. However, Starwalker was contemplating it again as he now had another reason to want his security status above -5. He had recently bought shinier ships (Deimos, Stabber Fleet Issue, Megathron and Hyperion) and he did not want to lose them to gate camps. Losing them in a fight - no problem. Losing them to a gate camp - no fun.

Drake Caught at Gate

Starwalker was out in a Drake just cruising around when he was distracted by incoming messages on his mobile device. Whilst he was distracted and holding on a gate an Executioner established a lock and point.

If Starwalker had demonstrated more caution or even fear, he would have simply carried on and left the Executioner behind. However, he was interested to see what would turn up and moved towards the Executioner but without engaging and simply running his defences. Space filled as the rest of the gang arrived and Starwalker knew that there were too many ships to take on his lone Drake.

So he headed back to the gate and saw some gang members jump through just before he did. The Drake was starting to take damage but it was nothing too serious. The trouble was that as he jumped through it was getting more serious as he was locked and scrambled again on the other side. It was now that Starwalker made his first real mistake - he jumped back through the gate again.

It was immediately apparent that it was a real problem as the majority of the gang was still there. They opened fire again and by now, the Drake was down to half of its shield and had also seen that electronic warfare was being used too. Starwalker knew that bouncing either side of the gate would simply be a slow death, so he decided to engage and kill what he could before going down.

That was the second mistake - more of the gang was this side of the gate and if anything he should have tried to fight the smaller part of the gang. He engaged the nearest Kitsune and it went down fairly quickly with the heavy assault missiles battering it whilst it was being webbed. Next he locked the original Executioner and engaged that too and it too started to go down and this was when Starwalker wondered if he could escape - only the Executioner still had a point.

Starwalker overheated his assault missiles but completely forgot to use his Warrior IIs and that might have made a small difference. It was only a small chance but it should have been taken, especially as the god of ewar locked onto the Drake and its lock and scramble on the Executioner disappeared, which quickly scuttled away trailing fire. The rest of the gang held distance at 19km and it was inevitable that the Drake would not survive and it exploded into a ball of fire.

Hawk Down in another Gate Camp

Starwalker was cruising around in Black Rise in his Hawk and finding it quiet. He noticed local spike with a few pilots and immediately recognised Daggaman as one of the gate campers that had got his Merlin. He waited at a planet to see where they were going but they stayed in system.

Eventually, he decided to leave the system and went to the out gate, unfortunately they were on that gate and Starwalker wondered whether if he jumped through immediately he could get away but the gang split with some of them going to the other side. They were clearly prepared for action on both sides of the gate.

As Starwalker jumped through he resolved to wait a little bit to see if they moved on or whether they were specifically hunting his Hawk now. They waited and as the gate timer ticked down Starwalker decided to try to burn back to the gate. It didn't matter - he was dead within seconds and podded again.

Gate camps - the bane of New Eden. It was one of the reasons that he had left Metropolis because of regular gate camps in the Auner to Dal pipe, especially at Eszur. Starwalker had no issue losing ships in fights but hated losing them in gate camps.

Starwalker Survived Gate Camp

Starwalker was moving between Auner and Hadozeko when he ran into a gate camp. In all previous instances Starwalker had died very quickly and in some cases had been podded too, especially in Eszur. This time was different.

Kaeda Maxwell had published an article on surviving low security camps and Starwalker had seen some of this advice in chat but had never applied it. That was about to change as Starwalker jumped into Hadozeko and a waiting gate camp.

There was a Stiletto and Curse and possibly one other ship waiting for a victim and as Starwalker aligned to warp to Klogori the warp drive stopped. Previously this was the first step to being destroyed but this time Starwalker went into immediate evasive action with his Rifter.

First approach the stargate, next hit the afterburner and overheat, then start the defenses – damage control and small armour repair. Damage started coming in and the capacitor dropped to zero as the Curse did its thing. But the Rifter was closing back in on the gate.

Capacitor boost and then hit the afterburner and repair again… damage into armour but only 3.5km from gate… and then jump! Starwalker had survived a gate camp for the very first time.

It was pleasing and exhilarating to have survived. Starwalker knew that his ship might be destroyed in a future gate camp but he also knew that he had a chance to escape. A gate camp no longer meant certain death.

Suicide Gank Interrupted

Starwalker was not a happy bunny. Rebels were gearing up in Auner to perform a suicide gank on some hapless miner and Starwalker was on his way to join them, but was stopped by a gate camp.

It was Mothra Inc again and this was the third time that they had caught Starwalker in a Rifter at Eszur. The Rifter came through the gate and aligned to the next gate but before it could get away it was warp scrambled. A fiery explosion (http://www.r1fta.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10490853) soon followed and the Rifter was no more.

Starwalker was so disappointed that he only hit his warp button to save the pod once, it wasn’t enough and that too suffered a fiery (http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14085389) death at the hands of Mothra Inc.

Starwalker sat in silence in his darkened quarters, sipping some quafe. He was not a happy bunny.

Two Rifters Killed in Two Gate Camps

Starwalker had been roaming around Amamake and surrounding systems looking for targets of opportunity. The roams had extended beyond the immediate systems like Dal and Auga to treks to Gusandall and Old Man Star. For whatever reasons, those roams had simply been fruitless.

Starwalker was returning to base after a long haul and ran into a gate camp at Eszur. There was no chance to escape and the Rifter (http://r1fta.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10302116) and pod (http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=13952290) disappeared in two successive fireballs. Worse than that, the same thing happened to the same guys with another Rifter (http://r1fta.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10308914) and pod (http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=13957833) the following night.

Starwalker was not happy as the pods had also lost a set of implants for training. In both cases, the pods had not responded to commands to warp out and seemed to simply wait for the subsequent podding. Starwalker considered how best to address that in future and whether his base of operations was the best location. Losing three ships and pods to gate camps within a week was absolutely no fun and a fast track to soon having no ships or ISK.

There was no problem with the original criteria for a base it was that the relative importance was not clear and that it was missing additional criteria:

·         Few or no gate camps in region, although no gate camps might be too optimistic

·         Away from a main hisec to lowsec pipe, like Hek to Amamake, which includes Eszur

·         Away from arterial routes between lowsec locations, which are also likely to be gate camped

Being close to hisec or a trade hub is relatively meaningless when using a hauler alt to buy and move equipment or paying for the service. Similarly, that need for ships and/or equipment is irregular but roaming is regular and consequently has much more importance when selecting a base.

Starwalker sipped his Quafe and his eyes wandered around the star map shining brightly from the Neocom console in the dimly lit quarters. Maybe move from Metropolis to Heimatar or maybe simply establish another stash of ships in Heimatar?