Aligning

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Definition

Before a ship can warp, it needs to align. Being aligned means going more or less directly towards the point in space you wish to warp to, at least at the the speed needed to warp (3/4 of current stop speed, including all webber and speed boost effects). In the typical use of aligning, you go towards the object at top speed, as that guarantees instant warping.

How to

These days, there is a useful "align to" button you can use to align to celestials, and you can find "align to" in the context menu of many warpable objects, too.

You still sometimes need to align manually to some things, for example bookmarks, or towards possible locations of known hostiles while your prober is looking for them. To do this, point your camera towards the point in space and double-click at or close to it.

Aligning for combat fleets

The reason why combat fleets align is to ensure that they warp at the same time. The reason for that is two-fold: first, it ensures that the fleet drops on the enemy together, instead of arriving one by one, and second, it ensures that no one is left behind to be ganked when the gang warps out.

The webber trick

Freighters are terribly slow to align, which can be frustrating. In escorting a freighter, the webber trick is often used to speed up the process. As being webbed slows down the top speed of a freighter, and as after a jump they only need to accelerate, not turn, as soon as the freighter starts to move, a friend webs it good. This drops its top speed, making it's current speed over the required 3/4, and causing an instant warp. If done by a friend in the same corporation, no criminal flags are caused in the process and so no additional risk to the escort is incurred.