0 Basics
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re interested in owning/flying a Jump Freighter. My goal is to go over everything you need to know to get started and fly safely. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
0a What is a JF/How do they work?
Jump Freighters are T2 freighters. They haul less than a freighter (~1mil m3 max for freighters, ~350k m3 max for jump freighters), but they trade this reduced cargo capacity for a capital Jump Drive. I’m not going to go into deep detail, but basically jump drives allow capital ships to jump directly from one system to another without using stargates. This requires fuel, and has a limit measured in light years. A jump freighter has a 10 light year range at max skills, making it able to jump across entire regions in a single jump. Jumping also incurs jump fatigue, which you’re likely already familiar with from bridging titans or jump bridges.
0b How much does it cost/How long does it take to train/How much can you make?
Between the cost of skillbooks, the JF hull, fits, and fuel, you should expect to spend 9-10bil. On top of this you need seed money either for contract collaterals or market seeding capital. Aim for 3-5bil to start. The more the better. Training for a JF isn’t nearly as bad as most capitals, but it’s still long. You can expect to spend at least 4-6 months, depending on how far you take the training and implants/attribute remaps. How much you can make depends a lot on how you use it, but market seeding and courier contracts can make quite substantial money. The amount you make also depends on how much you’re investing, what you’re doing, and how active you are, but ~6 billion per month is readily attainable for active pilots. It all depends on what you use the JF for though. If all you use it for is hauling your own pvp stuff up to 7RM, you’ll lose money to fuel costs.
1 Skills
I’m not going to post a skillplan here, mostly because there aren’t that many skills that are relevant, so I’m just going to go over the skills you’ll need, and why you’ll need them.
Racial Freighter 4 – This is a requirement for the Jump Freighter hull, it also increases your cargo, so this should be one to get to 5, but it’s a very long train, so 4 is fine to start.
Jump Freighters 4 – Technically only level 1 is required for Jump Freighters, but it increases your hull and shield/armor (depending on JF) hp by 10%, and more importantly, reduces fuel consumption by 10%. Get this to at least 4, 5 eventually, but after racial freighter 5.
Jump Drive Calibration 5 – Technically only level 1 is required, but this increases your jump range by 2LY per level, so this should absolutely be the first skill you get to 5. I wouldn’t even start flying a JF until it’s at least 4, and it should be 5 as soon as possible.
Jump Fuel Conservation 4 – Not technically required, but reduces fuel consumption by 10%, so absolutely get it to 4. Eventually 5, but after racial freighter 5 and jump freighters 5.
Evasive Maneuvering 5 – If you haven’t flown a freighter before, they are SLOOOOW. Like crazy slow. Jump freighters are a bit better, but the agility bonus from Evasive Maneuvering is hugely helpful to shorten your align times, and it’s a 2x skill, so get it to 5 because it’s short.
Mechanics/Hull Upgrades/Shield Management 5 – These all increase the related hp bar by 5% per level. When you have over 100k hp, a 5% increase is a lot. These are also low training multiplier skills, so train them to 5 because they’re short.
EM/Thermal/Explosive/Kinetic Armor Compensation 4 – This is of particular importance for Arks, but useful overall. Increases the resistance bonus of adaptive platings, which are one of the fits it’s useful to have, particularly for the Ark. 5 If you want to be a perfectionist, but 4 is fine.
That’s it! If you have all these trained up, you’re a solid JF pilot.
2 Which JF is best
This is a very common question, and one that doesn’t have a definitive answer. Every jump freighter, like every freighter, has a particular specialty. Which specialty you prefer is up to you, they all see regular use.
Rhea – The rhea has the largest cargohold of the JFs. It also has the slowest align time/speed, and the second lowest EHP. It also consumes the most fuel, making it more expensive to run. This is the freighter of choice for pilots that already have a lot of money and want to maximize cargo at the expense of fuel cost.
Anshar – The anshar has the highest EHP of the JFs. It also has the second biggest cargo hold, second most fuel consumption, and second slowest align time/speed. Generally the least likely to be ganked due to it’s high ehp.
Nomad – The nomad has the fastest align/speed of the JFs. It also has the lowest EHP, and the smallest cargo hold. It makes up for this by having the lowest fuel consumption, and thus is the cheapest to run.
