Ninja Salvaging Series 3 - Ninja statistics

Welcome to the last post of Ninja Salvaging Series, Season 3. Once again, it's been a fun journey. It depends on a person, but I see ninja salvaging as a temporary activity. It's a great way to break off your routine, but not something I would like to engage "full-time".

As this is a closing post, I have prepared something special. Shortly after I started season 3, I have began collecting data, something that has never been done before. I have kept records of every engagement in order to make some sort of statistics. A lot of mission runners have been visited.

The goal was to visit 100 unique ships and pilots and I'm happy to say, the goal was reached. I understand that this number is still too small to make any serious analysis, but hopefully it will give us somewhat an idea. There were temptations to close it before as activity in my system was not at such good level. Dodixie hub was out of the question and next door systems would also be tricky as I did not have my tools (ships) there, so everything was done in Agrallarier. Let's look at ninja salvaging backed by hard data.

The ship of choice to do missions is, of course, a battleship, which consisted a total of 61% of all ships encountered. Due to the data sample, I have combined faction and non faction hulls. Cruiser and Battlecruiser hulls were almost equally popular.

The majority of mission runners are between 1 and 2 years old, which accounts for 48% of total pilots visited. Please note that the count starts with first year, meaning if pilot is less than 12 months old, he will appear under 1 year bracket. Pilot with 12-24 months will appear in 2 year bracket and so on.

I believe this data backs up my general feeling, that new players either mine or run missions in high-sec, until they "grow out of it" and move out to another areas (see sudden drop after age of 2 years). Then there are hardcore old mission runners (3 years +) that stay in high-sec for various reasons. Can be just taking a break, alts, or generally not interested in life outside high-sec.

I have mapped reaction from mission runners. I've divided it in two groups: early and late reaction. Early means the reaction I get upon entering mission and staying for some minutes, usually not more than 3. Late is reaction I get when I stick around, usually up to 10 minutes.

From the above graph, we see that roughly half of mission runners will ignore you - 52%. When you stick long enough, only 44% of total mission runners ignores you for the entire time. Second most often reaction is a warp out. They leave their mission in hopes you will move on, get killed by npc and won't come again (hint: you should).

The purpose of ninja salvaging is to get aggro. Trend is that only 10-15% percent will shoot you. One fifth out of those who shoot you, may have pvp fits. Out of 16 Aggro, I had 3 encounters of people with pvp fits.

Of course it highly depends on what kind of ship they are flying and how old they are. If you visit only new players and cheap ships, chances to get shot at are much greater. In above graph I compare chance to get aggro per ship type. Of course data sample is rather small, but highest chance to get shot at is from cruisers (36%), battlecruisers (18%), battleships (13%). While sample is small, I can tell from experience, that it more or less reflects the reality.

Due to spread out age, it's hard to make any reliable analysis of age and aggro, however there is one trend that my experience backs up: high probability to get attacked if player is less than 1 year old. In contrast, the more old the pilot is, the higher the chance he will not care about you salvaging and looting his wrecks.

And there you have it. Mini analysis of ninja salvaging. Here is the table of all the data collected.

