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====== Fucking Jump Freighters, How Do They Work ====== (WORK IN PROGRESS)
This article is intended as a resource for pilots seeking to break into the business of hauling freight in nullsec. Jump freighters are the most expensive non-supercapital hulls in the game, and as such, learning proper risk mitigation techniques is highly recommended before embarking on your first journey.
The Different Races
Jump freighters come in 4 flavors, and all have varying characteristics. Luckily, proper use of this guide will boil all those choices down to the following spectrum: cargo size and fuel burn. Luckily this is an inverse relationship. A listing is given below.
Rhea (Caldari): largest cargo/highest fuel burn Anshar (Gallente) Ark (Amarr) Nomad (Minmatar): smallest cargo/lowest fuel burn
At the writing of this article, Caldari fuel is also the most expensive per unit, however fuel cost calculations are left as an exercise for the reader since they change with market conditions (sometimes rapidly). The same can be said for the cost hulls themselves.
Wait, Hitpoints and Agility Don't Matter?
No, not really. The assumption is made that if you're shot at, you're already dead. Agility is effectively negated with the use of webbing alts in highsec (which is the only time your JF should ever be taking a gate).
How to Most of The Time Not Lose Your Jump Freighter
Where Jump Freighters Die
Jump freighters die in three places.
- On gates in high security space
- Anywhere but a station docking ring in low- and null-security space.
- Within station docking rings while the pilot is being bad.
As such, you'll want to absolutely minimize your time in these places.
Actual Jumping
It is assumed the reader is familiar with what a cynosural field is and does, as well as how jump mechanics work. We will cover here where to locate your cyno ship for jumping into a station system.
Station Selection
This is arguably the most important part of your jump freighting career. Where are you actually going to jump into. Certain stations can mean almost certain death, while others take a truly epic failure on multiple fronts to cause death. Stations should be selected for, in rough order of priority:
- Excellent station models
- Relative quiet in terms of pirate/neutral activity
- Fuel efficiency along your route
Station selection is based upon the avoidance of “bouncing”. Upon jumping to your cynosural field (Yes, yours. Never trust anyone else to light a cyno.), you will land somewhere 5,000m from the field. You will not be able to dock until the session change timer expires (that's the little circular timer thingy in the very top left of your screen, it appears when you join or leave fleets, change your ship, die, jump gates, or activate your jump drive). Since you can't dock until it expires, you're at risk of landing within the station model and bouncing off it. This can cause your JF to attain extreme velocities which may place you more than 250m from the station's docking ring (i.e. the distance from your selected station as per your overview). If you are bounced from the station in such a manner, you will have to bring your JF to a complete stop and get back to the station, either by warping to somewhere and then back, or by slowburning back to the station. Both of these will result in dead jump freighters if there are any neutrals around who are even remotely paying attention (see #2 of “where jump freighters die”).
In order to determine if your station is a good one, fit a module with ~5-8km range onto a rookie ship, undock, and turn on the tactical viewer. Explore around and place book marks scattered around the area that is the rough border of 0-50m from the station, per your overview. This is the docking ring's boundary. Ships within this can dock. Ships outside cannot. If you hover your mouse over the module, a range bubble will appear around your ship (when in tactical view). If you can fit that bubble so it's comfortably within the docking ring and not intersecting the station model, you've found a good cyno spot.
Note that weird things can still happen, and you can still bounce if you hit a 'solid' part of the station with your ship model. However, if you're not too far in, the speed of your bounce won't be as bad, and you can still dock once the session timer expires.
Route Selection
This one isn't too hard - just string together a bunch of stations that get you to where you're going. Using DOTLAN, you can play with the route and even examine station models until you've gotten a satisfactory one.
Crossing Into High Security Space from Low Security Space
When travelling back from nullsec to empire, you should select a system to re-enter high security space that borders lowsec. The few direct high-to-null-sec gates are remarkably inappropriate for this purpose.