I'm excited about the prospect of flying one of these. Six billion ISK. Just the thought of having that much ISK at risk (more really, because it will have cargo) sends shivers up my spine. Good shivers. The kind of shivers you should get in EVE. Risk versus reward and all that.
So everything I've learned about jump freighters so far, I've learned watching the following video:
What did I learn? Well, you need an alt at the destination, or some character who can light a cynosural field thing. When it's lit, the jump freighter pilot can jump to the lit cyno. Both characters need to be fleeted together (obviously.)
It is best to jump your freighter from the undock of a station. The destination should be as close to a station as possible. For quick docking in the event of trouble.
Other things I know. Jump freighters have a maximum range of five light years. I still have no idea how to measure distance between star systems though. I wonder if there is some site that will take two systems as input parameters and spit out the distance?
Obviously, when jumping this thing into Stain, it would be beneficial to find a highsec system (with a station) within range of whatever system in Stain I'd like to jump it too. I'm guessing that's going to be impossible. Stain is quite a distance from empire space. My guess is that I should be able to find a lowsec system that is five light years from the Stain station I wish to jump to. At the moment, I'm assuming two jumps to get into Stain (though I would not be surprised if it ended up being three), highsec to lowsec, lowsec to nullsec.
I'm going to have to spend a few jumps practising all this in highsec. My first trip in a cargo-ladened 6B ISK freighter is not going to be into Stain. In two or three months, you can expect a post about either my first successful jump into Stain, or the destruction of my brand-new 6B ISK jump freighter. The latter would make for better reading, but has the nasty side-effect of making me sad.
I intend for Poetic to be the cyno lighter. So I have to figure out what skills she needs to pick up. From what I've gathered loosely over the months, the skill set for a cyno lighter is not high, so shouldn't be much of a problem. Just keep a Poetic clone down in Stain with some cyno lighting ships (I've heard this can be done in cheap frigates.) I don't know how accurate all this water-cooler information is. But I'll get around to checking out EVElopedia soon.
Heck, once I get the hang of it, maybe I'll see about joining Black Frog.
use the tactical overview to make your cyno bookmark on the station in stain. It needs to be close enough to be at zero when you jump in but not so close as to cause your jump frieghter to bounce off at relativistic speed! Also, dont light it right outside the undock. Hope that helps
ReplyDeleteMy advice is just a collection of notes written on used napkins. I'll add it to your post since you don't specifically state these lessons:
ReplyDeleteThe main thing to be aware of is that a cyno stays lit for the entire duration that the module is active. Toggle the module as soon as you start it up (i.e.: so it has pulsing red glow) so you don't accidentally cycle it a second time.
You have to weigh the cost of the extra fuel against the cost of the ship: some ships can shorten the length of time a cyno stays open for (e.g.: Falcon and other Force Recon ships). Generally, use a cheap throwaway ship with a cheap throwaway alt since the cyno beacon lights up for everyone in that system to warp to, while simultaneously immobilising your ship for the duration.
Alternately, rely on your corporation or alliance having a network of jump beacons attached to POSes. Having such a network can effectively provide a superhighway for the transit of goods from Jita to deepest darkest null sec.
You can use blockade runners and black ops battleships to jump to covert cynos. This gives you the safety of not lighting up a warp-to beacon for the entire system, but that's three characters you need, all of which need advanced skills, and you have nowhere near the hauling capacity of a jump freighter, and Black Ops can't bridge anywhere near as far as a Jump Freighter can jump.
Wollari's Dotlan maps have a handy jump planner: http://evemaps.dotlan.net/jump
Also, Dotlan has a pretty useful jump planner for figuring out your route. I'm not sure if its 100% perfect, but it looks pretty legit.
ReplyDeleteI typed in Dodixie to LGK (in Stain) and it said 4 jumps for a Thanatos with JDC IV.
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/jump
@Mara @Tommy Of course. Dotlan would have a jump calculator. Awesome. Thanks for the heads up. Looks like the only entrance into Stain from empire space is via Saminer (Tash-Murkon) into T-NNJZ. From there it's still two more jumps to my destination. Not too bad really. I can tweak the route from T-NNJZ to hit systems with very little activity.
ReplyDeletehttp://evemaps.dotlan.net/jump/Anshar,443/Saminer:T-NNJZ:LGK-VP
Also, if the destination is your POS, rather than a station, your cyno-lighter can activate the cyno mod while moving, and can then drift inside the POS shield and stay safe for the 5-10 minutes of immobility.. sourced from that other wiki :) http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Cynosural_Field_User%27s_Guide
ReplyDeleteI believe that you can no longer light a cyno above a certain speed (I think 500 m/s) making it quite difficult to coast a cyno ship into a POS. I've also been told that bumping a cyno ship into a POS after the cyno is lit with another ship is considered an exploit, but I have no personal confirmation of that.