Ark – The exception to the rule, the Ark is pretty much the jack of all trades. Second most EHP, second fastest align/speed, third biggest cargo, and second lowest fuel consumption. The ark’s only unique quality is that since it has such a particularly large amount of armor HP, it can actually have the same/better HP with adaptive plates and Slave implants than it can with Bulkheads, making it safer to haul larger volumes of cargo back into highsec.
They’re all perfectly serviceable, so if you prefer one, that’s fine. Personally I fly an Ark. I like the high tank with Adaptive Nano Platings for the highsec leg of my trips, and I also just think it looks the coolest, especially with the Cold Iron skin.
3 Cynos
3a What they are/how they work
Cynosural Fields are the beacons that jump drives lock on to to jump from system to system. They require the field generator itself which is a highslot module, and they require Liquid Ozone as fuel. With Cynosural Field Theory trained to 4, 3 of the 4 racial corvettes (sorry amarr) can hold enough fuel to light a cyno. The corvette cyno is the standard for pretty much everyone, since when you light the cyno you’re locked in place for 10 minutes, so this way if you lose it, all you lose is the cyno (assuming you can’t loot it).
3b Station/Citadel Cyno Placement
Placing cynos properly on stations is complicated, but not horrifically so. It would take a ton of explanation to cover how to do it properly, and fortunately other people have already beat me to it, so there are two links at the bottom of this section. The first is a Station Cyno Placement Guide. This gives you handy pictures for good cyno spots on any NPC station in high/low/null. The only thing not covered are Outposts (player deployed stations like you find in sov-null). The second link covers the theory behind creating a perfect station cyno, so if you want to make your own from scratch, read that.
The basic concept is that a station has a docking radius, outside of which you can’t dock. It also has a bumpable station model, which if you land inside, you’ll be thrown out to space and probably die in a fire. So the ideal station cyno will land you within docking range without bumping the station 100% of the time.
It’s important to remember that when you jump to a cyno, just like warping to an object, you land at a point off the target. When warping to something, you land 2500m off in any random direction, when jumping to a cyno it’s 5000m. Also remember your JF is big, so account for the size of your JF as well when figuring out how far from the station you have to be to avoid bumping.
4 Jump Fatigue
Most people are probably familiar with Jump Fatigue by now, but I’ll go over the basics. When you jump with a jump drive (or titan bridge, or jump bridge), you get two timers. A red/orange Cooldown timer, which prevents you from jumping again until it’s gone, and a blue Fatigue timer, which magnifies the cooldown timer on your next jump. This fatigue timer grows exponentially as you continue to jump, eventually making you have to take super long breaks to let it tick down, otherwise you have crazy long jump cooldowns.
Thankfully JFs have a 90% reduction to jump fatigue, which makes the fatigue a lot more manageable. Doing a run from Jita to GME and jumping on cooldown incurs about 1hour of fatigue. You can use the below calculator to calculate exactly how much fatigue you’ll build up, as well as play with wait periods to figure out how to make your trips most efficient.
5 Fits to have
There’s a few different modules you’ll want to have with you at all times:
Cargo Expanders – A no brainer. Without expanders, JFs are ~165k m3, with expanders they’re ~350k m3. However, don’t fit these unless you need them for what you’re hauling, and only fit as many as you need. They reduce your structure hp significantly.
Bulkheads – Pretty much the polar opposite of cargo expanders. They shrink your cargo, and significantly increase your structure HP. You should fit these whenever you’re warping gate-to-gate and carrying cargo that you can fit within the smaller cargo space, the more tanky you are the more difficult it will be to gank you.
Jump Drive Economizers – These are big modules at 3500 m3 apiece, but worth it. They reduce the amount of jump fuel you consume from jumping. You should equip these whenever you are jumping and your cargo fits within the smaller cargo space, because then you consume less fuel, and thus make more money.
Inertial Stabilizers – These reduce your align time significantly. They bloom your signature radius, but you’re a capital ship, so you’re already huge. Use these when warping gate-to-gate empty, as they’ll increase speed, and people are less likely to bother trying to gank you when you’re empty.
