Bookmarks

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Introduction

In Eve, you can save the position of celestial objects, stargates, your own position, and more through the use of Locations, found in your People and Places window. Locations are commonly referred to as Bookmarks by most pilots, and all as such, we will use the term "Bookmark" to refer to "Locations" throughout this article.

Bookmarks are one of the most useful things in Eve combat, and are vital to 0.0 survival. The expert PvP pilot will have mastered the creation and use of bookmarks down to a fine art. This article will get you started in the study and understanding of bookmarks

Basic Bookmarking

The simplest kind of bookmark is created by saving the location of any object in space. If you have favorite mining spots, anchored container for dropping off loot, or a corporate hangar array at a POS, you can simply create a bookmark at the object in space by right-clicking on the object and selecting "Save Location." These kinds of bookmarks can be created by right-clicking the object on your overview or right-clicking the object's bracket in space.

Midsafes

One of the simplest and most useful type of bookmark is most commonly called a Midsafe bookmark. This is a semi-safe spot that is located in space between two gates or any other two celestial objects. Safe spots allow you to sit in space at a place that is more difficult to find, however, spots that are within 14.355au (directional scanner range) of a planet, gate, or belt are easy to scan out quickly so beware.

The simplest way to make a midsafe is to select a stargate that you will be traveling to and observe how far away it is. Then warp to that gate. Open your People & Places window. As soon as you start to warp, click the "Add Location" button and then wait. When you are halfway between the two gates click "Submit." Bookmarks are created when you click "Submit" and NOT when you first click the "Add Location" button, so the location that is actually saved is where your ship is in space when you clicked the "Submit" button.

Midsafes aren't very safe, so you shouldn't linger there. It's quite easy for someone to bust your location using the directional scanner or by using the quirks of warping in Eve. Somebody "warping over" you can drop a bookmark and, if they time it right, come back and land right on top of and kill you. Never consider yourself "safe" at a midsafe - watch your directional scanner and local for potential threats.

Unaligned Safe Spots

Unaligned Safe Spots are locations that are NOT aligned between any two celestials. The best Unaligned Safe Spots are greater than 14.355au from any other celestial object, although this isn't always possible in every solar system due to celestial object layout.

There are two basic ways to create an Unaligned Safe Spot. The first way is to create a midsafe between two objects, then warp to that midsafe. From that midsafe, warp to another celestial object perpendicular to the path of travel used when creating the first midsafe, and drop another bookmark. (You basically travel in the form of a "T"). The second bookmark created is not aligned between any two celestial objects.

The second way to create an Unaligned Safe Spot is two create two midsafes that are very far apart from eachother. The further away you get from a celestial body and the less aligned you are with two celestial bodies, the safer the safe spot. Then travel between these two midsafes, and drop another bookmark between them, creating a new location that is not aligned between any two celestial objects.

You can press F11 to bring up a mini-map of the system, enabling you to easily determine your position relative to any celestial bodies.

Keep in mind that an enemy can use scanner probes to find your ship, so watch dscanner for probes. If you will be in a system for any length of time, it's a good idea to create several unaligned safe spots to bounce between, especially if you see probes on your dscanner.

Insta-Undocks

Insta-Undocks are aligned bookmarks created outside a station, that allow you to quickly warp off of a station, usually before waiting hostiles can target-lock you. Insta-undocks are particularly handy when camped in a station or trying to haul expensive loads out of the Jita 4-4 station.

The simplest way to create an Insta-Undock is to get in a fast ship fit with a microwarp drive. Undock, click the "+" on your HUD's speed bar to get to max speed, then turn on your MWD without changing your heading. Just keep flying out from the station, without changing your direction in any way, until you are 500km-2000km or so from the station, then save the bookmark at your desired range.

Now whenever you undock, simply warp to your undock bookmark, and you will almost-instantly warp off the station to your bookmark. Because there can be up to a 5º variance in your alignment when undocking, sometimes your ship will have to do a little bit of alignment before warping off. To create a more precise undock bookmark that negates this variance, please read our Precise Navigation article.

It is best to make Insta-Undocks that are off-grid, greater than 500km from the station. While all Insta-Undocks are reasonably easy to bust, on-grid ones are much easier for a hostile to bust than off-grid ones.

NOTE: Since the December 2016 release grids have increased in size a lot. It is now not uncommon to see grids that are 8000 km or more across. This means making off-grid bookmarks has become much more complicated and time consuming. Depending on the situation you may want to settle with a sufficiently remote on-grid insta-undock spot. Just make sure you don't hang around there for long, as it can be easily busted.

Tactical Bookmarks

A tactical bookmark is a bookmark placed close to the gate, station, or other object for tactical purposes, such as avoiding a bubble, getting in range of a sniper, looking at the setup of a hostile gang, and other tactical purposes. For example, you might place a bookmark 2000km off a gate so that you can scan the gate to make sure the opponent doesn't have an interdictor or bubble, or unaligned 300km off a gate to avoid a bubble.

Tactical Bookmarks are usually just called TACs. The simplest way to make a tactical bookmark is to manually fly a fast ship in a random, non-aligned direction away from a stargate (or other object) until you are at your desired distance, then creating a bookmark.

Tactical Bookmarks: Laddering Technique

Occasionally, as you and your fleet travels through unknown areas, you will find a need to build a quick bookmark to give you a position some distance off of a gate/station/beacon. Often these are for sniping or for covert ops pilots or skirmishers trying to get a drop on a target. The technique used to make these is referred to as "laddering" because the bookmarks end up laid out like rungs of a ladder, set up at stepped distances from the origin point.

