In honor of their company birthday and the Tyrannis Expansion, CCP is giving each EVE Online player a special one-time ship: the Primae. Once gifted, there are no plans to allow players to produce them, making the ships particularly valuable as collector items a few months down the line.

Before that happens, high-security space will be swarming with happy go lucky fools looking to try out their new, nigh-irreplaceable ship. If they are not especially cautious, jerks like you and me will gank them despite their location in high-security space, just to be mean. That's what this guide is about.

About The Primae

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style="font-style: italic;">The Primae is vulnerable to suicide attack because many people flying them probably do not even realize that they can be attacked in high-security space.

The primae is a neat-looking ship that is basically a special industrial that can be used without training the Industrials skill. It has a two extra cargo bays that can only be used to carry the materials used in Planetary Interaction and the "command centers" used to set them up.

This is all significant because characters on a trial account cannot normally train the Industrials skill. No industrial skill means no industrials, which means people trying out EVE Online during the free trial would be unable to experiment with Planetary Interaction. I mean, I guess you could haul things around in a Kestrel all day, but I doubt that would raise interest in Planetary Interaction or EVE Online in general.

As a result, for as long as the Primae supply holds out, there are going be oodles of players wandering around planets, with cargos full of planetary materials and silly grins on their faces. Some will be new players that don't really know what's up, some will be incautious players that should probably know better. Either way, the result will be the same if you get within firing range.

About Suicide Ganking

Suicide ganking is allowed by the mechanics of EVE Online. It is allowed by the GMs, who cannot intervene or reimburse involved parties. It is not, however, smiled upon by most players in high-security space. They get downright mad, in fact. So, uh, don't plan on making any friends by doing this. Thou art warned.

The basic idea here is that you load up an insured battlecruiser or battleship with cheap guns, open fire on your target, maybe get a second volley off if you are lucky, and then CONCORD instantly explodes your ship. You collect your insurance ISK. Hopefully, your one or two volleys of weapons were enough to destroy your target, and he's really mad. Since you can't get into a new ship in space without CONCORD exploding it for the next fifteen minutes, you may want to have a friend with an industrial ship swoop in and loot your target's wreck. Even without that, platinum insurance will cover most of your expenses, meaning that it will cost relatively little ISK per gank. Maybe have your friend salvage the target's wreck and your wreck, too, while he's at it, to shave off even more of the cost.

Voila, instant misery machine. A man or woman that thought themselves safe in high-security space has been proven wrong. An irreplaceable ship has been destroyed. You have become a villain.

On The Behavior Of Targets

Primae are for planetary interaction, so you will find them warping between customs officer and stations, moving goods around, and refreshing extractors. Pilots will sit right next to the customs offices, fiddling with their planets and importing or exporting goods to and from the planet's surface. Easy target. Often, they don't even move, so you can stop yourself in space and have zero transversal, which is important because the primae's signature radius is small enough that it might theoretically avoid some of your damage if it were moving.

Basically, if you look at enough customs offices in high-sec, you will find them. For reasons listed below, the ideal place to suicide gank them is in .5 sec status solar system. Check in them and .6 systems, first.

What Can Kill A Primae

It depends. An un-tanked Primae, which is the kind that you are most likely to hit with luck of the draw, can be destroyed by any turret-using battleship. If you don't believe in luck, you can use a "Ship Scanner I" to check your gank target's fittings, and a "Passive Targeter I" so that the target won't notice you scanning him.

The fitting theme is pretty simple: fit close-range turrets of the largest sort you can use. Fill them with close-range, faction ammunition (it's cheap since you only need about a dozen rounds). Fit as many damage modifiers as you can. Like, five or six. However many low slots you have.

CONCORD doesn't care how many hit points you have or how fast you can repair your armor or shields, so make no attempt to bother with a tank. Use a target painter in your mid-slot, as well as a "Warp Disruptor I". Maybe fit a passive targeter so that your target doesn't have a chance to warp out when he sees you targeting him (he may be aligned or otherwise ready to espace).

You want the best bang for your buck, so you may want to look at the cost of various named varieties of modules. Depending on where you are, they sometimes run for less than a tech one version. Remember: your bottom line is especially important in this.

Hurricane Fittings

High-Slots

• x6 Autocannon I (Republic Fleet Fusion M)
• x2 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I (Caldari Navy Fulmination Assault Missile)

Medium-Slots

• x1 Warp Disruptor I
• x2 Target Painter I
• x1 Tracking Computer I (Tracking Speed Script)

Low-Slots

• x6 Gyrostabilizer I

Drones

• x4 Warrior I
• x1 Valkyrie I

Pure damage, baby. You only need about a dozen of any given ammo, since you will surely be blown up by CONCORD before you get a chance to use it all. If you want to get really fancy, you can have half of your autocannons loaded with "Republic Fleet Phased Plasma", and fire them slightly before your second set of guns. The thermal damage caused by the phased plasma will help eat through the shields, and when they are gone the explosive damage caused by your "Republic Fleet Fusion M" will wallop your target. In a perfect world you would be able to inflict thermal damage and then switch to explosive ammo, but CONCORD kills you so quickly that changing ammo is out of the question.

This hurricane should get the job done, even with a decently tanked primae target, though in a .9 or 1.0 system a tanked primae may still escape you. Don't engage if CONCORD is already sitting next to the primae, they will engage you immediately and you will blow up.

When It Doesn't Work

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style="font-style: italic;">Try to do your ganks in .5 or .6 systems. Not only will you likely be more successful, but you will also lose less personal security status.

Primae have four low-slots. They can, theoretically, be filled with sufficient 800mm armor plating and hardeners that a suicide attack will fail. It happens. If you really want to kill the guy, like he is laughing in local chat at you or whatever, wait fifteen minutes, get a buddy, and double-team your target. This can also be avoided by using the ship scanner described above, to see his fittings and make sure that he is not fitting a tank.

About Security Status

Every time you shoot a target in low-sec that you aren't at war with, you lose some "sec status". Every time you shoot someone that you aren't at war with in high-sec, CONCORD appears and blows you up, and you lose a lot of sec status. The higher the system security status (visible in the upper left part of your screen when you are in space), the more of your personal sec status you will lose.

If your personal sec status sinks below -2, then you will be attacked by the NPC navies any time you enter a 1.0 security status system. Getting attacked by navies stinks. They hurt you and warp disrupt you, respawn constantly, and otherwise prevent you from being able to get stuff done. As your goes steadily lower, you will be excluded from more systems. When it reaches -4.5 sec status, you will be attacked anywhere in high-sec.

Never suicide gank pods unless you really, really hate somebody. That takes a ton of sec status away.

You can ameliorate this by killing pirate NPCs, which brings your standings back up, again. Training the "Fast Talk" skill will make that easier. If you start drifting too low, it is probably best to take a break from suicide ganking for a while. Run some missions, instead. Before you know it, you will have enough sec status to gank again.

That's all for now. Good luck, and I hope you make lots and lots of friends!