Adaptive Nano Platings – These increase your armor resistances. Most potent on the Ark, but still useful for other JFs, because they increase your tank without decreasing your cargo or align time. If you’re hauling ~160k m3 back to Jita, you can’t fit bulkheads, but you can still fit these to get more tank.
5a Faction/Bling/Implants
ORE Cargo Expanders are great, very expensive, but worth it if you use your JF a lot, since they give you even more cargo and reduce your structure HP less.
Deadspace A-Type Adaptive Nano Platings are great as well, not too expensive, and strictly better than t2.
Jump Drive Economizers come in three types, ranging from 20mil to 300mil apeice. Take a look at the attributes, the more expensive ones give a greater reduction to fuel usage. You can actually calculate how much fuel you’ll save with these and decide if it’s worth it to you to invest in the super blingy ones. But definitely worth it if you haul a lot, since they’ll eventually pay for themselves and then some.
ORE Bulkheads are good, less cargo reduction, more structure hp. If you use bulkheads a lot, these would be a useful investment, but not as much as expanders.
Don’t bother with faction inertial stabs, inertial stabs don’t get used nearly as often as the rest, and the increase from faction isn’t really that important for JFs. It has a larger total reduction because of the longer align time, but even with t2 inertial stabs you’ll spend significantly more time warping than aligning, so the overall gain is still pretty small.
Implants are also great, and with the expense of all the rest of the stuff in this guide, well worth it. It basically comes down to Ascendancies vs Slaves. Ascendancies are more expensive and make you warp faster, which means faster trips back into highsec, which is nice for efficiency. Slaves are cheaper, and increase armor hp, making you tankier and slightly more likely to survive a gank. Implants aren’t required, but they are a help, so if your JF pilot is pretty much just being a JF pilot, this is a worthy investment. Nomads aren’t bad, but for freighters/JFs the align is less important than the warp speed, making ascendancies much faster. Nomads are still great if you often use a BR/DST however, since both of those benefit from nomads more.
6 Planning a route
The Dotlan Jump Planner is the standard tool for planning a jump freighter route. You can select systems and then it will automatically pick a route. You can then select alternative systems to find other midpoints. You can also see fuel usage. The Range tool is also quite useful if you’re trying to see whether you can reach nearby systems to where you want to go, or to see all the in-range systems in a region..
6a Picking good systems
Picking a good system for a JF midpoint isn’t too complicated. There’s three main things you want: Good cyno stations (ones with a generous docking radius), not in a high-traffic pipe, and low jumps/kills. All of these things are visible from Dotlan, so that’s what you should be using primarily. Make sure to look at the killboard, see how many JFs have been killed there, see what groups are active in the area, and try to avoid using the default systems when you put in your route to dotlan, because that’s where people will assume you’ll jump next. Though being hunted in a JF is rare since they’re so safe, so that part isn’t as big of a deal. Not that it doesn’t happen.
6b Highsec Exit Systems
Highsec exits are a little more tricky. You want pretty much all of the same things as above, except it needs to connect to highsec, which means low-traffic is probably unlikely. Make sure you pick a system with multiple stations if you can, but more important than anything is that you connect to as high security highsec as you can. The lower the security in highsec, the longer the concord response time, which means the fewer ships enemies need to kill you. If you can jump straight from lowsec into 0.7+, that’s great. If you have to go a few jumps through 0.5, that’s not great.
6c Citadels
Citadels in general are fantastic to cyno onto, since your cyno is tethered until you light, you can tether your JF, and the docking radius is super large, and clearly marked. It’s particularly great for your highsec exit because you can pretty much ignore Tiky Mikk-style ganks, which I’ll go over below.
7 Standard Operating Procedure
The basic procedure for moving a JF is super simple. Make sure you’re in fleet with your cyno(s), undock the first cyno, move it into position, undock the JF, wait for the session change timer, light the cyno, right click capacitor, jump to the cyno, wait out the session change timer, dock. That’s basically it. Repeat for every midpoint. Once you get to your highsec exit, Undock, align to gate, warp to gate, gate to trade hub, dock up. Make sure to make an insta-dock bookmark in any stations you’re warping to to dock.
7a Cyno Alts, multiple accounts
Some people get a JF without any cyno alts. This is a horrible mistake. Having your own cynos is incredibly important, it allows you to move when you want, where you want, and to be sure that the cyno is good to your standards.
