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Fundamentals of navigation in EVE Online

Like so much else in EVE Online, movement and navigation are complex. There are three separate layers, each with their own mechanisms and operating at very different scales:

The finest-granularity control is on what is known as the grid. Here is where fighting, hacking, and mining are controlled and determined.
The next level up is that of the star system, where players can warp between the system's star, celestials, and, structures and sites.
Finally, the player can navigate between star systems using gates and wormholes. New Eden is made up of roughly 5000 systems connected by static gates and a further 2600 connected by dynamic wormholes.

The following sections deal with each in turn. Successful gameplay requires understanding and mastery of each.

On-grid maneuvering

The grid

Each time a ship comes out of warp, a grid is loaded. It is typically a space 16,000 km across, centered on a celestial, structure, site, or bookmark. The grid size can vary, with locations such as Jita 4-4 having a larger grid than normal or others such as abyssal deadspace having a much smaller grid.

A player can fly their ship in any direction on the grid and can see and inspect visually objects such as their ship, other ships, celestials, structures, etc. that are physically located on the grid. The player's overview can also show all uncloaked objects that are on the grid.

Movement on the grid is not based on classical Newtonian mechanics in a vacuum, but instead behaves more like an object moving through a fluid. For example, throttling up afterburners does not result in steady acceleration to arbitrarily large speeds -- instead a given ship has a maximum velocity. Similarly, throttling down an afterburner results in a gradual loss of speed, more consistent with motion through some gaseous or liquid medium. Motion on grid in EVE Online has been likened to that of a submarine in water.

Propulsion modules and other relevant ship equipment

(See also the Explorer's Guide section on fitting for the general principles of fitting ships.)

A ship can move on grid much more quickly through the use of propulsion engines, jump drives or warp drives.

Maximum speed

Propulsion drives are available on all ships, but their maximum speed can be greatly enhanced by either of the following two active, mid-power ship modules, know colloquially as "prop mods": (a) Afterburners (ABs) and (b) Microwarpdrives (MWDs). See Table 1 below for a brief summary of their properties and those of passive, low-power modules that also enhance speed.

There are two other alternative mechanisms to travel even faster:

Use the in-build warp drive between two points at least 150km apart. Note that the in-built warp drive can only be used on objects that can be warped to (see the section on in-system navigation).
For battlecruisers, battleships and their size equivalents, use a Micro Jump Drive (MJDs) to jump forward 100km in the direction of travel after a short (~10s) spool-up. MJDs also have longer cool-down times (up to 3 minutes). Additionally, Micro Jump Field Generators are MJDs that also jump up to 25 ships within a radius of 6km. Used only on Command Destroyers, this is referred to as "booshing".

There are a few other modules that negatively impact a ship's navigation and maneuverability, with highly specialized uses - see Table 2 below.

Agility

Agility is a second critical parameter for a ship's maneuverability. It measured as the time it takes a ship to align to the desired direction with 75% of maximum speed from a standing start. It also is how long it takes a ship to get into warp after initiating warp. Modules that help to improve agility are the Inertial Stabilizer and Nanofiber Internal Structure. Two rig types also help: Low Friction Nozzle Joints and Polycarbon Engine Housings.

See Table 1 below for all the modules and rigs mentioned so far.

Table 1: Modules that impact maximum speed and agility, in order of decreasing speed improvement.

Module type	Benefit(s)	Drawback(s)
Micro Jump Drive (MJD) - battlecruisers, battleships, etc. only	Jumps forward in the direction of travel by 100km after a short spool-up time	Signature radius increases by 150% during spool-up Activation cost (for capacitor)
Micro Jump Field Generator - Command Destroyers only	Jumps forward in the direction of travel by 100km after a short spool-up time Up to 25 other ships in a 6km radius will also jump by 100km	Signature radius increases by 150% during spool-up Activation cost (for capacitor)
Microwarpdrive (MWD)	Increases speed by at least 500% when active	Signature radius increases by 500% while active Heavy activation cost (for capacitor) Reduces the overall ship capacitor Reduced agility while on
Afterburner (AB)	Increases speed by at least 130% when active	Activation cost (for capacitor) Reduced agility while on
Overdrive Injector System	Increases speed by at least 10.5%	Reduced cargo hold size
Nanofiber Internal Structure	Increases speed by at least 7.75% Improves agility by at least 13%	Reduced hull hitpoints
Auxiliary Thrusters (rig)	Increases speed by at least 7.25%	Reduced armor hit points
Polycarbon Engine Housing (rig)	Increases speed by at least 5.5% Improves agility by at least 9.1%	Reduced armor hit points
Low Friction Nozzle Joint (rig)	Improved agility by at least 11.7%	Reduced armor hit points
Inertial Stabilizer	Improved agility by at least 16.75%	Increased signature radius

Table 2: Modules that negatively impact maximum speed.

Module type	Impact(s)	Use(s)
Higg's Anchors	Reduces maximum velocity by 75% Increases mass by 100%	Enables miners and mission runners to remain aligned while mining or ratting.
Zero-Point Mass Entanglers can only be used by heavy interdiction cruisers	Reduces maximum velocity by 95% Reduces AB and MWD velocity bonuses by 90% Decreases mass by 80%	Used for wormhole rolling
Bastion Modules can only be used by marauders	Immobilizes the ship while active	Greatly increases combat abilities
Cynosural Field Generators	Immobilizes the ship while active	Used to create a cyno for other, appropriate ships to jump to.

Improving your character's abilities

Skills

Most of the relevant skills for directly improving maximum velocity and agility are under the "Navigation" tab in the skills catalogue. This tab also has a number of skills for improving the ability to use afterburners and MWDs. One often-overlooked skill that impacts agility is that of Spaceship Command under the "Spaceship Command" tab: it improves your agility by 2% for every level of skill trained.

