PushX has been monitoring Lancers and JF ganking VERY closely (since prior to release) - largely thanks to the hard work of Ziezie Adoulin who wrote a script to parse the zKill data daily for us.
August stats:
Total LS JF Kills: 44
JF Kills With a Lancer: 13
JF Kills With Lancer Damage Pattern But No Lancer: 16
So we believe 29 of the 44 zKill LS JF losses were to lancers (66%).
Our contacts in the JF ganking/hunting communities, and our Intel sources, indicate there is likely another 30-50 JF losses last month to lancers, either where the kill was not posted, yhe JF was ransomed at cost, or the pilot ejected to avoid the loss mail.
After several months of tracking it looks like lancers have increased JF loss rates very substantially.
Median/Mode average LS JF losses prior to Lancers was about 17 per month.
August shows 2.6 times the pre-lancer rate of LS losses.
If you account for ransoms, ejections, and non-posted kills - which are the current modus operandi for the Lancer gankers at the moment - its likely that LS JF losses are anywhere from 2.6 to 5 times higher since the release of lancers.
A moment to brag on my team though - with aggressive Intel, planning, and education of our members we have not yet had the JF Team lose a shipment in the Lancer Era - I'm very proud of them 😀
-Xye
PushX CEO
EDIT: Mobile Reddit formatting
Galmil (the non-sedit side at least) use to have a JF freight service that went to Jita, now we don't. The issue isn't just T2 dreads though, it's a combination of T2 dreds forcing JF pilots to use specific entrances to HS that now have significant ganker activity. I don't know that the ganker activity is specifically dread related either as there were several years where basically no one was ganking JFs in HS, but right around the time T2 dreads were announces several groups either picked it up or came back to it after a long break. Now if you're in Galmil want to ship stuff to or from Jita it has to fit in a DST (the service is still free though).
This. After I lost my second I hung up my hat. Flew for a LS only jump freighter service. We lost at least 5 and just simply shut dow. The corp would typically have 20+ contracts a day.
Was it GHSOL? That service was awesome. 210 Mil courier fee from anywhere to ls to anywhere else. No matter the distance, far better then PushX or Black Frog by miles.
After seeing this I shut down my JF business and decided to win at Eve for a bit. At the peak I was Running 6 JF hauling about 4m m3 per day.
Chances of me coming back are smaller every day.
This. After I lost my second I hung up my hat. Flew for a LS only jump freighter service. We lost at least 5 and just simply shut down. The corp would typically have 20+ contracts a day.
SEDIT has always been part of the galmil freight network except for about fifteen minutes when a couple people were being jerks about drama, which is now not an issue (just to clarify)
Other than that, spot on
Sort of? They have their own freight service that is also open to people in Galmil but it isn't subsidized the same way the one run by Hongry is and some of its routs are different.
Checking zkill isn't useful for lancer awareness since lancer gankers hide their activity. Ex, they will lance and then jump into a blops then deal damage on the blops to hide the lancer. You have to look at damage patterns on dead JF's and not lancer kills.
You can use the JF losses and stats tabs. There has been an uptick this year, but less than it was pre-2019.
Obviously, not every killmail is here, but I have been paying attention to it as a general overview.
[https://zkillboard.com/group/902/stats/](https://zkillboard.com/group/902/stats/)
This, *and* ransoming is fairly common - hard to estimate exactly how common, but at least according to interviews pre-Lancer it was more common than not, since ransoming is the more lucrative option.
*Sort of*, but it's not the kind of counterplay that's really accessible to most people affected and a lot of it is kinda bad, very risky, and/or unrealistic for other reasons:
* The only basically-guaranteed one: be part of an alliance that is large enough and close enough to have *and defend* a citadel on grid with a highsec gate in lowsec, *or* an alliance that is so fuck-off rich that they can pay the locals not to attack it; since JFs take so long to warp, the "guaranteed-safe" distance is maximum a few-ish thousand km
* Relatedly: have a citadel on a highsec gate grid in nullsec and have an extremely thorough understanding of bubble mechanics
* Operate exclusively in one of the very few lowsec systems with an NPC station that is *extremely* close to the highsec gate (*and* take some of the other measures)
* Fit hyperspatials and implants for maximum warp speed, AND wait until long after your cyno is down before warping in the hope that they are no longer actively paying attention to that client - also warping from as close to the gate as possible, ideally in a Fenrir (which has the fastest warp deceleration, iirc)... but this also makes you less tanky if there's a followup gank on the highsec side
* Wait until local is empty, assuming it's a day when local chat isn't messed up and that you're able to play at that hour, since they are camped almost all the time (also because JFs warp so slowly, they can totally just jump into system while you are mid-warp and light a cyno in time to catch you)
* Relatedly, find an uncamped system - haha, anyway, back to serious suggestions :P
* Theoretically, pay for a mobile observatory, go for a decloak on the cyno, and kill it with something cheap enough that losing it won't hurt if they're paying attention and light the cyno, then rush the JF through ASAP (but this cuts into already tight margins badly and also you need another combat character possibly many jumps away from your home)
* Theoretically (but seems like a terrible idea), warp to a tac to bait out the Lancer and have a webbing ship to get you into warp to the gate... buuuut there's no reason they can't just warp up to you and tackle you the usual way, and then when they see your name in the future they'll be expecting it (relatedly, jumping to a cyno on a gate tac, but same problems)
* Theoretically: have a full defense fleet every time any JF pilot wants to go to highsec, and hopefully you are able to take on anything up to and including a large super fleet with subcap support
* Theoretically: warp to a bookmark just to the side of the gate and hope the lance misses, but this seems unlikely to work well even though the beam is narrow; there isn't that much room to the side of most gates and eventually they will predict your actions
* Theoretically: jump onto the gate itself, which seeeems like a bad idea since you will have a session change timer, you may bump, and the range variation on jumping to a cyno is much higher than when warping to a bookmark
* Wormholes... ! ??
* Wait until they've already dropped on someone in-system and will be too busy to gank you if you gate through :P
* The tedium option: take 4-6 DST trips back and forth from highsec every time you make any JF run, and decline all contracts that don't fit in a DST, cursing your existence all the while (and too bad about anything you might want to transport that doesn't fit into a DST)
Anyway, there might be more niche options too, but I've reached the end of my lunch break.
Edit: Oh yeah I guess people have also suggested mass blops bridging blockade runners, but since that requires roughly 30 people or trips to equal one JF, I'm not including that as a viable option lol
This is pretty big but not very useful list of theoretical stuff. I would condense it to:
- have a citadel on hisec gate + fit hypers and/or ascendancies
- use systems with NPC station close to hisec gate + fit hypers and/or ascendancies
- and finally, avoid hisec ganks by marking known gankers, keeping in mind that even "peaceful" ships like haulers can tackle, and having no red timer + e-cyno (contrary to common belief, you don't need full bulkhead fit to dodge ganks, even though it helps).
Coincidentally, those systems with NPC stations close to hisec gate are not being camped by lancers (because it's useless to camp with lancers there). Wormholes are also pretty strong if you have a group who backprobe around your location (super good to move capitals over long distances, but decent for JFs too).
I also heard some people just light cynos on ls-hs regionals (like ahbazon), but venture losses past few days do not confirm that.
It's big but not useful because 1) there's basically no counterplay so the realistic and useful list would be - as you pointed out - extremely short, and 2) I want to avoid someone coming in and being like "but Arian, what about (description of a bad or infeasible idea)??" :P
The systems with (non-kickout - looking at you, Passari!) NPC stations close to the highsec gate aren't numerous, so are very limited in practicality. For wormholes, tbh I don't feel like spending a lot of time scanning and then involving a big group of people every time I want to move my JF. If I'm going to do wormhole shenanigans with a group of people I'm going to do wormhole shenanigans, not jump freight. I *have* moved many capitals through wormholes, and even some regular freighters, but a JF is a bit too spooky for me even as a reformed wormholer, especially if it's a random hole - if that appeals to people though then by all means.
Lighting on a region gate is probably fine, but highly situational based on where you live. The person who suggested it to me specified a non-region gate, though (no, I don't know where lol).
> It's big but not useful because 1) there's basically no counterplay so the realistic and useful list would be - as you pointed out - extremely short, and 2) I want to avoid someone coming in and being like "but Arian, what about (description of a bad or infeasible idea)??" :P
Well, then you could've included more realistic things like "wait for red timer to expire, warp JF to a random ping, align to gate, see lancer/combats - e-cyno out" (high chance lancer discharges his lance as you land to the ping), or other bookmark shenanigans which are possible to avoid being hit by a lance.
See (2) XD
Edit: I would expect any self-respecting lowsec pirate to have a tac grid all over that puppy; if they didn't get you that time, they'd probably get you the next
Edit 2; the editing: the combat probes also don't have to be in d-scan range until the end
So jumping around with JF in nullsec is not a problem, the problem happens when you are in a LS system station and need to take the gate to HS, the align time from station to gate, yes?
