EVE General Discussion

This is hilarious stuff.

The same insurance mechanic should apply no matter how a ship is lost.
That isn't a complaint; I for one look forward to the removal of insurance all together.

Fair enough. What I'm referring to is the one thing that defines highsec: that aggression costs. You can either pay it by losing your ship (suicide) or by handing over ISK to CONCORD (wardec). This is in addition to the various opportunity costs you mention. Thus, high-sec aggression does have an associated costs and it is… well, let's just call it “less cheap” than elsewhere.
I have been targeted by ganks four times — two of those in my first year, one in my second, one in my third, and none since (ok, I landed in a disco trap recently, but it wasn't particularly aimed at me, and it was all suicide and no gank). I've also lived for quite a while in a very obvious ganking area and travelled constantly across an equally obvious ganking pipeline. The sum of those experiences is that ganks have become increasingly rare over the years.
Good. Well… no, it's bad, really. They shouldn't trick themselves that way. Preferably, they should be fully aware of the risks so they take the precautions needed to mitigate them and thus earn a sense of measured security — one that they have created for themselves.
I don't need to change anything, but at the same time, I don't see the need for it to change either. I don't mean that people shouldn't be allowed to feel safe — I mean that the safety they feel should be of their own making, not one created by the game restricting gameplay in such a way that safety is the only feeling you can have.
Quite the opposite, actually. Remove that false sense of safety that lets them make such horrible mistakes and replace it with a sense of calculated and gauged safety that lets them judge what they can safely get away with without becoming that loot piñata.

bah insurance payouts for concorded ships was always, heck insurance payouts as a whole, are a silly feature anyway. It's probably an improvement overall.

Lack of insurance payout wouldnt have saved this Orca.

I've seen very few people come right out and say "stop the ganking." A couple, not many. Point is....go ahead and keep the gank in the game. There is absolutely a valid place in the game for the practice. If I had the chance to gank a hauler with uber loots....pew pew pew.

There is no sane way to validate the practice of subsidizing that type of play though. And that is what insurance is....a subsidy to ease the loss of a ship. Missioners have no mechanism to subsidize the ammunition lost, or the drones damaged.....and the ganker considers the ship to be no more important than ammo. It is a piece of ammo.

Now wait a second...

Does anyone really think that the big organized suicide ganking alliances care about a few million ISK work of Brutix? They're doing it for the tears and taking out 200m exumers. Taking away some pocket change reimbursal won't change anything.

How so?

The same way I can be a Top Hat in monopoly — utterly illogical, but still with a purpose.

On the surface, it's because logic is not strictly required in order to have a purpose.
More fundamentally, though, it's because we are talking about two completely separate systems of logic.

Suicide-insurance is illogical — or, more accurately, unrealistic — because no real-world insurance company would pay out if the customer willingly and with intent put himself in a situation where he'd with utmost certainty be destroyed… even less so if the situation was one where he was committing a crime… and even less so if he kept doing it over and over again. It is illogical because the common logic of a business is that it is there to make money and to keep everyone from going to jail for aiding and abetting criminals (although some might argue this latter point…).

Suicide-insurance is logical because it is not a simulation of a real-world insurance company, but rather a game mechanic that is intended to incentivise the destruction of ships. This is a good thing because such destruction generates demand for goods and keeps the economy flowing. It is particularly logical if certain ships are particularly likely to be ganked and if, without these ganks, those ships would be in very low demand. The real-world-illogic is utterly irrelevant because the mechanic does not serve the same purpose as the real-world business. So being utterly illogical and still serving a purpose is not in any way contradictory.
It is utterly illogical in the same way as suicide-insurance is illogical — or, more accurately, unrealistic. No real-world police force teleports to the scene of the crime without being called; it does not instantly know who the culprits are, and it does not instantly kill (almost) everyone involved. In particular, no real-world police force has what can only be described as the hand of God backing them up, condemning anyone who somehow manages to avoid them to eternal damnation. It is illogical because the common logic of a police force is to apprehend and investigate suspected criminal acts so the suspects can be handed off to the criminal justice system.

CONCORD is logical because it is not a simulation of a real-world police force, but rather a game mechanic that is intended to define highsec: it is there to ensure that aggression in certain parts of space comes at a cost. This is a good thing because it creates an area where people can hedge their resources against the hope that the general miserliness of other players will keep them from attacking people all willy-nilly. It also ensures that certain acts of aggression are pretty much impossible due to hardware limitations, and thus opens up a market for the other way of paying that defining aggression cost. In order to maintain this defining characteristic, any tactic that circumvents it is considered an exploit and will be answered with actions taken against your account. The real-world-illogic is utterly irrelevant because the mechanic does not serve the same purpose as the real-world police force (in fact, a different mechanic is in place to simulate that part far more closely). Once again, being completely illogical and at the same time serving a purpose is not in any way contradictory.
They have to find this thread first, which would explain the lack of tears so far…

Crap. my bucket is full..

/gets new tear bucket

Can't have enough ganker tears!

Gankers, unlike most of their victims, are able to adjust their tactics when game mechanics are changed against their favor.

I welcome this change, to be quite honest - it will make miners so much more complacent in their supposed "safety" that they will totally neglect taking any measures to protect themselves.