See also the Explorer's Handbook section on Skills and Implants for further discussion.

Implants

Much of the information here is taken from the Eve University Wiki.

A number of implants improve agility and maximum speed:

The Eifyr & Co. 'Rogue' skill hardwirings boost the same characteristics as given in the "Navigation" tab of the skills catalogue. So, for example, the "Eifyr and Co. 'Rogue' Evasive Maneuvering EM-703" implant improves ship agility by 3%.
The Genolution Core Augmentation CA-3 implant provides a 1.5% improvement in maximum speed with a further 0.45% improvement if a clone has a full set of Genolution implants.
The Genolution Core Augmentation CA-4 implant provides a 1.5% improvement in agility with a further 0.3% improvement if a clone has a full set of Genolution implants.
The Snake attribute enhancer implants have improved maximum speed as their secondary effect. For example, a complete set of 6 mid-grade Snake implants will give just over 16% improvement to maximum speed.
The Nomad attribute enhancer implants have improved agility as their secondary effect. For example, a complete set of 6 mid-grade Nomad implants will give just over 27% improvement to agility.

Medical Boosters

The following boosters impact either maximum velocity or agility:

Table 3: Medical boosters that improve either maximum velocity or agility.

Key loot item	Source	Attribute improved
Agency 'Overclocker' (SB3 Dose I to SB9 Dose IV)	Events and DED LP store (SB2 only)	Velocity (1 to 9%)
Halcyon G (Dose I to Dose V)	Login rewards	Agility (1 to 5%)
Halcyon R (Dose I to Dose V)	Login rewards	Velocity (1 to 5%)
Halcyon Y (Dose I to Dose V)	Login rewards	Agility (1 to 5%)
Quafe Zero Classic	Events	Velocity (5%)
Quafe Zero Green Apple	Events	Agility (5%)

Note that Drop, Frentix, Sooth Sayer, and Crash boosters can have reductions in maximum speed as their possible negative side effect.

Automated movement

"You're not flying a fighter. You're commanding a vessel."

BlodhgarmDethahal on Reddit

For much of the time, navigation on-grid involves using one of four commands that result in an automated response by your ship:

Aligning leads to your ship flying in the direction of a selected object, often off-grid. This is often used to prepare a ship for warp, since the first step in any warp is to align and come to at least 75% of maximum speed.
Approaching is the simplest of commands, directing your ship to head directly for the selected object and only stopping when reaching it. This often leads to your ship bouncing off the approached object.
Orbiting is frequently used in PVE, setting the ship up in an orbit around the selected object at a distance either manually selected or (if pressing the orbit button) at the default distance. This maneuver is useful for ensuring that you control your range to the target, while maintaining a good transversal, mitigating damage from turret weapons, and velocity, mitigating damage from missiles. Some important subtleties:
- It should be noted that the command results in a orbit choice that is random in its inclination and orientation. The ship will first approach the point in the orbit closest to itself and if the player is unlucky, that approach angle may have poor transversal, leading to large damage application from the target object.
- If a prop mod is active then the orbit achieved will have greater radius than commanded. The extra distance from the selected object is relatively small for afterburners, but significant for MWDs.
Keeping at range is where the ship is commanded to head directly towards the selected object, but advance no closer than the selected range. This command is often used in PVP, especially against ships of equal size or smaller, to control the range to the target ship. The control algorithm is underdamped, i.e. there is a strong tendency to overshoot the target range, particularly if an MWD is active.

Manual maneuvering and advanced techniques

There are times when the automated maneuvers simply do not achieve the result that you are looking for. There are two manual flying techniques that can be used for either more directed flying or more sophisticated maneuvers:

"Clicking in space" is used to aim your ship in the direction of your choice. Rotate your view until you are very roughly behind your spacecraft relative to the desired direction. Then double-click in space for the direction you want to move in.
Holding down the "Q" button is to set a point on the grid for the ship to move directly to. Holding down the Q button will position a small light blue circular marker in the horizontal plane around your ship. A line will join that marker to your ship to indicate the direction the ship will travel in. Control the position of the circular marker with your mouse until it is in the desired location. Having the tactical grid view switched on helps greatly with this. At this stage there are two options:

Double-click the left mouse button to fix the position of the circle marker in the horizontal plan and the ship will commence movement towards that marker.
Single left-click to fix the horizontal direction and the distance to be traveled out from the ship; move the mouse up or down to set the angle made in the vertical direction; and finally left click-again to set the circle marker in position. Again the ship will commence movement toward the marker.

Building on these manual controls, a good pilot can then execute the following two advanced maneuvers:

"Spiraling in" refers to a maneuver to limit the damage received from turreted weapons as the player attempts to establish a close orbit around a (typically bigger) ship:

The player selects a direction (using either of the two manual piloting techniques above) that is not directly towards the target spacecraft, but off to one side, at an angle.
As the player's ship gets closer, the angle opens out again and the player reselects the direction to close the angle again. The resulting motion is a spiral in towards the target.
When close to the desired final distance, the player will often select "orbit at" to move into the final, settled orbit around the target.

See this video for an example of the technique.

A "sling-shot" refers to a maneuver to close range with a faster target that is kiting you, i.e. keeping a certain range, outside that of your weapon systems:

Burn away from the target.
As the target begins to move towards you and builds up some speed, head back towards the target. If the target was orbiting you, aim towards where you expect the target ship to be few seconds from now rather than approaching it directly.
The target ship may take time to readjust and reverse course away from you. This gives you time to close the gap with the target and get within web, scram and weapons range.

