Ratting Etiquette

The spirit of the rules within this page are to keep everyone from clashing with each other, to keep the isk and escalations flowing, and to keep you as safe as reasonably possible. If you interpret these rules in any other way, and attempt to rules lawyer, you will likely be subject to commissar.

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There are a few game mechanics worth understanding, especially when it pertains to ratting. Understanding how they work will help you understand why the rules below are the way they are.

• New Anoms spawn after downtime, or shortly after a previous Anom has been completed
  • This means your half-finished site or wrongly triggered site will stay up as a monument to your failure until downtime
  • It also means that depending on the truesec and the ratting upgrades in place, a system will never sustain more than X of a certain Anom type at a time.

• For each class of Anom, eventually there becomes a point where warp time and not dps is the limiting factor in your tick rate
  • I.E If you have 5 carriers or 20 carriers, you're not going to do a haven any faster.

• Mobile Tractor Unit
  • Mobile Tractor Units despawn after 48hrs of being placed
  • Mobile Tractor Units can be bookmarked, and probed with a combat scanner probe set
  • Mobile Tractor Units will loot EVERYTHING in range, including the wrecks of real ships

• ESS Reserve Bank
  • CCP has implemented the long-awaited system for accessing the Reserve Bank of each system’s ESS.
  • The ISK is gated (held) behind a CCP mechanism and even though ratting in the system causes ISK to be placed into the bank, this is through game mechanics and not player action.
  • The ISK can’t be regarded as anyone’s property.
  • Players use a region-specific key and get SCC Encrypted Bonds to be redeemed at a CONCORD owned station for ISK.

The rules below are for your sake as much as it is ours. It is our feeling that this makes for the simplest set of rules to abide by, and the easiest to enforce for a clean, consistent, non-blue-murdering ratting experience.

1. Stay in TEST space for ratting/mining/exploring unless stated otherwise by the diplomatic team.
   1. All TEST space is everyone's space. Setting up citadels or installing upgrades early into an ihub does not give a corp claim, rights, or privileges over a system.
   2. No supercap ratting outside of T0DT-T titan bridge range
      • If you get tackled in a carrier in M4U get your own help or die quietly.
   3. Within the T0DT-T umbrella (see OP), regardless of red/green status, the following ships will be given equal priority over ship classes not listed below:
      1. Haven/Sanctum = Drone Patrol/ Drone Horde: Titan/Supercarrier/Carrier/Dread
         1. If a prioritized ship class lands on a site you are actively doing, you need to recall and cede the site (do not finish it)
         2. Multiboxing, or running semi-afk, is not an excuse for missing a carrier landing on you. Set up your clients so you can see blues within a minute or two or afk in smaller sites.
      2. No specific rules apply to anomalies smaller than Havens/Patrols, but please mind the guidelines at the bottom.
      3. T0DT-T is explicitly excluded from the umbrella restrictions since you cannot jump to the system you are in, classify it like a system outside of jump range.
   4. Just because we have blues and renters doesn't mean they want us ratting in their space.
   5. Feel free to do escalations you get in allied space
   6. See the Diplomatic Agreements Forum Sticky for all current agreements pertaining to PVE
2. The first person to land ongrid in a site is the “owner” of a site
   1. Calling out a site in local or a fleet does not grant you claim to it
3. If you leave a site (or are not actively running it) you forfeit all claim to it
   1. Yes we understand sometimes neutrals enter a system, and sometimes you take too much damage and have to warp off to repair. However, when this happens a new entrant to your site has no idea whether or not you are coming back, and should not leave a half-finished site just because it's half finished and somebody MIGHT come back. Get gud scrubs, if you want to lay claim to something you'd better stay on-grid with it.
   2. Yes this includes faction spawns and Dreadnoughts; turns out when you trigger a faction spawn you are the only one who knows it's there and you should have plenty of time to get yourself a gang or a different ship to come back and finish off the spawn before anyone else notices.
   3. That being said, don't be a shitlord. If some newbro in his VNI starts asking in local or a standing fleet for help killing a faction spawn, it doesn't become yours because he's not sitting on grid eating shit from it. Be reasonable and help each other out.
   4. Leaving an interceptor or other ship not actively running a site does not hold a claim to it; to be considered running the site you need to be actively engaging with the rats.
4. You are NEVER allowed to shoot a blue or his (drones/fighters/mtu/etc) unless he shoots first
   1. I don't care if some shitlord flies into your site, drops an MTU, steals a faction spawn's loot, and then flies off telling you in local that this is why your mother is in a wheelchair… go get a diplomat; If you shoot that guy you'll have more hell to pay than he does.
5. If you come across an MTU sitting in a site that is unfinished or hasn't been started ask in local, attempt to PM the owner, and take a screenshot before shooting
   1. If he does not claim it in a reasonable amount of time (few minutes) you may kill and loot it; he technically forfeited claim to it when he warped off. This does not apply to MTUs in deadspace and not in an active Anom.
   2. I repeat, you do NOT have the right to probe down and destroy MTUs from finished sites, many people drop them by the dozen while doing the sites themselves and bookmark them to come back and loot later.
6. In the event that PVP happens in your ratting site, you are not entitled to loot accidentally hoovered up by an MTU
   1. Distribute the PVP drops among the people who came to try and save you.
7. When saving logs for potential future discussions, only use: https://paste.pleaseignore.com