Because of this, running a JF basically requires having multiple accounts. The more the better, you can never have too many cyno alts. Cyno alts are a fast train, you literally only need Cynosural Field Theory 4, and then they can use corvette cynos. Park them in a station with a bunch of liquid ozone and spare cynos, and they’ll be able to cyno forever.
7b E-cynos
Emergency Cynos (E-Cynos) are what saves your ass when someone tries to gank you. Whenever you’re warping your JF, you should have a minimum of 1 cyno character undocked with either a cyno already lit, or a cyno able to be lit at a moment’s notice. This is primarily what makes JFs so difficult to gank in highsec. If they drop point on you even for a second, you cyno out and are safe.
If you don’t have an e-cyno, you’re just a tankier slightly faster freighter, and freighters are easily gankable. ALWAYS HAVE AN E-CYNO. NO EXCEPTIONS. Also an E-Cyno doesn’t have to be different from a midpoint cyno. It can just be one of your existing cynos that is in range of wherever you’re warping in highsec. If you have to go deep enough into highsec that you won’t be in range of any of your existing cynos, then move them. DO NOT WARP WITHOUT AN E-CYNO, EVER. I can’t overstate how important this is. JFs are very expensive, but the collateral you’re hauling is probably worth just as much or more. Don’t end up losing it because you couldn’t be bothered to get an e-cyno in position.
7c Webbing Alts
Webbing is more commonly seen with freighters instead of JFs, but it’s still a great way to speed up your highsec gating trip. The idea is to have an alt in a ship with 3 webs that can apply the webs to your JF. Doing this reduces the maximum speed of the ship, allowing it to enter warp more quickly. You can use a simple t1 frigate for this, or if you want to do it the best way, get a Hyena or Rapier. The procedure is to duel your webbing alt from your freighter pilot (who should have auto-reject invitations on), then get your webbing ship within range, ideally before decloaking the freighter. Initiate warp on the freighter, lock up the freighter on the webber, apply webs, and bam, the freighter kicks into warp. You need to get a certain amount of speed before the webs will work, since you need to be going fast enough to warp with your reduced maximum speed after the webs. This is particularly problematic when it comes to webbing off of a station undock for example, where rather than decloaking at 0.0m/s you’re decelerating and aligning to a gate, which can cause problems with webbing. It’s important to remember that webs won’t provide any additional security, only speed. Since any would-be gankers need to bring suicide scram ships regardless in order to kill you, they’ll be able to lock and point you before you can web into warp (even properly executed it’s not instawarp), so you’ll still be tackled just the same. It’s just great for speeding up trips.
8 Common mistakes/ganks and how to avoid
8a Tiky Mikk style
This is Tiky Mikk. For a while, he was the only one doing ganks like this, but now he’s got copycats. What he does is he sits cynos in popular JF highsec exit systems, and then drops his super on unsuspecting JFs when they undock to warp to highsec. His gank relies on two things. The first is that the JF pilot underestimates the amount of alpha a Super can do (they can alpha a JF), and the second is the JF clicked “Jump” on the gate, and thus has to ctrl+space before they can dock back up. In their panic, they don’t do this fast enough, so they die. So how do you not die? When you undock, align to your gate, and then press warp/jump once fully aligned. If any supers cyno in, immediately dock up. If anything big undocks behind you, dock back up. Easy peasy, you’ll never die to this as long as you don’t panic.
8b Highsec gank
Highsec ganks work pretty much like freighter ganks. They’ll bring suicide scram ships to point you, then bump you with a machariel and bring in a gank fleet. Usually this is catalysts, taloses, or bombers. With a freighter, once you get bumped you’re effectively dead. With a JF, you should be lighting your e-cyno and jumping out at the first sign of trouble. If you jump in to a gate and there’s a bunch of nasty looking ships on the other side, just e-cyno out. If they point you, then spam jump and hope that they let their point drop for a second and you can get out. If they successfully hold point on you non-stop, then you’re dead. But if they let it slip for a single tick, you’re saved. Because of the difficulty of holding point while being concorded constantly in high-highsec, JFs aren’t targeted nearly as frequently as normal freighters. Most of the JFs that die in highsec die because they either didn’t have an e-cyno, or weren’t in an npc corp and died to wardeccers.
