EVE General Discussion

What

I correct myself. OP is a 1 day alt and this is his first post. We have been trolled.

I will say it again: Freighters need module slots, just like every other ship. Then their captains can decide for themselves if they want more room or more tank. The smart ones will take tank. The cargo ones will probably keep getting ganked.

But the point is when players have zero options then player intelligence (or lack thereof) never enters the equation either. There is no tangible difference between a smart, cautious freighter captain and a moronic, greedy one when both can be killed by the exact same gank setup.

When freighter captains do have options - such as sacrificing tank for cargo & vise versa, only then will people have any right to talk about whether ganking freighters is a problem or not, because only then will the issue of ganking actually be factoring the freighters into the equation. Because right now the freighters themselves, and their captains, aren't even part of the gank equation: They're a fixed set of numbers than can be destroyed with a 100% certainty by a fixed set of gankers, no contest, no questions asked. Player ability or decisions don't enter the picture at any point - and that is a problem. That is nothing more than pure, undiluted bad game design, plain and simple.

Now if you give freighters module slots and they do nothing but fit cargo extenders and stuff themselves with billions of ISK worth of stuff and get ganked, well at that point you can legitimately tell them to STFU and grow a brain (or bring escorts). Meanwhile, the other freighter captains will be using those module slots to tank themselves up to the limit so as to make ganking a losing proposition, ISK wise, for any would-be attackers. Either way, you would get a fair game for freighter captains where Risk vs Reward is actually a thing... because right now it isn't.

Why should I have to make twice as many trips in my freighter because people want CCP to try to fix stupidity only to have the same pilots die anyway?

Nobody wins aside from gankers with that freighter nerf.

Predictable thread is predictable.

If I was to hire a a van, even a security one, and put billions of £££ worth of stuff in it, would I jsut put in one driver and be like "I'm sure he'll be fine!".

No.

I'd be like "Holy hell, I better make sure there is plenty of security on this trip".

Last time I checked I don't live in a war torn 3rd world country with no concept of law and order, I'd be worried to drive the thing through London.

Not really, no.
My stance then was that it was entierly possible to defend your ship so there was no need to buff them. My stance now is that it's entirely possible to defend your ship and that it won't be improved by a nerf.

No, they really don't. They have a perfect mixture of tank and carrying capacity and I don't see the reason why you'd want to nerf them like that? I suspect that you're operating on the assumption that you'd be able to recreate their current stats with those module slots but that is not the case. A module-equipped freighter must have either much worse tank or much worse carrying capacity than they do now due to the strict limitations to cargo they have to maintain, and the perfect middle-ground is no longer achievable.

For every lowslot a freighter gains, its base cargo capacity must be reduced by 22%.
For every rig slot a freighter gains, its base cargo capacity must be reduced by 17%.
From these new base stats, it will be impossible to recreate the cargo+EHP combo they currently have — they will always be strictly worse.

…and now your Charon can only carry 765k m³.
If that's your goal, why not just carry that little to begin with and make yourself a less valueable target. That will keep you far more safe than a damage control that you'll forget to turn on…

The smart captain doesn't allow himself to become a target to begin with.

OP is wrong.

Freighters should be the defenseless whales of the space sea, getting WTF-harpooned and turned into useful spermaceti and blubber. The problem right now is the maths is too easy given the relative ease to scan cargo, then do easy the gank math. that gank math needs some more complication and variety is all.

So the only changes I think they do need are some specific slots or rigs for customising them for example:

i) An unscannable cargo hold rig for maybe 50% of cargospace
and / or
ii) 1-4 lows and a little cpu to fit expanders/ istabs/ wcs or even a dcu and hull extenders.

PS - I'm not a fan of jump freighters either - they have contributed even more to the Jita problem of one super-centralised hub. JF jump drive should only work in Null IMHO.

The loot drops are a dice roll. If you gank a freighter with 50 stacks and only one of them is of any value, the odds of getting a favorable drop are against you.