Yesterday we had a small fleet hunting bad guys and I was flying as tackler. We decided to setup an ambush for one particularly sneaky interceptor that had been preying on our lone miners. We jump to a belt with a bait and let him burp out in local 'Help! Rats!'. Believe it or not but this actually works and the enemy interceptor warps straight into our fleet. I see her, hit approach, engage MWD and start targetting. Locking fails and I get 'blah blah target is invulnerable'. She warps out.
So what exactly triggers this invulnerability state and for how long does it last each time? I hear if you undock from station you're invulnerable for some time if you don't move, you're invulnerable after you exit warp (for how long?) and what else? Exiting jump gate?
Is there anything that can be done to counter this?
You are invulnerable as long as you are actually "IN" warp. Remember speeding up and slowing down while in warp seems to be exponential, with about one second to go to the next power. That means, from the time they hit the edge of your grid and become targetable, they are still about 3-4 seconds from kicking kicked out of warp and are invulnerable until then.
You can see this for yourself as you warp into a stargate or other object, you'll load the grid while still in warp, and will be slowing down...slowing down... in fact, you can look at the updates on your overview and can actually see yourself going from 150...50...30...0. If you can see them, they can see you.
This works in the defender's favor as well, as you get that little extra time to try and align and escape.
As for stations, you're simply untargetable in a similar way for 30 seconds after you exit a station. This is to give people time to load the grid, and not go from the black exiting station screen right into a pod. You instantly become targetable the second you perform an action, from moving your ship to targeting. That means that if someone is trying to escape a station camp, the attackers only get the time it takes for him to align and warp -- he's untargetable until he starts his rotation and line-up.
As for stargates, you are completely targetable but cloaked. The cloak serves the same purpose as the station invunerability and acts in nearly the same way -- the only exception is that you will automatically uncloaked in 20(?) seconds and become targetable at that time.
Counters are spamming shift-click to target the instant they come out of warp, flying a ship that has a very good scan resolution (and thus, very fast targeting speed), and station bumping (getting them out of dock range at the end of that 30 seconds).
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