See this video for a good tutorial on the technique.

Objects on-grid

Bounding boxes

Most objects on the grid will have defined bounding boxes that are close to the actual shape of the object. Until the object is destroyed, it is not possible to fly through them and your ship will bounce off them, killing your speed. This can be catastrophic for your ship if you are speed-tanking incoming damage or attempting to reach 75% of maximum speed to enter warp. Wreaks and small debris in asteroid fields don't have bounding boxes.

Force fields

Force fields in EVE Online are semi-translucent spheres in place around certain stationary objects. Two examples:

A player owned structure (POS) can support a force field to prevent entry by outside ships and to protect assets inside from attack.
Cans in Sleeper Caches can have force fields that can be deactivated by successfully hacking a Remote Defense Grid Unit. Alternatively, a fast exploration or covert ops frigate can reach the protected can before the force field goes up, after being triggered by the approaching frigate.

Gas clouds

Gas clouds don't impede motion, but can be either harvestable or cause periodic damage. To see the extent of gas clouds requires the EVE client to be running on reasonably capable graphics hardware -- the boundaries of gas clouds are not shown in "Performance Optimized" mode.

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:

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.
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:

Can I see the ships of any other players in-system?
Can they see me?
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:

Warping to a Drifter wormhole (marked by a beacon) will put the ship about 80km from the wormhole itself.
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:

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.
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:

If a tethered ship is bumped out of tether range, the tether breaks.
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.

Inter-system navigation in New Eden

Basic geography of New Eden

New Eden consists of roughly 7800 star systems, with over 5400 connected by permanent stargates (forming so-called K-space) and the remaining systems by transient wormholes (known as J-space).

K-space is divided up into 64 interconnected regions with a 65th region (Pochven) isolated from the rest. Regions are further subdivided into constellations, but these have little impact on gameplay. 23 regions are part of empire space, divided up between the four empires and CONCORD, and are the game's high-sec and low-sec spaces. The remaining 41 regions form null-sec and are player controlled. Pochven's 27 systems are also interconnected by gates, but the rest of K-space is only reachable via wormholes and filaments.

J-space systems are divided up into various wormhole classes, C1 to C6 being the main classes. The mechanics of navigating these are nearly identical with only the four Drifter wormholes having wormholes that appear directly on the Overview when in connected K-space systems. All other wormholes need to be scanned down as cosmic signatures.

See Sections 5 to 9 for further descriptions of the different spaces.

Jumping from system to system

There are multiple mechanisms for jumping between star systems:

Star gates are the main mechanism to jump between different systems in K-space, i.e. outside of wormhole/J-space. All ships in-game and even capsules can jump through star gates. One needs to be within 2500 m of a gate to jump through it and on reaching the other side, the jumping ship is placed around 12 km from the gate, with a 60s cloak and invulnerability timer. Given the correct distance, the jump will occur except when

(Rarely) a server error occurs -- the player is informed that "traffic control" is preventing the jump. Generally a second attempt at the jump command will result in a successful jump.
The player has a 60s weapons timer.

Wormholes are the main mechanism to jump between different systems in J-space/wormhole space. These are temporary connections, lasting no more than a day, covered in more detail below in the section on wormholes. One needs to be with 5000 m of a wormhole to jump through it and on reaching the other side, the jumping ship is placed roughly 5 km from the wormhole, with a 60s cloak and invulnerability timer. There are no aggression timers, but there is a polarization timer, allowing no more than two jumps through a wormhole inside any four-minute interval. The polarization timer applies to the capsule, not the ship -- so reshipping does not change the polarization timer state.

Jump filaments provide a means of jumping large distances within K-space, but the destination system is always randomly determined. All jump filaments have a cool-down timer, preventing use of another filament within 15 minutes of the first. Most filaments can transport multiple ships, up to the number listed in their name. This means that you need to be in a fleet to use these - right-click at the center of your capacitor indicator and select "Pilot" and then "Form Fleet" to place your character in a fleet with just yourself.

The table below shows the different jump filaments available.

Table 7: Jump filaments.

Filament	Destination
Noise-yy 'Needlejack' Filament	Transports up to yy ships from K-space into a quiet system randomly selected in null sec.
Signal-yy 'Needlejack' Filament	Transports up to yy ships from K-space into a busy system randomly selected in null sec.
Border-yy 'Pochven' Filament	Transports up to yy ships from K-space into a randomly selected border system in Pochven.
Cladistic-yy 'Krai zzz' Filament	Transports up to yy ships from K-space into a randomly selected system in Pochven controlled by the zzz clade.
Home-yy 'Pochven' Filament	Transports up to yy ships from K-space into a randomly selected home system in Pochven.
Internal-yy 'Pochven' Filament	Transports up to yy ships from K-space into a randomly selected internal system in Pochven
Glorification-yy 'Devana' Filament	Transports up to yy ships from Pochven into a randomly selected Triglavian Minor Victory system in either low-sec or high-sec space.
Proximity-yy 'Extraction' Filament	Transports up to yy ships from Pochven into a randomly selected low-sec or high-sec system within 2.5 light-years of the starting Pochven system.

Use of filaments is a powerful gameplay tool - some would say too powerful. The tactics of using filaments is covered in more detail in sections discussing entering null sec and Pochven. Note that travel filaments cannot be used in wormhole systems.

Ansible jump gates are the player-installed and owned equivalent of star gates. They can only be installed in null sec space and one ansible jump gate connect to another, generally many systems away on the "normal" star-gate map. Access may be controlled and tolls may be charged.

