EVE General Discussion

With the recent surge in suicide attacks against highsec miners, it's not surprising that there's been a lot of carebear angst and confusion. Highsec miners--who sacrifice all of their time and dignity for the sake of earning ISK--just can't understand why people will throw away ships to CONCORD in order to suicide gank. After all, it's one thing for a ganker to turn a profit by killing a freighter packed with expensive loot. But killing a highsec miner is no way to make money. What's the motivation?

In frustration, the highsec miners ask, "Why do they hate us?"

They come up with plenty of reasons, of course. Some carebears say it's because the suicide gankers hate freedom and want to control everyone else's game. Others say it's because the gankers are griefers who want to hurt people, or because they're just evil, or they're crazy, or misguided.

Naturally, all of the highsec miners' explanations are designed to make them feel better about themselves, and to dismiss the possibility that the suicide gankers have good reasons for doing what they do. The highsec miner doesn't want to question himself, after all--question whether he might deserve to be hated.

But if a highsec miner genuinely does want answers, he'll need to listen to the people who have been launching the suicide attacks. Don't listen to the self-serving explanations being given by the carebear propagandists. Listen to the suicide gankers themselves. We'll tell you.

In the interest of time, I would like to just briefly relate a few of my thoughts about highsec miners and suicide ganking.



There's no question that an anti-highsec miner fever is spreading across Eve like wildfire. Years ago, almost no one ever bothered to kill the miners. There were isolated incidents, yes, but hardly anything to get worked up about. Miners barely even noticed. Highsec was totally safe.

But these days? Everywhere you look there's evidence that the tide of public opinion is turning against highsec miners. "Hulkageddon" is famous, and has gathered new participants with each event. Then there's the Goon-sponsored interdiction of Gallente ice, which spread to other alliances. And suicide ganking has moved beyond the boundaries of alliances and coalitions: Once ordinary Eve players have set aside their ISK and security status in order to wreak havoc on unsuspecting miners. Miners who thought nobody could kill them--or wanted to.

And then there's The Mittani. He is the Chairman of the Council of Stellar Management (CSM). The CSM is elected by the players of Eve, and is the best representation of popular opinion. The Mittani is a suicide ganker, and a prolific one at that. Nor does he make a secret of that fact: He runs on a anti-highsec miner platform, and the more he rails against the carebears, the more his public support grows.

Years ago, no one with any sort of credibility was seriously advocating suicide attacks. Today, the popularly elected representative of the Eve playerbase is also one of Eve's biggest promoters of suicide ganking.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.



Before I begin to explain the forces behind the rapid increase in hatred and violence against the miners, I probably ought to make some disclosures. I am a suicide ganker. I kill highsec miners. And aside from the reasons that we'll be exploring in a moment, I simply don't have any fondness for highsec miners. Personally, I just find them easy to dislike. Even apart from what they actually do, their presence has always irritated me. I suppose you could say that I have a natural prejudice against them.

When I examine the phenomenon of the highsec miner, I put all of that aside. Do I despise them? Absolutely. But am I able to be completely objective? Hell yes! In studying the highsec miner, I am essentially a neutral party, as my hatred of the miners becomes a non-factor.

My objective analysis of the highsec miners has concluded that my prejudice against them is well-founded. They do deserve the disgust that people feel for them.

Now it's time to get to the heart of things. Why do highsec miners deserve to be attacked, even at the guaranteed loss of the attacker's ship?



First of all, let's talk about the bots. Highsec mining operations are crawling with botters. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. And nobody knows it better than the human miners. They mine together day in and day out, side by side. Thick as thieves.

Allow me to make one thing perfectly clear to the humans who mine in highsec: We suicide gankers will make no distinction between the botters and those who harbor them.

Whenever I tell a highsec miner this, I always get the same response. They whine that they would never help a bot, and surely if they ever saw one, they would immediately report the bot to CCP. So please, please, they say, leave the human miners alone.

Uh... No. I don't think so.

Of course the highsec miners harbor the bots. They camouflage them. They act as human shields. If it weren't for human players mining in highsec, the remainder would be known botters, and would be instantly banned. But worst of all, highsec miners contribute to an institutional system and culture that legitimizes botting.

