Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Name says it. Haulers should have significantly more tank to discourage successful suicide ganks. More tank = More leveraged isk needed to gank.

IMO the leveraged isk needed to gank should at least be 80% the value of the hull for t1 freighters and 60% for t2 j-freighters.

Is this argument special to freighters? or should we start applying it elsewhere in game aspects as well?

(Hint: No)

Lots of ships can be ganked cheaply, below your 10% of t1 hull cost criteria.

An untanked covetor (30m) can be suicide ganked by a single low meta fit catalyst (<2.5m).

An untanked Talos (60m) can be suicide ganked by 2 low meta fit catalysts (< 5m in total). If it is tanked, it will take 3-4 low meta catalysts to kill the Talos (< 10m).

A Cargo Fit Apoc (160m) has only 25k EHP, which could be ganked by 3-4 low meta catalysts (<10m isk total)

Lots of ships can be ganked by a few low-cost ships. The question is, how many pilots put themselves in such a situation.

It has only been a couple months since they gave freighters low slots! That change allowed freighters to fit bulkheads and significantly increase their EHP. Fitting cargo expanded, nanofibers, and i-stabs rather than bulkheads to a freighter is a pilot choice, and it makes them easier to kill.

This leaves us with a reasonable decision to make: Do you fit a max cargo capacity freighter, taking more stuff at once, while simultaneously being much easier to gank. Or do you fit a max tank fit freighter, which is much more expensive to gank but limited in its cargo capacity and slower than it potentially could be?

Having choices like this is good for the game. Players constantly make similar choices when running missions (tank vs dps), when doing incursions (tank vs dps), when mining (tank vs yield), when PvPing, and more. I personally find the balance points pretty reasonable at the moment, but perhaps your personal experiences are different. Can you explain what is out of balance?

This is isk balancing. and isk balancing is bad. Shoul we also buff the HP of my prowler since a T1 cruiser at a fraction of the cost is capable of killing it before concord arrives? The only way cost is a balancing factor is by comparing its effectiveness to other similar type ships.

What will most likely happen is not that gankers will stop ganking because targets are tougher, they will simply wait as everyone realizes they can stuff more into their cargo holds. Then the ganking goes on as usual and we come back here wanting more buffs.

You already got low slots to give you an option to get more tank than you could before. Was that not enough? shall we continue to buff freighters continously until gankers cant keep up?

Cost reflects more than just how hard something is to kill.

A freighter fitted out with three t2 bulkheads is significantly harder to kill than the previous iteration. They have almost 100k more EHP. Jump freighters jumped up even more (my alt's Rhea has nearly 600500k EHP with three bulkheads on it).

The problem is people don't fit them with bulkheads. Because of :balance:, the cargo capacity was reduced pretty significantly, and people keep fitting them with cargo expanders to get back to the old max cargo room value. The problem is that cargo expanders actually reduce your hull hp, which is where the freighter stores most of its EHP.

We did warn the "freighters need slots" crowd, but they kept whining and CCP gave them what they asked for.

So no, freighters, properly fit, are actually harder to kill than they used to be. But if you fit it like a tissue paper pinata, it will pop like one.

From the rate these threads keep popping up, I'd say another freighter nerf is probably heading our way through. Thanks a lot.

Edit: Had the EHP values on the Rhea off.

Bullet Therapist has already answered the question of everyone who wants more EHP on their gankable freighter. Read these words of wisdom.



I'll just elaborate a little. If you have enemies who are able to get 11 people together and spend 110 million isk to screw with you then it is in your interests to give them something harder to bite down on than a freighter with a full rack of cargo expander II's flying AFK through a 0.5 on the Jita -> Amarr route.
And just to be sure, if your freighter is heavy-laden with expensive merchandise, then you have such enemies.

Alternative idea: you try to actually use your brain, and use the numerous methods of avoiding getting ganked without whining to CCP to prop-up your laziness with buffs.

It's quite easy to get any freighter over 250k EHP.

That said, thread locked.