Interstellar shipcasters are faction warfare structures installed in one system per faction:

Mehatoor (Amarr)
Onnamon (Caldari)
Intaki (Gallente)
Amo (Minmatar)

These structures work in one direction only, from the ship caster in the direction of up to three beacons, potentially in different systems. The beacons are player-installed and can be attacked and destroyed by players from opposing factions. The end destination from any given ship caster rotates between the different beacons installed. Access to the shipcasters is restricted to players signed up to the corresponding faction. Camping the beacons by opposing players is possible.

Cynos and Jump Drives are ship-based inter-system jumping mechanisms. Capitals, Jump Freighters and Black Ops Battleships are the only ship hulls that have the jump drive capability. Jumps are made to either deployable cynosural (or cyno for short) beacons or to cyno fields lit by ships such as Ventures (for the Rorqual) or Covert Ops (for Black Ops Battleships).

Titans, Black Ops Battleships and Rorquals can bring other ships with them through bridging of fleet members. Fleet members need to manually activate the bridge.

Black Ops Battleships and Rorquals can also bring other ships with them using conduits where up to 30 qualifying ships within a 10km radius are automatically jumped to the cyno.

Navigation tools

There are numerous tools to aid in inter-system navigation in EVE Online:

The in-game map provides a wealth of statistics that can inform route planning. The most useful are

Ship kills in the last hour.
The average number of pilots in space over the last 30 minutes.
The average number of pilots docked up, over the last 30 minutes.

Once a route has been set in-game, the in-game map will highlight it, making it easy to check for conditions along the route. Importantly, it provides a more up-to-date and accurate view of these statistics than any of the external tools.

DOTLAN is an external tool that presents a flat 2D map of K-space. The flat, per-region presentation is much more useful for understanding the topology of EVE's K-space than the confusing 3-D presentation in the in-game map. Just like the in-game map, it can overlay with various statistics by pulling from an external API (application programming interface) called ESI (EVE Swagger Interface). Unlike the in-game map, these statistics are based off delayed data, perhaps up to a one-hour delay for some kills. The statistics include:

Ship and pod kills in the last hour or last 24 hours.
Jumps per hour or last 24 hours.
NPC kills in the last hour or the last 24 hours.

It also provides a wealth of other (static) data on individual K-space systems, covering mining resources, stations, sun type, etc. It also has route mapping capabilities, presenting the number of system kills on the selected route.

For J-space navigation, the player and/or their corporation has to build their own maps. Two tools frequently used for mapping wormhole connections are Tripwire and Pathfinder. Each has their own strengths, but it should be noted that Thera mapping work is done in conjunction with Tripwire.

There are a number of dedicated threat assessment tools:

Eve Gatecamp Check provides a combined routing and presentation of kill reports, with a focus on gate camps. In particular, it not only presents the number of recent kills in a system, it also check to see if they were at gates and whether or not smartbombs and/or Heavy Interdiction Cruisers were used.

Killboard can also be queried for recent kills per system. It gives a lot of detail on the location of the kills, the pilots and ships involved, and the long-term kill statistics as a function of the day of the week or the hour. Note that some gate-camp players will go to considerable length to keep their kills off zKillboard, so as to not tip off any other players that may go through their camp.

Allison is the Signal Cartel AI co-pilot. If given access to your character's location, it provides an easy interface to other tools such as zKillboard and DOTLAN. Other navigation capabilities in Allison are explored here - these include mapping and routing functions, using any wormhole data you've gathered while traveling through J-space.

Planning and setting your route

Basic in-game mechanisms

If one right-clicks on any system name, celestial name or station name nearly anywhere in-game two or three routing options appear in the drop-down menu:

Figure 1: Route from Jita to Amarr as selected by the in-game routing tool with "Prefer Safer" option selected.

Set Destination - for setting that location as the first destination in the routing tool.
Add Waypoint - for adding that location as an extra waypoint or final destination in the routing tool.
Avoid/Do Not Avoid (for systems only) - for adding or removing a star system from the routing tool's avoidance list.

The resulting route selected by the routing tool is shown under the left-hand side on-screen user interface item with an A symbol. The system listed just over the route is the next system to jump to, while the final destination is given on the bottom. The same route is also highlighted in the in-game New Eden system map.

To adjust the results of the routing, right-click on the A symbol. Various options are presented for adjusting the desired route, but the most commonly used are "Prefer Safer" and "Prefer Shorter":

"Prefer Safer" attempts to keep the route in high-sec space as much as possible, but the algorithm can be made more or less aggressive in doing so by setting the "Security penalty" slider. For the example shown in Figure 1, the 45-jump high-sec-only route is selected with the default penalty of 50. Set the slider to 20 and the algorithm gives a higher weighting to shorter routes and selects the 11-jump route via Abhazon -- a low-sec system notorious for gate camps!

"Prefer Shorter" will always select the shortest route, irrespective of the security status en route.

Assessing traffic flows, identifying choke points

If a pilot understands the main traffic flows and main areas of activity in a region then the risks of any given route become easier to determine.

For example, consider the Great Wildlands. Dotlan's view of the number of jumps per system in the last 24 hours will show that most jumps are on the western and eastern north-south corridors, with particular hot-spots around two of the systems with NPC stations, M-M3DB and E02-IK. Switching to the view of the player ship kills in the last 24-hours will generally show the most kills in choke-point systems such as N-RAEL or M9U-75 near the inter-region gateways or along the pipe from NIH-02 to CRXA-Y, with most of the region's NPC stations.

Thera and Turnur

Two systems with a large number of wormholes to K-space are Thera and Turnur. Thera, a large J-space system, always has wormholes to roughly a dozen random systems in K-space. Turnur, in Metropolis' low-sec space, has 3 wormholes to random systems in null-sec space, 2 to low-sec space and one to high-sec.