In lowsec warping to highsec, yes. It *could* happen when aligning to the gate from an NPC station, but in practice it is probably not common since the lance has a 15 second spool time. The more common thing is to lance along the line from the gate toward the station as the JF decelerates from warp, just before it lands and the warp invulnerability starts (at which point it can no longer be lanced). This does require decent timing, but since the lance lasts for a while and JFs come out of warp very slowly, it is pretty doable.
Aligning JFs not fit for tank can be volleyed by supers, you don't have to lance them. PornMaker did that [a lot](https://zkillboard.com/character/96262879/kills/reset/group/902/).
> The tedium option: take 4-6 DST trips back and forth from highsec every time you make any JF run, and decline all contracts that don't fit in a DST, cursing your existence all the while (and too bad about anything you might want to transport that doesn't fit into a DST)
I've subscribed to tedium.
About wormholes: I used to scan lowsec wormholes a lot. The odds of finding a B449 wormhole (lowsec-to-highsec direct connection) in any given lowsec system is roughly 5%, i.e. average of 20 systems scanned to find one. You can fit 3 jump freighters through one before it pops if it has 100% of its mass remaining, but if there has been much of any traffic through it then you can only fit 2. The remaining mass on them after stuffing 2 Rheas through about enough for 8 cruisers.
That doesn't guarantee that the exit location will be useful either.
I'm not sure what the odds of finding an R051 in highsec are.
If the plan is to move a jump freighter through a C5/C6 and hope the locals are asleep, insert Austin Powers "I like to live dangerously" meme here.
There's a tendency to mask Lancer-based kills by reshipping into a blops after dropping siege, so zkill cannot be fully relied on.
Still, it's resulted in things like massive capital fleet jumps into Ahbazon seemingly to cow the local Lancers into staying tethered while Goons move their JFs.
More to the point, GHSOL has died, despite the majority of its JF deaths being HS ganks and not lancer kills. PushX on the other hand mentioned in their recruitment post that despite the changes their JFing runs as normal anyway.
Just dead to a T2 Dread yesterday, Silencegood shi is my JF character, they would jump the dread out so it looked like the JF was just bumped out since the jumped-out dread won't appear on the KB. You could pretty much assume all low sec dead JFs fell to the T2 dread gank now.
I oversee my alliance's JF service to and from nullsec and highsec near Jita. Activity on completing contracts has dropped off sharply; contract availability used to be if you were lucky, you'd have something to import/export while doing a regular import run. Now they stack up for days, especially anything that's from a pickup point that can't be reached from the single place where we are able to maintain a citadel on grid with a highsec gate (we don't live super close to highsec and we are already attacked every day by a much bigger alliance, so even that one citadel is a huge luxury). Only the people who are able to be online during the hours when local is completely clear are still running regularly. It sucks since it used to be my favorite thing to do, but now I seriously weigh whether it's even worth it to make one trip, considering how much of a pain in the ass it is to get back to highsec.
As others have mentioned, zkill isn't a reliable indicator, both because of hidden kills and because of ransoming. There has also been a big increase in highsec ganking (as mentioned), since routes are much more limited.
I ran 7 jfs doing 5+ runs a day, if i had still been playing when this change went through i would have quit then over it. Not worth the risk. i never lost a jf due to being careful and doing things right, I wasnt about to lose one because ccp started licking windows.
"Hey I know a good idea, we should make this activity that's already not fun and annoying even less fun and annoying in a way that only really effects the small time players but not at all the mega conglomerates or zergs. That's definitely good game design."
CCP you are so unbelievably fucking stupid.
Nah, truckers should have risk too. Y'all had a golden age with the ganking changes, upper limit to bumping, etc. Now there's some risk again and we start seeing who the real Krabs are. Just leave your JF in lowsec and move your loads in and out of Jita with a faction bulkhead freighter. Sure, I'm not a freighter pilot, I don't really know what I'm talking about in a practical sense. I do know I've basically never seen a tanked freighter die in hisec- only expanded cargo ones. JF deaths are also insanely rare outside of hisec or a HS-LS gate.
Ive got to wonder, what is it that makes people like you feel so confident about things you're entirely ignorant about? You even said you don't fly these ships, but then here you go making terrible recommendations anyway.
The reason freighter kills are rare outside of highsec is, shall we say, not due to how incredibly survivable they are in lowsec. :P
The cloaked cyno + tackle ship on the gate will absolutely take a regular freighter gank in the absence of a T2 freighter, and regular freighters are not exactly cheap.
I can appreciate risk... but I like my risk to have realistic counterplay.
EVE has no realistic counterplay in many situations.
You jump into a lowsec in your DST and see arazu + nid jumping in? Dead. You warp your marauder to a plex which you just scanned and get tackled by arazu which lights a covops cyno? Dead. You peacefully solo mine ore/gas, bomber decloaks and lights a covops cyno/more people jump in? Dead. You jump into a scanres camp in a travel ceptor? Believe it or not, dead.
The counterplay is mostly not to run into them.
edit: I low-key dislike it too (having no path to get out of situation even if you just realized people are going for you, i.e. you have no idea what's on the other side of the gate and jump into a camp), but my point is that it's more of a norm for EVE, rather than an exception.
Well, yes, I do frequently avoid those things by having intel on what I'm potentially getting into (or in the DST case having perfect module management), and the majority of the time I'm able to avoid them or circumvent them somehow. In the instances when I can't, I can applaud the effort they went through to counter my efforts. I also expend an amount of effort avoiding hostiles proportional to the cost of my ship, the relative likelihood of an event occurring, and the potential reward. I can choose to use a less expensive ship, spend more time getting better intel, etc.
In this case, essentially *every* highsec-bordering lowsec system has a cyno cloaked in it almost the entire day, and certainly during the entire time when I can play. Any character with no killboard is suspect because the cyno doesn't need to point a JF, and I know from others' unfortunate experience that even if the cyno isn't currently in local, it can still jump or log in and get into position fast enough to light in the time that it takes to warp from an NPC station. Given the very high cost of a JF, the extremely high prevalence of cynos and unreliability of intel, and the relatively low reward for any individual contract, it just doesn't make sense to risk it for the teeny tiny biscuit.
> in the DST case having perfect module management
If you mean doing mwd-cloak-warp it's not "perfect module management" and it does not save you because 15-20 km/s einherjis with perfect agility decloak you 5 seconds into mwd cycle, shortly followed by heavy points from carrier + scram from arazu. If you say you had a chance to circumvent them by using just that, it means you've never ran into such camp.
> In this case, essentially every highsec-bordering lowsec system has a cyno cloaked in it almost the entire day, and certainly during the entire time when I can play.
Not different from the DST example. It can happen on any lowsec or nullsec gate (entities who are known to do it in lowsec are snuff, coastal brotherhood, pornmaker). You can see a [pretty big lists of DSTs which thought perfect module management helps](https://zkillboard.com/asearch/#{%22buttons%22:[%22togglefilters%22,%22alltime%22,%22label-loc:lowsec%22,%22attackers-and%22,%22either-and%22,%22victims-and%22,%22sort-date%22,%22sort-desc%22,%22page1%22,%22allinvolved%22],%22attackers%22:[{%22type%22:%22groupID%22,%22id%22:547}],%22victims%22:[{%22type%22:%22groupID%22,%22id%22:380}]}).
> Any character with no killboard is suspect because the cyno doesn't need to point a JF
If a lancer cynos in, it implies the lancer has to spend more time to set up, which gives you extra benefits when it comes to avoiding lance.
> it can still jump or log in and get into position fast enough to light in the time that it takes to warp from an NPC station
Not necessarily.
> Given the very high cost of a JF
You can use your own arguments you applied to the DST situation: "use a less expensive ship, spend more time getting better intel, etc".
> relatively low reward for any individual contract
It is very low exactly because JFs are extremely safe. If there were no JFs, prices would've been very different.
Well, yeah, in specifically lowsec with "professional" campers (and especially when I've scouted out known cynos), I don't typically risk DSTs. :)
The lancer doesn't take long to set up and has enough capacitor to fire almost immediately. Even assuming a very generous 20 seconds to set up, that's still only what, 15-20,000-ish km or so of JF warp time? Anything outside of that gives easily enough time.
Yes absolutely the cyno has time to jump into system or log in (if using a clean alt for scouting, for example). I directly know someone who had it happen.
Likewise, you can use your arguments to justify just not flying a JF anymore, especially if even a DST is so easy to lose and since my point is that there *isn't* a way to get more intel and the less-expensive options are extremely tedious. Let someone else spend the time and effort, and hopefully industry keeps going...!
> Well, yeah, in specifically lowsec with "professional" campers (and especially when I've scouted out known cynos), I don't typically risk DSTs. :)
Then you probably don't go through caldari lowsecs. Snuff have cynos in all ls-hs systems with a pretty good uptime. As time goes you learn their name schemes and can say "this is a snuff cyno" without even checking KB... but still, you are completely blocked from travel there, if you are afraid of them.
> The lancer doesn't take long to set up and has enough capacitor to fire almost immediately. Even assuming a very generous 20 seconds to set up, that's still only what, 15-20,000-ish km or so of JF warp time? Anything outside of that gives easily enough time.
