In-system navigation and maneuvering

In-system navigation and maneuvering

The basics of warping

Warping is the high-speed means of travel between two in-system locations. Even the largest of solar systems, Thera, can be traversed in a few minutes, using this method of travel. While in warp, a player's ship is nearly invulnerable (the one exception is discussed in the next section).

The time taken to travel between any two points by warping is set by the maximum speed while in warp, called (a little misleadingly) just "warp speed" in game. Smaller ships warp faster than larger -- warp speeds range from 20 AU/s for the Leopard shuttle down to 1.37 AU/s for titans. (1 AU is nearly 150 million kilometers, the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun.)

There are limited options for improving warp speed:

• No skills impact warp speed.
• The only set of modules that improve warp speed are the Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer rigs, that give a 20 to 25% improvement in warp speed, at the expense of increased signature radius.
• Eifyr & Co. 'Rogue' WS series of hard wirings give warp speed improvements from 5% to 18%.
• Ascendency attribute implants give bonus for warp speed, up to a maximum of 62.17% for the High-Grade set.
• The Halcyon B Series of daily award boosters give a time-limited boost to warp speed of up to 5%.

To get into warp, some conditions need to be met on-grid:

• Your velocity should be at least 75% of your current maximum speed. If your maximum speed is increased by a microwarpdrive or an after-burner or is decreased by webbing then the critical velocity is 75% of that speed, not your nominal ship-fit maximum.
• Your direction of travel should be within a few degrees (perhaps 5° or less) of the line towards the target of your warp.
• Your warp drive is not destabilized by warp scrambers, warp disruptors, etc. The various methods to interfere with your warp drive are discussed below.

The time taken to achieve 75% of current velocity in the right direction, from a standing stop, is exactly the align time and is listed in the fitting window. Two important points to note:

1. Because of the way the game is architected, the actual align time is the listed align time rounded up to the nearest second. So listed align times of 1.01 and 1.99 seconds give an actual align time of 2s.
2. The actual direction the ship is facing when starting has no impact on the time to enter warp. The speed and direction of travel does.

Align time is set by ship agility and the factors that impact this are listed in this section.

To enter warp, capacitor is used. The amount needed depends on the length of the warp. If the ship has insufficient capacitor then it will fail to complete the warp, but come out of warp at a distance dependent on the available capacitor. Factors that impact the amount of capacitor needed are as follows:

• The skill Warp Drive Operation reduces the capacitor needed for a given warp distance by 10% for each skill level.
• Eifyr & Co. 'Rogue' WD series of hard wirings reduce the capacitor needed by anywhere between 2 and 12%.
• Ships like covert ops have skill-based bonuses for reduced capacitor need.

How to interfere with a warp

Ships in warp are nearly invulnerable to attack from other ships until they arrive at their new location on-grid. The mere act of entering warp also breaks the targeting lock of hostile ships. So modules, deployables and techniques that either prevent a ship from going into warp or pull a ship out of warp prematurely form a central hunting technique in EVE Online.

Table 4: Modules, deployables, and techniques that prevent a ship from going into warp or pull a ship out of warp prematurely.

Module/deployable/technique	Impact	Range	Counter
Warp Disruptor	Prevents warping. Strength of +1 points.	20-30 km	Warp core stabilization due inate ship characteristics or through use of a Warp Core Stabilizer
Warp Scrambler	Prevents warping and use of a MWD or MJD. Strength of +2 or +3 points.	7.5-11.25 km	Warp core stabilization due inate ship characteristics or through use of a Warp Core Stabilizer
Warp Disrupt Probes	Used only in null sec and J-space: Creates a sphere or "bubble" for 2 minutes in which warping is prevented If the bubble is with 500km of your warp destination and your line of motion intersects with the bubble, your ship will be dragged to the bubble edge	20 km radius	Active Interdiction Nullifier module when warp is initiated
Warp Disruption Field Generator	Used only by Heavy Interdiction Cruisers (HICs): When activated unscripted creates a warp disruption bubble centered on the ship (null sec, J-space only) When activated with scripts it can create +100 strength warp disruption or scrambling on a targeted ship	(Unscripted) 20 km radius	(Unscripted) Active Interdiction Nullifier module when warp is initiated
Heavy Warp Disruptor	Used by battleships and larger. Prevents warping. Strength of +3, +4 or +5 points.	22-40 km	Warp core stabilization due inate ship characteristics or through use of a Warp Core Stabilizer
Heavy Warp Scrambler	Used by battleships and larger. Prevents warping and use of a MWD or MJD. Strength of +6, +8 or +10 points.	8.5-15 km	None for small ships
Mobile Warp Disruptor	A deployable that can only be used in null sec and J-space. Creates a warp disruption bubble centered on it.	5-40 km	Active Interdiction Nullifier module when warp is initiated
Bumping	A technique where a hostile pilot rams a ship attempting to align at high speed. This can prevent a ship from aligning direction well enough to warp.	0 km	A ship moving quickly is very hard to target for bumping.

