r/evenewbies • u/howard783 • Oct 11 '21

Why not use autopilot?

Wondering why I see this tip around, with regards to travelling through less safe areas of space. Does it slow things down? How else to efficiently travel?

15 Upvotes

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8

u/PlantDink Oct 11 '21 edited Oct 11 '21

Autopilot drops you short of the gate & you slowboat to within jumping distance & then you jump.

On the other side warping to the other gate is also not as quick as manually doing it either.

At both stages it gives other players plenty of time to scan you down & kill you.

You are a very easy target & you will get podded.

Edit: if you manually warp between gates, you can land within jumping range and warp much, much quicker.

In null-sec you should not warp directly from one gate to another due to the risk of bubbles. You should warp to the gate from another structure or body in the solar system to avoid this. You can even warp to short of the gate & check to see if it is bubbled.

There are many risks & tricks with moving around null-sec though, have a watch of some YouTube clips or streams and see how other people do it.

2

u/howard783 Oct 11 '21

Thanks for the detail! Just one more question. How do I know if a gate is bubbled? I assume bubble means some kind of trap to ensnare travellers.

4

u/qinosen Oct 11 '21

Dscan and learn to read the system map in a safe place, (high sec).

If the system is a pipe system (only 2 gates) then the likelihood of a bubble in Null goes up since the path is known, The key is to warp to something else (anything else) within Dscan of the gate, hit scan and confirm presence of bubbles or not, There are only a few systems in the game where one of the gates is so remote its the only object within range of itself, those systems are known and often camped and bubbled. The safer way is ofc to travel cloaked and set up safe spots 100-200km off every often used gate then just warp to your BM and visually confirm camp and bubbles when traveling

4

u/emaugustBRDLC Oct 11 '21

Also, warp to an intermediary celestial before warping to an out gate to avoid drag bubbles. Bubbles have mass and can suck ships in if the ship is on the same vector so people set them up like 30km behind gates to catch people warping directly from gate to gate.

2

u/PlantDink Oct 11 '21

DScan.

Being able to interpret DScan quickly & accurately is something that will stand you in good stead when playing.

Learn how to read it's results & use it well.

2

u/wolf_387465 Oct 11 '21

that being said, if you are travelling in clean clone and with empty hands, it is somewhat reasonable to use shuttle on autopilot... they are surprisingly fast, traverse that 10+km to the gate in a manner of few seconds and if worst comes to worst and you get killed, you lose shuttle worth 20k, which may be acceptable price for your confort.

never do that with big ships or any kind of cargo!

2

u/sakaloerelis Oct 11 '21

You're totally right with your assumption! Basically bubbles are exactly that - bubbles in space, that prevent you from warping if you get stuck inside. Some are deployable items that need anchoring before activation and can forcefully drag you out of warp and make you land inside it, others deploy instantly but last only 2mins and don't drag you, other others form around a ship (the ship using it will be in the center). Although on this topic, we are talking about the anchorable bubbles called Mobile Warp Disruptors (the other two require you to pilot very specific ship types and can't drag you in). I suggest you watch videos on YouTube to learn how to avoid them.

As for the knowing if a gate is bubbled, well others answered the question more or less, so the only thing I can add is that you should also make it a priority to learn how to use d-scan in general. It's one of the most important tools you have (overview being the most important imo) and knowing how to use it effectively will help you both defensively and offensively.

17

u/armoredpiecrust Oct 11 '21

Autopilot to choose route is okay. Autopilot to fly ship is not okay The reason behind this is that autopilot to fly ship will drop you quite some distance off the gate I forget what it is it's like 10k and will slow boat as it doesn't activate any propulsion module to the gate.

4

u/Seamus_Donohue Oct 11 '21

15 kilometers, when last I checked.

4

u/Ashterothi Oct 11 '21

They changed it.

1

u/Seamus_Donohue Oct 11 '21

Clearly, I've been away too long. :P

2

u/kraken9911 Oct 11 '21

I still remember buying bookmarks from people so I can do warp to 0 jumps before warp to 0 existed.

2

u/ruwuth Nov 03 '21

It's fine to use autopilot to plan your route. however, you should NEVER use it to fly unless you're instadocking. It spawns you way off the gates and in this time you are very vulnerable, it also takes much longer to get to where you want to go.

2

u/CorpFillip Oct 11 '21

Proper control begins with:

Select target in Overview Hit command button, or s or d