The connectivity to null-sec space is particularly useful, bypassing as they do any gate camps at the entry systems to many null-sec regions. Combined with Eve-Scout's public, dynamic Thera map and bookmarks, the Thera route is a well-used method for taking short-cuts across the map of New Eden. At the time of writing, there are plans to extend Thera mapping to Turnur.

Using Thera and Turnur is not without risk. Because of that enhanced connectivity, one or two major low-sec alliances use Turnur as a staging system for raids. Null-sec holes are frequently collapsed through rolling. Thera often has camps stationed at K-space wormholes and indeed any connections close to Jita. However, the large size of both systems, makes it difficult for any one group to lock down all wormholes or (in the case of Turnur) stargates.

The Pochven Express

Gate camps permanently bubbled using mobile warp disruptors are the main impediment to travel around null-sec and in particular crossing over to low-sec or high-sec space. The danger is particularly acute for ships without covert-ops cloaking. The combination of one Pochven-in-bound filament and one Pochven-out-bound filament is a powerful tool for bypassing such null-sec gate camps. This technique is known as "the Pochven Express".

The steps are as follows:

Use any Pochven in-bound filament to jump from null-sec to Pochven.
Create a safe and cloak up at it. If no cloaking device is fitted and online, create additional in-system safes.
Stay cloaked or bounce around between safes for 15 minutes until the filament use timer expires.
Use any Pochven out-bound filament to jump to high-sec or low-sec.
Travel to your destination by conventional means.

While this scheme works with any in-bound/out-bound pair of Pochven filaments, one can influence where one jumps to on the out-bound filament through the correct selection of the in-bound filament combined with a Proximity out-bound filament. Proximity filaments always jump to a K-space system geographically close to the Pochven system from which the jump is made. To select the correct in-bound filament to improve the chances of a Proximity-filament jump landing close to your final destination, consider the following in conjunction with this map:

If your target is Caldari space, select a Border filament -- all six Border systems were from Caldari space.
If your target is Gallente space, select a "Krai Veles" filament -- four of the nine systems in the Krai Veles constellation were from Gallente space.
If your target is Amarr space, select a "Krai Svarog" filament -- all four systems formally from Amarr are in the Krai Svarog constellation.

By way of contrast, Glorification Devana filaments will jump to any low-sec or high-sec minor Triglavian system and these are scattered between the four empires. This can leave the player with a long, and sometimes hazardous journey, to their final destination.

Other points to note:

Pochven space is dangerous. Local is delayed, just like wormhole-space. Bubbles are allowed! So jumping from system to system in Pochven is not advised unless fitted with a covert ops cloak.
Glorification Devana filaments can be purchased in Pochven itself, from any NPC station for 10k ISK. Docking up in an NPC station is an alternative for waiting out the 15-minute filament timer, but is much more risky than simply cloaking up.

Wormhole selection and statics

Wormhole destinations are highly random, but since different wormhole classes have different static wormhole classes, the statistics for a given wormhole system are not evenly spread. For information on what static wormhole types each class has, please see this Eve University Wiki page. Some informal studies on the probability of a static type occurring, given the current wormhole class, have been reported on Reddit.

However, consider a different question: When traveling through J-space, often a player has scanned down and identified the wormholes in the system they are currently in. No wormhole to their desired destination is available. Which wormhole should they choose to jump into next to maximize their chances of finding the right connection in that next wormhole?

Table 8 below attempts to answer this by identifying the system types with the highest probability of a static wormhole to the desired destination. The assumption is that availability of these statics then skews the probability distribution towards or against finding any wormhole with the desired connection destination.

Table 8: Tactics for wormhole selection

Desired destination	Good wormhole selection	Poor wormhole selection
High-sec	C1 or C2	C4, C5 or C6
Low-sec	C3	C4, C5 or C6
Null-sec	C3	C4, C5 or C6
C1	High-sec	C5 or C6
C2	High-sec, C4	C5 or C6
C3	Low-sec, C4	None
C4	None	K-space, C1 or C3
C5	C4 or C6	K-space, C1 or C3
C6	C5	K-space, C1, C2 or C3

Ice filaments

During the Winter Nexus events, ice-storm filaments are made available to players as site drops, NPC drops, login-rewards and track rewards. The high-sec version of those filaments jump a player or group of players to a metaliminal storm in high-sec space. The idea is to provide a fast means to travel quickly to the event sites.

However, these filaments work from anywhere in K-space and thus can be used during the event as a low-risk means of jumping directly to high-sec space.

Hisec

The security of a system is an indication of roughly how dangerous that system may be, displayed as a decimal value between 1.0 and -1.0, Systems with a security rating of between 1.0 and 0.5 are considered High-Sec. In High-Sec space CONCORD will police PVP actions taken by Capsuleers, responses are delayed depending on the security rating of the system in question, nearly instant in 1.0 space and nearly 20 seconds in 0.5 space. While this is intended to be an indication of danger, the only truly safe place in New Eden is docked, so remember to practice caution regardless of this value.

CONCORD will only police specific actions called Criminal-Level Offenses, which give a Capsuleer the Criminal Status, CONCORD ships and nearby sentry guns will fire on Criminal Capsuleers.