DeleteMy advice: use a disposable cyno ship with dual webs. Park @ 70 - 80 km off of POS directly across from a BM 100 km away from the tower out the other side. Light cyno, jump in, warp ship to BM @ 100 km, apply dual webs with cyno ship. Instawarp into shields with a vulnerable period of maybe 15 seconds for the capital. Change the bookmarks regularly, and every time there is a hostile in system you can't account for, as he may be in a cloaky marking your spot for the next time he sees the cyno character in local.
You should join Black frog. That way you can pay off your jump freighter sooner.
ReplyDeleteA JF can actually jump 11.25 light years with all the skills to 5 ... 4 if you have JDC to IV.
ReplyDeleteIt usually takes 3-5 jumps from a highsec market hub to the nearest nullsec.
You will need to bear in mind that your system needs to have a station in it (to dock and regen the cap) and that the trip for the cyno alt can be as much as 10jumps per JF jump.
The ability to light cynos right on the station has also been nerfed, so pay extra attention to this. You can ~very easily~ end up a couple of KMs out of docking range, and that can (and eventually will) get you killed when you try to chug along at 23m/s once you have two webs on you.
I'll probably keep the jump freighter on JF jump out of Saminer (Tash-Murkon), and just use a regular freighter to transport goods to it. Would save money and fuel.
ReplyDeleteAs for lighting cynos on a station ... it is why I will be practicing in highsec first. (Can cynos be lit in highsec?)
Cynos can't be lit in Highsec. :)
ReplyDeletePoetic, I enjoy your blog very much but I have to say that lately your stubborn-ness and almost suicidal devotion to your isolated survivalist way of life are becoming tiresome. Eve is more about teambuilding and relationships than your 'one man versus the entire game' attitude, you lack the skills and resources to 'solo' this game so why do you persist? How many Black Frog contracts would you have to pay for before owning your own JF really becomes economically viable? You need all the relevant skills to 5 to make it cheap enough to run (jump range and fuel costs), you need a number of cyno alts on a different account strategically positioned in waypoint systems, this stuff is so much easier accomplished in an established corp or small alliance. If you get it wrong even ONCE you'll lose everything, quit the game and we'll lose this blog. You're obviously smart so quit doing stupid stuff or I'll be forced to believe that you're insane. Get a carrier first, it's cheap by comparison, you can grab tons of ships in empire and move small volumes (10k) quickly plus it can tank most anything long enough to dock. Oh, and DON'T tell us where you are or you'll get ganked.
ReplyDeleteThe dotlan link above. Thats an example. I am not in LGK. Good info on the carrier. Will look into it.
ReplyDeleteEvery station type and outpost type, in my experience, has a spot where the docking area is at least 10km wide (some are much larger). Test by dropping a can right on the closest piece of station structure and then flying directly away, checking range on the can. Ideally you want a spot that has you 12km from the can and still 0 on the station. If so bookmark a spot @ 6km from the can back towards the station. A capital lands @ 5km from the cyno but I say use the 6/12 rule for leeway, right @ 5km is too close. This method will prevent embarrassing (and possibly fatal) bounces.
ReplyDeleteHey Stan.
ReplyDeleteGotta agree with the carrier idea. Sure, a carrier takes hellaciously longer to train (about what, 3-4x longer?) than a JF, BUT you'd get a lot more utility out of one than a JF.
JFs are glorified haulers. Can't do anything else. Simply impossible for them.
Carriers, on the other hand, can haul around a fair bit of fitted ships (+have room for spare fitting mods), are tankier, far cheaper, and should you ever decide to join a corp (we still have room under the hobo bridge I hear), you'll find your carrier far more useful: you can train up reps and run triage for a fleet, help with logistics for deployments (assuming you end up in a nullsec group that does that sorta thing), If you really want to be fast but stupid, you can even rat and run plexes with it, if you dualbox.
The "obvious utility is obvious" of a carrier is SO obvious I've pulled my FW alt out and started training him up for it... on the subject of which, as far as "you vs the game" comment from the anonyposter above, the simple fact is, especially out in null, EVERYONE has a variety of alts for different purposes.
The simple fact is that training one char to do everything leads to 2 things: 1) it takes forever, and it's hard to keep one char on track for one thing when you find out you need another shiptype, etc for something else you want to do, 2) more skills means more skillpoints means more expensive clones if you get pod-expressed somewhere... and podding does happen quite frequently in null unless you stay in the deepest blue area you can find and always dock or safe up & cloak when neuts/reds enter the system...