As a matter of fact, I'd go so far as to say that all of the miners in highsec are bots. Even the ones who aren't running any bots or macros. The human miners are bots, and they deserve to be treated like it. Why? Read on.

Not only is the highsec miner incapable of feeling anything, he's also incapable of valuing anything. In a game filled with corporations, alliances, coalitions, and empires, one of the most basic values in Eve is loyalty. Don't misunderstand. Sure, there's plenty of treachery and betrayal in Eve. But it takes the form of a spy or traitor's loyalty to his true employer. Agents play a double or triple game. Even the most duplicitous deceivers in the game usually have an attachment to something. The Mittani, The greatest spymaster in Eve--some might say the only true spymaster the game has ever produced--has betrayed or engineered the betrayal of thousands of corporations, but always remains loyal to the Goons. Some traitors are just out for themselves, but when they finally burn their last employer or friend, they usually quit the game soon afterward.

Then there are the highsec miners. They don't believe in anything or anyone. Sometimes they form corporations, even though they're in highsec and have no need of blues. Then a war declaration comes and they all run their separate ways. At first, they make bold claims about fighting back or taking arms. But then these miners--the same ones who scream bloody murder about the "dishonorable" suicide gankers--scatter like sheep and leave their friends to die. Always.

Standing up for someone else takes ISK, you see. It would be a risk. One might even have to put down the mining laser for a few seconds. The highsec miner's devotion to his pile of ISK reasserts itself, and everything else is abandoned. The corporation is dissolved and he resumes his endless, pointless efforts in the asteroid belts. Perhaps he joins another mining corporation and bolts when it runs into trouble. Or he'll remain in his NPC corp and slave away by himself. Why bother even pretending?

The best and brightest of the highsec miners will venture to nullsec. They'll join an alliance surrounded by a coalition of blues. They'll nestle in the deepest blue of the bluest territories they can find, and try to make some ISK. Then, when trouble inevitably arrives, the poor fellow is gone with the first failure cascade. He didn't sign up for that whole "conflict" thing. Eventually perhaps he'll tire of it all and return to the asteroid belts in highsec where he belongs. Or he'll quit the game. Good riddance.



That's enough bashing the highsec miners for now. What about their good points? What about their contributions to the Eve community? I could go on and on about all of the wonderful things the highsec miners have added to the Eve universe--or at least, I could if there were any. They have produced nothing of value whatsoever.

That's not to say highsec miners leave no legacy. Actually, they do. Their legacy is a series of nerfs to highsec warfare. They whine and whine, and eventually CCP takes pity on them and gives them a few nerfs to make highsec safer. And the highsec miners are quite satisfied with this, until they end up a smoldering wreck because the suicide gankers keep on coming.

There have been at least a dozen separate nerfs to highsec violence over the years. They run the gamut: Buffs to CONCORD, faster CONCORD response time, drone bandwidth disabling, buffs to ship hitpoints, limits on war declarations, faster corp member expulsion, increased security standing losses, limits to insurance payouts--anything you can imagine. The bleating for nerfs has never stopped because the killing has never stopped.

Aside from whining to CCP, highsec miners have never taken a single action on their own to protect themselves. They have never made a single innovation in Eve, ever. Instead, the suicide gankers--many of whom are the brightest minds in Eve--take it upon themselves to adapt to all of the nerfs. The suicide gankers have been ingenious in finding new ways to inflict damage upon the carebears. If they didn't, the carebears wouldn't need to whine for more protection. Suicide gankers thus represent the creative force in Eve. The highsec miners are unable to produce any creative thought--again, like bots who cannot go beyond their simple programming.

Ironically, when the gankers look askance at any of the new nerfs, the highsec miners then smugly tell the gankers to "adapt." The hypocrisy goes without saying, of course. Highsec miners have never adapted to anything in their lives. They go to highsec precisely because they're incapable of dealing with the world around them. They declare that the "tears" of the gankers are delicious--a meme which they picked up from their hated enemy, the Goons. Unfortunately for the highsec miners, the suicide gankers do adapt, and the whole process starts over again.

