Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A veldnaught in every belt!

and yet the market prices are set by players...so what if the price of BC's goes up and the price of freighters goes down. does that mean CCP have to change the freighters stats again to make them easier to gank? no of course not.

and which ships do u balance the tank against? tier 3 BC's, cuisers or destroyers. u can send 8 talos's for 1 bil or u can send 40 catalysts for around 100mil.

a deimos costs more than a phoon. so should it be harder to gank than the phoon? no of course not. hulks cost more than skiffs, does that mean they should have better tanks? no of course not.

trying to balance a ships ability to resist damage against its cost on an ever changing market is absolute bull and u should feel bad for thinking of it.

ive said it before, our freighters have absolutely no right to being even difficult to gank. it is always upto the freighter pilot to decide whether to make himself gankable or not, whether to use another ship or not, whether to scout and ask for help etc etc. if freighters are so risky to use, why are so many ppl using them?

On a side note, since it is around that time of year, I have been doing some searching around for indications of this years HULKAGEDON. It seems there are no plans for one. Most likely due to the fact that mining ships are no longer the easy ganking targets they once were.

However there are plans forming for a anual BURN JITA event where freighters and haulers will be the targets. Why? Because these are now the most gank worthy ships in the game.

Current plans will extend beyond Jita as last years BURN JITA was limited due to the population cap, so this year they will also be hitting the ships waiting to get into Jita.

for those of you who believe freighters are no more gank worthy then they were two years ago, you are wrong. It has changed. It has changed to the point where HULKAGEDON has become BURN JITA targeting haulers rather than miners. The freighter has become the NEW HULK as far as Gankers are concerned.

Guess what... 1.9 Billion isk is more than double 650M which is what a Charon used to cost. freighters are now worth more than double in fact almost triple what they were before T3 BC's were introduced.
your right, nothing has changed.

freighters have just gone from being able to comfortably haul 1-1.5B worth of cargo without being bothered, to not being able to haul more than 800M without fear of being ganked. And the cost of them has also nearly tripled. But nothing has changed. Are you blind or just stupid.

EVE is a sandbox which is affected more by player actions than development changes.

Those little seemingly insignificant changes you mentioned do add up.

Combine that will some player innovation looking for a new source of ganking income after mining ships lost there appeal.

We now have freighters getting ganked like never before. Close your eyes to it if you wish, but that does not change the facts.

At this time last year it was rare to see more than 2-3 freighter ganks in any single system over a months time. In the last 6 months many systems around Jita have exceeded 50 freighter ganks per month for at least 4 of those 6 months.

And yet ignorant players like you insist nothing has changed.

Some minor changes have made freighter ganking easier than it ever has been. Not a lot easier, but it seems enough to tip the scales.

Players who devote their time to ganking have lost their primary targets with the mining ship revamp and have had to move on. Freighters have had the bad luck of receiving the brunt of that new focus for gankers.

Sure maybe freighters have always had this weakness, and have been profitable to gank for years. But the gankers have never exploited that weakness, at least not on a large scale, until recently. The GOONS started the band wagon rolling, now many other gankers have jumped on board.

Not all bad things that happen in this game are caused by failed expansions and poor developer judgement. Some things are just over looked, and the flaws do not become manifest until players start to exploit them.

Regardless of whether freighters are newly weakened due to inadvertent game changes, or have had this weakness for years and it just has not been exploited until now. The problem is now here, it is real, and it needs fixed.

Open your eyes, before you drop the soap and get a very rude awakening.

lol if its common for freighters to be ganked merely for padding, and therefore worth while to gank them even when they are empty...why has none of my freighters even had an attempt on them. i regularly fly through hot spots like uedema with a FULL hold worth a bill.

when was mining not worth doing? by its very nature, the less ppl that do it the more valuable it becomes.

ppl that do fit max yield hulks are stupid, but sometimes they can avoid ganking long enough to make it worthwhile. some ppl are so out of the loop they dnt even know what hulkageddon is.

players go out ganking rather than doing something 'positive' because its fun and can make good money. in a game designed around PvP, what exactly is more positive about hauling and trading than attacking other players? u really think ganking is a negative aspect of the game? u have such a warped perception that i now wonder what ur really doing here other than trolling ppl playing the game in one of its intended ways.

hulkageddon has been targetting haulers (including freighters) since before the barge revamp.



on the contrary, players make it worth doing by doing it. u might not think it worth ur time, but as long as someone else does, it must be worth doing for someone.

reasonable cargo amount? one bill will probably allow u to wander through hot spots unmolested. though u can carry considerably more if u stay active, avoid dangerous systems, and have friends to help u.

and for the record, ship prices are not so directly linked as u think. they are not simply proportionate to the price of their mineral cost. supply and demand are a big influence, and the demand for combat ships can go up independently of non-combat ships.

ur knowledge of markets is equally as ignorant as ur knowledge of everything else u talk about.

ur a discredit to not just those who may want a freighter revamp, but this game as a whole would be more enlightened without u.

u must do it all the time, or at least get ganked all the time if it is so easy...ah wait, u've neither ganked, or been ganked.

hardly do anything against it? take it u havent read the thread then. the first page has some very effective suggestions.

there is a tankier freighter, the jump freighter

CCP shouldnt do anything about it, just like they shouldnt have done anything about barge ehp. the pilots getting ganked should be the ones doing something about it.

/thread

One big problem here. None of the old solutions work against current ganking tactics. 6 months ago or more yes. But not anymore.

I got a jump freighter, but they are even bigger targets due to being worth over 8 billion isk. They have a bit better buffer but still not enough. Suggesting to use a jump freighter instead of a regular freighter is like suggesting to double wrap your loads. Using a jump freighter puts a bigger target on you, just like double wrapping does.