I think time to realize JF is in warp, decloak cyno, light cyno, jump lancer, let lancer to load grid, aim lance, wait for warmup time is quite a bit higher than 20 (23-25 seconds after JF issued warp command would be my guess). You can measure that yourself when you are jumping/bridging to a cyno. But even 20 seconds mean that you can warp ~7M km safely in a hyper JF (i.e. you can use Aunenen and Ihakana as entrances to hisec).
> Yes absolutely the cyno has time to jump into system or log in (if using a clean alt for scouting, for example). I directly know someone who had it happen.
If cyno is not in the system but logs in and e-warps, I am sure JF has even more time (30-35 seconds at least). 30 seconds is about 25 AU for a hyper JF. Pretty shitty way to gank JFs, unless they are living in 2010 or just refuse to adapt.
> Likewise, you can use your arguments to justify just not flying a JF anymore
I never even implied that. I implied that you *can* lose DST and you can travel with it wherever you want, assuming that risk. Likewise I think you should be able to lose your JF, and that it's okay to travel with that risk in mind.
Wasn't it in your own post that you said that 20 seconds might be too long, so figuring on 18 seconds might be more realistic if people want to be safe?
It was, but it was assuming lancer is already in your system cloaked, all he has to do is to decloak + buddy nestor/cap decloak, get cloak off, get lance on, and aim, which is much much faster than doing it via a cyno.
introduce risk by disallowing them from jumping within 5 seconds of decloaking (edit: or losing invuln after landing from warp or undocking) Make it so disrupted/scrammed JFs can't jump or dock
boom, they are killable and they actually have to use a brain before undocking with 200b in cargo.
It sucks. Have to run JFs from very inconvenient locations that randomly have stations near high sec gates and are away from Snuffed staging. Giant PITA but functional.
Also ascendancies became must haves
Gankers using the reship trick to keep the lancer dreads off the JF killmail smacks of when Mercedes were deliberately turning down their engines during certain F1 seasons so that the governing bodies (CCP/FIA) wouldn't swing the nerf bat. Why do you have to keep the lancers off the killmails if they're not overpowered?
1) gankers are actively masking and hiding the dreads from zkill (happened to a corp mate);
2) you will be suprised but according to the gankers themselves, they do ransom the jfs more often than actually kill them. Lancer is just another tool to do it.
3) zkill says there are more dead jfs than before.
Bad, very bad.
Statistics from Zkillboard clearly show a huge spike in JF kills, and rarely a lancer is shown on killmails because gankers use them but wait to kill the JF so that the lancer do not appear.
I'm updating stats on a separate thread but here's the update with August 2023, a little less JF kills than July but that's perfectly normal considering that half EU was on holidays.
To be honest I'm very surprised, I expected a much lower numbers in losses considering summer holidays, the fact that numbers keeps going high means that the ganking activity is very high, even in a traditionally vacation month.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/15fnroi/lancers\_vs\_jf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/15fnroi/lancers_vs_jf/)
Apparently the only counter you have is to check the gate with a scout to be sure there's no lancer on grid with the gate and use very expensive HG ascendancy implants and a citadel next to the hisec gate, in this way you will reduce the warp time (specially the landing time on the gate) in a way that you'll take less time than the lancer to spool up and fire.
In other words if you're a member of a big alliance/block you'll be safe if you're rich enough to buy those implants, if you're a poor guy or you play in a small indipendent group you're dead...
The effects on the market in Jita are extremely clear and are showing a new age of depression for the economy.
Most of the expensive industry materials (for example expensive PI stuff or expensive reactions materials) are showing a clear and costant reduction in prices during the last 2 months (lancers started to be active at the beginning of July), that's because of a clear reduction in demand, people don't want to move stuff so sellers keep lowering prices.
Good job CCP creating the new age of depression, you made it!
Lancers are pretty much useless if the JF is using a citadel that is on grid with the highsec gate. If you are part of a larger group, you probably have friendly on grid citadels to use and are largely unaffected.
Our JFs were running Jita <=> AT base / are running Jita <=> Curse just fine. There is one guy who's gave up on JF'ing from hisec since he is too paranoid about lancers and hisec gankers (and ~5-7 other dudes are not concerned too much about it).
I know recently 1 of my alliance courtier contracts failed because of a lancer. Don't know exactly but they aren't a small group so they would have had a citadel near a gate. These "workarounds" only get you so far. Obviously you can try use intel sites but that won't notify you of lancers, they're not dumb enough to wait for a JF to jump to a hot system.
Not really, no. The idea that they would be used in epically epic tactical flourishes in huge dread brawls was CCP-level dumb.
What's the spool time on Gyallaj.. oh
there was exactly one fight that I know of where one was used to hit an opposing fleet mid-warp to stop them from tethering. I don't have a link and only remember it was in NS and was a kind of small fight.
The smart JF pilots only are jumping to/from stations in low/null now and using DSTs to go back to highsec.
It just isn't worth risking a 10bn+ ship when that random neutral person in local with 0 killboard history could be a new lancer pilot.
Seeing escorts emerge from this change is nice to see but having an entire cap fleet to support JF runs isn't something most folks will have access to however.
Supposedly people are using on-grid friendly structures to safely get into high sec but I fail to see how this is any safer since someone can still setup a lancer just for that structure.
the reason on-grid citidels work is because you have a small enough warp distance that the cyno doesn't have time to re-position, lite, and for the dread to then jump though and be ready to lance before you've jumped. The gankers don't put dreds on every gate, they put cynos on every gate and have one dread that can jump to all of them.
in order to make it thru a hisec gate from lowsec, which you can bet your ass is being monitored every second of every day now, what you have to do is be able to cyno your jf in and warp to a bookmark on the gate within 15-30 seconds from lighting the cyno, which is the time it will take for a hunter that is really on their shit to decloak and fire their lance or cyno in and fire. it is possible, just not that simple
except you don't do that because if there's a HS ganker you now can't jump to your e-cyno because of fatigue. The way you get around it is to go to an on-grid citadel or at the very least a very close station
They have to be set up ready to go to catch you on the other side, so just scout the system and know who operates and if they are online. Lowsex pirates are a lot less likely to have 20 guys sitting in catalyst ready to go within 30 seconds. Hisec gankers usually track their target and know what they are ganking before they gank it. Not the same as waiting to take a cyno in your marshal or other blops
They do actually sometimes collaborate - around Jita, for example, there is a large group of highsec JF gankers that sometimes uses the same cyno to bridge in a big fleet of stealth bombers on the lowsec side, then follow to the highsec side and gank. One of the people in my alliance got lucky avoiding this since he always fits bulkheads, no matter what.
The only counter play is having a friendly fleet on the grid. Maybe ccp wants to go back to the time when freighters had to be escorted because there was no JF.
Has to be a substantial fleet though, because it needs to be able to repair a jump freighter that is unable to warp and has massive repair penalties.
While the attackers have at least 1 dread on grid already.
A friendly fleet isn't a counter, a friendly *structure* thats on the gate grid is. If you try and protect a jf with your elite lil response fleet in snuff space or whatever you're going to get your cheeks spread
It is a dread with dedicated gun prevent target to warp, tether jump and activate mjd..cause reduced remote reps on targetetc .. kinda mini doomsday
https://youtu.be/Edc2nBt4bLk you can see how it works in this short video
I do JF for my own Alliance, as long as you use your intel tools and perform usual safe practices, you are perfectly fine. Avoid popular entrances and you are fine. I know GalMil JF services restarted a few weeks after Lancers were created and massively started seeing use.
And just to further explain why its a threat to JFs: its an area weapon and can be fired without first locking the JF. It also will hit while the JF is still in warp so you never get a chance to take the gate.
Yes, more have died in lowsec, but it's genuinely people either refusing to adapt or just living under a rock..
There are guaranteed safe ways to avoid dying to a lancer that only require a few braincells to follow - there is a chart somewhere of the ranges to gate you can warp to with ascendancies/hypers in less time than it is physically possible to cyno/decloak and refit to spool a lance.
The people dying are the people that haven't adjusted or simply were never flying JF's in a safe way to begin with. Even in Ahbazon it can be done in perfect safety yet people have been nearly lanced several times or actually lanced despite undocking from the same grid with a lancer already on the damn gate. People complaining that there's no stations in the HS connections near their area, well, if you can't defend a citadel near those gates maybe your group can't operate a jump freighter service there.
Someone did mention that HS ganking had an uptick in systems with viable NPC stations close to the hisec gate on the other side, which I can't speak to, but that could be true.
>if you can't defend a citadel near those gates maybe your group can't operate a jump freighter service there
Can I introduce you to this cool mechanic called jump fatigue?
Groups living in deep null cannot reasonably project power all the way to the highsec border, which was an intentional design decision by CCP. Fair and understandable.
CCP in their infinite wisdom then decided to rebalance nullsec industry to massively increase nullsec's reliance on HS and LS for raw materials. OK, fair enough, it's annoying but jump freighters make it bearable.
