Apologies for the long post.

I have a character with whom I like doing solo roaming in a frigate in lowsec, enjoying a bit of the pirate/antiparate lifestyle. On occasion I've got some really fantastic fights and some good kills way out of my weightclass but recently I've been running into more and more instalocking T3 gate camps.

Even high agility frigs have trouble not being caught and blapped before they warp off, and the only way I've found to combat it is to completely gimp a fit by stuffing in as many nanos/polycarbs as possible, which still only works occasionally. On the occasions I've overheated the MWD and tried to burn off the increased sig means I'm dead even quicker.
I roam all over, right around lowsec, and nearly always end my roam due to fiery death by T3 camp.

Now I've nothing against lowsec gatecamps, I've done a few in my time, but there were always counters - either the fast tackle ships couldn't take gate fire for long or were low dps, and there were usually a couple of sebo'd tackle ships with dps/logi support, so I could often escape them in a frigate with some skill/luck and enjoy the process.

The T3 gatecamp fleets seem to remove that completely. If you jump in you die. They are instalocking, very tanky, have long range webs/scrams AND have significant mid range dps.

Now my question is how to combat these camps? Am I missing something? Do I just accept that solo frigate roaming in lowsec is largely dead? Am I limited to cloaky ships for solo roams nowadays? I've tried avoiding known busy systems and 'pipes' and try to avoid any gates with a scout on my side.

To the T3 camp pilots - do small ships ever escape your death machines of pwnage? If so, any chance you could tell me how?

Many thanks guys.

There is nothing like insta-lock in this game (if CCP hasn't changed the game mechanics suprisingly with the last patch).
To my experience so far every non-plated frigate with enough nano fibers (the needed amount depends on your skills and the frigate) is not stopable in low-sec at any gate.

Learn to analyse the map. Get access to local secure channels.

There is nothing like insta-lock in this game (if CCP hasn't changed the game mechanics suprisingly with the last patch).
To my experience so far every non-plated frigate with enough nano fibers (the needed amount depends on your skills and the frigate) is not stopable in low-sec at any gate.

I sometime do instalock gatecamps, ~3000 scan res T3.
Most shield/nano frigs get out.
AFAIK everything that aligns in under 3 seconds (or even 4?) are 99% safe to fly with, because of how the server works in 1 second intervals . (1% lag and random voodoo) Stilleto, nano-rifter, etc. should be good to go.

How are your navigation skills?

It take 1 second for my eve client to see you, it takes 1 second to tell the server that i want to lock you, minimum 2 seconds to lock you if you don't use MWD.

I sometime do instalock gatecamps, ~3000 scan res T3.
Most shield/nano frigs get out.
AFAIK everything that aligns in under 3 seconds (or even 4?) are 99% safe to fly with, because of how the server works in 1 second intervals . (1% lag and random voodoo) Stilleto, nano-rifter, etc. should be good to go.

How are your navigation skills?

It take 1 second for my eve client to see you, it takes 1 second to tell the server that i want to lock you, minimum 2 seconds to lock you if you don't use MWD.

That's actually really useful, cheers. I honestly didn't realise you can get scan res THAT high on a T3!
It looks like I'll have to stick to kitey nano stuff for roams from now on, I'll try to use 3 seconds allign as my target.
Does my client latency affect this too?

SeaSaw

There is nothing like insta-lock in this game (if CCP hasn't changed the game mechanics suprisingly with the last patch).
To my experience so far every non-plated frigate with enough nano fibers (the needed amount depends on your skills and the frigate) is not stopable in low-sec at any gate.

That's actually really useful, cheers. I honestly didn't realise you can get scan res THAT high on a T3!
It looks like I'll have to stick to kitey nano stuff for roams from now on, I'll try to use 3 seconds allign as my target.
Does my client latency affect this too?

if you see them camping, park a (covert)cyno arazu in that system, wait them to agress someone on gate, decloak, light cyno, drop a fleet of BS/BC on them or blackops if you got enough of them.
-> profit?

Either they stop camping or you will get 2 or more shiny T3 killmails in process.