Gate camp, this has nothing to do with the great outdoors and tents etc. The Eve Online gate camp is generally a nasty place to find yourself, especially if you are not in a counter fleet. In this article I wil try and explain the Eve Online gate camp in detail, why they happen, how they operate and hopefully how to avoid them. There are many reasons for gate camps, usually they are for combat but some poeple use gate camping to earn ISK. There are also those who simply camp gates to greif other Eve Online players, there is many reasons to camp a gate in Eve Online so let me try and explain it in depth.
Lets start with where gate camps occur and why, gate camps usually serve a purpose and most times are well orginized. We will start in null sec space (0.0). There are many reasons for gate camps in 0.0, it can be for an organized operation. Maybe an enemy has been using a particular route and it is time to make them stop or use an alternaive route. There are also gate camps to protect organized mining operations in 0.0, as well as tactical operations like attacking an enemy structure. They are also used t protect the building of new structures or to simply close systems down so only particuarpeople may enter the system. Null sec (0.0) gate camps will comprise of many ship types and are organized arround Mobile Warp Disruption generators. the mobile disruptors are anchored all around the gate to catch people as they jump in or out of the system, but these are not always used.
In nul sec (0.0) Mobil Warp Disruptors are used everwhere and can be very nasty, they can be anchored all around the gate to catch people as they jump into the system and try to warp away. The only way to try and get out of this situation if you are caught in a bubble after you jump into a system. Use your cloak time productively, look at your location and see how far you are from the edge of the bubble you are in. You may be able to quickly approach the edge and warp away, the only other option is to try and get back to the gate and jump back to the pevious system. The other option is to use the cloak cool down and assess your enemies capabilities, you may want to fight your way out.
The Mobile Warp Disruptors can be ued to drag you away from the gate to stop you jumpig out, a lot of pople are confused by this when they first go to 0.0 space. This is generally called a drag bubble and they are very effective. Firstly drag bubbles are placed at a distance from the gate, usually around 100KM. Now the drag bubble must be correctly aligned to the area where they are trying to catch people from, usually another gate in the system. So lets say we are in a system that has 2 gates, the drag bubble would be place 100 KM behind the second gate and be directly aligned with gate 1. So what happens is you jump in throgh gate 1 and warp directly to gate 2. When you arrive at gate 2 you will be dragged past the gate and end up on the edge of the Mobile Warp Disrupto bubble.
There are other warp disruption bubbles in 0.0, they are generated by the intrdictor ships, there is the standard Interdictors, which are Tech II Destroyers. Then there are the Heavy Interdictors, which are the Tech II cruisers. The Interdictor launches interdiction spheres, these generate a warp disruption bubble that lasts for 2 minutes. The Heavy Interdictor has a warp disruption generator and can maintain a bubble indefinitely. The ship has to be destroyed or nueted until it runs out of cpacitor, this generator can be turned on and off by the pilot and has a 30 second cycle time. This means if the pilot turns the generator on and then turns it off again immediately, the generator will stay runing for 30 seconds then turn off.
Lets move on to low sec space, this is between 0.1 and 0.4 security systems and is considered to be very dangerous. Low security is not as bad as most people think, you can make a good living in low sec space and be relitively safe if you take care. Now low sec gate camping is very different to 0.0 gate camps. The biggest difference is that you cannot use Mobile Warp Disruptors, Interdictors cannot launch an interdiction sphere and Heavy Interdictors cannot generate a bubble. The Heavy Interdictor can still be used in low sec, the generator can use a focused beam script which turns the generator from a bubble into an infinite diruptor, this means no matter how many Warp Core Stabilizers you have they will not save you. The generator also has a longer range usually around 40KM depending on skils and bonuses and for low sec gate camping people add many sensor boosters so they can lock very fast in the Heavy Interdictors.
Now with low sec gate camps there is another extreme difference to 0.0 camps, in low sec the gate guns will shoot people that agress another player for no reason. This is good for you but it will not save you in most situations. Gate guns depeding on the security of the system do not have great damage and they cycle between all aggressive ships, this means one gun maybe on one pirate and the others are on other ships. This means the damage is split and will usually not break any of the pirates tanks before they destro you. Most low sec gate camps consist of Battlecruisers and Battleships, of course there are lots of Tech II cruisers used but people generally use ships that can tank all the gate guns at once. And of course they use Tech III cruiers as well, you usually won’t see frigates etc in gate camps, but there are those that do it.