Fitting bulkheads and having slave implants can potentially make them miscalculate and not bring enough damage, but don’t count on this.
8c Dread undock bump
This is where after you undock from a station at a midpoint or highsec exit, enemies undock a bunch of dreads behind you, immediately siege them, then as you bump outside of docking range, they blap you. The counter to this is essentially the same as for Tiky Mikk, align instead of warping, and dock up if anything sketchy happens. The only additional thing, is make sure you pick stations with generous docking ranges, if you pick near-kickout stations, this kind of gank is that much easier to pull off.
8d Taking a JF to anywhere that’s not a station/citadel
There’s a very small number of reasons someone might do this, and most of them include poses, but if you aren’t absolutely sure you know what you’re doing, you should think twice. A jump freighter is a 7-8bil hull with no defenses and an incredibly slow align/warp, it’s pretty much the most expensive free kill you can put on field short of jump-instead-of-bridging a bridge-fit titan. If you’re ever outside docking range in lowsec or nullsec, and you aren’t in warp to/landing on a highsec gate, you’re likely doing it wrong.
8e Jumped to bad cyno and bumped
This is the point where you enter full-on panic mode. First of all, spam dock until you’re sure you’re out of docking range. Then make sure you chastise yourself for not making a proper cyno, now you know why you take the time to make a proper cyno. There’s 2 options when you bump. First is to find a warpable object roughly in-line with the direction you’re bumping and try to warp off to that at range, and the second is to try to burn back to docking range if you didn’t get thrown far. Neither are good options, both leave you exposed far longer than you want to be. Just hope nobody who would do anything about it saw it happen, otherwise you’re likely going to lose your JF.
9 Courier contracts
9a Rates and subcontracting
JF Rates are usually calculated in isk/m3 plus a percentage of collateral. This makes it so that no matter what the value you’re hauling, you can still make enough to cover fuel and earn a base fee. Then the percentage of collateral rewards you for the additional risk of carrying higher value goods.
Always take any opportunity to stack multiple contracts together to make a full load. Don’t leave any empty space if you can avoid it, the more you haul the more you make. Make sure when calculating whether a run’s reward is worth it that you take into account the fuel costs, both for your JF and for the cynos.
9b Subcontracting
Your JF pilot should never accept contracts from other players, because then those players know your JF pilot’s name and can more easily hunt you or target you with contract scams/wardecs. The standard method is subcontracting.
Use some random alt for accepting contracts. This character can just sit in Jita and hold a pool of isk to cover collateral. Once you accept a contract (or contracts), right click the package(s) and Create a contract on them. Set this up as a private courier to your JF pilot, going to the same destination. You can also do this from the assets tab, so the alt doesn’t need to be in the same station as the contracts they’re accepting.
This way nobody knows your JF pilot, and if you’re in a hauling corp, you can keep your JF pilot in an NPC corp to avoid wardecs.
9c Contract Scams
The only contract scam that works on JFs is contracts to undeliverable locations. Usually this means a contract that’s going to a player-owned station, though citadels are also used for this. When you get to the delivery station/citadel, you realize you don’t have docking rights. You can’t complete the contract, so you’re forced to fail it, and it turns out that the collateral was massively over-inflated so you lose a ton of money. Beware of any public contracts to sov-null stations or citadels.
9d Problem contracts (not necessarily scams but maybe)
Assembled containers are a big annoyance. They can’t be subcontracted, so when you accept the contract, the only way to deal with it is to direct-trade the package to your JF pilot at the origin and then back at the destination. This can really be a pain if your contracting alt can’t fly travelceptors and the destination is deep in nullsec.
Contracts with collateral significantly under the value of the goods, or missing altogether isn’t really a problem for you, but it’s a significant risk for the contractor, and if you charge a percentage on collateral, they’re paying you less than they should.
Contracts to kickout stations are dangerous as well. Kickout stations are dangerous for anyone, doubly so for JFs. Avoid any contracts to kickout stations if possible.
How you handle these contracts is up to you, or the directives of the hauling group you work for, but they’re all problems to be aware of.