Ship	Ship type detail	Age (years)	Early reaction	Late reaction	Group (2+)
Hyperion	Battleship	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Dominix	Battleship	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Rupture	Cruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Vexor Navy	Faction Cruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Drake	Battlecruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Vexor Navy	Faction Cruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Brutix	Battlecruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Thorax	Cruiser	1	Aggro	Aggro	no
Vexor Navy	Faction Cruiser	2	Aggro	Aggro	no
Raven Navy	Faction battleship	3	Aggro	Aggro	no
Raven Navy	Faction battleship	4	Aggro PVP fit	Aggro PVP fit	yes
Armageddon	Battleship	5	Aggro PVP fit	Aggro PVP fit	no
Hyperion	Battleship	10	Aggro	Aggro	yes
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	11	Aggro PVP fit	Aggro PVP fit	no
Kronos	Battleship	4	blues wrecks	ignores	no
Drake Navy	Faction battlecruiser	4	blues wrecks	blues wrecks	no
Nighthawk	Battlecruiser	6	blues wrecks	blues wrecks	yes
Ishtar	HAC	1	goes afk	shoots wrecks	no
Golem	Marauder	7	goes afk	warps out	no
Golem	Marauder	9	goes afk	goes afk	no
Thorax	Cruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	1	ignores	goes afk	no
Dominix	Battleship	1	ignores	ignores	no
Arbitrator	Cruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Brutix	Battlecruiser	1	ignores	warps out	no
Drake	Battlecruiser	1	ignores	warps out	no
Hyperion	Battleship	1	ignores	ignores	no
Brutix Navy	Faction battlecruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Machariel	Faction battleship	1	ignores	ignores	no
Caracal	Cruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Vexor	Cruiser	1	ignores	ignores	no
Vexor	Cruiser	1	ignores	goes afk	no
Dominix	Battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Nestor	Faction battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix Navy	Faction battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Gnosis	Battlecruiser	2	ignores	ignores	no
Machariel	Faction battleship	2	ignores	warps out	no
Armageddon	Battleship	2	ignores	warps out	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	2	ignores	ignores	no
Rattlesnake	Faction battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Megathron Navy	Faction battleship	2	ignores	warps out	no
Dominix	Battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Hyperion	Battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	2	ignores	ignores	no
Typhoon	Battleship	2	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	3	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	4	ignores	ignores	no
Raven Navy	Faction battleship	4	ignores	goes afk	no
Gila	Faction Cruiser	4	ignores	ignores	yes
Raven	Battleship	5	ignores	ignores	no
Armageddon	Battleship	5	ignores	Aggro	no
Dominix Navy	Faction battleship	6	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	6	ignores	ignores	yes
Kronos	Battleship	6	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	6	ignores	ignores	no
Omen	Cruiser	7	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	7	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix Navy	Faction battleship	8	ignores	ignores	no
Megathron	Battleship	8	ignores	ignores	yes
Nightmare	Faction battleship	8	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	8	ignores	warps out	no
Drake	Battlecruiser	9	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	9	ignores	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	10	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	10	ignores	ignores	no
Golem	Marauder	10	ignores	ignores	yes
Ishtar	HAC	10	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	11	ignores	ignores	no
Kronos	Battleship	11	ignores	ignores	no
Megathron Navy	Faction battleship	11	ignores	ignores	yes
Vargur	Marauder	12	ignores	ignores	no
Golem	Marauder	12	ignores	goes afk	no
Dominix	Battleship	3	shoots wrecks	goes afk	no
Hyperion	Battleship	1	warps out	warps out	no
Brutix	Battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Hyperion	Battleship	1	warps out	warps out	no
Myrmidon	Battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Raven	Battleship	1	warps out	warps out	no
Vexor Navy	Faction Cruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Brutix Navy	Faction battlecruiser	1	warps out	warps out	no
Rattlesnake	Faction battleship	2	warps out	warps out	no
Machariel	Faction battleship	3	warps out	warps out	no
Hyperion	Battleship	4	warps out	warps out	no
Machariel	Faction battleship	4	warps out	warps out	no
Megathron	Battleship	5	warps out	warps out	no
Hyperion	Battleship	5	warps out	warps out	no
Stratios	Faction Cruiser	7	warps out	warps out	no
Dominix	Battleship	8	warps out	warps out	no
Kronos	Battleship	12	warps out	ignores	no
Dominix	Battleship	12	warps out	warps out	no
Dominix	Battleship	1	yellow box	ignores	no
Megathron Navy	Faction battleship	1	yellow box	warps out	no
Golem	Marauder	2	yellow box	warps out	no
Dominix	Battleship	5	yellow box	warps out	no
Rattlesnake	Faction battleship	8	yellow box	warps out	yes
Dominix	Battleship	10	yellow box	Aggro	no
Dominix	Battleship	11	yellow box	yellow box	no
Dominix	Battleship	12	yellow box	warps out	no