When Ghost sites were first introduced to the game, CCP said that a timer will activate when any uncloaked capsuleer ship lands on grid, even without attempting a hack. The timer is random ranging from 5 minutes up to 20 minutes.
The actual scenario for the sites was that a few 'Ghost' NPC's will warp in (They don't show up on overview hence the 'Ghost' term, have to be added manually), they web and scram the capsuleer thus enabling full force of the can explosion to hit their ship. The explosion has an AOE (Area Of Effect) range of 10km, so if you're in-between the cans, the amount of damage received is greatly reduced. The 'Ghost' NPC's will also shoot at the capsuleer and then warp out after a minute or two.
Quote:I was exploring a high sec dead-end pocket and happened to notice 3 Angel Ghost Sites located within a couple of jumps from each other. Due to the lack of available info pertaining to these sites coupled with players posting threads about high DPS resulting in ship loss, I contacted a friend to help me run the sites. Neither of us had ever run Ghost Sites before and didn't know what to expect.
My friend had two shield logistic Osprey's to support my DPS Loki. He maintained 25 km range from the cans due to rumors of massive DPS within a 10km blast range. My Loki normally has between 80 to 90 percent shield resists across the board with over 750 shield point boost every 3.2 seconds. With dual Logi's fleeted we figured it was a good set up.
Since the rats are basically ghosts that don't show on the overview and due to the mini hacking game filling most of the screen, my friend was the lookout and would notify me when the rats warped into the site. We warped to 0 at the first site to see 4 cans sitting about 25km range from each other, I hacked one can, half dozen rats warp in, scrammed me, destroyed the cans and then warped out. The whole ordeal lasted a couple of minutes max. Both of us were sitting there wide eyed saying WTF?
Both my friend and I had to manually add the ghost rats to our overview, he did it at the 1st site and I did it at the 2nd site.
At the second site I was able to hack two cans before the ghost rats showed up who then scrammed one of the Logi's. At the third site I was able to hack three cans before the ghost rats showed up who once again scrammed my Loki. The rats also took a few shots at me before they warped out.
At the first two sites I didn't really notice much damage from the destroyed cans since the explosion happened while traveling to the next can. At the 3rd site I was still hacking and looting when the cans were destroyed resulting in 1313 DPS.
Loot collected from those 3 sites :
Covert Research Tools x42
Shattered Villard Wheel x51
Low-grade Ascendancy Gamma Blueprint x2 (Market price for Implant = about 100 mill)
That was in early 2014, since then I've done over a dozen Ghost Sites solo, I've had the cans blow up at various times, while hacking the 1st can, after hacking the 1st can, while hacking the 2nd can, after hacking the 2nd can, while hacking the 3rd can and after hacking the 3rd can. I've never been able to hack all 4 cans at the site.
Also there seems to be a new form of high sec griefing being done. Players will warp to Ghost Sites, activate the timer and then warp out without actually trying to do a hack. Since there's a lot of competition in high sec, the site will basically blow up on the next player who enters it.
Anyway, make sure you have a good tanked Cruiser and manually add the NPC's to your Overview the next time you go to a Ghost Site.
DMC