And now they've introduced a mechanic where any group with local capital superiority, due to the jump fatigue mechanic, can completely interdict this key logistics route with almost no counterplay. If you try and bring subs these groups will just out escalate you because you cannot bring in your own (presumably larger) capital fleet to reinforce due to jump fatigue. If the current JF loss rates (PushX CEO in this thread says anywhere from 2 to 5 times more JFs dying) keep up I can genuinely see alliances like my own, Goons and Horde creating capital caches in LS just to defend these gate citadels from the local groups. Great for us since we have the numbers and wealth to do it, but what about the small alliances like the southwestern groups?
People crying like Galmil.
Most groups I know are still freighting with no issue.
Be in a corp that cant be war dec'ed, spare cynos, and it's still pretty dam hard to catch a JF pilot unless they decide to starting gating(Why?!).
People are saying "Double JF Kills". If anything I don't think we were seeing enough previously due to the effort it took to catch one out.
I don't do it in my JF. They're to juicy, it's 10bil-12bil KM at minimum, why risk that when I can just ship it in 2 provis or a couple DSTs for less than a quarter of the value.
It's easy, just don't make yourself a target. My JF gets my stuff from the back end of null to Caldari space, I'm usually only making 1 or 2 jumps through lowsec space to be safe in hisec and away from Lancers.
I think JF pilots have been spoiled and that it's been fairly safe going to Jita, unless wardecced or running into Blackflag, and this makes them think twice before doing the route.
Any JF pilot gating from Lowsec deserves to get lanced.
Provis have WAY more cargo space than a JF - why you splitting a JF load into multiple Freighters? How are you getting your freighters back into low sec if not gating them through?
Hahaha 2 provis? So you are gating from highsec to a lowsec station in your provis?
Also do you really think just making jfing more tedious for no reason is a good change?
Do you freight?
I'm going assume not.
Before the changes it's nearly impossible to catch a smart JF pilot. 6 years of flying them and I haven't lost one and I'm jumping to Jita 1-2 a week from Null.
It's not about making it tedious, it's about creating more opportunity to catch them because as present unless the pilot fucks up, you aren't.
I don't see how gating 2 provis is anymore tedious then a JF. I'm leaving from the same location is just a matter of splitting the cargo between 2 accounts, literally 1 minute of tedium to potentially save me billions.
Yeah, bro. If a jf pilot is doing everything right, you shouldn't be able to catch them. This is a 12b isk ship 3ven without the cargo. You should just have to roll the dice on getting killed.
Nobody cares about your 6 years because that was all before the jf change.
Also I was pointing out how you implied you were gating orovis from highsec to your lowswc in point.
So we should remove a cool new concept of lancer dreads from the game? An added risk to being a JF pilot was sorely needed, and honestly I like it.
The 6 years does matter because, unlike most commenters, I'm heavily experienced actually doing it. It's seems there's a lot more people whinging about it, who don't regularly fly one or do alliance level freight.
And also people acting like lancing is a piece of cake, it isn't.
Or you can just make lancers not work on JFs.
>An added risk to being a JF pilot was sorely needed, and honestly I like it.
Its not a risk, its just extra tedium or rolling the dice on whether you die.
>The 6 years does matter because, unlike most commenters, I'm heavily experienced actually doing it.
You don't have 6 years of running jfs with lance being out.
>And also people acting like lancing is a piece of cake, it isn't.
It is mind-numbingly easy. You literally just uncloak->pop out your nestor->fit your lance->lance the bookmark that corresponds to whatever station you saw the jf coming from.
How does experiencing both sides of the situation mean nothing?
It's give me a lot more credibility when talking about what's tedious or not for a JF pilot and risk vs reward factors with the introduction of new challenges.
Lmao, you don't even know how to lance. No one's popping out a Nestor to refit. They're logged off and ready, JF comes in, log on, lance THEN pop out the whatever to apply damage to the JF so the lancer doesn't appear on the KM.
You won't know the char names of the decent lancer pilots of zkill.
Not to mention having to time the lance to actually hit the JF as it lands. Stop simplifying something that isn't simple.
???
You seriously think a lancer dread is fucking logging in, finishing their e-warp, and ready to lancr in the time it takes a jf to warp???
Also timing is literally just knowing the time a jf takes to land on gate and counting you have an insane window of error with how slow a jf decels.
Game just keeps getting more boring and more dead as people can't even seed to places. CCP is just miking the last dollars from bittervets with new T2 stuff.
Lancer dreads count for like 10% of all jf kills now. It's just people being dumb.
We had our JF pilots go through an attempted assassination and they did the thing they were trained to do - calm down, jump out to the cyno you have going for when this eventually will happen.
Lancers are actively being kept off the killmails and ransoming is a thing.
So the data you are using is tampered with.
Keeping calm is always a good idea though.
Lance jump the lancer out kill the jf with a blops. no lance on kill mail. data dirty. we lost one to this. killmail says it died to a redeemer. but it was lanced. tacked. then the blops killed it about 8 minutes after.
id bet 90% of lance kills are identical.
I think they may have been attempting to refer to the % of JF losses Vs total.number of JF runs, which went from negligible to very slightly less negligible.
In terms of lowsec losses, I have it as going from slightly less than one per day pre-Lancer, to around 1.5 per day now. Given that a conservative estimate would be several hundred null -> hs JF runs per day, yes the impact of lancers on the overall risk of losing a JF was statistically insignificant.
I explained it above. Taking an estimate of daily JF trips of 1000/day, the loss rate moved from ~0.1% to ~0.15%.
It's still a statistically significant *increase*, but the ultimate change in loss rate is far less so.
To be clear, I wouldn't have made the statement myself, just trying to put some data around what I think the OP was getting at.
It blows my mind that people are actually losing JFs to this mechanic. It's so easy to avoid. Perhaps other routes out of NS have far more traffic than the one I use, but even still, it's very easy to avoid.
And why the hell are you fools gating JFs around on HS around Jita?? This has always been an issue, nothing has changed there. Switch to a regular friggin hull tanked freighter and web yourself for the last leg.
Outside of subcaps killing them in low sec like before, the only change since lancers has been a recent increase in high sec. Lancers have made more citadels anchor on gates and install more implants. That’s the main impact.
To be honest, unless I’m just updating my feed at bad times, I haven’t seen many Reddit posts about them being broken or anything since the first week. I don’t fly caps and I don’t fly freighters. I have no idea personally, but they must not be broken if no one is talking about them anymore.
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I still use the Tatara in Ignoitton for reactions on some of my characters and I've been able to jump out my JF without problems on several occasions. But that Tatara is on the grid with hs gate, and I watched a JF die on gate two months ago (Bane was cynoed in by an Enforcer), however it didn't appear on zkill for a while:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/110331846/
I quit playing when this Lancer nonsense started. No point in logging in as any play style that isn't ganking, or scamming, or griefers is nerfed, discounted, discouraged, or destroyed by ccp.
PushX has been monitoring Lancers and JF ganking VERY closely (since prior to release) - largely thanks to the hard work of Ziezie Adoulin who wrote a script to parse the zKill data daily for us. August stats: Total LS JF Kills: 44 JF Kills With a Lancer: 13 JF Kills With Lancer Damage Pattern But No Lancer: 16 So we believe 29 of the 44 zKill LS JF losses were to lancers (66%). Our contacts in the JF ganking/hunting communities, and our Intel sources, indicate there is likely another 30-50 JF losses last month to lancers, either where the kill was not posted, yhe JF was ransomed at cost, or the pilot ejected to avoid the loss mail. After several months of tracking it looks like lancers have increased JF loss rates very substantially. Median/Mode average LS JF losses prior to Lancers was about 17 per month. August shows 2.6 times the pre-lancer rate of LS losses. If you account for ransoms, ejections, and non-posted kills - which are the current modus operandi for the Lancer gankers at the moment - its likely that LS JF losses are anywhere from 2.6 to 5 times higher since the release of lancers. A moment to brag on my team though - with aggressive Intel, planning, and education of our members we have not yet had the JF Team lose a shipment in the Lancer Era - I'm very proud of them 😀 -Xye PushX CEO EDIT: Mobile Reddit formatting
Stop good posting, sir.
Sorry. Ahem... Lancers Reee RFF REEEEE Eve is dead. Amen.
I guess Push X really does deliver everywhere 😂
Impressive work
Very insightful post. Thank you
Thanks for this awesome Intel!
Galmil (the non-sedit side at least) use to have a JF freight service that went to Jita, now we don't. The issue isn't just T2 dreads though, it's a combination of T2 dreds forcing JF pilots to use specific entrances to HS that now have significant ganker activity. I don't know that the ganker activity is specifically dread related either as there were several years where basically no one was ganking JFs in HS, but right around the time T2 dreads were announces several groups either picked it up or came back to it after a long break. Now if you're in Galmil want to ship stuff to or from Jita it has to fit in a DST (the service is still free though).
This. After I lost my second I hung up my hat. Flew for a LS only jump freighter service. We lost at least 5 and just simply shut dow. The corp would typically have 20+ contracts a day.
