EVE General Discussion

Force/reprisals will in most cases not end in good.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that "violence never solves anything" I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

You can't gank 10 tanked hulks with 10 dessies.

If the Hulks are untanked, that's the Hulk pilot's fault.

Hulk Pilots, hear me. Don't be a Dodo, blind to the threat posed by the sailors. Fly, Fight, or Tank, and avoid their fate.

I would like to ask two questions to anyone who considers him/herself a "highsec carebear".
Snip..

So my questions are the following:

1. What exactly is a reasonable amount of risk? In other words, at which point would losing your most expensive ship (NPCs or Players, no matter) result in you going "Yep, I truly deserved to lose that ship and I can only blame myself". Showing emotion - sadness or rage - for such a lose is understandable; such is the nature of the game. So please, an honest response.

2. What exactly is a reasonable amount of profit you should be allowed to make? What is the maximum and the minimum isk/hour that should be available when you perform said activities under you ideal risk/reward ratio you thought of when answering question 1.

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--- EDIT 1 --- (after 5 pages) (POST #91) ---

So anyways... 5 pages I there is barely anyone who actually responded to the questions. Is it because the real highsec dwellers simply adapted and are playing the game or because they do not exist?

I honestly expected something along the lines:

1. Losing a ship should happen under two circumstances: when I make a mistake (vs NPC or player) or when someone invest more effort into ganking me than I invested protecting myself (vs player).

2. I should make enough money in highsec to barely pay for a PLEX on a good month. It makes no sense to me if I could make more, because the price would just shift accordingly since 80% of EVE's player-base (and henceforth the biggest chunk of PLEX customers) is in highsec. This also keeps the higher profit areas of the game relevant. Think about it, if we all could make 1 bil profit a month in highsec with "casual" playing, how long would it take before the minimum price for a PLEX peaks just a little over one bil?

These are actually my personal answers to those questions.

--- EDIT 2 --- (after 24 pages) (POST #480) ---

I believe the hulk vs suicide ganker topic has been hammered out. Let's keep it to the OP topic please. What I am essentially asking highsec dwellers is :

What, in your opinion, is a proper counter to your "safer PVE" if not suicide ganking or wardeccing.

It easy to call something overpowered or not fair, but what is your idea of fair then? There are many activities in EVE and "getting your killmails" is not the only way to counter something.

I think 100% safety in highsec is not fair while you can still keep supplying isk and items into the economy. It would make highsec income grossly overpowered in regards to other sec regions.

I can. Maybe you can't. You are probably just inserting the words "the same" in front of "10 dessies."

If the hulks are tanked as much as you can tank a hulk, they will die every time. The more you tank them, the more the module drops will be worth.

Once upon a time, maybe in winter of 2008, I was told on these very forums that you could escape hulk ganks if you did any number of things. I added up the math, and found out that was a line of bullshit. As I said earlier in the thread, the only chance of survival in a gank is an error on the part of the ganker.

TL;DR
I got ganked by pro gankers, then the guys that taught them how to gank taught me how to gank. I have since done it many times, and have only ever failed when someone in the fleet made an error. I have never failed when solo (multiboxing). Math tells me I am correct, expereience both being ganked and ganking tells me I am correct. People on the forums are telling me I am wrong.

So goes the internet.

Is that people keep telling me that I literally cant do something I have already done.

How were the Hulks you killed for profit tanked?

Nobody's saying you can't kill a Hulk profitably. We're saying that you can't kill a properly tanked Hulk profitably.

The problem is that you keep changing the variables around and not taking into account what's actually being said.

At first, there was 10 dessies, which as Ruby pointed out removes any profitability from the deal. Now there's just 5 of them, which could make it profitable, but a horrible and very slow RoI. Already at 5, you're approaching unprofitability — you get 1.5M ISK per pilot for 15 minutes' work. You might as well start belt ratting if that's the kind of money you're after, and you don't even have to change ships or system (if you're the kind to grind your sec status back up between attacks, that grind will be far more profitable than the gank). But even then, you skipped over the second part of his post:

“Tanking a Hulk to the gills will stop most ganks, and doesn't require any attention, but some successful ganks will happen.
Tanking a Hulk with logistics […] will stop all reasonably sane ganks”.

…and that's where you get the 60k EHP Hulk. It won't be in the form of buffer, though, but rather in the form of “amount of EHP you need to deal before the ship blows up”. Well, except that against blasters, it can quite easily be closer to 120k as shown earlier in the thread. Hell, at the profit levels you're looking at just with your 5 catalysts, I'm already close to categorising it as a not “reasonably sane” even without the logistics.

Oh, and if you look back in the thread, you'll have your fits. The beefiest one so far (unsupported) sits at a minimum of 38.7k EHP against blasters (more if you use kinetic-heavy ammo).

As a bonus, Scordite (the current second most valuable ore in the game) is found in 1.0 space (and lower), so there's very little excuse to be mining in .5 space, Home of Kernite, Plag, and Omber.

Right, so with the very best fit it would take 6 destroyers and a neutral alt to kill and salvage.

The ships and fits cost under 2 million to produce.

Just look at some past threads where they assumed people would bring maxed Orcas plus logistics plus extremely expensive implants and years of training SP "all V skills" Hulks just to pretend they have a point.

No way you'll ever see more than 2 fleets in whole hi sec with Orca and logistics.

Another myth is the "span DSCAN" or "make 4-6 warp points". Once again only somebody who never played the game would suggest that.

Don't bother, between Ban Porto and Tippia you will never, EVER show them how they are just forum knights with no connection with reality.

Just look at some past threads where they assumed people would bring maxed Orcas plus logistics plus extremely expensive implants and years of training SP "all V skills" Hulks just to pretend they have a point.

They don't. Period. Never, EVER listen to their absolute theorycraft, it's like believing in Forex "get rich quick" ads.

It's all paperwork and no substance.

No way you'll ever see more than 2 fleets in whole hi sec with Orca and logistics.
Split the profit by account, factor in how a 30k EHP Hulk is just BAD at its job and you get a fleet earning half than an AFK miner spending a tiny fraction of that.

Another myth is the "span DSCAN" or "make 4-6 warp points". Once again only somebody who never played the game would suggest that.
When I did missions in low sec the DSCAN spamming was excruciating and it was just 30 minutes of it in an almost empty system. Imagine doing it for 8 hours a day, every day and in a system with 30-50-80 other players (i.e. ice mining, where you can't choose to go in a secluded system).

The BEST viable solution that actually works in practice is to:

- If the system shows more than 7-8 kills per day then switch it.
- Set personal / corporation standings to terrible when you see some guys doing a gank. Include alts.
- Not be totally AFK but check every some minutes that the above guys are not there.
- Never EVER mine at the belt arrival point. Surprised the honorable theorycrafter did not mention this fundamental tip.
- Fit enough tank to survive 1 - max 2 dessies. This will deter most of the casual gankers. More is overkill and will just kill your profit hard.
- If you are scared to lose ships go play another game. EvE is a game where ships are meant to pop, and you are meant to be smart enough to make more than enough ISK than what you lose when you get popped.
- In general avoid the "all skills to V + super implants" suggestions as they are as good as terrible Battleclinic fits. If I was a ganker I'd slobber at the thought somebody who went AFK 5 minutes would lose 1-2B in implants and would gank him at a loss just to see the tears.

Here you go. Mining since 3 years with all of *1* loss while having very decent yield ships and making 3-5B a month.