Safespots

Introduction
Safes are locations in space which you can mark, so you can warp to them in a later stage. You can make a safe spot by creating a bookmark mid-warp. This type of bookmark includes those that are positioned on the grid around a Stargate. This will make it harder for you to be scanned down by enemies because you won't be near any celestial bodies. Potential uses include:


 * A point to warp to with your Covert Ops ship when you need to monitor activity at the gate.
 * A point to warp to in any ship to check if it is safe to warp to the gate at 0km.

It is often useful to have a number of these prepared for personal use, the The FC may even tell you to make em for fleet usage.

The basic procedure is this:
 * 1) "People and Places" > Places tab > "Add Bookmark"
 * 2) Give it a good label
 * 3) The moment you press "Submit" a bookmark is created at your exact location

Perch
A perch is a bookmark located at least 150km away from a fixed object, typically a stargate or station. You should make perches in systems you frequent. Warping to a perch puts you on grid with your target so you can observe the target at a reasonably safe distance that also allows direct warping.

Aligned Safe
An aligned (aka on-line) safe is a bookmark made while warping between two fixed objects (station, gate, celestial, etc.) It helps to be more than 14.7 AU away from anything, placing the safe outside the maximum range of enemies' directional scanner. The best spots are as far away from anything. It will do you fairly well as at least no one will have you on your locations grid.


 * 1) Open your solar system map (Optional, but helps quite a bit in placing the bookmark).
 * 2) Warp from your current position to another celestial object in the system, and while still warping create a bookmark. Call this bookmark Spot 1.

This continues into:

Unaligned Safe
Unaligned (aka off-line) are relatively safer since enemies cannot do a partial capacitor aborted jump onto you. You will no longer be algined from your mutual startpoints.


 * 1) Locate a different celestial object, and be sure that it is not on the same vector that you just came from. Warp to this object, and again while still in warp create a bookmark. Call this bookmark Spot 2.
 * 2) Warp back to Spot 1.
 * 3) Warp to Spot 2, and again take a bookmark in the middle of this journey. Call this bookmark Spot 3.
 * 4) Spot 3 is not positioned on any of the lines between celestial objects in this system.

These types of bookmarks potential uses include:


 * A place to hide if hostiles are hunting for you.
 * A storage location for secure containers.

It is important to remember that these types of safe spots are NOT entirely safe. In fact a well trained prober can find you in under 30 seconds if they are lucky. To be far safer you need to activate a cloak after dropping out of warp. That again is not perfectly safe. Enemies may already be aware of that spot from earlier usage, and could have placed a bubble after you logged out from there, in which you will get stuck logging back in.

Docking Station Safe Spot
This type of bookmark includes those that are positioned to ensure you can dock at the station as soon as you arrive at it. In some cases when you arrive at a station you will not be quite in range of the "docking ring", and will have to travel a short distance to dock. This can be fatal, so these bookmarks can be used to save your bacon.

To make one, follow these steps:


 * 1) Undock from the station for which you want a Station Safe Spot.
 * 2) Head the other side of the station. If you clear the docking ring you will see the station distance start to count off in Meters, you will want to get back in it.
 * 3) When on the other side of the station relative to the undock and within docking range, place the bookmark.

Note, don't make these at the undock, since that is exactly where enemies will be camping/have bubbles up.

Insta-undock Safe Spot
This type of bookmark includes those that are positioned to allow you to warp instantly from undocking to safety. These can be used to allow a pilot to assess the situation outside a station before engaging with any enemies that might be outside.

To create an 'Under Fire' Safe Spot, follow these steps:


 * 1) Un-dock from your station, but take care to not change the direction that you automatically travel in.
 * 2) Carefully change the speed of your ship so you travel away to a safe distance.
 * 3) Either keep the station close (around 200km) for pvp usage, so you can asses the situation and scout/engage.
 * 4) Or make a gtfo one that is far deeper (1500km+).

In this way, the moment you undock you can warp to a spot straight ahead of you 200km from any enemies lurking outside the station - and from there to any other point you wish while being out of range of snipers and tacklers.

Poor Addition

When undocking, your ship does not come exactly straight out of the station. I believe the ship undocks anywhere within 5 degrees of perpendicular. The closer you are to perpendicular, the better your undock is for ships with poor align times. A good insta-undock will allow a cargo fit hauler like the Iteron V to undock and warp in less than 6 seconds (align time on this ship is 11+ seconds). Test your insta-undock with slower aligning ships if you have time.

Bouncing Safespots
Quality probers will likely be able to find a ship larger then a cruiser in under a minute so if you are spending time dodging the enemy in a hostile system it is best to create many safespots and jump between them randomly while you make more. Your jumps between safespots should be approx 298 000 000km (2 AU) apart or further when you jump between them to avoid probers locking and warping on to you if you are in a ship which is slow to align or you plan to stay at a safe for a few minutes.

Rolling Safes
From a normal safespot and in a fleet, you get a fast ship in the fleet to burn away aligned to nothing. This is to prevent someone warping in front of them (warp to 100km for example) after probing them down from the celestial.