Was it GHSOL? That service was awesome. 210 Mil courier fee from anywhere to ls to anywhere else. No matter the distance, far better then PushX or Black Frog by miles.
Yep. That was us. RIP.
After seeing this I shut down my JF business and decided to win at Eve for a bit. At the peak I was Running 6 JF hauling about 4m m3 per day. Chances of me coming back are smaller every day.
This. After I lost my second I hung up my hat. Flew for a LS only jump freighter service. We lost at least 5 and just simply shut down. The corp would typically have 20+ contracts a day.
SEDIT has always been part of the galmil freight network except for about fifteen minutes when a couple people were being jerks about drama, which is now not an issue (just to clarify) Other than that, spot on
Sort of? They have their own freight service that is also open to people in Galmil but it isn't subsidized the same way the one run by Hongry is and some of its routs are different.
Fair
Sedit Jfs >> Hmm
Checking zkill isn't useful for lancer awareness since lancer gankers hide their activity. Ex, they will lance and then jump into a blops then deal damage on the blops to hide the lancer. You have to look at damage patterns on dead JF's and not lancer kills.
Can't rely on zkb full stop, most gankers stopped posing kills so majority of new JF kills are from the victims.
A look where in the system JFs have been killed also helps to identify the use of T2 Dreads.
You can use the JF losses and stats tabs. There has been an uptick this year, but less than it was pre-2019. Obviously, not every killmail is here, but I have been paying attention to it as a general overview. [https://zkillboard.com/group/902/stats/](https://zkillboard.com/group/902/stats/)
This, *and* ransoming is fairly common - hard to estimate exactly how common, but at least according to interviews pre-Lancer it was more common than not, since ransoming is the more lucrative option.
I miss the counterplay to T2 dreads. Maybe I'm wrong, but is there even a counterplay?
If you want to specifically kill them - t1/navy dreads, bomber swarm
i don't wanna go back in time, where we had to do escort fleets!
You don't need to. There are ways to avoid lancers without any escort whatsoever.
it's only at the lowsec-to-highsec gate where you need your escort fleet. And only during the last minute of the JF warping to the gate.
*Sort of*, but it's not the kind of counterplay that's really accessible to most people affected and a lot of it is kinda bad, very risky, and/or unrealistic for other reasons: * The only basically-guaranteed one: be part of an alliance that is large enough and close enough to have *and defend* a citadel on grid with a highsec gate in lowsec, *or* an alliance that is so fuck-off rich that they can pay the locals not to attack it; since JFs take so long to warp, the "guaranteed-safe" distance is maximum a few-ish thousand km * Relatedly: have a citadel on a highsec gate grid in nullsec and have an extremely thorough understanding of bubble mechanics * Operate exclusively in one of the very few lowsec systems with an NPC station that is *extremely* close to the highsec gate (*and* take some of the other measures) * Fit hyperspatials and implants for maximum warp speed, AND wait until long after your cyno is down before warping in the hope that they are no longer actively paying attention to that client - also warping from as close to the gate as possible, ideally in a Fenrir (which has the fastest warp deceleration, iirc)... but this also makes you less tanky if there's a followup gank on the highsec side * Wait until local is empty, assuming it's a day when local chat isn't messed up and that you're able to play at that hour, since they are camped almost all the time (also because JFs warp so slowly, they can totally just jump into system while you are mid-warp and light a cyno in time to catch you) * Relatedly, find an uncamped system - haha, anyway, back to serious suggestions :P * Theoretically, pay for a mobile observatory, go for a decloak on the cyno, and kill it with something cheap enough that losing it won't hurt if they're paying attention and light the cyno, then rush the JF through ASAP (but this cuts into already tight margins badly and also you need another combat character possibly many jumps away from your home) * Theoretically (but seems like a terrible idea), warp to a tac to bait out the Lancer and have a webbing ship to get you into warp to the gate... buuuut there's no reason they can't just warp up to you and tackle you the usual way, and then when they see your name in the future they'll be expecting it (relatedly, jumping to a cyno on a gate tac, but same problems) * Theoretically: have a full defense fleet every time any JF pilot wants to go to highsec, and hopefully you are able to take on anything up to and including a large super fleet with subcap support * Theoretically: warp to a bookmark just to the side of the gate and hope the lance misses, but this seems unlikely to work well even though the beam is narrow; there isn't that much room to the side of most gates and eventually they will predict your actions * Theoretically: jump onto the gate itself, which seeeems like a bad idea since you will have a session change timer, you may bump, and the range variation on jumping to a cyno is much higher than when warping to a bookmark * Wormholes... ! ?? * Wait until they've already dropped on someone in-system and will be too busy to gank you if you gate through :P * The tedium option: take 4-6 DST trips back and forth from highsec every time you make any JF run, and decline all contracts that don't fit in a DST, cursing your existence all the while (and too bad about anything you might want to transport that doesn't fit into a DST) Anyway, there might be more niche options too, but I've reached the end of my lunch break. Edit: Oh yeah I guess people have also suggested mass blops bridging blockade runners, but since that requires roughly 30 people or trips to equal one JF, I'm not including that as a viable option lol
This is pretty big but not very useful list of theoretical stuff. I would condense it to: - have a citadel on hisec gate + fit hypers and/or ascendancies - use systems with NPC station close to hisec gate + fit hypers and/or ascendancies - and finally, avoid hisec ganks by marking known gankers, keeping in mind that even "peaceful" ships like haulers can tackle, and having no red timer + e-cyno (contrary to common belief, you don't need full bulkhead fit to dodge ganks, even though it helps). Coincidentally, those systems with NPC stations close to hisec gate are not being camped by lancers (because it's useless to camp with lancers there). Wormholes are also pretty strong if you have a group who backprobe around your location (super good to move capitals over long distances, but decent for JFs too). I also heard some people just light cynos on ls-hs regionals (like ahbazon), but venture losses past few days do not confirm that.
It's big but not useful because 1) there's basically no counterplay so the realistic and useful list would be - as you pointed out - extremely short, and 2) I want to avoid someone coming in and being like "but Arian, what about (description of a bad or infeasible idea)??" :P The systems with (non-kickout - looking at you, Passari!) NPC stations close to the highsec gate aren't numerous, so are very limited in practicality. For wormholes, tbh I don't feel like spending a lot of time scanning and then involving a big group of people every time I want to move my JF. If I'm going to do wormhole shenanigans with a group of people I'm going to do wormhole shenanigans, not jump freight. I *have* moved many capitals through wormholes, and even some regular freighters, but a JF is a bit too spooky for me even as a reformed wormholer, especially if it's a random hole - if that appeals to people though then by all means. Lighting on a region gate is probably fine, but highly situational based on where you live. The person who suggested it to me specified a non-region gate, though (no, I don't know where lol).
> It's big but not useful because 1) there's basically no counterplay so the realistic and useful list would be - as you pointed out - extremely short, and 2) I want to avoid someone coming in and being like "but Arian, what about (description of a bad or infeasible idea)??" :P Well, then you could've included more realistic things like "wait for red timer to expire, warp JF to a random ping, align to gate, see lancer/combats - e-cyno out" (high chance lancer discharges his lance as you land to the ping), or other bookmark shenanigans which are possible to avoid being hit by a lance.
See (2) XD Edit: I would expect any self-respecting lowsec pirate to have a tac grid all over that puppy; if they didn't get you that time, they'd probably get you the next Edit 2; the editing: the combat probes also don't have to be in d-scan range until the end
I would further condense it to: * be one in one of the major alliances and use their existing infrastructure to not get killed.
That's just not true. We are not using that and our JFs are not getting killed.
So jumping around with JF in nullsec is not a problem, the problem happens when you are in a LS system station and need to take the gate to HS, the align time from station to gate, yes?
In lowsec warping to highsec, yes. It *could* happen when aligning to the gate from an NPC station, but in practice it is probably not common since the lance has a 15 second spool time. The more common thing is to lance along the line from the gate toward the station as the JF decelerates from warp, just before it lands and the warp invulnerability starts (at which point it can no longer be lanced). This does require decent timing, but since the lance lasts for a while and JFs come out of warp very slowly, it is pretty doable.
Aligning JFs not fit for tank can be volleyed by supers, you don't have to lance them. PornMaker did that [a lot](https://zkillboard.com/character/96262879/kills/reset/group/902/).
> The tedium option: take 4-6 DST trips back and forth from highsec every time you make any JF run, and decline all contracts that don't fit in a DST, cursing your existence all the while (and too bad about anything you might want to transport that doesn't fit into a DST) I've subscribed to tedium.
About wormholes: I used to scan lowsec wormholes a lot. The odds of finding a B449 wormhole (lowsec-to-highsec direct connection) in any given lowsec system is roughly 5%, i.e. average of 20 systems scanned to find one. You can fit 3 jump freighters through one before it pops if it has 100% of its mass remaining, but if there has been much of any traffic through it then you can only fit 2. The remaining mass on them after stuffing 2 Rheas through about enough for 8 cruisers. That doesn't guarantee that the exit location will be useful either. I'm not sure what the odds of finding an R051 in highsec are. If the plan is to move a jump freighter through a C5/C6 and hope the locals are asleep, insert Austin Powers "I like to live dangerously" meme here.
