The Dark Arts - AFK Krab Farming in Nullsec Staging Systems - A Guide

How to be a thorn in the side of any major nullsec alliance as a solo pirate

There are definitely other pirates and PvPers out there who have found effective ways to hunt krabs solo in hostile staging systems. But I don't know of anyone else who does it quite the same way I do. This strategy has gotten me quite a few easy kills with minimal losses. I wouldn't say that I'm making great isk by the standards of anyone who does PVE or trades or does industry or whatever, but I scrape by on loot and ransoms and heists alone, as I have for the past decade. And I'm a casual player, as my readers know. So the isk to me is good, and by good I mean I'm making more money selling off loot than I'm spending on ships and supplies. To me, that's a win, And it is nice seeing 15-25 killmarks on my ships before they go down.

Honestly is absolutely stupid of me to publish this guide. I'll probably delete it before I hit publish. If I'm dumb enough to publish this, that's just...wow...really stupid. I definitely won't share it anywhere. I'm on to a good thing here, and if other people start doing it too, then everything will be ruined for me. There are so many ways that they could kill me out there, if they know how I'm doing it. But they don't. Yet. And then again...I've always published guides when I figure stuff out. It seems like I shouldn't stop now. Here's hoping that only fellow pirates read this article and not angry nullseccers who are trying to kill me.

This is the step by step guide to my tactic, how I got those 100 nullbear kills in November of last year, and many more since then. 

Two Accounts - Scout and Gank

You need two accounts for this one. It can be two people but I just multibox two accounts fairly easily. The first character is a scout. They can be flying anything with a covops cloak. I usually fly a covops frigate or an Astero. If you don't mind multiboxing in fights, you could go with something more interesting, but I like to have just one decloaked character on grid when I have to make a speedy exit.

For your scout character, any reasonable fit will do. It should have an expanded probe launcher if possible, as those come in handy. It's mice if a scout covops can have a microwarpdrive as well, for making fast bookmarks. Cargo capacity is also nice.

The Ship - Osprey Navy Issue

For your ganking ship, your most important stat is align time. The magical number, from my experiments, is an align time less than 4 seconds. If you don't fuck up, you can evade the standing fleet every single time with a sub 4 second align time.

I have used several ships and fits, but here is my latest Osprey Navy Issue fit. This absolutely slays krabs. Using this fit I have killed dozens of Vexors, dozens of Ishtars, Algoses, Vexor Navy Issues, Procurers, a Noctis, a Navy Drake, a Praxis, and probably a bunch of other things I can't remember right now. And for every fight I won there were often one or two fights that I successfully disengaged from when they tried to blob me.

This fit in some ways is a very conventional RLML solo fit, but one thing is unusual. The Improved Cloaking Device. Being able to cloak up for the 15 minute duration of your aggression timer is key. You do not need one of these on your ganking ship, per se, but you do at least want to have a Prototype Cloak and a mobile depot in your cargo hold so that you can switch to the cloak after an attack and switch back to get ready for the nest fight. Without a cloaking device, you would be bouncing between safes all night to avoid being probed down. 

Obviously, you could choose a more expensive ship that has a covops cloak to gank krabs. But I'm on a budget here. 112 million for an ONI is more cost effective than 600+ mil for a strategic cruiser or Stratios or something. Kill a dozen Vexors and it pays for itself. Or one or two faction loot drops, which will happen from time to time.

Just a little singed after a fight

The Strategy

Once you have your ships in position, safe log off your ganking account. Keep your scout alt online. Sneak around the system scanning for targets.

If you are doing this anywhere else other than the staging system of a major alliance, you would run into a big problem here. Everyone krabbing in the system would run and hide in a citadel the moment you were spotted in local. 

Even in these staging systems, neutrals in local affect some people's behavior. But they don't always see you in local. With hundreds of people in local chat, most folks will have to scroll down to spot your name, unless you are one of those poor fools whose name starts with A. Some people probably notice you there, but not everyone does. You may be mentioned in intel channels or the standing fleet may discuss you, but often those things don't happen for hours at a time. Some feel invincible so close to hundred of their alliance mates and take foolish chances. Some are simply oblivious to their surroundings. Still some others are determined to AFK krab and accept repeated losses as a cost of doing business. There will always be targets in space even with your neutral scout or PvP main in system. 

But of course, if your scout alt is planted into your target alliance, or blue to them, that's even better for a multitude of reasons.