Laddering is simple. Warp to a stargate (or any other object you wish to create a bookmark at) at 100km. Save the location. Warp back to your starting point, then warp back to the bookmark you created at 100km, and create a second bookmark. This bookmark is now 200km from the stargate. Continue creating bookmarks at 100km distances as needed for whatever final distance is desired.

Alternatively, you can use multiple pilots to ladder. Have pilot A warp at 100km, then pilot B warp to pilot A at 100km, then pilot C warp to pilot B at 100km, etc., repeating as needed.

Since the starting point is almost always another celestial object, tactical bookmarks created using the laddering technique are aligned, and therefore NOT safe. They are easily busted by opponent pilots using the same technique.

Note that you can easily unalign these types of tactical bookmarks by simply manually flying in a random direction shortly after landing, so that you are no longer aligned, THEN create the bookmark and/or have the next pilot warp to you at range to create the next rung of the ladder.

Bookmark Naming

There are almost as many naming schemes for bookmarks as there are 0.0 pilots (if not more!). The key to bookmark naming is to make sure that your bookmarks are named in a method that is understandable at a glance.

Agony has developed a mark-up scheme derived from the early days of bookmarks themselves, which is largely symbolic making the bookmarks easy to read and share between our corp members. For those outside of Agony, our method may appear nonsensical or overly-complicated, but it works for us. Our method may not work for you and your corporation, but we share it here as an example that can be adopted and adapted if desired.

  • For sorting purposes, all our bookmarks are encased between two vertical bars and the greater-than and less than sign: |> name of bookmark <|
  • The @ sign indicates distance from the referenced object.
  • % indicates bookmark is aligned
  • %% indicates bookmark is unaligned
  • Brackets are used to signify a station or citadel: [abbreviated station name]
  • Parentheses are used to signify a planet: (planet name)
  • The greater-than and less-than symbol are also used to indicate anchored cans <can location>
  • Insta-undocks are indicated by the word UNDOCK
  • Bubble locations are indicated by three dashes on each side --- bubble location ---
  • Additional alignment information may be indicated by a dash and greater than symbol: aligned between this gate -> and that gate
  • Stars are indicated by an asterisk: *
  • Player-owned stations (POS's) are indicated by curly braces and corp ticker: {AGONY}
  • Safespots are marked with two dashes: -- safespot --

Example Insta-undock bookmark:

 |> [V-M2-CFO] % UNDOCK @2500 <|

Example bookmark of an anchored secured container at an asteroid belt.

 |> <VII - AB2> <|

Example of an unaligned bookmark 250km off planet 5:

 |> (P5) %% @ 250 <|

Bubble at the Taisy gate aligned with planet 5:

 |>---TAISY -> (P5)---

POS owned by Agony:

|> {AGONY} <|

TAC bookmark off the 93PI-M gate aligned with the G-M4I8 gate:

 |> 93pi-m % g-m4i8 @1500 <|   

TAC bookmark 300km straight above gate:

 |> 93pi-m % ABOVE @300 <|

Unaligned TAC bookmark:

 |> 31-MLU %% 350 <| 

Example safe spots:

 |>--01: @3au --<|
 |>--02: @25au --<|

Midsafes are marked like safe spots but with the objects that that the midsafe is between. This tells you what objects the midsafe are between. You can also add the distance syntax to indicate the location of the midsafe. Some examples are below:

 |>-- Babirmoult - Anckee --<|
 |>-- (VII) - Anckee @3au --<|
 |>-- Babirmoult @3au - Anckee --<|

Organizing and Managing Your Bookmarks

Some people prefer to have all of their bookmarks in one folder. That is fine but it can get problematic if you have a large collection of them and have to scroll down to one in particular; perhaps to share it with a corp mate. To make this easier you can create folders and sort your bookmarks into these folders.

You can organize your bookmarks however you want, be it by type of bookmark (safespots, insta-undocks, tacticals) or by region (Curse, Syndicate), by purpose (mining operation bookmarks, missioning bookmarks, trade hub bookmarks) or any other method. Bookmark folders can be opened up in a separate window by right-clicking on the name of the folder in your People & Places window, then selecting "Open Group Window." Bookmarks can be sorted by clicking on the column headings in the People & Places window or the folder window if you've opened it up as a separate group window.

It's a good idea to go through your bookmarks on a regular basis and clean out old bookmarks that are no longer used (such as old mission sites or wormhole locations). Alternatively, you can move old bookmarks from your People & Places into a small can in your hangar and store them there, in case you need them in the future.

Sharing BMs

By all means share your BMs with other corp mates. However, be wary of giving out safe spots, sniper, observation, and instant undock BMs. There are always spies and you could end up warping in on a huge fleet. Even without spies, someone else could get your safe spot busted with probes and you may not even know it is broken. For that reason you should never ever give out safe spot BMs or put them in a corporate hangar. If you would like to share a safe or sniper spot then give it to the pilot personally or through the contract system.

To copy a bookmark, open your people and places window and go to the window with all of your bookmarks. Then click on a bookmark, hold down SHIFT, and drag it to your hangar or cargo hold. You can copy up to five BMs at a time.

To import a copied bookmark drag it from your hangar or cargo hold and drop it in your people and places window. You can drag as many bookmarks as you want into your people and places, but the process can take a long time, so beware. You can drop the BM right on a folder to sort them instantly into that folder.

Conclusion

If you follow these guidelines you will start to accumulate a list of really great BMs that will allow you to fly much safer all over the universe. However remember that BMs don't make you invincible. Bubbles and interdictors can ruin your day. Consistent naming of bookmarks enables easier understanding by corp mates. Once you explore the potential of bookmarks, the imagination can devise hundreds of tactics that will help you take the fight to your opponents.