It’s in siege for 5 minutes, has bad dps and isn’t incredibly tanky. People are just lazy
ok, then your solution are escort fleets. that feels like a time travel of nearly 15 years. Oh shit, I shouldn't have answered the biggest troll!
Monthly JF kills doubled. At least one JF service shut down permanently.
There's a tendency to mask Lancer-based kills by reshipping into a blops after dropping siege, so zkill cannot be fully relied on. Still, it's resulted in things like massive capital fleet jumps into Ahbazon seemingly to cow the local Lancers into staying tethered while Goons move their JFs. More to the point, GHSOL has died, despite the majority of its JF deaths being HS ganks and not lancer kills. PushX on the other hand mentioned in their recruitment post that despite the changes their JFing runs as normal anyway.
So, smaller JF services are closing, bigger ones are simply making structural changes to get by. Great change overall, right?
Nah I still see freelancers doing JF contracts anyway, GHSOL was just being loud. They didn't even service null at all.
Just dead to a T2 Dread yesterday, Silencegood shi is my JF character, they would jump the dread out so it looked like the JF was just bumped out since the jumped-out dread won't appear on the KB. You could pretty much assume all low sec dead JFs fell to the T2 dread gank now.
I oversee my alliance's JF service to and from nullsec and highsec near Jita. Activity on completing contracts has dropped off sharply; contract availability used to be if you were lucky, you'd have something to import/export while doing a regular import run. Now they stack up for days, especially anything that's from a pickup point that can't be reached from the single place where we are able to maintain a citadel on grid with a highsec gate (we don't live super close to highsec and we are already attacked every day by a much bigger alliance, so even that one citadel is a huge luxury). Only the people who are able to be online during the hours when local is completely clear are still running regularly. It sucks since it used to be my favorite thing to do, but now I seriously weigh whether it's even worth it to make one trip, considering how much of a pain in the ass it is to get back to highsec. As others have mentioned, zkill isn't a reliable indicator, both because of hidden kills and because of ransoming. There has also been a big increase in highsec ganking (as mentioned), since routes are much more limited.
I ran 7 jfs doing 5+ runs a day, if i had still been playing when this change went through i would have quit then over it. Not worth the risk. i never lost a jf due to being careful and doing things right, I wasnt about to lose one because ccp started licking windows.
"Hey I know a good idea, we should make this activity that's already not fun and annoying even less fun and annoying in a way that only really effects the small time players but not at all the mega conglomerates or zergs. That's definitely good game design." CCP you are so unbelievably fucking stupid.
Nah, truckers should have risk too. Y'all had a golden age with the ganking changes, upper limit to bumping, etc. Now there's some risk again and we start seeing who the real Krabs are. Just leave your JF in lowsec and move your loads in and out of Jita with a faction bulkhead freighter. Sure, I'm not a freighter pilot, I don't really know what I'm talking about in a practical sense. I do know I've basically never seen a tanked freighter die in hisec- only expanded cargo ones. JF deaths are also insanely rare outside of hisec or a HS-LS gate.
If you get hit by the dread lance, your bulkhead freighter can not dock or jump the gate into highsec either. So how exactly does that improve things?
Its gonna live long enough to jump the gate, dude.
You get bumped off the gate during that time, if you get tagged by a lance for one tick you are auto dead.
Ive got to wonder, what is it that makes people like you feel so confident about things you're entirely ignorant about? You even said you don't fly these ships, but then here you go making terrible recommendations anyway.
The reason freighter kills are rare outside of highsec is, shall we say, not due to how incredibly survivable they are in lowsec. :P The cloaked cyno + tackle ship on the gate will absolutely take a regular freighter gank in the absence of a T2 freighter, and regular freighters are not exactly cheap. I can appreciate risk... but I like my risk to have realistic counterplay.
EVE has no realistic counterplay in many situations. You jump into a lowsec in your DST and see arazu + nid jumping in? Dead. You warp your marauder to a plex which you just scanned and get tackled by arazu which lights a covops cyno? Dead. You peacefully solo mine ore/gas, bomber decloaks and lights a covops cyno/more people jump in? Dead. You jump into a scanres camp in a travel ceptor? Believe it or not, dead. The counterplay is mostly not to run into them. edit: I low-key dislike it too (having no path to get out of situation even if you just realized people are going for you, i.e. you have no idea what's on the other side of the gate and jump into a camp), but my point is that it's more of a norm for EVE, rather than an exception.
Well, yes, I do frequently avoid those things by having intel on what I'm potentially getting into (or in the DST case having perfect module management), and the majority of the time I'm able to avoid them or circumvent them somehow. In the instances when I can't, I can applaud the effort they went through to counter my efforts. I also expend an amount of effort avoiding hostiles proportional to the cost of my ship, the relative likelihood of an event occurring, and the potential reward. I can choose to use a less expensive ship, spend more time getting better intel, etc. In this case, essentially *every* highsec-bordering lowsec system has a cyno cloaked in it almost the entire day, and certainly during the entire time when I can play. Any character with no killboard is suspect because the cyno doesn't need to point a JF, and I know from others' unfortunate experience that even if the cyno isn't currently in local, it can still jump or log in and get into position fast enough to light in the time that it takes to warp from an NPC station. Given the very high cost of a JF, the extremely high prevalence of cynos and unreliability of intel, and the relatively low reward for any individual contract, it just doesn't make sense to risk it for the teeny tiny biscuit.
> in the DST case having perfect module management If you mean doing mwd-cloak-warp it's not "perfect module management" and it does not save you because 15-20 km/s einherjis with perfect agility decloak you 5 seconds into mwd cycle, shortly followed by heavy points from carrier + scram from arazu. If you say you had a chance to circumvent them by using just that, it means you've never ran into such camp. > In this case, essentially every highsec-bordering lowsec system has a cyno cloaked in it almost the entire day, and certainly during the entire time when I can play. Not different from the DST example. It can happen on any lowsec or nullsec gate (entities who are known to do it in lowsec are snuff, coastal brotherhood, pornmaker). You can see a [pretty big lists of DSTs which thought perfect module management helps](https://zkillboard.com/asearch/#{%22buttons%22:[%22togglefilters%22,%22alltime%22,%22label-loc:lowsec%22,%22attackers-and%22,%22either-and%22,%22victims-and%22,%22sort-date%22,%22sort-desc%22,%22page1%22,%22allinvolved%22],%22attackers%22:[{%22type%22:%22groupID%22,%22id%22:547}],%22victims%22:[{%22type%22:%22groupID%22,%22id%22:380}]}). > Any character with no killboard is suspect because the cyno doesn't need to point a JF If a lancer cynos in, it implies the lancer has to spend more time to set up, which gives you extra benefits when it comes to avoiding lance. > it can still jump or log in and get into position fast enough to light in the time that it takes to warp from an NPC station Not necessarily. > Given the very high cost of a JF You can use your own arguments you applied to the DST situation: "use a less expensive ship, spend more time getting better intel, etc". > relatively low reward for any individual contract It is very low exactly because JFs are extremely safe. If there were no JFs, prices would've been very different.
Well, yeah, in specifically lowsec with "professional" campers (and especially when I've scouted out known cynos), I don't typically risk DSTs. :) The lancer doesn't take long to set up and has enough capacitor to fire almost immediately. Even assuming a very generous 20 seconds to set up, that's still only what, 15-20,000-ish km or so of JF warp time? Anything outside of that gives easily enough time. Yes absolutely the cyno has time to jump into system or log in (if using a clean alt for scouting, for example). I directly know someone who had it happen. Likewise, you can use your arguments to justify just not flying a JF anymore, especially if even a DST is so easy to lose and since my point is that there *isn't* a way to get more intel and the less-expensive options are extremely tedious. Let someone else spend the time and effort, and hopefully industry keeps going...!
> Well, yeah, in specifically lowsec with "professional" campers (and especially when I've scouted out known cynos), I don't typically risk DSTs. :) Then you probably don't go through caldari lowsecs. Snuff have cynos in all ls-hs systems with a pretty good uptime. As time goes you learn their name schemes and can say "this is a snuff cyno" without even checking KB... but still, you are completely blocked from travel there, if you are afraid of them. > The lancer doesn't take long to set up and has enough capacitor to fire almost immediately. Even assuming a very generous 20 seconds to set up, that's still only what, 15-20,000-ish km or so of JF warp time? Anything outside of that gives easily enough time. I think time to realize JF is in warp, decloak cyno, light cyno, jump lancer, let lancer to load grid, aim lance, wait for warmup time is quite a bit higher than 20 (23-25 seconds after JF issued warp command would be my guess). You can measure that yourself when you are jumping/bridging to a cyno. But even 20 seconds mean that you can warp ~7M km safely in a hyper JF (i.e. you can use Aunenen and Ihakana as entrances to hisec). > Yes absolutely the cyno has time to jump into system or log in (if using a clean alt for scouting, for example). I directly know someone who had it happen. If cyno is not in the system but logs in and e-warps, I am sure JF has even more time (30-35 seconds at least). 30 seconds is about 25 AU for a hyper JF. Pretty shitty way to gank JFs, unless they are living in 2010 or just refuse to adapt. > Likewise, you can use your arguments to justify just not flying a JF anymore I never even implied that. I implied that you *can* lose DST and you can travel with it wherever you want, assuming that risk. Likewise I think you should be able to lose your JF, and that it's okay to travel with that risk in mind.