So anyway, d-scan all the combat sites. Locate krabs, then warp to the site and see who they are. Take your time. There is absolutely no need to rush the intel gathering stage of this plan. Check their corp history and zKillboard history. Choose targets that seem the highest value that you can realistically solo first and work your way down the list. Assess the available information to decide whether or not to attack. Do they look like they bait people often? Are they PvPers at all? If so, any solo kills? Kills in their krabbing ship with a blob of other guys? Have they been in the alliance long, or did they just start the other day? Have they lost the same ship class they are flying recently? What was the fit? If you have an in-corp scout/spy, is the target in the Standing Fleet? Work your way around and decide what you want to go for. Make a list if you want to hit multiple targets fast.

Anyway, you choose a target, and make not of its location. A shared bookmark is handy sometimes for this but not always needed. At this point you want to move fast.

Expect lots of narrow escapes

The Drop

Log in your ONI or whatever. Immediately warp in on your first target. Overheat your point, your launchers/guns, your microwarpdrive. Burn to it if necessary, get point, orbit within disruptor range and within your weapon's optimal. The RLML ONI is nice because you can stay right out of scram/web range without any reduction in damage, but most of your targets won't have points anyway.

Anyway, burn the krab down. Remember not to burn out any modules. While doing this, have your directional scanner set at 1 AU range. Spam dscan and if anything appears, recall your drones and bug out. Even when the standing fleet lands on grid before you notice them, you still can make it most of the time (if you don't screw up.) Try to remember to shut off your MWD to align faster. This will happen a lot, so get good at running away. They will be chasing you all night long. 

Quite often, the target won't ask for help quickly enough. You will tackle them, and they will melt under the onslaught of your missiles. Then you will recall your drones and run away.  If you have multiple targets lined up, go to the next one, and the next. Keep moving fast, don't stay on grid any longer than necessary. 

When you are done blowing stuff up or have been chased off grid by the standing fleet, cloak up at a safe spot. Repair your overheating damage, reload missiles and cap booster charges. When your aggression timer is gone, safe log off. Meanwhile, carefully collect the loot with your covops scout. Rinse repeat.

This tactic feels a whole lot like suicide ganking except the standing fleet isn't infallible like CONCORD. They show up anywhere from 20 seconds to never, they can be evaded, but yeah if you serve yourself up on a platter to them they will fuck you up.

You're going to want one of these

Supply Chain

Even an extremely casual player like me can rack up kills by the dozen doing this. All of that fighting consumes ammunition, cap booster charges, nanite repair paste, and especially drones, which you sometimes have to abandon on the field when the standing fleet gets the drop on you. Loot also begins to accumulate in large amounts. I suppose one could periodically leave the system to pick up supplies and drop off loot, but that seems like a lot of tedious traveling back and forth. It's more fun to just stay there until they manage to kill you.

Two deployables are essential for this style of camping out in hostile space. A mobile depot, kept in the cargo hold of your Navy Osprey (or whatever). This allows you to swap modules, like to fit a cloaking device if needed, or an armor or hull repairer. It also allows you to put drones in your drone bay. These can be probed down, though, so scoop them when not in use and vary the locations where you anchor them.

The other thing you will need is an anchorable container. I use a medium secure container. This is my supply dump. All my consumables are stored here. These containers cannot be probed down, so this is safe storage as long as you don't go there while combat probes are out.

As for a way to move move stuff to and from the system, I've done it two ways. First, a blockade runner alt is handy if you need to move things across multiple systems. You could even use a blockade runner as your scout alt. 

The best way to handle this, though, is to have your scout alt infiltrate the alliance that stages there. Then you can buy ammo and stuff in the local Keepstar, and sell their loot drops back to them. This greatly simplifies logistics, eliminating a really tedious part of the game from the equation. It's also deeply satisfying.

Conclusions

If you are a casual pirate and parent like me, this is an awesome way to solo PvP. I only have limited time to play EVE, so I came up with this as a way that I can just log in to the game and immediately PvP. I followed the principle I've cited again and again over the years in this blog - go where the targets are. In nullsec, that means one of a very short list of systems.

Once I get set up in a system, I can AFK all day long. If I have 10 minutes to play, I can log in my scout alt, pick a target, then log in my PvP main and kill it, loot the wreck and cloak up all within about 3 minutes. Then I just have to remember to come back after my aggression timer runs out to log off again. Anytime I have a few minutes and want some immediate PvP action, it's right there in front of me.

The catch is that you have to not die. The only tedious part is reshipping when you take a loss.

Try not to die