Safe Safespot Safety Procedure

We have two of the ladyfolk in alliance - yeah, exciting I know - one of which is comfortable with PVP and the other who plays the game for sociability and fits more into the builder/crafter/hoarder classification. She PVP's, but its not the driver for her gaming enjoyment.

The latter fine lady, confronted with wardecs and instructions to safe up, asked a question of Alliance - how safe is a safe spot? Specifically, she's seen some of our probe adepts do what must appear to be wizardly feats of combat probing and ninja probing, and wants to know how safe is a sfespot with adept probers about? How fast, and how easy, can you be probed down at your safe.

Well...it all depends. Part of the issue is your sig radius. Some ships are easier to probe than others. I am more concerned about d-scan discipline in a BC, BS or, god forbid, a capital than I am in a Vengeance on AB.

Secondly, the distance you are away from your nearest celestial, and the vector towards it, will determine how swiftly someone can just dump probes on you splash-style and return a useful hit. See, for instance, nullbears complaining aboout on-grid probing when they set their sniper fleets 200km off a gate.
If you have set a safespot <1 AU away from a celestial someone can drop probes, squeeze them to 1-2 AU and get you at 50-100% first go just by dropping probes (more likely in a sig-bloated Drake than an armour frig, for example). If it's <0.25 Au, say an off-gate safe, they can insta-deploy 8 probes and get you inside 8 seconds.

If however you are between 4 and 14 AU and not in line with a celestial, they have to d-scan a vector to you (>10s), get a distance to you (~10+ s), launch probes (preferably off your d-scan; may require them warping off and back = +2 minutes), then position the probes and drop them.

if your safespot is >14 AU away from all celestials, they have to drop probes and just start scanning. That is if they eveen know you are there.

In all cases, if you are aligned to a moon or at worst a planet/gate, and are watching d-scan regularly, you should be able to spot their probes even if they get a ninja probe on you. And if they do, if you are aligned they can't get a point before you hit warp (unless you are distracted).

If you see probes, warp to the moon, spawn 2-3 more safes, delete your old safe, repeat.

The reason I align to moons is that if someone is sneaking up on you in a cloaky at your safespot they will see where you are aligned. People automatically assume that you'll be aligned to the planet and will warp there or position a HICtor there to catch you. But you'll actually warp to a moon, and avoid being caught. This is especially true if you have a planet with 23 moons - in fact, at planets with shitloads of moons it is often better than being a safespot because you can be off the moon's initial grid and they won't deploy probes...just keep derping about trying to find a needle in the haystack.

There is a small risk that if you are aligned someone will warp in front of you (at 100) and decloak-bump you and ruin your alignment and instawarp. it does work, so realign to a different celestial cluster every 2-3 minutes. Pulsing your MWD or AB is also advisable to avoid being keelhauled by cloaky bombers.

So, what have we learned?
- drop safes as far from celestials as possible
- drop safes not directly in line between two celestials if possible
- align to moons (even if its got a hostile POS you can land and GTFO 99% of the time)
- ALWAYS HUMP D-SCAN
- realign to a different planet/moon cluster every so often
- always be aligned!
- no AFKing or smacktalking or browsing porno.gifland.eu