Mission thieves are the bane to all true mission runners in eve online, these thieves come in to a mission runner’s mission and steal all the good loot. There are a lot of these thieves in eve online and they can be a real annoyance to mission runners, but some of these thieves are not there to steal the loot. Let me explain how this all works and what some thieves are attempting and how you can protect yourself. Firstly most of these mission thieves are found in the large misioning areas; these areas are where there are good agents and good agent’s means lots of mission runners. Firstly the thieves can use 2 methods to locate your mission. The first way is by using a specially trained alt character to probe your ships location. Once they probe your ship down they warp to your location in the alt character, usually to the start gate of your mission.
The thief now warps his main character to his alt character, which is at the first gate to your mission. The second way thieves locate your mission is by using their main character; they simply have the main character probe your ships location. Some people use alt characters simply to save training issues with their main character, also the alt character is usually in a standard starting corporation. This means there is no affiliation to anyone, so if you catch them at the gate you will not know who is really trying to access your mission loot. The alt character probing your ship is also used for if you are currently at war with another corporation. This is used so you do not spook and dock before the main war fleet is called into your mission. The war targets will use an alt character to probe you in your mission, they will then warp a solo tackling ship in to tackle and hold you until the main war fleet gets to your location.
Now that the thief has found you in your mission he usually activates the entrance gate, he will warp in while you are killing your mission rats. Because most solo mission runners usually kill and complete the mission before looting and salvaging, this makes them an easy target for these thieves. Once the thief is in your mission he will assess the situation, he will be looking for the largest ships or named wrecks, by named wrecks I mean the special wrecks that usually contain the best items. Once the thief has found what he is looking for he will approach the wrecks that he is interested in, he will open the cargo of the wreck and make sure the items are worth stealing. A careful thief will start aligning his ship to an object he can warp to before he steals any items, he does this because as soon as he steals any items he is flagged to you and you can destroy his ship.
Once the thief is aligned he will steal the item and hit warp, because he is aligned he will instantly warp out and you will not have time to scramble him to stop him from warping out. The thief may rinse and repeat this process a few times to you while you are in this mission, especially if it is a large mission. Basically the thief will wait out his 15 minute aggression counter and then warp back to the bookmarked entry gate to your mission. Because he waits the aggression timer, when he comes back into your mission he is no longer flagged to you as a criminal. This means you cannot do anything to the thief. This type of thief is very annoying and they are usually there just to steal your items and that is all, but there are other types of thieves as well.
The next type of thief is just as annoying as the first type; however this thief will never be flagged to you as a criminal. This thief is a salvager and he will warp into your mission just to salvage your wrecks and does not usually steal from the wrecks. He will only steal from the wreck if there is an extraordinary item in the wreck. This thief will be using his specially built salvaging ship and he will simply salvage your wrecks taking the salvage not the items from the wrecks cargo. Because you only own the items in the wreck and not the wreck itself, the thief can salvage the wrecks with no issues at all. The thief will never be flagged criminally to you and he can stay there until he has salvaged all your wrecks and all you will end up with is cargo containers with the dropped items in them. Not so bad, but still a thief and quite a bit of ISK lost to him.
The next thief is not actually a thief, he is there to try and make you agrees him so he can destroy your ship. Because most mission runners do missions to make their ISk, they usually have some very nicely fitted ships. This is called bling and means a ship is fitted with faction or dead space modules that are worth a lot of ISK. Why shouldn’t you have bling, you work hard to make your ISK. The problem is that this makes the pirates and griefers drool and they want to destroy your ship for the killmail trophy and for the loot that will drop from your wreck. Now what these thieves do is basically the same as the first type of thief. They will enter your mission and approach a wreck to steal items, but when they steal the item they will not warp out. They will stay in your mission hoping you will now try to aggress them to punish them for stealing.
Now they will be in a small non threatening ship hoping you will aggress them, let me explain what will happen if you do aggress them. Most mission runners do not carry warp disruptors, so if you don’t destroy their ship first shot the thief will now warp out. Even if you do destroy the thief’s ship he will now warp out in his pod. The thief will now go to the station and get into his PvP built ship and quickly warp back to your mission. He will now warp in and proceed to try and warp disrupt or scramble your ship. He can do this, because when you aggressed him that criminally flagged you to him. Once he has you warp disrupted he will now proceed to destroy your ship, this usually doesn’t take long. This is because you are usually being attacked by the mission rats at the same time. Once he destroys your ship he will loot the wreck and dock back up with what ever bling dropped in the wreck. He will then post his trophy killmail on his killboard. This is the worse thief of them all, simply because if you fall for the trap it usually costs more then just a few items or a bit of salvage that the other types of thieves take.
Now let me tell you a few things you can try to teach these thieves a lesson, there are not many things to do but it is worth a try. Now for the first and second types of thieves, the item stealer and the salvager. The only thing you can really try is to use the mission to kill them; this is quite simple and does work sometimes. When you see the thief enter your mission, wait until they start approaching a wreck, now call your drones back and warp out of the mission. Hopefully the thief will not notice and now the mission rats that were attacking you will switch to them and hopefully destroy them. That is pretty much all you can do to these thieves, but with the third type of thief you can try the same thing. But usually this type of thief is focused on you so he will warp out as soon as you do. But what you can do is try to destroy his small ship and when he or his pod warps out you do the same, do not wait there for him to return if you aggressed him. Go to the station and dock until the aggression counter has expired.
Just to make it a little clearer because I know this confuses some people. Let’s say multiple thieves warp into your mission and they are all from one corporation. If one of them steals from you, this will criminally flag him only unless the others steal as well. But here is the part that confuses people, you can attack any one of these thieves and only the thief that you attack can attack you back. Attacking one of the thieves will not criminally flag you to the entire thief corporation. So this means even if there are 4 thieves and they are all criminally flagged to you, if you attack pirate A. Only pirate A can attack you back Pirate B, C and D cannot aggress you until you aggress them individually. This means you can actually destroy pirate A and warp out with no aggression from the others. I hope this article helps you mission runners out and fly safe.