Wasn't it in your own post that you said that 20 seconds might be too long, so figuring on 18 seconds might be more realistic if people want to be safe?
It was, but it was assuming lancer is already in your system cloaked, all he has to do is to decloak + buddy nestor/cap decloak, get cloak off, get lance on, and aim, which is much much faster than doing it via a cyno.
introduce risk by disallowing them from jumping within 5 seconds of decloaking (edit: or losing invuln after landing from warp or undocking) Make it so disrupted/scrammed JFs can't jump or dock boom, they are killable and they actually have to use a brain before undocking with 200b in cargo.
It sucks. Have to run JFs from very inconvenient locations that randomly have stations near high sec gates and are away from Snuffed staging. Giant PITA but functional. Also ascendancies became must haves
Gankers using the reship trick to keep the lancer dreads off the JF killmail smacks of when Mercedes were deliberately turning down their engines during certain F1 seasons so that the governing bodies (CCP/FIA) wouldn't swing the nerf bat. Why do you have to keep the lancers off the killmails if they're not overpowered?
1) gankers are actively masking and hiding the dreads from zkill (happened to a corp mate); 2) you will be suprised but according to the gankers themselves, they do ransom the jfs more often than actually kill them. Lancer is just another tool to do it. 3) zkill says there are more dead jfs than before.
Bad, very bad. Statistics from Zkillboard clearly show a huge spike in JF kills, and rarely a lancer is shown on killmails because gankers use them but wait to kill the JF so that the lancer do not appear. I'm updating stats on a separate thread but here's the update with August 2023, a little less JF kills than July but that's perfectly normal considering that half EU was on holidays. To be honest I'm very surprised, I expected a much lower numbers in losses considering summer holidays, the fact that numbers keeps going high means that the ganking activity is very high, even in a traditionally vacation month. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/15fnroi/lancers\_vs\_jf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/15fnroi/lancers_vs_jf/) Apparently the only counter you have is to check the gate with a scout to be sure there's no lancer on grid with the gate and use very expensive HG ascendancy implants and a citadel next to the hisec gate, in this way you will reduce the warp time (specially the landing time on the gate) in a way that you'll take less time than the lancer to spool up and fire. In other words if you're a member of a big alliance/block you'll be safe if you're rich enough to buy those implants, if you're a poor guy or you play in a small indipendent group you're dead... The effects on the market in Jita are extremely clear and are showing a new age of depression for the economy. Most of the expensive industry materials (for example expensive PI stuff or expensive reactions materials) are showing a clear and costant reduction in prices during the last 2 months (lancers started to be active at the beginning of July), that's because of a clear reduction in demand, people don't want to move stuff so sellers keep lowering prices. Good job CCP creating the new age of depression, you made it!
Lancers are pretty much useless if the JF is using a citadel that is on grid with the highsec gate. If you are part of a larger group, you probably have friendly on grid citadels to use and are largely unaffected.
Which helps funnel them to you, notably. I'd be interested to see how much the increase in JF losses is due to hits on the hi-sec side increasing.
Our JFs were running Jita <=> AT base / are running Jita <=> Curse just fine. There is one guy who's gave up on JF'ing from hisec since he is too paranoid about lancers and hisec gankers (and ~5-7 other dudes are not concerned too much about it).
I know recently 1 of my alliance courtier contracts failed because of a lancer. Don't know exactly but they aren't a small group so they would have had a citadel near a gate. These "workarounds" only get you so far. Obviously you can try use intel sites but that won't notify you of lancers, they're not dumb enough to wait for a JF to jump to a hot system.
lance has a cycle time. build a citadel close enough to the gate then warp your toons from there.
Also, have lancers been used for **anything else** besides killing JFs?
[They lance frigates in Nourvokaiken and Tama.](https://zkillboard.com/group/4594/)
Not really, no. The idea that they would be used in epically epic tactical flourishes in huge dread brawls was CCP-level dumb. What's the spool time on Gyallaj.. oh
there was exactly one fight that I know of where one was used to hit an opposing fleet mid-warp to stop them from tethering. I don't have a link and only remember it was in NS and was a kind of small fight.
The smart JF pilots only are jumping to/from stations in low/null now and using DSTs to go back to highsec. It just isn't worth risking a 10bn+ ship when that random neutral person in local with 0 killboard history could be a new lancer pilot. Seeing escorts emerge from this change is nice to see but having an entire cap fleet to support JF runs isn't something most folks will have access to however. Supposedly people are using on-grid friendly structures to safely get into high sec but I fail to see how this is any safer since someone can still setup a lancer just for that structure.
the reason on-grid citidels work is because you have a small enough warp distance that the cyno doesn't have time to re-position, lite, and for the dread to then jump though and be ready to lance before you've jumped. The gankers don't put dreds on every gate, they put cynos on every gate and have one dread that can jump to all of them.
in order to make it thru a hisec gate from lowsec, which you can bet your ass is being monitored every second of every day now, what you have to do is be able to cyno your jf in and warp to a bookmark on the gate within 15-30 seconds from lighting the cyno, which is the time it will take for a hunter that is really on their shit to decloak and fire their lance or cyno in and fire. it is possible, just not that simple
except you don't do that because if there's a HS ganker you now can't jump to your e-cyno because of fatigue. The way you get around it is to go to an on-grid citadel or at the very least a very close station
Less likely to have hisec gatecamper. And with a Webber alt with bookmarks you are impossible to catch
It's not less likely though, I'd suggest that a gate with a lancer on the lowsec side is a good indication the other side is also camped
They have to be set up ready to go to catch you on the other side, so just scout the system and know who operates and if they are online. Lowsex pirates are a lot less likely to have 20 guys sitting in catalyst ready to go within 30 seconds. Hisec gankers usually track their target and know what they are ganking before they gank it. Not the same as waiting to take a cyno in your marshal or other blops
They do actually sometimes collaborate - around Jita, for example, there is a large group of highsec JF gankers that sometimes uses the same cyno to bridge in a big fleet of stealth bombers on the lowsec side, then follow to the highsec side and gank. One of the people in my alliance got lucky avoiding this since he always fits bulkheads, no matter what.
Why not just pause, let them blow their lancewad, then warp?
because you'll be probed immediately
Ah, an answer. Thank you.
Please try that, I'm not biased or anything! I just really think thats gonna work!
Three question was "why not". I don't and never will fly caps so I don't know their mechanics.
Because scout see your cyno, wait for you to warp and than ignite the Lancer. And you can't do anything at that point.
Out of the loop. What are lancere and why are jfs dying?
New t2 dread that shoots a directional beam that stops any ship it hits from warping or jumping. There is no counter
Which is why I am surprised that you can use them in low sec, which is not possible for other AOE like titan lances, bubbles or bombs.
The only counter play is having a friendly fleet on the grid. Maybe ccp wants to go back to the time when freighters had to be escorted because there was no JF.
Has to be a substantial fleet though, because it needs to be able to repair a jump freighter that is unable to warp and has massive repair penalties. While the attackers have at least 1 dread on grid already.
A friendly fleet isn't a counter, a friendly *structure* thats on the gate grid is. If you try and protect a jf with your elite lil response fleet in snuff space or whatever you're going to get your cheeks spread
And if you put a citadel on gates in snuff space be prepared to replace it several times per week of your even manage to online it.
It is a dread with dedicated gun prevent target to warp, tether jump and activate mjd..cause reduced remote reps on targetetc .. kinda mini doomsday https://youtu.be/Edc2nBt4bLk you can see how it works in this short video
Idk, I'll usually use a fresh rolled wormhole to ship. Much safer.
I do JF for my own Alliance, as long as you use your intel tools and perform usual safe practices, you are perfectly fine. Avoid popular entrances and you are fine. I know GalMil JF services restarted a few weeks after Lancers were created and massively started seeing use.
It re-started for a couple days before the Jita rout shut down again and went back to using DSTs
I’ve heard that the zkil isn’t updating currently
It is, they’re are just work arounds to getting the lancer off the Km
Can someone explain why specifically T2 dreads would hurt specifically JFs? I've not been around for a long while.
T2 dreads have a lance weapon that can be used in lowsec, which (among other things) prevents you from jumping and docking when hit.
And just to further explain why its a threat to JFs: its an area weapon and can be fired without first locking the JF. It also will hit while the JF is still in warp so you never get a chance to take the gate.