So while I still am against EVE as a "massively multiclient" experience, it's also time to face the fact that there's a reason people have diff alts for diff things with multiple accounts to support the alt army... and null is definitely NOT like hisec where you have "the industry guy, the mining guy, the missioning guy, and the plexing guy who sometimes helps with missions".
You're expected to be mostly self-sufficient...you don't get to be "the DPS guy" to someone else's "the carrier guy". "The carrier guy" also has a DPS alt, an EWAR alt, and a repper alt, and if all you're bringing to the table is "the DPS guy", you're going to be expected to seriously step up the game and provide some other services, your own logistics, or contribute in a VERY major way to the overall success of the corp.
Multi-clienting and the "alt army" have broken the original intent of corps and alliances -- you join a corp now and the question is "How many alts do you have and what can they do for us?"
Just try to avoid this particular situation... *grin*
ReplyDelete-- Mynxee
That's a great post, Mynxee. The intensity of the situation was right there in the writing. I didn't know how it was going to end. Glad it ended okay.
ReplyDelete----
To the dude that thinks I might quit if I were to lose a JF. Not at all. I'd be pissed at myself. But I wouldn't quit over it.
Question for whoever sees this and knows:
ReplyDeleteI assume that a carrier or JF can still jump to a lit cyno while targeted and under attack?
I'm guessing that the only thing that would stop a capital ship from jumping would if it were bubbled ... I recall the old EVENews24 battle reports of the Goons trapping PL titans in, what they were calling, rape cages.
@Hong @Anon Yeah, I'll probably go with a carrier then. I think I'll still train the JF for now ... the JF skill itself doesn't take long ... and I already have all the jump drive skills in that queue up to V. After that, I'll work on the skills to get a carrier specifically. I won't actually get the JF, but will have the skills for the future, if I want to go that route. Once I become proficient at jumping with a carrier.
ReplyDeleteYou're on the right track, Poetic. You'll find, however, that Stain presents some unique challenges. It's a minimum 2 jumps just to get into a stain "border" system, 3 for most of the stations above the middle pipe (as the region is displayed on dotlan), and 4 for many of the systems below that (we refer to them as Far Stain or the Back Edge). Using only one cyno pilot, you'll have to light, jump, dock up, wait out the 10 min cyno timer, reposition your cyno pilot, and repeat. There are lots of other little details to attend to, but you'll get the hang of it. At some point you'll be doing logistics for your logistics (fuel and cyno equipment). Stain is usually hideously expensive for cyno and fuel.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck,
Zaxix (Black Frog)
oops. Also, carriers are nice, until you realize how much non-ship carrying space there is. Fuel will be an issue if you don't stockpile it along your route.
ReplyDelete"I assume that a carrier or JF can still jump to a lit cyno while targeted and under attack?"
ReplyDeleteNope, sorry. Huge sig radius (so everything locks them super fast) and a point on it stops the jump.
Even if the carrier has warp stabs, the tackle prevents the jump (but you can warp away then jump when you land).
I just happened to stumble upon this blog, and since I live in Stain and have an Anshar I might know a thing or two :D
ReplyDeleteFirst off, Stain is separated from Empire by the Pool of Radiance, and to make the jump to or from Stain you must train Jump Drive Calibration to at least level 4. At level 4 you can jump from Saminer in Tash-Murkon to T-NNJZ in Stain. At level 5 you can jump from Sagain to NRT4-U or (I think) F7-ICZ. Training JDC V is highly recommended because it will save you a cyno on the return trip, which will lower your fuel costs substantially.
You will need a lot of cyno frigs in T-NNJZ (or whatever system you decide to use) because you will lose the cyno ship just about every time. You can usually not get shot in Tash Murkon if you go through at a quiet time of day (early morning US, just after DT). Make sure to factor expected cyno ship losses into your hauling costs.
You will need cyno alts installed in your midpoint systems, for obvious reasons. The importance of lighting the cyno in a good spot cannot be understated - a jump freighter is extremely slow and completely defenseless - cyno'ing in even a few hundred meters outside the station docking radius can result in an extremely costly (and embarrassing) loss.
A good cyno spot is at the center of a sphere with a radius of 5kms which is completely inside the docking range of the station and does not intersect the station. This is easy in Tash Murkon, but the T-NNJZ station is one of the most difficult to get a cyno spot at. The more you do it the better you'll get at it.
Make sure you carry enough fuel to get your destination and back. You'll probably want to train both Jump Freighters and Jump Fuel Conservation to 4 before you even make your first trip, it's 3 jumps to pretty much anywhere in Stain (Paye --> Saminer/Sagain --> T-NN --> Your Destination) and 2-3 jumps back. When you go back to highsec cyno into the station in Sagain, then warp to 0 on the gate and jump. Do not cyno the gate unless you want to lose your freighter.