The reasons why I decided to write this 101 are very simple: first, because vanity is definitely my favourite sin – I love bragging. Second, because CCP overpowered interceptors and now we all play eveceptors online. I hope that after reading my paper some of you will consider that sniping is worth a try and will start separating dumb pilots from their interceptors. Let’s make ourselves clear from the beginning; I do not consider myself an authority in the matter, nor do I consider my technique perfect, however I’ve had my share of solo sniping kills and over time many people encouraged me to write this, so here it is, with the best English I am capable of. Constructive criticism is most welcome.
You will need to dual-box two toons, one is the sniper, the other one is the warp-in provider. Attempts with someone else as warp-in failed miserably in 10-20% of the cases, which is an unacceptable rate, so you will have to have your own eyes both on the prey and on the guns.
8x 1400mm T2 Arty
2x SeBo (have both scripts ready)
3x Tracking computer (1x optimal range, 2x tracking speed)
2x Tracking enhancer
1x Gyrostab
last low slot: this slot varies depending on conditions, DCU II or another Gyrostab, I will talk about this later.
1x medium ancillary current router
2x medium ionic field projector
+ drop booster if you are rich
Insure the ship, you WILL lose it.
2 gun groups with different ammo, default is 4xfaction EMP L + 4xfaction fusion L (first group to melt shields on their weak resist, second for armor on its weakness).
Faction titanium sabot ammo should also be in cargo.
Falcon’s fit greatly depends on circumstances, but you will surely want 6 jammers and an MWD, tank in lows and , if sniping happens in hostile sov space, then remote hull rep and remote armor rep mods are not a bad idea, because your sniper might get badly scratched by counter-snipers and expanded probe launcher could be fitted and offlined, maybe cyno offline in case you one day find something worth calling the cavalry upon.
This 2nd toon will also be the squad leader, thus increasing sniper’s targeting range from 114 to 121 Km, which doesn’t look like much, but it is very important and I will explain later why.
First, you need to find an active system, like the staging system of a big coalition. If you have to choose, find a big system (100Au would be wonderful ), because once you piss the locals off they will hunt you and you’ll have aggression timer, so a big system makes it harder for them to probe you down. Then, start bookmarking.
Each “on-grid” bookmark should be carefully chosen so it won’t be aligned with any celestial, or you risk to have someone landing on top of you by sheer luck. Your ideal snipe range would be 110Km so bookmarks will be divided into “snipe points” – 110km around gates and around station, six to ten BMs for each gate are not too many, so take your time and do tons of them. Make sure the BMs are not too close one to another. Then you will need “observation points”, that is 150+ Km off each gate/station, which you can use as pings when searching for good insertion points with your falcon.
Third, you need safes, make a few “deep” safes, then make some safes close (1.000-100.000 km) to gates/station, be extra careful and take note of each safe in which direction it’s aligned. You make these ones while warping in or out, just before entering the desired grid. Their use will be explained a bit later.
Now that you wasted a whole day bookmarking, make a copy of them so both your toons have the same BMs. But you’re not ready yet. Make sure you have a good overview set up, and you see both velocity and transversal velocity columns.
For the moment the nado stays in a deep safe, always aligned to another safe. Don’t forget which safe you’re aligned to, in case something lands on your sniper you don’t want to initiate warp towards something in a different direction than you’re aligned to. Also, in this state while your falcon seeks a victim, you want to have your dscanner on (probes should always be checked on list, always!), and set the dscan range to something like 500.000.000 Km (deleting the first two digits from the default max value and replacing with a “5” might be the fastest way to get to this).
If you see probes on dscan with this range set, it’s likely they got you already, so warp out and delete this safe spot from both your toons. Each time you even remotely feel that a BM is compromised, delete it. I am sure you won’t actually do this until after the first time you get killed due to usage of a compromised BM.
Once you are all set in system, find your first victim. That is in many cases a sad cyno noob ship or something similar. You must draw attention upon you, then you must annoy them badly, so they start making mistakes. Their confidence in being 200 in local while you’re alone usually makes them do stupid things, like MWDing ceptors towards you with no transversal.
In the beginning they will most likely have no prober set, so it’s ok to get your sniper in one of the safe spots near the target (that you previously saved), and keep him aligned towards target. This way you will have a short warp which means only little time for unexpected things to happen. You can warp @10 to your falcon, or if distance is critical, then you can try @0, but in that case falcon must be aligned and you also must be ready to warp it off or re-cloak in case you decloaked it when tornado lands. When landing 110 Km off your victim, you have two choices. When there doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger, you should allow your tornado to slow down while targeting (with this setup you’ll have a 2.x seconds lock time on a frigate for example).