The following is a list of offenses that provide the Criminal status in High-Sec

Attacking another Capsuleer that is not a Legal Target
Attacking CONCORD
Attacking another Capsuleers loot
Remote repairing NPC or Capsuleer Criminal ships

An important distinction here is the "Legal" target, which makes a world of difference to how safe High-Sec actually is for members of Signal Cartel. A Criminal or Suspect Capsuleer is a legal target, and CONCORD will not intervene if a Capsuleer aggresses against them. War is another reason that a target would be considered legal, members of warring Corporations are considered Legal Targets to each other. If a Legal Target is attacked they gain the Limited Engagement status which allows them to defend themselves against their aggressor without interference by CONCORD. Another source of the Limited Engagement status is when two Capsuleers accept a Duel Request, allowing them to fight without interference.

While these are the CONCORD laws and standards, members of Signal Cartel are expected to uphold The Credo and remain neutral in our actions. Just because CONCORD will not respond to an action, doesn't mean it is in line with The Credo.

Remember that CONCORD is only present as a deterrent to criminal activity in High-Sec and will not protect you. Other Capsuleer Corps have often declared war on Signal Cartel and are free to attack our ships regardless of status, including in High-Sec space, combined with low returns from high-sec exploration sites this means that High-Sec space provides much less in the way of exploration opportunities than Null-Sec or J-Space.

Lowsec

The security of a system is an indication of roughly how dangerous that system may be, displayed as a decimal value between 1.0 and -1.0, Systems with a security rating of between 0.4 and 0.1 are considered Low-Sec. In Lowsec, like Hisec, there are CONCORD sentry guns on stations and stargates, however, CONCORD will not react to hostile PVP actions, though the sentry guns will attack provoking players and such actions will still cause a loss of Security Status. Low-Sec is just as dangerous as Hi-sec but for different reasons.

While Lowsec is far less populated than Hisec people there will often specifically hunt you down, without any fear of concord showing up. Lowsec systems that act as chokepoints bordering Hisec or Nullsec are often used to Gate Camp, resulting in many ship losses when moving in and out of Lowsec. The safest method in and out of Lowsec for an experienced explorer is through Wormhole space, however, this requires its own set of skills to be done effectively and safely.

The lower population of Lowsec means that worthwhile sites in empty systems are far more common, likewise, the sites themselves provide much better payouts than Hisec variants, though they often tend to have cans that are harder to hack. It is important to learn how to use D-Scan and Local to protect yourself, and to practice risk assessment at all times; determining when it's "Safe Enough", when to cut your losses or quit while you're ahead. The greatest tool would be experience and making mistakes, you'll likely never forget the situations that got you blown up and you'll learn from them. Try to use cheaper, disposable, ships at first to get used to the feeling and to mitigate any anxiety.

Faction Warfare Space

Faction Warfare as a gameplay mechanic does not really affect Signaleers, as being in Signal Cartel precludes us from participating. Faction Warfare takes place in Low-Sec space, specifically in two regional War Zones, each of which is being contested by two NPC factions: The Amarr-Minmatar war zone, and the Caldari-Gallente war zone. Players aid their chosen faction in contesting these systems for faction standings and loyalty points, and count as being at war with their opposing faction, allowing them to legally attack each other in High-Sec space.

Nullsec

The security of a system is an indication of roughly how dangerous that system may be, displayed as a decimal value between 1.0 and -1.0, Systems with a security rating of between 0.3 and 0.0 are considered Null-Sec. In Null-Sec, unlike in Hi-Sec or Low-Sec, there is no Concord presence or acts that provide the criminal or suspicious status.

No ship or module restrictions apply in Null Space and situational awareness is key to surviving Null-Sec. Keep an eye out for gate camps and fleets of hunters, and remain mobile or cloaked when possible. Always trust your gut when you feel things are a little too unsafe and simply move on. Try not to fly anything you couldn't afford to lose in Null and practice effective risk management when it comes to deciding when to return to a station.

On top of the usual safe travel technics, you'll need extra measures specifically in Null-Sec. For instance, gate camps will use "bubbles". Mobile Warp Disruptors, Warp Disrupt Probes, and Warp Disruption Field Generator will be deployed at specific gates and will require specific defensive modules (nullification module) or tactics (warp to the gate at an angle, not from another gate). The locals know their space well and will have scouts to warn them in advance while you are still two or three jumps away, many PVP corps present in Null Space have standing fleets intended to chase out or down trespassers.

Despite all these risks, Null-Sec offers the most relative freedom and possible rewards of known space for exploration, and despite how overwhelming these risks may sound correct mitigation can nearly guarantee survival.

Choosing a Region

Assuming you are exploring to find hacking sites you will need a quiet area with profitable sites and an easy way in / easy way out. Different regions of Null are occupied by specific Pirate Factions, each of which has unique loot tables for their data and relic sites. The average value of each faction in order of most to least isk per site is as follows: Sansha's Nation, Gurista's Pirates, Blood Raider Covenant, Angel Cartel, Serpentis Corporation. Though this can change based on the current economy. You can use various sites like EvEye and DotLan maps to find out which regions of null are inhabited by your chosen faction, but remember that the more valuable of a faction you choose the more competition you are likely to find.

Null Sec is divided into Claimable and NPC regions, in Claimable Null you will find capsuleer corps and stations being run, from which there are most likely standing fleets and you are unlikely to be allowed to dock, while in NPC Null you will find NPC Stations that are generally safe to dock at so long as you do not have poor standing with the pirate faction of said region.

Entering Null sec

The first issue of Null-Sec is simply finding a reliable method of accessing it. The various alliances and factions - even small gangs of independant pilots - will set gate camps at the choke points. Even if it is possible to reach Null space using the regular travel routes, there are much safer ways to do so.

