Burn Jita

So, Burn Jita is over, and I’m a little disappointed.  Sure, I was able to kill about 30 billion in ships, and sure, total kills were above 600 billion.  On those accounts, it was a good weekend all around.

But I only managed to lose 3.1 security status.  I’m disappointed in myself.  I had hoped to bring my ratting alt down to negative security status, but, alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

For those of you who haven’t participated in a Burn Jita in the past, here’s generally how the fleets go.  The CFC had two fleets running around the clock, with various FCs rolling responsibility in two or three hour shifts, usually.  It’s similar to what happens during hellcamps.

At any given moment, the participating players are in one of three basic roles: DPS, bumper, or scout.  Scouts surreptitiously scan passing freighters, jump freighters, and Orcas to try to identify ships with a good cargo value.  When a target is found, the call goes out for bumpers to push the ship out of alignment and away from the nearest gate, ideally more than 150 km.

Once the target is clear of the gate, the call goes out to the DPS ships to form up.  Because most of us had kill rights available on us after our first gank, we remained in station or in deep safes until the last possible moment to minimize the chances that a fleet would drop on us, activate our kill rights, and wipe us out before we could reach our target.

When the DPS ships warp in, we immediately approach the target and overhead our guns.  As soon as everyone’s in range, the fleet opens fire, typically killing the target in two or three volleys with Thrashers and Catalysts, or one volley with Tornados.  With so many ships going GCC all at once, CONCORD simply cannot destroy everyone fast enough to save the target (hence why we each get 2-3 volleys, even in 0.9 or 1.0 space).

Once the target is down, we tend to look for anyone nearby and open fire on them, as well.  We already have GCC, after all, so why not, right?  Eventually, the entire fleet is dead, and we all warp our pods to safety.  We dock up as soon as our weapons timer clears, and we wait the 15 minutes until our GCC counter expires and we can actually fly in a ship again.

There are a few things that can thwart our efforts, though.  The first is when our target is on the same grid as a previous gank.  With two gank fleets roaming at once, it’s very possible that the first fleet could kill a target five minutes prior on the same gate with a target we’re tracking.  If CONCORD is already on field, their response time is a lot faster, meaning we might only get 1-2 volleys before the fleet is destroyed. 

To counter this, we’ll ask the first fleet – the one that still has GCC timers – to undock in newbie ships.  When you have a GCC timer and you undock in a ship, the CONCORD ships that spawned on the first gate will warp to the undocking targets and begin to destroy them.  This effectively lures a good number of them away from our target gate, allowing us to take down our target.

The other thing that could thwart our gank is a neutral repping fleet.  If a neutral fleet begins repairing a freighter that never aggressed, that fleet will never become aggressed, and won’t be a valid target to our gank fleet.  They could theoretically save the freighter, but it’s very difficult (I think it only happened once this weekend).  Most of a freighter’s HP is in its hull, so a repping fleet has to be very careful to time its repper cycles to gradually fill up shields or armor (I suppose it could repair hull, but that’s not a very efficient way to go).  It can happen, but doesn’t happen frequently.

That said, ganking requires a lot of coordination, but not a lot of skill.  Warp, approach, target, press F1.  In my mind, the real satisfaction is making some use of all that security status I gained.

So, in a way, that very security status you gain is what leads at least some of us to complete our pilgrimage to high sec to kill you.

That’s what I call irony.