EVE Online Route Danger Score

Every ISK of realized margin disappears if your freighter gets caught on the way. For personal hauling, a successful gank costs you the cargo plus the hull and any implants your pod was carrying. For courier contracts, the collateral you set is the only mechanism you have to recover value — and collateral only works when the contract was sized to cover cargo plus a risk premium. Route danger is the input to both decisions.

New Eden is also a dynamic place. A route that was quiet yesterday can become a gank corridor after a fleet moves into the neighborhood, and the opposite is also true. Looking at the current danger score before every major run — not just once a week — is a surprisingly cheap habit that has saved many freighters over the years.

Highsec space, security 0.5 and above, is protected by CONCORDE response ships. Aggression here is punished, but suicide ganking by disposable attackers is still possible, especially against visibly expensive cargo. Most casual hauling and beginner trading happens entirely inside highsec, and that is the correct default while you are learning.

Lowsec, security 0.1 through 0.4, has no CONCORDE response. Engagement is at player discretion, faction warfare systems can be especially active, and gatecamps are a realistic threat on well-traveled pipes. Lowsec shortcuts can be hugely profitable for experienced pilots flying interceptors, blockade runners, or cloak-capable transports, but they demand situational awareness.

Nullsec, security 0.0 and below, is sovereign space claimed by player alliances. Intel is king here — knowing which constellation is friendly, who owns which station, and how the current war is moving can make the difference between a rich freighter run and a loss you laugh off on Reddit. Most nullsec hauling is handled by specialized logistics pilots rather than casual traders.

A route's danger score considers three signals that each tell a slightly different story. Raw security status captures the base risk of the space itself. Recent ship kills add a time-sensitive layer — a system with dozens of PvP kills in the last hour is objectively active right now, regardless of what its security number says. Kills per jump is the ratio of violence to traffic: a busy system with many kills and many jumps is a normal corridor, while one with many kills and few jumps suggests hunters waiting quietly for specific targets.

These signals move on their own timescales. Security status is essentially fixed. Kills refresh on the order of hours. Gatecamp flags can appear and disappear within a single evening as fleets form, fight, and go quiet. The right habit is to re-check the score at the start of each hauling session rather than trusting a number you saw earlier in the day.

The route tier is determined by the worst system along the path — a chain is only as safe as its weakest link. Safe routes (score 0 to 15) are effectively all-highsec pipes with no current gank heat and are appropriate for freighters, full-value cargo, and new traders. Caution routes (16 to 40) sit on the edge — usable in faster ships with cloaking or MWD/cloak tricks, but not where you want to send a slow freighter stuffed with PLEX.

Dangerous routes (41+) exist for pilots who actively want the risk premium and who know how to scout. For most players the correct reaction to a dangerous tier is to either choose a different route, split the run across several smaller contracts, or price the extra risk into the reward. The score is not a prohibition, it is a framing tool.

On courier contracts, the danger score feeds directly into fail-probability estimates, which then shape the recommended reward and contract split. A safe route might produce a single-contract recommendation with a modest premium, while a dangerous route might call for four smaller contracts to diversify risk. When you haul yourself, the same number tells you where to stage scout alts, where to set warp-to safe spots, and whether it is worth bringing a friend in an interceptor to clear gates ahead.