- Filaments:

Filaments are fairly cheap consumable items found in data-sites, the two kinds useful for this purpose are "Noise" and "Signal". To use a filament you must be in a fleet (Even if it is simply by yourself), have your ship safety setting set to at least Partial Safety, and not have any log-out timers. You must also be a certain distance from structures, simply warp at 100 to a nearby celestial object or use a safe point. When attempting to use a Filament you may find it a tad finicky, so long as you meet these requirements simply try a couple more times and it should work.

These filaments are named as "(Noise/Signal)-# 'Needlejack' Filament" the # determines how many nearby fleet ships the filament is capable of transporting, while the "Noise" vs "Signal" determines how the filament targets systems, With Noise being seemingly random space and Signal targeting systems with high "Activity"

There is, however, a catch to filaments: while theoretically Noise filaments will go to a random null system, the exact methodology of its targeting is unknown. Many have claimed to find patterns in where it will put you in short periods of time, or repeated locations being used, and there have been some claims of gate camps or hunters that specifically use this knowledge to hunt down filamenters. Though there isn't much in the way of hard evidence on the subject, Reddit post studying the Needlejacks use leads to this conclusion. On the other hand, there are a lot of examples of successful pilots roaming in Null Sec using filaments. This tactic should probably not be discarded lightly.

- Using Thera

Thera is a unique system and offers a lot of opportunities to travel across New Eden. Signal Cartel - and more specifically the Eve Scout program - are heavily related to Thera and any Signaleer should probably get familiar with it. Suitonia, a famous Eve Online PVPer, made a good introductory video here. Regarding the access to Null Sec, Thera is definitely a valid option, especially if you have decided to live out of Signal Cartel's Thera Station. A famous Signaleer explained how to use Thera to access Null Sec.

This tactic is not without risks either, thanks to the Eve Scout program, there is a public list of currently opened wormholes in Thera and their destination. This is very useful to the Eve Online community, however, the trade-off is that any Null sec group could be waiting for you on arrival as they can check the current wormholes state on the Eve Scout Website, they may be waiting two or three jumps away. Remember that Null-Sec Capsuleers are very familiar with each of their limited territories, while you must become familiar as you move and plan.

If you would like to use this method you should also look at the Thera section of this page.

- Using random wormholes

This tactic could be qualified as a "brute force" approach. To summarize, you scan a random wormhole close to where you are, and enter it. You enter another wormhole and continue following the chain until you find a suitable null connection, or dead end.

The advantage of this method is that no one should be waiting for you, it's unlikely your specific chain has been mapped out and camped as long as it doesn't border a high-traffic system. However because of the unpredictable nature of these connections the resulting Null connection, should it even exist, may be sub-standard. There may be high traffic, or a poor yield NPC faction, or perhaps even some sort of conflict. You may scan during hours without finding a valid Null sec exit point or continuously find dead ends.

If you would like to use this method you should also look at the Wormholes section of this page.

Pochven

Wormhole Space/J-Space

Wormhole Space, also known as J-Space or Anoikis Space, is a unique collection of around 2600 systems that contain no stargates making them only accessible via Wormhole. J-Space Systems are named with a J- followed by 6 numbers and do not contain NPC Stations. High, Low, and Null Sec Space, when in reference to J-Space, is called Known Space or K-Space.

The Local Chat in Wormhole Space is different from K-Space as it does not show Capsuleers present in the system unless they are actively using it. D-Scan still functions as normal, allowing you to see uncloaked Capsuleers, but any wormhole could contain any number of cloaked capsuleers without your knowledge, thus it is imperative that you remain alert in Wormhole Space. Many use the one-click one-scan rule, that for every time you click something you should D-Scan. Thankfully this also means that cloaked Signaleers at safe spots are nearly impossible to find, or even notice for that matter, thus you are most vulnerable while caching, hacking a site, or leaving the wormhole.

Once mastered, however, Wormhole Space is particularly useful for explorers and contains the majority of Signal Cartel content such as The ESRC Program, Thera Scanning, and even The Anoikis Division. Other than Signal Cartel services, Wormhole Space is uniquely valuable to explorers as it contains a higher density of sites than Known Space, has random paths that continuously change, making Capsuleer Density low, allows for better hunter avoidance, and provides more valuable exploration sites.

Finding Wormholes

Wormholes spawn randomly in any system and decay within a couple of days, making their various connections and locations exceptionally random, logging out in a Wormhole is both a good way to lose your path back to known space and to find new systems in the chain. Wormholes can spawn anywhere and can lead to anywhere, from J-Space to K-Space, K-Space to K-Space, J-Space to J-Space, and more.

Wormholes spawn appear as Signatures just like Data and Relic sites, most wormholes can be easily scanned down by a starter exploration fit, and all wormholes can be entered by frigates, some can have size restrictions beyond this. Once a wormhole is scanned down it can be warped to and entered. Once you have warped to a Wormhole you are most likely going to want to identify it. How long it will last, if other ships have traveled through it, where it will go, and if your ship will fit through it this is the kind of information you'll be wanting.

There are a variety of methods of identifying wormholes, from simply inspecting the details of them to looking at their color and shape. Though it can seem daunting at first, As you gain experience with wormholes you'll find them more and more simple to identify. Make sure to D-scan near a chosen wormhole to ensure it isn't being camped, and remain alert whilst identifying it, camped wormholes are rare but dangerous, and become far more common with High-Sec connections.

Identification

Show Info

The most straightforward method of identifying wormholes is simply selecting one on grid and clicking "Show Info". A window will appear giving you information about the wormhole in 4 sentences.

1. The first indicates what parts of space it would seem to lead to, there are more accurate ways to determine the destination, such as distinguishing between C1/C2/C3 wormholes or even determining what region of known space it connects to, however this is the simplest.

