EVE General Discussion

A story was recently relayed to me that I found interesting and actually quite devious if true. So I figured I would share it with you.

As with most stories told to me by Eve players I take them with a grain of salt and a generous helping of doubt, but here it is as told to me. I would ask you if the mechanics as described to me are accurate because I have personally never tested nor experienced a scenario such as this.

Apparently an unnamed corp admitted a relatively new player. He seemed to have a good background. Nothing really stood out. So he was admitted.

After being in the corp for a few weeks doing missions and developing a relationship with his new corpmates he asked them if they wanted to help him crank out some Lvl 4 missions for standingds gain. They assembled 8 additional members to form up with his fleet.

The other older and more experienced members of course were in their faction fitted missionmobiles so it didn't take long to do a mission or two. The new member said he wanted to help more in the mission (he was only flying a cruiser) and play around with some more drones. He requested that each member assign him 1 drone for assistance. 7 of the 8 agreed and would deploy and assign him 1 drone. The 8th was without any drones so he was unable to help.

On the next mission once the fleet hit grid, deployed and started to battle the mayhem started. An additional player (trial) joined fleet and warped to the mission area, unnoticed by other fleet members. Upon entering the mission area, dropped fleet. At that point the new member apparently targeted and opend fire upon (trial), ignoring all warnings. This triggered massive CONCORDOKKEN. Not 1 cruiser but 1 cruiser + 7 mission pimpmobiles gone. 50+ Billion ISK *POOF*. Wtf? He said the assisted drones also fired upon (trial) causing their owners to draw Concord's wrath.

One could have almost thought the new player was a moron until several seconds after the explosions 2 more (trial) warped on grid and started scooping and looting all the wrecks of faction mods. Then they warped back to the station. The 8th member who still survived warped out ASAP not knowing what was going on.

The new player dropped corp and logged. They haven't seen him log since and estimate he got off with 20+ Bil in loot. The moral of the story as told to me was, don't assign drones to anyone unless you REALLY trust them.

So there it is, as told to me. True or false? You be the judge. Would an assisted drome potentially draw the wrath of Concord back to the drones owner?

Assuming their safeties were on green, I actually hope it's not true.

If their safeties were on red, all is good, they got scammed by their own choice.
If they were on green that's a faulty game mechanic, and they should be reimbursed.

You shouldn't have to study books as thick as law books to work out if an action with get you concorded. It should be clear. And safety on green or yellow should block any action that can get you concorded.

That's genius.

They took out the drone aggression bug on the MTU's that allowed you to get aggression flagged with another player. Getting CONCORDED with your safety on green, if it happens this way, will not be allowed to stay. Petition it, get your stuff back, and wait for incoming patch.

Yeah was just about to say.

If you are assisting somebody and your safety is on green your ships will stop assisting people with Drones/RR the minute the person you assist goes criminal.

However if they are on red.. well sucks to be you.

False.

Assisted Drones should never engage a target which would create a LE with the owner. That is the reason why pirates are complaining that assist doesn´t work in lowsec.

If this story is true and it worked like that, then it is a bug which should be reported

It actually sounds like a well thought out and superbly executed Trap / AWOX. While i feel for the corp, I do have to tip my hat to the people who performed this act.

I would say the moral of this story is don't go missioning in pimp-mobiles!

Hey folks,

This didn't seem right to me, so I've done some investigating, and happily have been unable to reproduce this issue. Of course, if anyone comes across this themselves and can provide more specifics as to the date and time it occurred then I can look into it further, but unless that happens I'm more than happy to say that this is simply quite a nice little urban legend.

For future reference (Or for anyone interested in how the drone assist mechanics are currently designed), the general rule is that combat drones will only consider characters that are personally legal targets for their owner when deciding to instigate an unforced attack. Targets that are not a personally legal target, or targets that are merely 'globally legal' such as outlaws, suspects and criminals will never be valid unforced targets.

TL:DR - A drone will not trigger a limited engagement or criminal/suspect flag, unless explicitly instructed to engage a target. (This only applies in high/low sec)

I hope this clears things up!

Mom! MOM! I spotted another one who doesn't know what PvP means!! That's two in a day! WOW!