Now lets see how these things work and how you can avoid them, most low sec gate camps are in systems that are accessed from a high sec gate, high sec is 0.5 to 1.0 systems. The pirates, well lets call them that just to signify they are the baddies. The pirates will find a route that leads from a high sec system to a low sec system that is very busy, they maximise their kill ratio this way. Just as an example I know of 2 such areas, one is the gate from Bherdasopt to Gonditsa, hope I spelled Bherd right. Bherd is the high sec system and Gonditsa is the low sec system, the pirates have used thi system for as long as I have payed Eve Onlin. Another area they do it is from Imya to Antem, Imya is high sec and Antem is low sec but there are many of these areas that pirates use.
Most of the time these systems are used because they are the only ways to access these areas or just the easiest way to enter the low sec area. But the pirates also use the market to get people to enter these systems, they will put items on the maret cheap to attract you in to be killed. But the pirates ultimate goal is to make ISK from these gates, so they really hope for expensive combat ships or expensive haules to come through. They destroy the ship and then loot the dropped items. Some do it just for the kills as well, Eve Online has a unique PvP experience and it attracts lots of pirates.
I will try to explain how most low sec gate camps operate, but I am not saying this is the only way they operate. This is just how I have seen it done over my past 5 years in Eve Online. The pirates will place a scout in the high sec system, usually cloaked off the gate but not always cloaked. Can be a new character in a noob ship, some people don’t take any notice to these players, but you should if you see one sitting off a high sec to low sec gate. Now most pirates will use a cloaked character that is not in their corporation so there are no ties to them. This way if anyone knows they camp the gate they will think it is safe because there is no one from that corp there so no scout.
Now the pirates will have a number of safe spots around the gate, safe spots are areas they have bookmarked earlier. Some of these bookmarks will be on grid to the gate, on grid means it can be seen on the overview the grid can vary in size but most times a grid is usually 400 to 500KM. Now an important thing to remember is that gate guns will not shoot anyone that is further then 150KM from the gate, this is why they make bookmarks out around 200KM. They will sit at around 200 to 250KM from the gate already aligned and approaching it, this way the gate is not shooting them and they can get there quickly when a ship jumps in. Now another way they do it is to make a safe spot off grid, lets say 1080KM away from the gate. This way they are off grid so if you jump a scout character into the system there will be no one on your overview, you think it is safe and they see you warp to the gate with their cloaked scout. They warp to gate and are there quickly because they were not far away.
Pirates will spend hours doing this iether for the kills or hoping for a great drop fom one of their victims. Now there are some things you can do to try and prevent yourself from becoming one of their victims, you just need to pay attention and you should not get caught. First of all you should always look in the high sec system before the low sec for a scout, especially if there is a new character sitting on the high sec side of the gate, this is a clear sign. Another one is if there is ony one character in the high sec system, good chance he is the scout. Alway and I mean always scout the system with a new character that is no great loss if it gets killed and podded. Never feel safe to jump from high sec to low sec it generally is not always camped, but why risk it. Now if you are scouting a low sec system and you jump in and there is no one on the gate, but there a some people in local chat window. he first thing you should do is open your directional scanner and set it to 380 degres and max scan range so type in all 9s in distance, when you press scan it will then set to max range. If any ships come up on scan look at their type and if they are combat ships there is a good chance they are waiting to warp to gate to kill you.
The only way you will get gate camps in high sec would be if you were at war or your corporation is trying to kill you. People do setup high sec gate camps for suicide ganking, but you would have to be unlucky to be the target of one of these. All gate camps are not very pleasant especially if you are the target, If you pay attention in all areas you should not get caught in a gate camp, it is a little harder on 0.0, but you can stop the chances of being caught in a drag bubble. You do this by not warping directly to the gates, make tactical warp ins etc. To make a tactical warp in all you do is make a book mark of a location iether above or below the gate at around 300 KM. this will easily let you warp from gate to gate without being dragged into a bubble. Once you get to your tactical you can now see if the gate is safe and because you are over 150KM from the gate you can warp directly to it. I hope this article helps, please if you have any questions ask in the comments section.