For warp disruption or warp scrambling modules to prevent warping, their strength must exceed the warp core strength of the ship attempting to warp. Most ships have a warp core strength of zero, ships such as the Venture and the Metamorphosis have an innate warp core strength of +2. For all ships, this can be boosted by +2 for a limited period of 10 or more seconds by activating a Warp Core Stabilizer, if installed. (Note that Warp Core Stabilizers come with significant drawbacks: halving of drone bandwidth and maximum target lock range.)

Once in warp, the hunted ship is much safer. However, as always in EVE Online, no tactic is risk free:

• It is possible to smart-bomb a ship mid-warp. Every 1s server tick, EVE Online calculates the position of a ship in warp. If another ship detonates a smart bomb within range of that position at the right server tick, the warping ship will take the usual smart-bomb damage. This can be fatal to low-tanked ships like shuttles. Note that the attacker will have determine the right locations mid-warp using their own dummy runs and therefore this method really on works on ship classes with little or no variation, most particularly shuttles. Even the use of a cheap Eifyr & Co. 'Rogue' WS-01 implant by the warping pilot will negate this tactic.
• The main risk arises after leaving warp. The hunter may try to guess the on-grid location where the warp will finish and attempt to intercept. A classic example is using the system's star as an emergency warp-out point. Since the star is always present on the overview, it is a common choice for fleeing pilots. Good hunters will observe the direction of alignment to determine where the hunted ship is fleeing to.

Can I see it? Can I warp to it? Locating ships and other objects

For the New Eden explorer, tactical awareness at the system level is probably the key factor to survival. Once a hunter is on-grid with your ship, the outcome of destruction or escape is often pre-determined. Off-grid and in-system, the outcomes are very much more fluid.

This is because three key questions have complex answers:

1. Can I see the ships of any other players in-system?
2. Can they see me?
3. Can they warp to my position?

The answers to these questions depend on a multiplicity of tools and mechanisms, each returning different types and granularity of information, each leaking information to your opponents. Table 5 gives a brief summary of each.

Table 5: In-system intel tools and mechanisms, with their characteristics

Tool/mechanism	Information given	Location granularity	Information leaked to opponents
Local chat	Character names of in-system pilots	In-system or not	Own character name visible
D-scan	Ship name and type	Angle to within 5 degrees; distance to within 0.1AU; all inside a 14.4AU radius of current location	If a given ship is within 14.4AU, they can D-scan you if uncloaked (*)
Combat probing	Ship type	Accurate enough to enable warp-in to within 2500m of the located ship	Presence of combat probes will alert other players to your presence and intent
Overview and on-grid view	Character name, ship name and type, weapon types and other visual fit data	Accurate enough to obtain target lock	Own ship is similarly visible, if uncloaked.

(*) There are also a class of ships, combat recon ships, that are invisible to D-scan: the Rook, the Curse, the Lachesis, and the Huginn.

Local chat

For all of K-space (high-, low- and null-sec space), the local chat window shows what other pilots are in-system. Right-clicking on their name and selecting “Information” gives some useful data: how old the character is, what is their security status, what corporation do they belong to. Out-of-game tools such as zKillboard and localthreat give further information. zKillboard can be searched, one pilot at a time, for detail on all their kills. localthreat provides a quick, single summary view for a list of players cut'n'pasted from local chat into that tool.