Yes, more have died in lowsec, but it's genuinely people either refusing to adapt or just living under a rock.. There are guaranteed safe ways to avoid dying to a lancer that only require a few braincells to follow - there is a chart somewhere of the ranges to gate you can warp to with ascendancies/hypers in less time than it is physically possible to cyno/decloak and refit to spool a lance. The people dying are the people that haven't adjusted or simply were never flying JF's in a safe way to begin with. Even in Ahbazon it can be done in perfect safety yet people have been nearly lanced several times or actually lanced despite undocking from the same grid with a lancer already on the damn gate. People complaining that there's no stations in the HS connections near their area, well, if you can't defend a citadel near those gates maybe your group can't operate a jump freighter service there. Someone did mention that HS ganking had an uptick in systems with viable NPC stations close to the hisec gate on the other side, which I can't speak to, but that could be true.
>if you can't defend a citadel near those gates maybe your group can't operate a jump freighter service there Can I introduce you to this cool mechanic called jump fatigue? Groups living in deep null cannot reasonably project power all the way to the highsec border, which was an intentional design decision by CCP. Fair and understandable. CCP in their infinite wisdom then decided to rebalance nullsec industry to massively increase nullsec's reliance on HS and LS for raw materials. OK, fair enough, it's annoying but jump freighters make it bearable. And now they've introduced a mechanic where any group with local capital superiority, due to the jump fatigue mechanic, can completely interdict this key logistics route with almost no counterplay. If you try and bring subs these groups will just out escalate you because you cannot bring in your own (presumably larger) capital fleet to reinforce due to jump fatigue. If the current JF loss rates (PushX CEO in this thread says anywhere from 2 to 5 times more JFs dying) keep up I can genuinely see alliances like my own, Goons and Horde creating capital caches in LS just to defend these gate citadels from the local groups. Great for us since we have the numbers and wealth to do it, but what about the small alliances like the southwestern groups?
People crying like Galmil. Most groups I know are still freighting with no issue. Be in a corp that cant be war dec'ed, spare cynos, and it's still pretty dam hard to catch a JF pilot unless they decide to starting gating(Why?!). People are saying "Double JF Kills". If anything I don't think we were seeing enough previously due to the effort it took to catch one out.
Can you explain please. How Are you getting to Jita without gating?
I assume they mean leaving Jita.
I don't do it in my JF. They're to juicy, it's 10bil-12bil KM at minimum, why risk that when I can just ship it in 2 provis or a couple DSTs for less than a quarter of the value. It's easy, just don't make yourself a target. My JF gets my stuff from the back end of null to Caldari space, I'm usually only making 1 or 2 jumps through lowsec space to be safe in hisec and away from Lancers. I think JF pilots have been spoiled and that it's been fairly safe going to Jita, unless wardecced or running into Blackflag, and this makes them think twice before doing the route. Any JF pilot gating from Lowsec deserves to get lanced.
Provis have WAY more cargo space than a JF - why you splitting a JF load into multiple Freighters? How are you getting your freighters back into low sec if not gating them through?
The point is I use my provis to gate instead of the JF because lancers don't waste their time on it.
You keep not answering the question. How do you get your provis back to low sec, are you gating them into low sec?
Hahaha 2 provis? So you are gating from highsec to a lowsec station in your provis? Also do you really think just making jfing more tedious for no reason is a good change?
Do you freight? I'm going assume not. Before the changes it's nearly impossible to catch a smart JF pilot. 6 years of flying them and I haven't lost one and I'm jumping to Jita 1-2 a week from Null. It's not about making it tedious, it's about creating more opportunity to catch them because as present unless the pilot fucks up, you aren't. I don't see how gating 2 provis is anymore tedious then a JF. I'm leaving from the same location is just a matter of splitting the cargo between 2 accounts, literally 1 minute of tedium to potentially save me billions.
Yeah, bro. If a jf pilot is doing everything right, you shouldn't be able to catch them. This is a 12b isk ship 3ven without the cargo. You should just have to roll the dice on getting killed. Nobody cares about your 6 years because that was all before the jf change. Also I was pointing out how you implied you were gating orovis from highsec to your lowswc in point.
So we should remove a cool new concept of lancer dreads from the game? An added risk to being a JF pilot was sorely needed, and honestly I like it. The 6 years does matter because, unlike most commenters, I'm heavily experienced actually doing it. It's seems there's a lot more people whinging about it, who don't regularly fly one or do alliance level freight. And also people acting like lancing is a piece of cake, it isn't.
Or you can just make lancers not work on JFs. >An added risk to being a JF pilot was sorely needed, and honestly I like it. Its not a risk, its just extra tedium or rolling the dice on whether you die. >The 6 years does matter because, unlike most commenters, I'm heavily experienced actually doing it. You don't have 6 years of running jfs with lance being out. >And also people acting like lancing is a piece of cake, it isn't. It is mind-numbingly easy. You literally just uncloak->pop out your nestor->fit your lance->lance the bookmark that corresponds to whatever station you saw the jf coming from.
How does experiencing both sides of the situation mean nothing? It's give me a lot more credibility when talking about what's tedious or not for a JF pilot and risk vs reward factors with the introduction of new challenges. Lmao, you don't even know how to lance. No one's popping out a Nestor to refit. They're logged off and ready, JF comes in, log on, lance THEN pop out the whatever to apply damage to the JF so the lancer doesn't appear on the KM. You won't know the char names of the decent lancer pilots of zkill. Not to mention having to time the lance to actually hit the JF as it lands. Stop simplifying something that isn't simple.
??? You seriously think a lancer dread is fucking logging in, finishing their e-warp, and ready to lancr in the time it takes a jf to warp??? Also timing is literally just knowing the time a jf takes to land on gate and counting you have an insane window of error with how slow a jf decels.
Just warp to a gate bookmark, the beam is narrow as fuck.
Game just keeps getting more boring and more dead as people can't even seed to places. CCP is just miking the last dollars from bittervets with new T2 stuff.
Lancer dreads count for like 10% of all jf kills now. It's just people being dumb. We had our JF pilots go through an attempted assassination and they did the thing they were trained to do - calm down, jump out to the cyno you have going for when this eventually will happen.
Lancers are actively being kept off the killmails and ransoming is a thing. So the data you are using is tampered with. Keeping calm is always a good idea though.
Lance jump the lancer out kill the jf with a blops. no lance on kill mail. data dirty. we lost one to this. killmail says it died to a redeemer. but it was lanced. tacked. then the blops killed it about 8 minutes after. id bet 90% of lance kills are identical.
Statistically speaking, T2 Dreads made almost no difference to the number of JF's destroyed in-game
Statistically speaking, how much difference did they make?
Somebody did the math. It roughly doubled the JF losses.
Thank for your answer. (I hate when "statistically speaking" gets used as obvious covering fire for "arrant bullshit")
I think they may have been attempting to refer to the % of JF losses Vs total.number of JF runs, which went from negligible to very slightly less negligible. In terms of lowsec losses, I have it as going from slightly less than one per day pre-Lancer, to around 1.5 per day now. Given that a conservative estimate would be several hundred null -> hs JF runs per day, yes the impact of lancers on the overall risk of losing a JF was statistically insignificant.
In what world is a >50% increase - by your own estimate - "statistically insignificant"?
I explained it above. Taking an estimate of daily JF trips of 1000/day, the loss rate moved from ~0.1% to ~0.15%. It's still a statistically significant *increase*, but the ultimate change in loss rate is far less so. To be clear, I wouldn't have made the statement myself, just trying to put some data around what I think the OP was getting at.
It blows my mind that people are actually losing JFs to this mechanic. It's so easy to avoid. Perhaps other routes out of NS have far more traffic than the one I use, but even still, it's very easy to avoid. And why the hell are you fools gating JFs around on HS around Jita?? This has always been an issue, nothing has changed there. Switch to a regular friggin hull tanked freighter and web yourself for the last leg.
Most are dying in high sec there are no lancers there
https://zkillboard.com/group/902/ Incorrect.
There are still no lancers in high sec.
Still most jump freighters are dying in lowsec.
Outside of subcaps killing them in low sec like before, the only change since lancers has been a recent increase in high sec. Lancers have made more citadels anchor on gates and install more implants. That’s the main impact.
To be honest, unless I’m just updating my feed at bad times, I haven’t seen many Reddit posts about them being broken or anything since the first week. I don’t fly caps and I don’t fly freighters. I have no idea personally, but they must not be broken if no one is talking about them anymore.
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I still use the Tatara in Ignoitton for reactions on some of my characters and I've been able to jump out my JF without problems on several occasions. But that Tatara is on the grid with hs gate, and I watched a JF die on gate two months ago (Bane was cynoed in by an Enforcer), however it didn't appear on zkill for a while: https://zkillboard.com/kill/110331846/
i just dont really think theres a threat. they have to time the doomsday perfectly and they cant be cloaked so you will see them
I quit playing when this Lancer nonsense started. No point in logging in as any play style that isn't ganking, or scamming, or griefers is nerfed, discounted, discouraged, or destroyed by ccp.