10 Market Seeding
I don’t know a ton about market seeding, since I’ve focused mostly on courier contracts, however I can go over the basics. The key to making good money with market seeding is understanding what to import and when. The obvious goal is to buy low and sell high. Remember to account for taxes/broker fees/fuel when calculating your profits, some things won’t be worth importing since the margins will be too small. You can use sites like Eve-Central or Eve-MarketData for initial research to find profitable trades.
10a Reading the market window
There’s a few things you’re looking for that makes a good product for seeding. The first is obviously a healthy margin between the buy and sell values. In this case it’s the value you’d buy it for (even if this is the sell value) in the station you’re buying it, and the sell value you can get in the destination system. If you’re looking at something and it’s already seeded at under Jita value, you likely can’t make much money on it, if any.
The second thing you want to look for is volume. Just because something has great margins doesn’t mean you should just import as much of it as you can. Make sure you go to the Table view on Price History and check the Orders and Quantity. Often you’ll find items that have great margins, but only a few units move every day, or even less. You want to find something that you can import and then turn around and sell it rather quickly.
The third thing you want to look for is the current supply on the market. If the margins are solid and the volume is there, but there’s already a ton of it on the market, then importing will require you to compete with more people, meaning the prices will likely fall between when you buy it and when you eventually sell the last unit.
10b Contract Seeding
Contract seeding is where you import things and put them up on contract. Usually this means fitted ships for nullsec alliances, packs of BPCs, or other collections of items that are useful to be sold together. The benefit of this is that you can usually use a higher markup since you’re eliminating some of the hassle for the customer. The downside is you take that hassle on yourself, and it takes a lot longer to fit up dozens of ships and put them on contracts than it does to put the ship/fits on market. Since contracts are a pain to put up and update, the competition is a lot slower, and usually once people put up a contract at a certain price, they’ll leave it there. One trick to save some time is to use the “Copy Contract” function. Once you set up the first contract, click the 4 lines at the bottom left of the contract window, and choose Copy Contract. This will open up a new contract, with all the same details automatically filled in. That’ll save you a lot of copy-pasting.
11 FAQ
I heard I should keep my JF docked in the first highsec system and use a freighter for the rest of the highsec jumps?
This is something that I see talked about regularly on /r/eve and other forums. It’s a bad idea. Freighters don’t have jump drives, so they’re way more gankable in highsec than a JF. Plus if you’re doing a JF trip, then you aren’t going to be hauling more than the JF can hold anyways. I think this idea was propogated by freighter gankers who wanted to discourage the use of JFs in highsec, and perpetuated by people who don’t know any better yet.
I heard if you get bumped as long as you stay in warp you’ll automatically warp out after 3 minutes?
This is something CCP talked about adding, but they never actually did. At least as of now (22 Feb 2017) you can be bumped indefinitely.
Which is better money, courier contracts, or market seeding?
This depends on what exactly you’re seeding or your courier rates, but in general market seeding generally makes a higher percentage based on investment. Courier contracts are going to make a smaller percentage, however you don’t have to wait for things to sell on the market, so the turnaround time is way faster. You might only make 2% instead of 20%, but you make that 2% in less than an hour where the 20% would take a few days. I personally prefer courier contracts, but if you have tons of money and don’t mind the time it takes, market seeding can make more money.
Hauling is so boring! How do you handle doing something so boring so much?
Boring is subjective. Lots of people find hauling boring, same as mining. In my opinion, the best way to make money in eve is to find something you enjoy and then maximize it, because enjoying it will give you the energy to do it enough to actually make solid money from it. I really enjoy hauling. I like the feeling of being a cog in a vast machine, knowing that my work enabled other people to do whatever else they were doing. It’s also relaxing and relatively low-effort, meaning you can easily do it while watching tv, playing other games, doing other things in eve, etc. It’s also not as consistently active as things like ratting or mining, where you pretty much want to be at the computer paying attention to it (even on a low level) most of the time. Jump freighting you can do a quick run in ~20min, then walk away from the computer for the rest of the hour.
Why the fuck is this so long?
I don’t really know, I started writing and there ended up being a lot of things I wanted to cover. I figured it’d be better to have all the information you’d want/need in one place, rather than having to read a whole bunch of different guides to get all this stuff. If you read the whole thing, I apologize, but hopefully the information was helpful.