Once you’re satisfied with the transversal towards your victim, fire and warp off to a deep safe. However, if they are already on alert and you have probes on short dscan, or ceptors ready to burn towards you or closer than 100 kms, or there’s chance for cloaked bombers to be around, then as soon as you drop from warp (and I mean when under your capacitor it doesn’t say “warping” anymore), then you’ll immediately warp to a deep safe. While your ship aligns out, you have enough time to lock and fire, but your transversal will have to suffer cause you’re moving. If the danger is very high, then it would be ideal to think of a bookmark that is in the direction you landed on, so your align time would be even shorter. In such cases it might happen that you don’t manage to lock and fire before warping out, but at least you’ll live to try again. All this danger assessment is done via falcon’s view. If there are multiple possible targets, again, by watching falcon’s screen you will find the one with less transversal and decide, otherwise if you try to choose after your tornado landed you will do it in a rush and you will lose too much time and usually your choice won’t be the best one. What you must understand is that you have to spend as little time as possible in that spot, because there are so many ways they could toast you with. Below I will try to make a brief list.
First method and easiest for hostiles is to have 2 or more counter snipers (take note that carriers with sentries out also count as snipers). Having a DCU II fit in that low slot that I spoke about in fitting section will grant you survival vs a similar fit with yours. If he’s 0 tanked, then he’s your victim and you’ll laugh in his face after you one-shoot him. Be careful though, a machariel will alpha you even with a DCU II on. If there’s more than one, then it’s better to find some different location in system where to bother locals, or once you grow confident you can try to make them split, insert yourself out of their targeting/falloff range, etc, but that is for advanced snipers only. In case you play this game on their undock and they have probes out, then you will have to come out from long warps (safes close to station are obviously unusable due to probers), and they might check dscan, and once your ship name shows up they know you’re coming and they have time to undock more counter snipers than you expected, usually resulting in a loss-mail. You should check whether this is the case by warping nearby station but not on its grid, and with falcon’s eyes see what/if they undock in such a scenario.
Second method is for them to burn with ceptors towards you. It will take them some time till they realize that normal MWD ceptors won’t be of any use, as they either keep too much transversal and they won’t reach you if they start from 110 Km, or they burn straight and die. Bonus! You have time to pod them too, usually if you land and immediately warp to the same safe and a ceptor burns with low transversal you have time to lock, kill with first gun group and in 50% of the cases there’s still time to lock the pod and kill it with 2nd guns group. When they burn, if you have lock and you already gave the command to warp out, take your time and watch the ceptor’s transversal, you don’t have to shoot instantly, you have a few seconds to decide when is better to shoot, maybe he will lower transversal once he’s closer and he smells the blood … well, the blood will be his. However, a very good interceptor pilot, with speed links in system, full-speed fit and snake implants will be able to produce the surprise and tackle you before you warp, while keeping a decent transversal so your guns will miss him. There’s where the falcon comes into play. If you feel you’ll get tackled, quickly asses the situation: if they have many pilots on route to your sniper then die quietly and spare the falcon, maybe kill one with low transversal who rushes to get on the killmail , while they drain the life out of you. However, if they only have like 1-2 tacklers and low DPS on grid, you align your falcon and decloak, while you just did that the nado is already pointed, now switch to it and align it too , because its alignment just got interrupted by the scram. Falcon still needs 2-3 more seconds till it can lock something due to recent decloaking, use that time to decide who to jam and what type of jammers to use on each tackler. Do it and pray. If successful, first warp out the nado then the falcon, towards the points they were aligned to. They are pissed off, that’s a good thing, but you just showed your hand and now they know why you always have a perfect warp-in (because of Falcon). Which leads us to the 3rd method of catching you.
Once you killed enough baddies and plenty have gathered to hunt you, they will try to place cloaked bombers into spots they know you warp to. Luckily you have many bookmarks and never use the same spot twice. They might leave ceptors in spots they know you previously landed … gods are smiling, you’ll just come at 100 Km to that spot (always check the direction you come from, you don’t want to land near their blob). All right, you just landed 100Km off their waiting ceptor, he probably has his MWD on, waiting for you, but he’s a bit confused that you didn’t land where he expected. You end his confusion with gun group 1 and with a bit of luck his pod too, with group 2. If a bomber decloaks close to your landing spot , in 95% of the cases they are so busy decloaking, locking, pointing and calling point, that they forget to move. In that 95% of the cases next thing they see is the decor of their home station, cause you just popped him.
Probing you as you land on grid is another choice they have, usually accompanied by baiting you to shoot something juicy. If you do the dance as you’ve been taught, they will never have time to scan/land/point, but it’s close, about 1s, so not recommended to repeat too often in case you have a heart condition. Once again, remember the dance: while dropping from warp, already have the menu to the bookmark popped up, and as soon as you dropped warp, you initiate warp out, nothing goes before that. It will take about 5-6s to align and warp out, enough time to lock and kill something. If, however, you try to lock your victim first, and only after that you try to warp, you will end up hitting a bug that will most likely get you killed: if you land and first initiate lock instead of warp, and only after that you start navigating through the menus to find desired safe-spot bookmark and the menu to warp to it, then usually locking ends before you found your menu and click warp, and successfully locking your target will collapse the menu (bug), so you’ll have to again right click in space, find your BM, then warp to, which gets you killed in case probers are waiting for you or 7-8km/s ceptors are en route to you with 25% transversal. If there’s no immediate threat, then you’re fine. One other option would be to have your bookmarks folder open (it will waste some space on your display), and then you can just right click the bookmark and warp to it, without the risk associated with menu navigation. When hunted by hostiles with only 0.5s escape margin, hands tend to shake.