If you can see other in-system ships, you can postulate which ships are being piloted by which players, what their likely current activity is and what might their offensive and defensive capabilities might be.

Local chat rarely shows who is in system in wormhole space and Pochven. Only if somebody messages using local chat will their name appear.

D-scan

(See the Explorer's Handbook section on D-scan for further detail on this critical tool.)

D-scan is the fastest tool for identifying the existence of another ship. Unlike local, it returns not the pilot name, but the ship name. So, unless you are on-grid with the ship in question, then the match of pilot to a given ship is a game of guesswork. Note also, that D-scan does not tell you if a ship is being piloted -- often cheap corvettes are abandoned without any pilots.

D-scan's maximum range of 14.4AU has a big impact on how conflict plays out in a large system. With all cosmic signatures within 4AU of a celestial, a large system essentially has a number of (free space) pockets that a pilot has to warp between to determine what (uncloaked) ships are active in space. This is even more important in space like factional warfare low sec where few run with cloaky ships.

Setting the range to 1AU or less is often a good way to determine if you are about to be joined on-grid, since if you hit D-scan frequently (say more frequently than once every 10s) you will see other ships warping in.

Decreasing the scan cone angle to 10 or 5 degrees is a good way to determine if another player is at a particular location. Simply hold down the D-scan button (defaults to "d") and then click on a location in the scan probe window, a row in the overview or a bookmark or other marker in space. The cone quickly rotates to that direction and performs a scan. Any ship that is flagged up by the D-scan will likely be at that location.

Uniquely, there are no skills, modules, or boosters that improve D-scan effectiveness. A 10-year EVE Online veteran has no advantage other than personal experience, over a 1-day-old character. However, configuring the results filter to show up the desired ships and other artifacts, does make a difference in the ease of reading and utility of the results.

Scanning using combat probes

If a ship is not near another object one can warp to or a bookmark then there are only two methods to warp to that ship: (a) be in a fleet with them or (b) probe down their location using combat probes. For most players, spotting combat probes on D-scan (see below) is a sign that there are hostiles in-system and it is time to move.

Speed of combat probe scanning is of vital importance. A hunter can reduce the number of scans needed by determining the approximate location on D-scan then launching and scanning with a tight configuration, say with diameter 1AU, to locate the target ship with one sweep. That gives the target player just a short window of roughly 10 seconds to spot the combat probes on D-scan.

The target ship has a few strategies for avoiding a hunter appearing close-by, on-grid:

• Regularly moving between safes (see below).
• Cloaking up.
• Making it harder to scan down in a single pass, through the use of signature reduction techniques (see this investigation by Nac Audene).
• Moving at high-speed while on-grid. There is usually a minimum of 15s between completion of a successful combat probe sweep and a hunter landing on grid. If the target ship is a frigate, it can already be over 20km away from the location determined by the combat probes – outside of scram range. To achieve that gap, the target ship needs to be continuously moving with a prop mod active, ideally in a direction out of the horizontal plane.

The overview

(For further information on this important tool, please see the Explorer's Handbook section on the overview.)

The overview, with correct configuration, will show what ships are on-grid with you. If the ship is occupied by a pilot, their name will be given alongside the ship type. If unoccupied, the ship type will be repeated as the name. Note that neither you nor they can warp directly to your position directly – other modes of propulsion must be used. However, if more than 150km away, another ship can warp to a nearby object like a relic or data can or asteroid. So a ship that is several hundred kilometers away from any object is nearly invulnerable. Competent hunters can get around this through the quick use of combat probes…

Deadspace pockets and acceleration gates

A deadspace pocket is one that cannot be warped to directly, but instead any attempt to do so will land the pilot at some fixed location on the edge or outside the pocket. Two examples:

1. Warping to a Drifter wormhole (marked by a beacon) will put the ship about 80km from the wormhole itself.
2. Many combat sites are deadspace pockets and one arrives not at the pocket, but at an acceleration gate leading to the pocket.

For both examples, the ship warping in is placed at a disadvantage. In the former case, the ship is at risk of coming under heavy attack from Drifter battleships with long-range weapons. For the latter, any ship already inside the deadspace pocket can, through a short-range D-scan, detect their arrival and prepare accordingly before the arriving ship can activate and come in via the acceleration gate.