While we expect all bubble camps in our space to exist for the purpose of PVP and not PVE protection, if your PVE protection bubbles are not in a pipe or otherwise well traveled system, and are not otherwise causing problems, we, Test Diplomats, do not proactively enforce said expectation. This does not mean owners of PVE protection camps are absolved of responsibility for things that do happen, nor does it protect the PVE protection bubbles from being shot if unattended. It only means that we don't proactively enforce a ban on their use for the purpose of PVE protection.

1. You may NOT bubblefuck pipe system gates, including artificial pipes created by the jump gate network
   1. Unattended bubbles anywhere may be removed at any time by anyone.
   2. Unattended bubbles anywhere that get someone killed may make you responsible for their reimbursement.
   3. Attempt to PM the bubble owner in case it is being cloaky camped before shooting.

Test’s long-standing policy is that our space belongs to everyone in the alliance. Members can enter any Test-owned system, warp to a vacant anomaly, run the site, and receive ISK. Reserve banks are no different in this way. The Alliance will be treating these as PVE sites that are Free-For-All for TEST Members to access and run, these are simply another PVE site for players to run.

These rules apply only to the Reserve Bank. Policies regarding the Main Bank are unchanged.

1. All policies from the Test Alliance Bylaws and Ratting Etiquette regarding where PVE sites may be run and who can run them apply to Reserve Banks.
2. Claim to an ESS grid while a Reserve Bank is paying out is determined by the use of the Reserve Bank Key.
   1. Not by who landed first, or who is hanging about.
3. The person who spends the Key on the Reserve Bank has sole and complete discretion on who may or may not be on grid while the Reserve Bank is paying out.
4. You do not have the right to use any offensive module on another alliance member or blue.
   1. If someone steals from your key activation, your only recourse is in the Diplo Office in Alliance Discord. Due to this, it is strongly recommended that you have Shadowplay or its equivalent running while accessing a Reserve Bank.

1. Do sites that make sense for what you're in
   1. Yes an X-type LSB Ishtar can do a sanctum; it doesn't mean you should. You'll get ticks almost as high blitzing hubs and you can leave the bigger sites to ships like carriers that can do them much more efficiently. Don't be a dick, and don't make us make more of these guidelines into enforced rules.
2. If you start a site, finish it
   1. Half-finished sites are annoying because you end up spending more time warping and it lowers your tick size
   2. If you fuck up a trigger and make the site impossible to do with what you are flying, ask for help clearing it out don't just leave it for some poor bastard to die to.
3. If you land on a site more or less the same time as someone in a bigger ship, cede it to them
   1. Remember, you align and warp faster than he does.
   2. If your next site is within dscan range, scan it to verify that it is empty prior to warping to it.
4. If you're ratting, be on Mumble
   1. This is as close to mandatory as a guideline gets. If you have to spend time getting on Mumble after you get tackled you're probably just going to feed. If you feed repeatedly to your own incompetence diplos may have words with you or your corp.
5. Join a standing fleet if you're ratting in a common system
   1. It's certainly not mandatory, but it's a lot easier to call for help if you're already in a fleet and not panicking to make one as you're trying not to die.

• Mining Etiquette
• Ice Mining Etiquette
• Gas Etiquette