There are some other tricks that hostiles might throw at you, for example fighters assigned to ships that appear harmless. If that smart guy managed to lock you and send his assigned fighters on you, chances are you won’t even know it happened, for you it looked like just another random useless baddy locking you up just because he can. Once in warp to your safe, you will probably be more focused on your falcon that is on hostile grid to find another warp-in/victim, and you might not even notice that fighters are chewing on your sniper. It usually ends quickly. You can only get rid of the fighters by leaving system or by deploying a mobile depot, warping out until it onlines, come back, quickly refit a cloak. That mobile depot is also a good idea in case you have to go afk and you still have aggression, but don’t leave it in space as you might find unwelcome guests lurking around. Use it to refit a cloaking device, scoop, cloak up, sleep. Leaving system ain’t usually a good idea, because you presumably pissed them off pretty bad already and they will do everything in their power to keep you out or kill you. Once you died , and you will, pretty often actually at least until you find your whereabouts , assume that they will try to stop you from coming back to the system, so use your falcon as scout wisely and be patient.
There’s little you can do against bad luck though, just picture this one for a minute: your falcon @110 from your victim who is standing still, you are in warp to that nice point with your tornado, and everything looks perfect. Then, out of a sudden, an enemy ceptor randomly burns towards your falcon’s direction, just because he’s bored. You land on top of the ceptor and he points you, while the swarm of enemies can’t believe their eyes how lucky the ceptor was. Well, in such case just have a chat with your favorite divinity to set things straight. All you can do to prevent such displays of sheer bad luck is to minimize the warp distance whenever possible.
It’s of the utmost importance to realize how dangerous the game you are playing is, and don’t get greedy, or overconfident, and never break your own rules. For example, if you consider a warp-in point is good to be used only once every 12h or so and you make a rule out of it, then don’t get greedy like “I’m out of BMs but just this dramiel and I’m done”, and warp to a presumably compromised BM, cause it doesn’t work too often. If you are playing this game in NPC sov and you also use the same station you are hunting around as your temporary home, never warp to it without falcon eyes on grid, it might be bubbled. Have at least 4-5 insta undock bookmarks every 150Km usually works best, because it gives you room to snipe some of the smart guys that are waiting for you on that insta undock line. In NPC sov, also have two “safe dockup” BMs, one for you to safe up, and one positioned in such a way that undocking ships will be on the other side of the station with as little transversal as possible (be on the other side of the undock). It’s a vulnerable position, but if you don’t feel like cloakies are after you, or you just started the sniping session, that place is good for sniping things that undock and try to warp out, your very fast locking time and tracking will surprise them.
Anything frig-sized, destroyer-size and haulers are usually in your tornado’s menu, but also active tanked T3s with no buffer that just landed on station and decloaked, if they are on the unlucky side of the warp bubble they will need a few precious seconds to dock up, sometimes that’s all you need, give it a try.
Carrying mobile small bubbles with you is also a good idea. Install one of these on a gate towards station with a few decloaking containers and wait for a nice fish to hit it. Don’t stay on grid as this will allow cloakies to get on top of you, but instead stay in one of the safes you made close to the gate, aligned towards gate, and keep dscanning. Once you see something new on dscan, chances are that thing is in warp towards your bubble. Then warp to your bubble sniping spot where you will probably land just as the victim hits the bubble. Kill it if you can, sometimes this scenario also allows you a 2nd shot, so you might consider pre-overloading if the victim’s tank looks like it needs 2 volleys. Don’t stay on that grid , warp to your safe spot close to it and re-align, keep dscanning. If probes are out, assume your bubble compromised and just re-locate. Don’t be cheap and try to scoop the bubble back into cargo, chances are something cloaky lurks around and you’ll get killed in an unprofessional way. Keeping an invincibility aura around you and being one step ahead of their every trick will badly hit their morale which is good for your vanity but statistically bad for your kill ratio, because with time spent in their system hostiles will become more and more cautious and inventive into killing you.
You can even be of an utmost arrogance (hey CFC, remember me doing that in VFK? 🙂 and snipe them on their JB, if it is positioned in a way that helps you dscan incoming ships . Make a safe near the JB, align to your JB sniping spot and keep dscanning, in case the JB is favourably positioned in system you will know when something comes towards the JB, and with some practice you will learn when to hit warp so that you land at the same time as the victim does. The POS will not shoot/point for a few seconds so you have time to volley the unfortunate victim who frantically seeks the jump button. Kill and warp off, you don’t want to be the victim of a POS. Same method can be applied on the station against victims trying to dock up, as you know the warp bubble might land them 2500m away from station, so they will need precious seconds until dock-up, and might even do stupid things like hitting the mwd icon.
If your paint is scratched on your tornado and you have an aesthetics obsession but you can’t dock-up to repair due to being in hostile SOV space, having that remote hull repper and remote armor rep on falcon’s high slots will prove to be a life-saving idea, in a safe, of course.
That’s about it, the rest is practice. Hit me with questions/suggestions ingame.
Fly dangerously o7
– Lord Road
