Difference between revisions of "Ratting tactics"

Revision as of 11:20, 12 February 2009

TACTICS FOR BELT NPCING

This guide discuss various tactics for deep 0.0 ratting. See also belt rat spawn system description and list of Eve's NPC Rats.

Chaining

In modern use may also refer to Farming.

Obsolete effective tactic of waiting on one belt, partially killing the same good spawn over and over, while the spawn kept respawning faster and faster. This has not worked for years.

Farming

Also known as chaining.

Tactic of clearing all poor spawns, and leaving at least one ship from all good spawns, as a seed for future growth.

While average spawn total bounty value is around 1.6M, in couple hours of farming that can be increased to 2.1M, and rise up to 3.0M in long term (15+ hours) community-wide farming.

These incomes are further boosted by some 1M per hour, if we assume special spawns on average net 50M extra. If the special spawn average profit was around 150M, then farming would not be optimal at all.

ptimal cut-off point for which spawns to leave and which to kill lies around 2.6M - 3.6M, as in terms of total bounties of rats. Or in other words, clear all spawns that don't have at least triple 950k BS, or equivalent.

Clearing

Kind of opposite of farming; killing all spawns thus getting more chances for special spawns. Profitability really depends on what one assume's special spawns (hauler, faction, officer) average extra profit to be. If it is around 50M, farming always wins, if beyond 150M this one is better.

This test sets seems to indicate that farming is good idea for non-sov systems, and might be non-optimal for NPC home systems (like Stain).

Faction hunting

Kind of niche tactic, where focus is on finding special spawns. Idea is to check belts in multiple non-checked systems, and kill only special spawns.

Doable in some agile but powerful ships like Zealot/Ishtar, or with scout/killer pair (Interceptor/Battleship, Covert_Ops/Black_Ops). Upon finding target spawn the scout would write down the belt, leave it, and wait for the killer ship to arrive.

Since there is no point to check a system someone has already checked, faction hunting is effective only:

• Soon after the reset of downtime
• On systems constantly ratted by non-friends (ISK farmers etc), with some 50% reduced chances due farming.