Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Situation: A defenseless ship like a freighter in High Security space getting rammed or “bumped” by an aggressor into a position where station/gate guns cannot help protect this ship from suicide ganking or in a mining area for the purpose of harassment and preventing mining operations.

Options:

A. Concord response to multiple bumps in High Security space, inside of a set timeframe, to which point an aggressor is flagged as a criminal and is destroyed by Concord. Normal Concord response time remain unchanged as well as conditions of War Declarations that would prevent Concord interference. (I like how the War Dec works, so please don't change that.)
a. Example. I lost my Obelisk to multiple bumps preventing me from completing the 45 seconds warp alignment to warp to the next waypoint. Once my ship was far enough away from the star gate a fleet of ganking ships appeared (using a 3rd party multibox program) and suicide ganked me before Concord arrived and destroyed all the gankers. A classic high sec freighter gank. Since the Obelisk is not allowed any defensive measures such as armor plating, ECM/ECCM, etc., I feel this change would be the most effective at discouraging this type of game tactic/play in High Security space because it causes a good disruption of the supply chain for warring corporations and factions.
b. Or allow a freighter to install defensive measures. (If I could have defended myself, then maybe losing my freighter could have been more enjoyable, that Obelisk explosion was awesome after all! )

Next...and this seems much more feasible and reasonable.

B. New game mechanics are called for to address damage done to both ships. Where the aggressor suffers the most damage if the mass of his/her ship is less than the targeted ship. And of course vice versa, the greater damage is done to the target ship if its mass is smaller than the aggressors.
a. Example. I have been bumped multiple times while mining in my Mack by a frigate. How can such a small vessel get to fly full speed into a larger ship and NO damage is inflicted to either ship?? I would think that the frigate ramming a Mack or an Orca would almost be completely destroyed by this act.
i. A discussion about both ship's shields reflecting each other away may come up but then the same thought applies, how can shields take kinetic damage but not kinetic damage from ship ramming??
ii. Would the 1st bump knock the shields off line? Second bump take the armor down 50%, third ram results in ship destroyed....something along those lines maybe?
iii. The physics in the game are awesome, in this discussion though their are completely missing, can we resolve it? Yes, but how is the question. I am thinking about how a small car stuck on the train tracks never stays in one piece when hit by a fast moving freight train. Same principles would apply in space.
b. The concept of collision damage due to ramming/bumping as a combat tactic should be applied throughout the game, not just in High Sec space.

Now these next two options I brought up because of this: would changes to the EULA be needed?? I'm not sure. (I don't like lawyers but they are a necessary evil.)

C. Clarification of the EULA could be warranted concerning this player behavior if modifying the game as I have suggested above suggestion are too complicated to resolve or implement. This would of course require a support ticket mechanism to allow players to file grievances when just behavior takes place.

D. A change to the EULA to include rules that using a 3rd party multibox software to control multiple accounts logged into EvE at the same time by the same person/computer be RESTRICTED. If a person wants to have multiple accounts, then great!! But if you want to use all of the accounts at the same time, then 3rd party software assistance should not be allowed. Learn to juggle multiple screens/computers I say. Oh, and violating this multibox rule result in account banning.


Now I know there are holes in these ideas, but they are just that...ideas to help improve the game. I would like to think it would bring balance and make the game more realistic. Then again, maybe not. Thanks for taking the time to read this!!

Yeah, biggest problem is, undock in freighter from station. Get concorded. Get new freighter. Repeat.

And all those NPC that constantly bump into gates.

I like bumping damage as an idea, but not for the same reasons. I think bumping damage should be a thing b/c physics. Not to prevent people from bumping others for ganking purposes. I get OCD sometimes about games/movies breaking physics.

Here's a solution - why not just not carry items which make you a gank target, eh?

Or do you believe that you should be able to skip around anywhere free of worry?

Also, what if I see your freighter AP'ing the 15km to a gate and just sit my ship in front of yours and you repeatedly push me out of the way? Under your proposal, I hope your AFK butt gets CONCORDed for that.

There are ways to drastically minimize the probability of you getting ganked. However, the vast majority of people who fly freighters refuse to think they should employ any of these ways simply because of some misplaced sense of nobility OR because these methods don't reduce your gank chance to 0%.

Here's some news - people who think they are trustworthy do-gooders in all aspects of their life will still get mugged if they venture down the wrong street. Plan for it, plan around it, or just don't do it.

PS - if it takes 45 seconds for your freighter to warp after coming though a gate, then you haven't even trained skills which would be a great asset to any freighter pilot. This speaks volumes about what you value more.

^

First you need to decide whether or not its a good idea for CCP to make it harder to be .

If so there are a number of measures which can protect Freighters:

1. The ability to review contract contents before accepting it or the ability to decline a contract within 5 minutes after accepting it with no penalty / refund of collateral. This eliminates obvious freighter gank bait contracts - unpackaged ships / containers etc.

2. You can make it so that if you deliver the contents of the freight package then the deal is done. ie you accept the 500,000sqm contract and you can 'break bulk' as you see fit. This also allows you the opportunity to fly the contents in different ships - eg the un-scannable hangars. Allusions to "The Transporter" and not looking inside the package are rather asinine- you can look in the package already - you just can't [colloquial term for what the Thorax looks like] with it.

Personally these two mechanics should render it unprofitable to gank with minimal changes to EHP.

3. The MJD. For an MJD to work it will need to propel you align time x fastest speed possible (and you can put a 10MN MWD on a Dram if you really really want to and get to >20km/s) so you need to be 900km away. This assumes they just don't probe you down. (Although being stupid with probe scan resolution can be a way to do this).

4. Fix it with a Cyno: I know calling for HiSec Cynos for freighters is a travesty of blasphemous whatever but it solves the problem. Also covert cynos for jump freighters. It also means you don't need to fly a JF through multiple hisec stations. Essentially as it is now you fly a freighter to border of hisec, Jump your JF to the lowsec station and then warp to the hisec gate, gate jump and warp to the hisec station before jumping from the station undock to somewhere in lowsec.

5. The SUAF approach: Don't fly a freighter until you have a f-ton of alts ready to jump in and rep / jam / generally F-up the gank.

6. Yellowboxing = yellow-flashing: So what if you are getting bumped? You can log in 60 seconds. Unless you are locked. So the expensive bumping ship goes yellow flashie.

7. Increased EHP for freighters. Why not tank Freighters more than Jump Freighters? JFs have jump drives. Jump drives can logically F-up capacity and they could be said to f-up tank too. Treble EHP or just give the freighter the tank of a Supercarrier so it is just not profitable to gank it. Who knows, this might open its use in lowsec- (no....It won't, it'd just get bumped and hot dropped by caps) So the tank on a Freighter is just anti-gank tank. It cannot be explained by anything else. CCP is saying "this is what should be required to kill gank a Freighter in hisec". Just make it so it is not profitable... ie up to 99% resists on hull. ie you want to take one down you war dec it.

8. Fighters for freighters: Give them a drone bay. Especially effective if the bumper is yellowboxing = yellow flashing.

She wore a miniskirt, so it was her fault she got raped

I've got a solution for all those problems.

Freighters just never ever would produce a concord response when bumping someone.

Think about it, all the positive effects for the industry.

All the gankers would need to buy freighters, three or four at once, to be able to properly bump another freighter until the hit squads arrive. Every Freighter Escort would panick and attack every other freighter on the same route (the route from anywhere to Jita would then be known as "The Gauntlet"), all in good self defense.

Freighters would be one of the most bought, produced and destroyed ships in the entire eve cluster.

I'm all for it, we should do it.