EVE General Discussion

Rats spawn... ^___^ in some places, though.

You cannot swap ships when aggressed.

If you want to have fun at the ganker's expense, sit in a long range tier 3 battlecruiser with sebos some distance from the mining fleet. When the blinky reds appear, lock and shoot. You'll get a shot or two in between then going GCC and being popped by CONCORD, and might even save a mining ship or two.

The best part about this is that many of the gankers are KOS in hisec space (they're blinky red all the time) so you can shoot them before they even gain a GCC.

You missed a point:

Gankers are
- Ganking with help from alts in throwaway trial accounts... NO RISK.

You would think this concept would be pretty simple, but most will disagree with you because they don't understand the concept of "risk". They confuse cost of doing business with "risk".

In the past I was a pro blackjack player. I wasn't at risk since I knew the odds going in based on the individual game rules, my skills, and the law of probability. Losing occasionally wasn't a risk, it was a cost of doing business. The Gankers are exactly the same. But again, they won't ever see past their own delusions to understand the truth.

None of that is risk. All of the above is known. A ganker knows what the cost is before the battle. That is not risk because he/she is willing to lose all 100% in order to kill the target. Why because the target is worth it and it is a sure thing no risk of failure. No calculated risk because they know the target is dead.

Risk would be if the ganker was not sure that the gank would work? What if the gank attempt failed now that is risk.
What if the ganker fleet did not know the setup on the target ship? Now that is risk. A ganker fleet can calculate how much damage they need to do to alpha the target before they even attack it. That is not risk. That is the opposite of risk.
What if the ganker fleet did not know these things up front. What if they could not use a ship scanner in high sec to determine this before hand. When they can do this they just avoid attacking those hulks that are tanked again that is not risk it is making a choice to attack a known target that can be killed profitably. Totally known risk before they fire the first shot.

What would happen if the ganker fleet did not know the outfit of the target before the attack?
Then the question becomes what and how does the ganker fleet outfit itself for the attack? How much damage do they need to bring. What is the cost of the ganker fleet ging to be? Is the attack going to be profitable? Do you take a chance? Risk!
Is it going to be overkill? Just to insure the kill because they do not know the outfit of the target. That is risk inducing.
What if they had no idea how long the response time from concord would be? Now that is risk inducing for both sides.

I find that having a set of ECM drones orbit me while I mine significantly increases my survivability. Twice now it has thwarted would-be gankers.

As far as game mechanics go that is risk inducing because the ecm drone is chance based. Therefore it adds real risk to the ganker attack. You are no longer a sure kill unless they bring in way overkill. Then the value of the target might not be worth the attack. Real risk. About the only way in this game to add the element of risk to a gank attack with the current game mechanics.

the miner being competent/not a bot

The ships and fittings used by suicide gankers are an investment if the activity is low risk and a speculation if it is high risk. You might also call it a 'buy-in.'

The risk in suicide ganking seems to be based on the likelihood of the Hulk surviving the attack, the wreckage being valuable, and the chance of someone else absconding with the goods before the gankers or their allies can get it. Risk can be mitigated a number of ways, some of which would lower total profit.

Can a suicide ganker consistently destroy a Hulk before being Concorded and make enough from the dropped modules to recoup their principal and make a satisfying amount of profit? Then it's not a high risk activity.

I don't have those numbers, however. Gankers on this forum can tell us their personal experience, though there's no way to tell if they represent the average ganker.

However, much of this conversation is based on the idea that minimizing risk is bad. It's not.

Noob gankers do sometimes fail but they learn and become skilled. Skilled do not fail.
Goons are outsourcing the ganking mostly so lots of noobs trying out ganking.
Ganking is not a risk event for the skilled ganker. They know the outcome and only attack when they have the right conditions.
Maybe you want to consider those conditions to be the element of risk, I do not as the skilled ganker does not attack when conditions are not favorable and they do attack when they are favorable and then they do not fail, that is no risk.
They do not for example attack and fail and get concorded while the hulk gets away. But the noobs do that sometimes.
Rarely even then do they fail because it is fairly easy to do.