The point is, regardless of why or how, freighters ganking on average has increased by almost 600% in the last 6 months in systems like Uedama. Ganking does not only happen in Uedama but in several other systems around Jita and on major trade routes. They have all seen similar increases. 50 freighters ganked in Uedama in March, there are a least 5 other systems I found with comparable numbers. But if you go back more than 6 months ago it is hard to find a system with more than 3-4 freighter ganks in a month. As I said about a 600% increase.

We can argue of the cause as much as we want but that does not change this simple fact. Freighter ganking is on the rise. It is not stable, but increasing. This is a problem, and it is going to get worse.

- scouting does not help as the gank fleets are only on grid when doing a gank. If you see them, you are actually safe as they already have a target. They use neutral scout ships with passive targeters to check your cargo without you even knowing you were scaned. if they decide you are their target there is nothing you can do, you will not even know until it is to late. they scan you several systems out and are ready in a choke point system.
When you jump through you will get bumped off alignment by a ship you did not even see as a threat. Bumping is not considered an aggressive act, it will not summon CONCORD, or affect the pilots security rating. They will continue to bump you until the gank fleet arrives on grid. sometimes they are on grid but logged off. other times they will warp in on you. But they were not there when you jumped into the system. if you had scouted ahead your scout would have seen nothing.

- You can reduce you chances of getting ganking by reducing the value of your cargo, but if you are the only target available and have over 800M in your cargo you are a target. You are taking a chance and relying on the fact that there will always be another freighter worth more to the gankers than you are. This is not always the case.

- Some say just avoid those systems where ganking is high. The problem with that is freighter ganking is generally done in choke point systems. A choke point system is a system you can not avoid. Traveling from A to B you much pass through certain choke points to get the Jita. There is not other route that does not take you through another choke point.

-Running with an escort can help, especially if the escort is webing you for faster warp. But even this does not come with any ganantees. many gankers fleets are over coming this with insta lock disposable tackle ships. They will sacrifice a tackle ship on an alt account to stop you from insta warping. then once the bumpers start you are going nowhere. The gank fleet will not be tied to the original tackles agro so they are free to gank you as they normally would. some times they will even bump you off grid if the tackle spawned CONCORD.

-Many still suggest double wrapping your cargo. this is a bad idea as it causes two things to happen. 1- if you are going thru the trouble of double wraping then you must be hiding something worth getting ganked over. This makes you a target. 2- If they do gank you with a double wrapped package in your hold, there is a good chance of the entire package dropping, not just a portion of its contents.

You can take measures to reduce your chances of getting ganked, but if they decide you are a target, there is really nothing you can do. For every anti gank tactic, there are several methods for gankers to still get you. As I said things have changed. maybe not the mechanics, call it emergent game play if you will, but no matter how you look at it, freighter ganking has increased by about 600% over the last 6 months and is still rising. The common suggestions for anti ganking tactics are very limited in their effectiveness. Survivability is dependent almost entirely on the discretion of the gankers. If they decide you are their target, there is nothing you can do to save your ship.

still do.

using meta modules instead of t2 and i'm still lacking cpu/pg to fill the 4th mid slot on my mackinaw. not that it matters due to the ehp boost they gave it but still, would rather have that ehp coming from modules not base stats.

The increase in freighter ganking is primarily from "emergent gameplay".
1.) Why are freighters getting ganked?
--- They are primarily ganked for profit!!

I examined the last 50 freighter kills in Uedema last month:
48 appeared to be ganks, 2 were not (one with only 2 ships, one with t3 cruisers).
4 were ganked for a double wrapped package...
4 were ganked even though their cargo hold was empty...
4 were ganked with a cargo hold value between 0.4-2 billion.
3 were ganked with a cargo hold value between 2-3 billion
33 were ganked with cargo holds above 3 b.

Several mitigating factors (bounties on freighter pilots, Wars, Pilots getting suspect flags, Pilots mouthing off, etc) could have contributed to the low value killmails but lets assume that they were ganked for the killboard padding (IMO, unrealistic). That means, if you carry less than 2b in loot and don't carry double wrapped packages, your chances of getting ganked traveling through Uedema are pretty low, but much higher than most freighter pilots desire! Compare this to the number of freighter trips through Uedema in that time period, and your probability of getting ganked is extremely low....

2.) Do you have options?
-- Limit what you carry... This is a viable option, although it means you are significantly less efficient when moving things, not to mention the limit is easy to reach!

-- Use an escort/scout... This is also a viable option, although it means you have to work with others and is not fool proof.

3.) How can CCP improve freighter game play?

Simply buff freighters like mining barges were buffed....

-- In my opinion, this is the WORST thing CCP could do. It essentially stomps on the emergent game play rather than nurturing it.

Give freighters fitting options so they can add tank and/or agility at the expense of carge...

-- In my opinion, this is the Best thing CCP could do... Idiots are idiots, and there will still be plenty of targets to support the emergent game play. At the same time, it gives frieghter pilots the ability to optimize their ship to manage cargo, speed, and tank.

Alternatives that enhance game play, rather than inhibit it:

Decoy Cargo Containers -- Insure your ship, configure it so the suicide gankers think your hauling something valuable... and laugh when they destroy your ship and get nothing...
Exploding Freight Containers -- If your ship dies, the loot inside these detonates too...
Smuggler Holds -- Unscannable storage areas for your ship...

This is the idea I support. I think of freighter fittings like I think of my orca fittings. Some people go full cargo with expanders in the lows and expander rigs, other people go for tank with damage controls and shield mods, and others go for mobility with ab/mwd and inertia mods. Each orca pilot is responsible for the decisions they make, but at least they have options and get to make meaningful decisions.

When freighters go through tiericide I would like to seem them add in module and rig slots, with the appropriate base stat nerfs.