The remainder of the fleet will hit approach to that leading ship. As you fall behind 200km you initiate a warp to the leader. WARP TO 70-100km on him (depending on their speed). Once you land hit approach again. This will align you for the next warp at full speed. Don't do this in a huge blob. The idea is even if a prober gets a hit on the fleet (likely a BS or something large) there is a good chance they will have already warped from the spot the prober will be landing. On the off chance they do land on your ship (either because they probed down someone ahead of you or because you are going too slow) since you are already quite a ways behind the leader you will likely be able to just hit "warp to" to move to the leader before the enemy can drop a bubble. Once at the leader do what the FC says (generally scatter to random safes until reforming). If the leader is even going half fast they will be out of any bubble even if they were the ship probed down.

A note on probing: You could set your directional scan for 298 000 000km -- this is 2 AU. A prober with excellent skills will likely be able to get a 100% on a BS sized ship with their probes set at 2 AU. If you see probes within that range be prepared to move in a hurry. Even one probe in that range can prove to be a problem.

Deep Safespots
Deep safespots are safespots more than 20AU (CCP declared) away from any celestial/gate/station/etc. These are relics of older times where it was possible to exploit certain unintended effects of game mechanic implementations. They used to come handy for parking super capitals/titans, and where also used to get fleets into an already loaded system (this became a necessity due to post-Dominion lag). These days, you can no longer make them or use existing ones.

Using Safe Spots
Here are a number of simple guidelines that can be used to help keep a ship safe while out in EVE:

When traveling through 0.0 or 0.0-0.4 (low sec) warp to your Gate Safe if you see any neutrals or enemies in local. If you happen to be travelling in a slow aligning ship 151KM should give you enough room to maneuver back to your un/aligned Safe. However, if you are set-up correctly and no one is at the gate, you may be able to align to the gate and warp to it. In performing this procedure you can minimize the chances that you are caught by your enemies. If when you travel through the gate you catch a glimpse of someone chasing you, warp to your random safe check your scanner. Be on the lookout for any probes in space, or Covert Ops ships, as this may well be a give away that they are trying to probe for you. If this is the case the best strategy is to start bouncing safes. It is important to remember that a trained probe pilot can find you in under 27 seconds in the best case scenario.

When travelling into a system and you see a camp at the gate, at which they have a buzzard or another covert ops and are probing you down head to your deep safe spot 15AU from any object. Next align to the station, and warp to your Station Safe Spot to determine if it is safe to dock.

Align To
An FC will likely call this in a large fleet, it simply means align to whatever object he called. Speed is FC dependent. Some will want you at maximum speed so if you are primary you can hit warp to get off grid before poping. In most cases however they want you to go the same(ish) pace as the slowest ships (usually the BS). Even if you are in something like a cane unless the FC says something like 'get a tackle on' whatever stay aligned with the fleet. You hit primaries if they are in range but your real purpose is to hit the enemies bubblers/tackle and other anti-support ships. Don't worry if nothing initially comes into range, just keep your eyes open.

Anchors
While in a (large) fight a FC may call himself (or someone else in the fleet) as an anchor. This is the person who will be controlling distance to and from the enemy. Generally you will want to orbit this person at less then 3000m (FC specific how close they want you to take this). This way then can move closer/further from the enemy without having to relay movement directions over voice. They will optimize range for the type of fleet flying (ie 50-90km or so for many HAC/BC gangs). It is up to you to ensure you remain close to the anchor as if you stray too close to a short range gang you will be picked as the primary and die horribly.

Optimal
When told to get to your optimal off something that means get to your preferred range. This will depend on the type of ship weapons you are using. Generally it will mean the optimal range for your weapons (ie on the cusp of fallout starting). Note: If you are EW or Tackle this means the optimal for those systems not your guns.

Orbit at
This is generally done in small gangs when combat is imminent. It spreads you out a bit so bombs have a harder time hitting multiple people, it gets you moving so if required to scatter you should already be at least moving when choosing a celestial in front of you -- and on gates at 15 km (larger for regional gates) you may have the luck of running close to someone holding cloak who just jumped in.

Terms Explained

 * Docking Ring
 * The area around a station at which the range away appears to be 0km, thereby allowing you to dock. Just as a warning the size of this area can vary in size depending on the model of station which you are orbiting.


 * Grid
 * The size of the viewable area which your ship is currently viewable on, it will vary in size depending on the number of people in a given system. Grid size can be expanded or shrunk using a closely guarded technique known as 'grid fu'.

Safe Spot Bookmark Naming Ideas
Here are a number of abbreviations that you might like to use as naming conventions when making your own safe spots:


 * RS
 * Random Safe spot, to be used if you need a bailout point.


 * GS
 * Gate Safe Spot, to be used to check if a gate is safe to warp to.


 * IUS
 * Insta-Undock Safe Spot, this is an outbound safe to make sure you don't get blown away undocking.


 * StS
 * Station Safe Spot, this is an inbound check to see if you can dock.