Safes, Bookmarks, Perches and All That

Making and using bookmarks allows for much greater flexibility in where one warps to.

A bookmark is simply a saved location in a given system. It can be on an existing grid or be off any current grid. There are two methods to creating a new bookmark:

1. Right-click an on-grid object whose location can be saved and select save location. Note that the location of on-grid ships cannot be saved.
2. Hit the "save current location" hotkey (usually "Ctrl-b"), fill in the relevant details in the resulting dialog box and hit "Enter". The location saved is the one where you ship is during the current server tick when "Enter" is pressed. Crucially, this allows one to save mid-warp locations.

There are multiple different uses for bookmarks:

• Gate perches: Many gates are more than 14.4AU from any other celestial body or structure, in other words, out of D-scan range. Thus, warping to the gate means that a player is essentially flying blind into a choke point that may be camped. A previously saved bookmark within 14.4AU is a valuable "perch" from which the player can D-scan the gate and assess any possible threats there.
• On-grid perches: Sometimes referred to as tacticals, perches on-grid with stations, gates, PVE sites, etc. can be a useful way to observe what is happening on-grid. These are very safe if the ship is cloaked and if not combat probed, safe even if uncloaked.
• Data or relic site on-grid perch: One common use is in hacking data and relic sites. A player can "bounce" their ship rapidly and precisely between cans by warping over and back from the on-grid perch. This reduces vulnerability to hunters, since the player's ship does not directly travel between cans by "slow-boating" (conventional on-grid movement without warping).
• Conventional safes: Any saved location that is off-grid from other celestials, structures and sites is regarded as a "safe". To reach such a location, other players would need to combat scan the current location of the ship. The use of safes is essential when other players pose a threat -- which is the case in most of New Eden!
• Deep safes: These are safes that are more than 14.4AU from any celestial. Unless another player spots them on D-scan while warping by or detects them via a wide-spread combat probe configuration, a player at a deep safe is effectively hidden. Deep safes are hard to establish in small to medium-sized systems where all celestials, stations and gates are within 14.4AU of some other object. One known method for creating deep safes in any system, is to be in an abyssal site at down-time (11 EVE time, every day). After down-time, the player's ship is placed in the system from where the abyssal filament was activated, but at a random location. Sometimes these random locations are over 14.4AU from all other bodies and objects.
• Insta-doc bookmarks: Warping to a station can be dangerous. The warp-in point is a position placed at roughly 2500m from the point or object that a player requested a warp to. But stations have a docking range of 500m, leaving a potential journey of up to 2000m for the ship to traverse before docking. This period leaves a player's ship vulnerable at what is a well-known choke-point. An "insta-doc bookmark" is a saved location well inside the station model. A player that warps to an insta-doc bookmark is always guaranteed to have a warp-in point at 0m from the station and thus any dock command will be instantaneous. Insta-doc bookmarks can be created simply by saving the ship's location immediately after undocking.
• Insta-warp bookmarks: Undocking from a station can be dangerous. After requesting a warp to another location, it can take several seconds for a ship to align and warp, during which time, the ship is vulnerable to attack and/or warp disruption or scrambling. An "insta-warp" bookmark is one which is more than 150km from the undock point, directly aligned with the direction of travel on undocking. A player that warps to an insta-warp bookmark will experience no delay between the issuing of the warp command and entering into warp. Insta-warp bookmarks are created by undocking and allowing the ship to continue its undock trajectory for at least 150km before saving the location as an insta-warp bookmark.

For a good tutorial for insta-doc and insta-warp bookmarks at stations, see this video from EVEnton.

Gate, station and wormhole camping

Choke points

Space is BIG. Catching other ships is hard. So, players hang out at the natural choke points in the hope of intercepting and destroying other players' ships. Such choke points include:

• Intersystem stargates
• Wormholes
• Station dock and undock points

See here for a list of locations frequently camped.

Stargates

If you warp directly to a gate, and don’t get caught by a warp disruption bubble, you will jump the gate safely without being locked by hostile ships. Dangers include:

• Warp disruption bubbles can prevent you from reaching the star gate.
• Smart bombs can cause damage without the launching ship target locking your ship.
• If you have an aggression or weapons timer (duration 60s), you cannot jump through the gate.

