Saving pods and session timer tips

After yesterday’s angry-face post I thought I would counter with a few titbits on saving your pod in low-sec.

Generally, in low-sec, unless you suffer a lag monster incident or are within range of a smart-bombing ship, you should be able to save your pod after your ship explodes.

As soon as your ship starts exploding begin spamming the "Warp to 0" icon on your overview.




Having a handy "escape" style overview tab set up, showing all stations/gates etc. will help you to quickly select something to warp to. Select your object and click the hell out of that warp button, 9 times out of 10 you will be out long before your attacker can lock up your pod.

One very important thing to bear in mind is that there is that you have a session timer when you lose a ship and during that time you cannot dock or jump through a gate. So if you lose your ship at zero on a station don't sit there spamming the dock button - spam warp away instead. The same thing goes for when you lose your ship on a gate, don't try to jump, warp away.

A word on session timers, there is a handy little widget available in options that lets you see a session timer count down in the top left of your screen.


It is very small but can be quite useful, when you float your mouse cursor over it you will see the timer counting down.

I find it especially handy for surviving station camps where you need to re-dock quickly. When you undock from a station you have a 30 second session timer and before this timer ends you will not be able to redock.

In addition you also have 30 seconds of invulnerability, during that time you cannot be targeted by another player. BUT you can remove this invulnerability early if you start moving your ship, begin warp, activate certain modules or even try to re-dock. But because the session timer, preventing re-docking, remains in place you will still be stuck outside the station.

One thing you CAN do without removing your invulnerability is stop your ship (ctrl + space is the default shortcut key for this). So, if you undock and realise you are camped and might not be able to redock before you are popped simply stop your ship, so that you don't drift out of docking range, and watch your session timer widget count down to zero. Provided you don’t activate anything or start moving your ship around you will be safe until the counter hits 0 - and then you will be able to redock pretty much as instantly as your invulnerability wears off - giving your attackers little chance to lock you up and kick your butt.

Of course if you do stuff it up and lose your ship... remember to warp your pod out and don't try to redock it...

...and if you stuff that up too don't forget to update your clone ;-)

o/




*additional info*

Corp mate alexthefox pointed out that my first picture suggests warping to a gate - obviously bear in mind if you warp to a gate with your pod just after loosing a ship and the warp distance takes less than 30 seconds to complete then you still won't be able to jump out of this gate either. You can always bounce to a planet or bounce to another gate. The session timer is 30secs, and you can watch it with the session change timer.

Also, I've not gone into it here but yes you can of course change your warp to 0 distance, just as you can change your orbit distance. Right click on the >>> button to set a new distance.