Visiting Stations in Low Sec Space

As a growing industrialist, you may find yourself wanting to visit more stations in low security space.  This is fairly dangerous without Concord around.  Will station defenses defend you?  Honestly, I don't know.  But if you want to cover your bases and be able to get in and out of stations in low sec as safely as possible, there are a couple of things you can do.  As long as I am providing some pointers for navigating null space (see prior blog post), I might as well cover this too.

You may have heard the term insta-dock in game.  That will get you into a station more safely.  There is also an inverse to get you out of a station more safely, but I'm not sure what people call it in game.  For now I will just call it insta-undock (though undocking isn't really the insta part -- warping is -- but for now I'll just keep the naming consistent and go with insta-undock).  If you are not already familiar with these, then read on.

Insta-dock

The trouble with docking at a station is that where you drop out of warp has some variability to it.  You may have noticed that some of the time, when you warp to dock at station, after docking is requested your ship has to fly forward a few hundred meters before it docks.  When you came out of warp, you were not quite within the docking perimeter required.  Those few seconds of advancing towards the station opens up additional risk of being attacked.

To avoid this is fairly simple.  On your first visit to a station, add a bookmark 0 meters from the station (or at least within the docking perimeter).  In the future, when visiting the station, warp to your bookmark instead of the station.  This always puts you within the docking perimeter.  It does add an extra step of docking after warping there.  But it's worth it to ensure you get in more safely.

I haven't investigated this yet, but if it's possible to manually set up waypoints including docking waypoints, then you may be able to set up a waypoint path that will get you there without manually having to trigger docking.  But I don't know for sure if this is possible.

Just be careful not to warp to your bookmark while in a high security docking mindset.  If you forget you need to be carefully watching to dock after reaching the bookmark, you may end up putting yourself at greater risk than if you had just used a regular warp-to-dock like you would in high security space.

Insta-undock

Much like insta-dock, you also want a way to get out of the station that reduces risk while aligning to warp.  The solution here again involves using a bookmark.  You always leave the station flying near max speed in roughly the same direction.  If your warp destination happens to be in front of you, your time to align will be very short, minimizing your risk.

Using a fast preferably cheap ship with a microwarp drive, undock from the station, activate your microwarp drive, and fly straight out at least 150 km, preferably more.  Set a bookmark.  In the future, whenever leaving the station, immediately set warp to your new bookmark.  It will always be almost directly in front of you, and you will be able to align and warp to it very quickly.  Once there, you can then safely warp to your next waypoint.

This can also be handy for those stations where the docking exit isn't entirely clear of the station.  On some warp paths, you may find yourself embarrassingly bouncing off the side of the station trying to enter warp.  If you use an insta-undock, you will always be clear of the station.