On jumping through a gate, you will be placed at a random location roughly 12km from the stargate. You are invulnerable through the gate cloak effect for either up to one-minute or up until player action results in the "breaking" of the gate cloak. Successful evasion depends on entering warp or recloaking and evading other players. Dangers include:

• Your warp being disrupted by any one of a number of methods.
• Smart bombs after disengagement of the gate cloak. (Note that smart bombs still cause damage for a ship re-cloaked using a cloaking module.)
• Being de-cloaked (when using a cloaking module) by other objects within 2000m.

Wormholes

Very similar to stargates, with two major exceptions:

• On jumping through a wormhole, a ship is placed roughly 5km from the wormhole exit.
• You and, most importantly, your enemies can jump back through a wormhole so long as you or they haven't a polaraization timer from jumping through the same wormhole twice in the last 5 minutes.

Station dock points

When warping to a station with the intent of docking, any delay between coming out of warp and docking up is a point of vulnerability to attack. Docking occurs when within 500m of the station structure. Ship auto-piloting land roughly 20km from the station and hence are vulnerable. Ships manually approaching a station through hitting either the dock button or the warp to button for the station will land anywhere up to 2500m from the station - again sometimes leaving distance to be travelled to reach the 500m limit. Warping to an instadoc bookmark is the best approach to avoid this gap.

Also a player should issue the dock command either prior to reaching the 500m limit or immediately after. This can be done through quick, timely application of the dock button. Alternatively, if the station is the final waypoint or destination programmed in the in-game routing tool then engaging the autopilot after initiating warp will cause immediate docking on reaching the 500m docking limit.

Station undock points

Undocking can be dangerous! On undocking, you have an invulnerability timer (no more than 30s long) to assess the situation. If too hazardous, you have the option to redock if you haven't gone beyond 500m from the structure.

However, this leads to the big difference between jumping a gate or wormhole and undocking: the initial ship velocity is not zero. If you make the decision to warp, the time to aligment for warp depends a lot on the direction of the warp. It is faster than normal if even roughly aligned with the direction of travel and slower if aligned back against the direction of travel. In the worst case, even ships with fast align times can be vulnerable if warping in the wrong direction. Conversely, even slowly aligning ships can enter warp quickly if the warp alignment match roughly the direction of travel after undocking. This is why "insta-warp bookmarks" can be very effective. See the previous section above for further discussion on insta-warp bookmarks.

Some station types can have you undock outside the docking perimeter. These are called "kick-out stations" and once undocked, you cannot immediately redock -- your ship needs to first travel back inside the docking perimeter. See here for a list of station types that are kick-out stations [credit: Asa Kansene, Signal Cartel].

Player Upwell Structures

In addition to the usual dock and undock mechanics of NPC stations, player-operated Upwell structures have the additional feature of tethering. Tethering range is 10 km beyond the docking range and so any player that warps to an Upwell structure, to which they have docking rights, will be automatically tethered. Similarly, any player undocking will be automatically tethered.

A tethered ship is immune to attack, even from smartbombs. This means that it is much more difficult to camp an Upwell structure. Even bubbling a null-sec or J-space Upwell structure can be circumvented if a line of warp can be established from an unbubbled point within the large tethering radius.

Two limitations of tethering should be noted:

1. If a tethered ship is bumped out of tether range, the tether breaks.
2. An upwell structure in abandoned state cannot operate a tether.

Impact of space type

Table 6 below gives a summary of important characteristics of different space types when it comes to avoiding and escaping camps. They determine the options campers have when setting up at a particular gate, wormhole or station.

Table 6: Key characteristics of different space types for camping

Space type	Gate or station security	Smart bombs	Warp bubbles
High-sec	Unless war-dec'ed, CONCORD's overwhelming response	Rare	Not allowed
Low-sec	Gate and station guns, tankable by cruisers and above	Yes	Not allowed
Null-sec	None	Yes	Allowed
Pochven	None	Yes	Allowed
Wormhole space	None	Yes	Allowed

In high-sec, CONCORD will punish any aggressors within a time period determined by the security status of the system. That punishment is overwhelming and inescapable, leading to destruction of the aggressor ship. Campers operating in high-sec must expect to lose their ship. The only exceptions are when there is lawful warfare or combat, typically enabled by war declarations or formal duels.

