An Introduction to Ratting

Things to Know

You should always be on comms and in standing fleet so you can hear intel and call for support in real time.

It's often worth insuring your ship when ratting in a subcapital. This can lessen the sting of losing your ship.

Even if you can, you want to avoid going fully AFK while ratting as it makes you an easy target for roaming hostiles.

On Ship Fittings

Guns, damage enhancing modules, and drones can usually be safely downgraded on ratting ships.

However, ships that have had their tank, propulsion, or capacitor related modules downgraded may lose their ability to safely run some or all sites.

Choosing a System

Avoid ratting in our staging systems, as these usually have consistent hostile activity along with cloaky campers.

System Geography

The Geography of a system will determine how often you're interrupted by hostiles, and how quickly support can reach you if you need it.

Systems deep into our space, away from standard travel routes, and in dead-end pockets require more work for hostiles to reach, lowering your chance of being interrupted. Proximity to a staging system and standing fleet will allow support to reach you more quickly if you come under attack.

Security Status

Security Status or "TrueSec" as it's often called is static and can be thought of as a measurement of a system's value for moneymaking. TrueSec determines which sites can spawn in a system (see the Sovereignty System Upgrades support page for a full breakdown), and influences the spawn rates of Faction and Officer NPCs.

The higher a system's TrueSec, the more ratting capacity it can sustain at one time.

Bounty Multiplier

As its name suggests the Bounty Multiplier is a direct multiplier on bounties gained in a system. It has a base value of 150%, increases with PvP kills in the system (up to 200%), and decreases with PvE Activity in the system.

This mechanic counters the advantages of the two above factors, forcing pilots to choose between lower ticks in a safer / higher capacity area and higher ticks in a more dangerous / lower capacity area.

Process

As the name suggests, belt ratting simply involves going through a system's asteroid belts looking for rats to kill. This is usually done with either a frigate or destroyer, as cruisers are more suited to anomaly ratting. After the April 2021 Update, many asteroid belts were removed and stargates became a go-to area for this kind of ratting as well.

As this is an early game activity, it's recommended that you loot and salvage the ships you destroy so as to get as much money as possible out of each belt.

Process

There are several ways to run anomalies, and the process differs quite heavily for each of them.

Drone Cruiser or Battlecruiser

Running anomalies in a drone boat usually involves landing on field, finding a good orbit, and letting your drones do all the difficult work. Once you get the hang of it, Anomaly Ratting can even be a Semi-AFKable activity using this method.

The most commonly used ships in this category are the Vexor, Gila, Ishtar, and Myrmidon.

Drone Battleship

While cruisers and battlecruisers can rely on their speed-tank to survive, battleships require a hearty local tank to deal with the heavy incoming damage from the sites they run. These ships can run a sniper config, or a more AFKable one similar to what Drone Cruisers do. In both cases the site is usually tanked by a specialized active fitting.

The most commonly used ships in this category are the Dominix and Rattlesnake.

Smartbombing Battleship

TBA

Carriers

Carrier ratting is an extremely high APM activity compared to the previous methods, but offers a very high income with relatively low risk to your ship.

This method involves immediately aligning out to a safe once you land, and unleashing your fighters upon the site. Smaller rats should be destroyed before larger ones as they can cause damage to your fighters over time, and your missile volleys should be saved for the battleships. Also keep in mind that your fighters should always be moving, since the battleships can rack up an extreme amount of a damage in a short period if you're not careful. You can utilize an NSA depending on how risk averse you are, but bear in mind activating it prevents you from warping for the 60 second duration of its cycle.

The most commonly used carriers for ratting are the Nidhoggur and Thanatos for their bonuses to fighter damage.

Commonly Run Sites

You generally want to avoid sites with the "Forlorn" or "Hidden" prefixes, as their trigger-based spawns can quickly overwhelm most ships if not done carefully.

Forsaken Rally Points

Forsaken Rally Points are the lowest difficulty site that players should run in nullsec. These are best suited to ships such as T1 Vexors, and those trying anomaly ratting for the first time.

Forsaken Hubs

Forsaken Hubs are recommended for Dominixes, Gilas, Ishtars, and other drone-based ratting ships. This site provides great payouts because of the high ratio of Battleships to other rats.

Havens

Havens are recommended for higher tier drone ratting ships such as the Rattlesnake (please don't get one of these for anoms), along with Carrier ratting. They have a higher quantity of battleships than lower tier sites, but many less sought after rats as well. These also have a difficult final wave which spawns over a dozen battleships and battlecruisers.

Havens come in two variants, Stargate (or Rock) havens, and Gas havens. The former is generally considered better for ratting and easier to run. An easy way to tell the difference between to the two is to initiate warp to a haven and then immediately cancel it. If you get a popup message, it's a Stargate haven.

Sanctums

Sanctums are usually only preferred when ratting in a carrier or supercarrier, as the distance that each wave spawns from the previous discourages AFKing them and may result in lost drones or even ships for subcapitals.