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Saturday 7 December 2013

Making an undock bookmark

This is all about making me less vulnerable when undocking with a cargo of >100m ISK.


A bit of background first:

My manufacturer operates on a produce to sell basis.  I.e. when one of my manufactured items sells out in Jita or Dodixie or Hek my manufacturer at that point will buy the raw materials and manufacture more of the item which is then hauled to the point of sale.

That means that manufacturing time is important and so the time to haul the raw materials from Jita to my place of manufacture (in Lonetrek, one stop out of Jita) is important.

Now, i can contract out to Pushx Industries on a basic hauling fee and they will get almost any amount of volume there for under 1m ISK but it may take up to 3 days.  I could pay c25m ISK for a rush job which will normally take 5 hours - but for one jump (2 minutes of my time) that feels like alot.

So for one jump i often risk it myself - but that means minimising the hauling risks is a priority.

My greatest vulnerability is when i undock and jump to the gate.  That time to re-align and then enter warp gives gankers plenty of time to scan my cargo, make a decision and destroy me.


Part of the solution:

A way of minimising this risk is to cancel alignment which will then allow me to get to warp very fast.

Therefore, the consensus solution is to have a so called saved "insta undock point" several hundred kilometers outside of Jita which is on a straight line from the undocking location.

The idea here is that when i undock (and i am invulnerable for 30 seconds) i can warp to that point which is some 800 kilometers directly ahead of me so that i do not need to spend time aligning.  Therefore, any gankers have next to no time to target, scan and destroy me.

Once at at this "safe" undock point i can align to the gate to jump almost at my leisure.  OK, not "at my leisure" but for sure under less stress.


The method i use:

And so this is how i do it . . . . . . 

The key thing is to fly straight out of Jita - which is easier said than done.  With so much traffic undocking it is easy to be bumped off course.  I dont want that - i want an exactly straight line because i dont want any alignment time.

So, i undock in the largest ship i have (for me, an iteron) and let it fly out about 200 kilometers.  It wont get bumped by smaller ships so has a good chance of flying in a straight line.

If i have been bumped out of the straight line then i re-dock and try again.

At about 200 kilometers i select People & Places [Alt-E], press Add Location (that in itself does not save any bookmark), change the label to my description (i.e. Jita - Undock 200km), change the folder if i need to and then i press Submit.  The pressing Submit saves the location.

I then dock and get into a fast frigate with an afterburner.

Undock that, immediately warp to the saved bookmark - so no time to be bumped and i am on a straightline.

I then just put on the afterburner and fly as far as i want, certainly over 1000 kilometers before i save a new undock bookmark.

From now on, when i undock in my industrial ship with a high value of raw materials i can immediately warp to this saved bookmark without having to align to the warp gate.  At the bookmark i can then align and warp to the gate.

I save this bookmark to my corporation folder so that all of my alts can use it (note, only my alts are in my corporation so i know a spy wont steal it and set up an ambush!).

i do read in places that some people do just let their ship fly all night as they sleep to fly several hundred thousand kilometers out of Jita to save an undock point.


Additional sources:

There are some good youtube videos on this:

A good 10 minute easy watch from Cubehamster on undocking and docking

As an alternative, here is a video that looks at how gankers can counter instant undocking from Ureldor

. . . . . the lesson on that last youtube is to save more than one undock bookmark and make them many hundreds or even thousands of kilometers apart.

2 comments:

  1. A helpful thing is your tactical overview, almost always, putting that cardinal point on the undock line is pretty damn close to 100%, especially since it spits you out at a +-10deg angle anyway.

    Also, coming in is sometimes a hassle, warping to station at 1m or setting an instadock as far from the undock as possible help getting into the station

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  2. A couple of points if I may:

    1. Great post, everyone should have insta-warp bookmarks for stations they use frequently, especially in 0.0 or the major hubs;

    2. If you're hauling your own trading items around, I recommend never using anything other than a cloaky hauler, cloaky ship in general, or a Jump Freighter. In the case of the first two, you can be cloaked and unscanable by the time you land at your undock bookmark - to do otherwise is inviting a switched on scanner to scan you down and point you;

    3. I've had a case of using a Tengu to undock from Jita with four warp stabs installed and still getting pointed by a scan res boosted aggressor. It was simple to dock up again and not get popped, but be aware that you can be insta-locked sometimes prior to activation or your insta-undock bookmark warp.

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