What to fly
An Interceptor is one of the best ships that you can use for bookmarking, because it’s fast and immune to warp bubbles. Here’s an example interceptor fit that I use for my own bookmarking with a Claw interceptor:
LOW
* 2 x Inertia Stabilizers II
* 2 x Warp Core Stabilizer I
MEDIUM
* 1MN Microwarpdrive II
HIGH
* Improved Cloaking Device II
RIGS
* 2 x Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
The idea is that with the inertia stabilizers and the rigs – and with good skills – gets the align and warp time to 2.0 seconds (for the Claw, as it’s the fastest interceptor – other interceptors are likely to be up to 3 seconds) so that you’re warping away from any gate camp before 95% of them can get a target lock on you. With the 2 x warp core stabilizers you’ve got protection against the 5% of attackers fast enough to get a lock on you. And the Interceptor is immune to warp bubbles so you just don’t need to worry about them at all.
An Improved Cloaking Device II shouldn’t take you too long to get to level III and then on to level IV. You’ll also need CPU Management level IV.
However, the speed of an interceptor should mean that you mostly don’t need to worry about the cloak – you could just use a Prototype Cloaking Device I to hide out, but you won’t be able to do the cloak+MWD trick with it.
I activate the MWD to do 4.5 km/s away from a gate to do the bm’s, but if I don’t want anyone to see me (eg. if I see combat scan probes on the directional scanner) then I activate the cloak until they’re gone.
It normally takes about 20-30 minutes per system, depending on how many bookmarks you have to do in the system. You don’t need to bookmark the systems before you make the bookmarks for the client – that would take twice as long and just isn’t necessary.
How to make the bookmarks
- When arriving in a system that requires you to make 200 km gate bookmarks, first check your overview to see if there’s any nearby ships that might be a threat. If there is, you’ll want to warp to another gate at 100 km.
- If you’re on your arrival gate or you’ve warped to a new gate at 100 km, align the view of your screen so that there are no celestial objects in front of you. Usually this is straight up or straight down.
- Double click in the direction you want to go and then activate your MWD to increase your speed.
- If someone arrives at the gate while you’re doing your bm, activate your cloak immediately and continue on the same path for your bm. When they move on, deactivate the cloak and use the MWD again.
- When you reach your distance destination (eg. 250 km for a gate bm, or 600km for an offgrid bm, or 1000 km for a station’s insta-undock), add a new location in your People & Places. I usually make a new folder and name it after the client, and save all my bm’s in there.
* the format of the bm names is the following: [gate-name] 250km, or [gate-name] 600km, or [station-name] 1000km undock
To make an instant-undock from a station you do the following:
- Undock from the station, do not adjust your course as you move away from the station
- Activate your MWD and let your ship continue away from the station
- Monitor your departure from the station by looking back at the station. Imagine a straight line extending out from the undock point. If you’re deviating too far from that straight line, then adjust your course to get yourself back on that straight line.
- At 1000 km make the station undock bookmark.
To make a true safe bookmark, do the following:
- Warp to a celestial object and make a bookmark along the way
- Warp back to that bookmark
- From the bookmark warp to another celestial object and drop another bookmark along the way (use F10 solar system map to ensure this bookmark is not on any celestial-to-celestial flight path) – this is your ‘true safe’ bookmark because it’s not in between any two celestial objects
If you have any questions, contact Alexia Morgan in-game or via out of game email at [email protected]