Description	System Type
Unknown	C1/C2/C3
Dangerous Unknown	C4/C5
Deadly Unknown	C6
High Security	Hisec
Low Security	Lowsec
Null Security	Nullsec
Triglavian Space	Pochven
Thera System	Thera

2. The second indicates what stage of life the wormhole is currently at, while there are 4 different possibilities players generally split it into "Fresh" and "End of Life" (Or EOL) with EOL referring to a wormhole with less than 4 hours remaining. It is not suggested to enter end of life wormholes if you want to return the way you came as it is very easy to become trapped.

Description	Remaining Time
not yet begun	more than 24 hours
beginning to decay	Between 4 and 24 hours
reaching the end	Less than 4 hours
dissipating into the ether	unverified, potentially less than 15 minutes

3. The third indicates how much mass has destabilized this wormhole so far. Everything has mass including your ship and its contents, and every type of wormhole has different mass limits, any mass passing through a wormhole incrementally destabilizes it, until it reaches its limits. Some wormholes have very small mass limits, some very large, some even regenerate stability over time. This won't tell you a number, just how much in comparison to the wormholes max that has passed through, wormholes that are very unstable from mass are likely being "rolled" where someone goes back and forth through a wormhole to force it to close.

Description	Mass to Limit Ratio
not yet had its stability significantly disrupted	less than 50%
beginning to decay	between 50% and 90%
reaching the end	more than 90%

4. The last indicates what size ships can enter this wormhole

Description	Ship Limits
Very large ships	Everything except for Titans and Supercarriers
Larger ships	Battleships, Orcas, and smaller
Up to medium size ships	Unplated Nestors, Battlecruisers and smaller
Only the smallest ships	Frigates, destroyers, and certain Heavy Interdiction Cruiser fits

Visual Identification

The videos in this section were linked with the kind permission of their owner, Sothis Ast, owner of the whtype website.

The visual aspect of a wormhole provides information that enable a pilot to complete the "show info" details, which is particularly interresting when looking at an exit (K162). To do that, one has to look at the two parts of the hole : its "eye" (the wobbly bubble in the center) and its aurora (its arms) :

Destination system

This information can be gathered when looking at the eye of the wormhole. The eye of the wormhole reflects the landscape of the region you'll end in when jumping through. Here are their various aspects and a few additional clues to know what to look for when you look a wormhole in its eye !

Jumping to W-Space

Destination	Visual	What to look for
C1		The clues of C2 or C3 are missing, you see only a dark, cloudy aspect.
C2		There is a darker spot in the cloud bordered by small, bright ones.
C3		There is a v-shaped red cloud visible
C4		The clouds have a brownish/dark red color with a white V-shaped spot.
C5		The clouds are a brighter red than the C4.
C6		Those are a vivid orange tint.
C13		A greenish/greyish tint with a white cloud.
Thera, C13 shattered WH, Drifter WH		Very similar to the previous one, there's a large black spot curling around inside the eye.

Jumping to K-Space

High-Sec and Low-Sec

As the eye is a reflection of the skybox of the system you'll land in, when jumping to High-sec or Low-Sec, its color will hint at the empire ruling the system.

Amarr space.	Caldari space.
Gallente space.	Minmatar space.

Null-sec

When jumping into Null-sec, your only clue is the look of the clouds and your own knowledge of NS systems to recognize them. You can try to find the region by using the very well made "Modern Guide to Wormhole Identification" website

Maximum size allowed to jump through

This information is given by the color of the arms moving around the wormhole.

Size	Visual	Ships able to jump through
S		Up to destroyers with the addition of Porpoise and HIC (with specific fit)
M		Up to battlecruisers
L		Up to Battleships
XL		All ships with the exception of Titans and Supercarriers

Health of the wormhole

End of Life

As the wormhole ages, its aurora will fade and its movements will slow down and the eye become "wobblier".

Mass destabilization

As ships jump through, the size of the eye will shrink. Unfortunately, in empty space, there is no object of reference to compare the size of the eye to, so this is very hard to spot. It is generally visible if witnessing the moment when the size changes as a ship goes through and the wormhole's information is the quickest source of information available.

But if you use the "Look At" function when you select the wormhole in your overview, you'll set your point of view at a fixed distance and then you'll be able to notice how unusually small the "eye" of the wormhole appears to be on your screen as long, as you do not zoom in or out.

C2 that has not reached critical mass destabilization	C2 that has reached critical mass destabilization
C2 that has not reached critical mass destabilization	C2 that has reached critical mass destabilization

Wormhole Types

Unknown Space - Class 1-3

Dangerous Unknown Space - Class 4 and 5

Deadly Unknown Space - Class 6

Bookmarking Exits

Thera

Thera is the largest system in Anoikis. It has a unique distinction of being the only wormhole system with NPC stations owned by The Sanctuary corporation, a research branch of Servant Sisters of EVE. One of those stations, The Sanctuary Institute of Paleocybernetics, located near Thera XII planet hosts Signal Cartel headquarters.

Thera is highly connected to known space and can be used by adventurous or well-prepared pilots as a shortcut for traveling between New Eden regions. Signal Cartel's Thera Scanning service maintains a map of wormhole connections to Thera which can be used to plan the route.

There are several landmarks that have remnants of space constructions abandoned by previous Thera explorers. An activated CovOps cloaking device is recommended for sightseers who want to visit them as those sites are patrolled by Sleeper vessels.

@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 ==Propulsion modules and other relevant ship equipment==
+(See also [[Exploration_Ship_Fitting_Guide#General_Principles|the Explorer's Guide section on fitting]] for the general principles of fitting ships.)
 A ship can move on grid much more quickly through the use of propulsion engines, jump drives or warp drives.

Awesome Pilot

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