Crime & Punishment

"S2K" means nothing to me, but you're in Fidelas Constans which is funny in and of itself.

Neat idea, but there are a few main problems I see.

One, as you pointed out, is that the system is easily gameable with alts; two, giving access to wallet journal is a very invasive thing: there is an AWFUL lot of information you can glean from that. Given both wallet journal and up-to-date kill log, you can pretty much hunt down someone while knowing what they are in and how it's fit at any time.

For three, the adoption rate would be very low due to the difficulty of setting up the API and the privacy concerns that it entails.

The only rules I've ever followed when setting up a ransom are:
1: Honour it if they pay
2: Don't make an expensive requests

Honour it
If they paid, let them go and make sure that if you have any gang / corp members in system that they honour it as well. If they don't honour it, return the ransom since you've broken the deal that you made with your victim.

Don't make expensive requests
If the pilot in question is three weeks old, don't ask for enough isk to buy a new Command Ship, scale it down. Sure, they may be an alt, but you can't know that for sure. Myself, I'd rather ransom a pod but only because they don't shoot back, so base the pod ransom on the age of the character. Six year old pilot? Ask for more than you would from a two week old podder.I've asked for 20 to 50mil on pods and about half the cost of a hull on ships when the chance is there.

As far as paying ransoms go, I know that a lot of so called pirates don't care... they want the killmail, they want your isk and they want your loot. There are still groups out there that honour the ransom and will throw out or shoot their own member if they break that rule. Your best is to make a judgemnt call based on what you see. Are they giving people grief in local or have they been decent towards you (ignoring the whole shooting at you part.)

I've always honoured ransoms (that's not to say my alliance / corp mates do) and will even offer an escort out of system and I've had ransoms honoured when I've paid them.

Good hunting o7

Honoring of ransoms, a given system for it or not, might be the only thing that is going to change "garanteed gank" to "taking a chance".


Protection rackets or payoffs will boost the population even more.


The guys who want to don the pirate hat will have to kill the KM-Addicted Jan Brady crowd.

Possibly no other way.

Never paid a ransom and never will.

This has several reasons:

There is always the chance the ransom won't get honoured.

Pay once and your corp might get decced in high sec because they seem to be pushovers.

Since I will fight till the pod the only cost remaining will be a new clone and a set of +3's

I like to look in the mirror nd see someone with a spine.

I also don't ask for ransoms. It's kill or be killed. End of story.

Odds are they are going to 'splode you anyway. They already have the ransom and if there was anything on the hull worth ransoming they will want that too. I have seen ransoms honored twice in this game. Twice. I am sorry if this offends pirates that do hold a bargain but the rest of us have no way to know which ones you are so it's good iskies after bad for the rest of us. Short answer is flying low sec expect to get blown up. Flying high sec don't shoot at ninjas. All is well from there on out. No really honestly go out to OMS and get 'sploded a lot so you can get used to it and mitigate risk based upon experience.

What ?! Why ? If you see someone getting pewed, chat in local and tell them if they pay you, you won't shoot them. You'd be surprised how many people will pay up even if you arn't even busy shooting them.

Don't let people bully you. If someone tries to ransom you, don't pay. Set your ship to auto-destruct and smile at them. Even if they catch your pod and you have 1 billion worth of implants and an inadequate clone, just smile and say no, just like this:



Just try it out.

You jump into a system and suddenly you're warp scrambled. A player messages you demanding 10 mil for your ship:



You're sitting in your pod now that they blew up your ship, and they tell you they want 50 mil for your pod:



And smile as you wake up in station knowing that this time you took their personal power away from them.

People who ransom are psychopaths who get off on robbing others' of their personal power. The only way to deal with this is to just smile unaffected and refuse. Eventually, they will become bored with this situation: Even if they're making more ISK this way, it will lack the stimulation and sadistic satisfaction that the psychopath craves, and they will fall into an apathetic depression phase and move on to something else.