For low-sec, there is no CONCORD response, but gate and station guns will retaliate against any aggressor. The DPS is at a level that frigates and destroyers cannot take for long. Cruisers and above may be able to tank the damage. There are also 60s weapons timers preventing combatant ships from jumping through gates or docking until their expiry.

Bubbles or other area-of-effect (AOE) warp disruption techniques are not allowed for either high- or low-sec.

Smart bombs can be used in low-sec, but are rarely used in high-sec because either they don't deal enough DPS before CONCORD's response or, if under a war-dec situation, the danger of inadvertently doing damage to an innocent party and thus drawing CONCORD's ire.

In null-sec, Pochven, or wormhole space, there are no restrictions, aside from combat times preventing combatants from jumping through gates or docking.

Different types of gate or station camp

Table 6 below lists different camp types and examples of the types of ships one might see in each along with the general approaches to avoid or to escape such a camp. These approaches are discussed in detail in the next section. Note that the ships listed are the typical ones for the task, however, camps can be set-up by other, perhaps less optimal, choices of ship.

Table 6: Different gate/station camp types, typical camp fleet composition, and possible counter-plays by a targeted spacecraft'

Camp type	Typical fleet composition	Counter-play approaches
High-alpha strike	Thrashers or Tornadoes	Avoiding tackle Tanking damage
High-dps strike	Catalysts or Taloses	Avoiding tackle Tanking damage
Fast-locking	Gnosis Interceptors: Malediction, Crow, Ares, Stiletto Keres Frigates sensor-boosted by a battlecruiser	Avoiding tackle Crashing the gate or wormhole
Smart-bombing	Machariel Rokh Praxis	Angle of approach Tanking damage
Bubbling gate camp	Sabre, Flycatcher, Eris, Heretic or Broadsword, Onyx, Phobos, Devoter or Mobile Warp Disruptors	Angle of approach Nullification (some ships only) Cloaking

In high-sec systems with a high security index of 0.9 or 1.0, there is usually only time to get one shot off before CONCORD responds. Hence camps usually involve cheap T1 ships with bonuses for autocannons, the weapon type with the highest alpha strike damage, i.e. damage from the first shot: Thrashers for smaller targets and Tornados for larger.

Where the security index is a bit lower, e.g. 0.5 or 0.6, but still in high-sec, there is more time before CONCORD responds. Then the approach is usually to use ships with high levels of damage per second at the lowest cost possible -- cheap T1 ships with bonuses for hybrid weapons: Catalysts for smaller targets and Taloses for larger.

In low-sec, there is more time for a camp to destroy a ship before the frigates in the camp are forced to retreat due to gate or station guns. Similarly, since the incoming DPS is typically lower, the target ship's best response may be to get out or range, jump or warp off. The focus, therefore, for such camps is to quickly lock and disrupt or scramble warp drives, pinning the target on-grid. Interceptors are used to web or bump any ship attempting to "crash" the gate or dock up.

Speed of lock becomes critical: a camp with ships that can catch sub-3s or higher align-time ships is usually called a instalocker. One that can catch sub-2s align-time ships is usually called an ultra-locker. Such fast lock times are typically achieved with frigates with natively fast locking, improved by sensor boosts from a battlecruiser. The other surprising option is the Gnosis - it can achieve a low lock time with appropriate fitting and (self) sensor boosts.

See this Dad Dex video for an excellent decomposition of a typical low-sec gate camp.

Smart-bombing camps also become an option in low-sec. Usually the targets are ships with limited tank such as frigates and shuttles. Battleships with high CPU are usually the launcher of choice, e.g. Machariels.

In null-sec, Pochven and wormhole space, all of the above options are available. In addition, the use of bubbles, i.e. AOE warp disruption, is also allowed. This allows camps to dispense with fast tackle/insta-locking as part of the fleet composition and rely on the bubble to hold the ship on grid.

How to escape or avoid a gate or station camp

Because of the wide variety of camping strategies, avoiding or escaping a gate, station or wormhole camp requires a variety of approaches, sometime in combination with each other.

Tanking incoming damage: If caught by a high-sec gate-camps, using high-alpha-strike or high-dps ships, lots of passive tank with high resists is usually the best option. This may involve fitting the ship with what is called a "travel fit" made up of shield extenders with shield hardeners and amplifiers or armor plates with membranes and coatings. Note that extenders can significantly increase your signature radius, allowing a hunter to lock faster, and armor plates reduce on-grid speed. Resists (hardeners, amplifiers, membranes and coatings) don't have these downsides.

Active tanking is only effective in more extended engagements in low security space.

Avoiding tackle by warping off: Of course, the best approach on landing in or jumping into a camp is to warp off before the camp can target lock you. Some approaches include:

• Fitting for sub-2s align time. (To get to sub-1s align time there are very few options: namely an appropiately fitted Hecate with low-cost implants or a travel-fit Astero with high-cost implants.) See Table 1 in the Propulsion module section for some options on how to fit for low align time. Interceptors and the Sunesis can be easily fitted to achieve sub-2s align time.
• Warp core stabilization. Another approach is to have as many points of warp core stabilization as the camp has activated on your ship. Ships like the Venture or the Metamorphosis have +2 of innate warp core stabilization. Also, one, and no more than one, Warp Core Stabilizer can be fitted using a free low slot, for +2 points of warp core stabilization. Note that many camping tackle ships fit a faction warp scrambler, with +3 points of warp core disruption, negating any Warp Core Stabilizer. Warp Core Stablizers can be activated while under the protection of a gate or worm hole cloak. However, they need to be active both when initiating warp and when entering warp.
• MWD-cloak trick. If your align time is relatively long, say 4s or more, then most camps will lock and disrupt your warp drive. However, with an appropriately sized microwarpdrive and a cloak, it is possible to achieve warp more quickly. This involve aligning with the warp-out point, activating the MWD, cloaking and near the end of the MWD cycle, deactivating the cloak and hitting the warp button. The idea is that while the MWD is operating the ship's speed will be in excess of 75% of the on-grid speed without the MWD -- which is the required speed for entering warp when the MWD cycle ends.
• Burst jammers. These need to be activated prior to entering warp -- they have a certain probability of breaking the target lock of any the camping ships. Note that since these may impact other ships not in the camp, their use can be considered as an act of aggression in low- or high-sec.

Crashing the gate or wormhole: If you unable to escape target lock, often the best option is to "crash" the gate or wormhole. If you have an MWD, ensure that it is activated at least once before being locked and potentially warp scrambled, shutting down the MWD. Afterburners don't suffer the same fate as MWDs, but the ship can be webbed down, greatly reducing speed, and increasing time to the gate or wormhole. Using an oversized afterburner, e.g. 10MN instead of 1MN, can mitigate webs, but ensure that the ship is already heading in the right direction before activating since align time greatly increases with an active oversized afterburner.

Avoiding AOE bubbles or smart-bombs: Specialized approaches are needed to counter bubbles and smart-bombs:

• Never warp directly from one gate to another -- this is the approach angle expected and used for positioning a bubble or a smart bomber. By first warping to another celestial (not near another gate!), the second warp to the gate can be at a different approach angle, probably separated enough to avoid smart bomb damage and possibly even a warp bubble.
• Nullification (bubbles only). A limited number of ship classes (e.g. Covert Ops) can fit and use a Nullifier module. If activated prior to initiating warp, this module will nullify the effect of any warp bubble in the path of the warp. Note that Nullifiers have long cool-down times (100 to 150s) and this must be managed when flying through several systems.
• Cloak and slow-boat. If a cloak is fitted, one can break the gate cloak and immediately cloak up and attempt to fly out of the area of effect of a bubble at sub-warp speed. However, many gate campers will have scattered objects (e.g. jettisoned containers, drones, fighters), to de-cloak such ships. Some camps will also have fast frigates to try to intercept and de-cloak ships that will have momentarily appeared on overview between the gate cloak and the conventional cloak.
• Tanking (smart-bombs only). Even large smart bombs will have relatively limited damage. A well tanked frigate or destroyer can withstand one or two hits.