Highsec miners are no strangers to hypocrisy. They also whine that suicide attacks require no skill, even though clearly their own profession--shooting rocks with lasers in highsec--requires much less skill. They even complain that suicide ganking isn't risky, despite the fact that it carries a 100% risk of losing your ship. Add to that the irony of a highsec miner complaining that someone else isn't taking enough risks when his whole profession is based on having zero risk.

It's almost as if the highsec miners want to be hated by everyone in Eve. If that's their goal, they're doing a great job.

Highsec miners are a superstitious and cowardly lot. They always believe CCP will save them if they cry enough. Within two days after word got out that the winter expansion would nerf insurance payments further, I already saw highsec miners gloating about it in local, and about how it would end suicide ganking forever.

Highsec miner, allow me to suggest an alternative forecast for the winter.

It's gonna be cold...






It's gonna be gray...





And it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.

So far we've covered most of the reasons why, from a purely rational standpoint, suicide ganking the miners is acceptable, desirable, perhaps even imperative. If Eve players were motivated entirely by logic, the current ganking of highsec miners is nothing more or less than what we would expect. But of course, Eve players are human (aside from botters/miners), so they are motivated by more than reason: There is a highly developed emotional and ideological--some might say religious--aspect to the anti-miner fervor.

It is universally recognized that the father of modern suicide ganking was an Eve player named karttoon. Now, let it be understood that there are as many different perspectives on who karttoon was and what he taught, as there are different cultures in Eve. Some view him as the absentee CEO who went **** Goons in spectacular fashion. Others see him as an exploiter who deserved to be permabanned from the game. Still others think he was a griefer and a terrorist who preyed on the weak and innocent. But to the followers of karttoon, he was a man touched by the divine, one who had extraordinary vision beyond that of ordinary human experience.

Before karttoon, suicide ganking existed to a limited extent. People were not unfamiliar with the concept of killing a ship in highsec and accepting death by CONCORD. What karttoon saw, that no one else had seen before in Eve history, was the possibility of suicide ganking as a way of life. karttoon grew up in a world where highsec carebear activity was an accepted part of Eve, a necessary evil. karttoon was outraged by the corruption he saw. The miners flaunted their sense of invulnerability. They lacked even the modesty of a few tanking modules. To karttoon, this represented a humiliation of himself and his people, the Goons. It was an intolerable situation.

karttoon was convinced that one should be willing to lose a ship to CONCORD if it were the price of destroying a highsec miner. To a miner, this was a totally alien concept. They cared only for money. But karttoon was willing to die again and again for what he believed. And he felt strongly that his was a cause that others should adopt. He taught the Goons his methods and his beliefs. He taught them to kill the miners in the most efficient manner possible. More importantly, he taught them that they did not have to accept the world as it was. Instead, they should strive to make the world into what it could be.

karttoon was called "the Sheikh" by his followers, a title of the greatest respect and admiration. His teachings had an extraordinary impact on the world, and they still do today. All of the suicide gankers who came after him were, to some extent, influenced by the Sheikh. There is some debate about precisely what he taught. The Sheikh famously said, "The most excellent jihad is that for the conquest of self." Interpreted in the light of its fuller context and modern scholarship, the best reading of this quote is that "everyone must kill the highsec miner wherever they find him." Sadly, most Eve players have fallen far short of this call. Still, suicide ganking is currently the fastest-growing activity in Eve.



If highsec miners were capable of rational thought, they would have no difficulty understanding why they are universally reviled. Anyone should automatically recognize that everything about highsec mining is antithetical to the spirit of Eve. Time and again, highsec miners blind themselves to the world around them and fall for anti-ganking propaganda. They want to think the problem is with the suicide attacks rather than the mining.

It would be easy for me to give up and abandon my efforts to educate these misguided proto-bots. They certainly don't deserve enlightenment. Still, I will make one last attempt. Am I not merciful?

My final illustration is one of personal experience. I will tell you something of my own encounters with the highsec miners. Maybe if they see themselves through my eyes, they will finally get it. If not, they will be even more guilty than they already are.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I would visit a highsec system in Caldari space called Arvasaras. I understood that it had an Ice Field, so I decided I would make the trip and take a look at it. As soon as I loaded grid, I was greeted by an appalling sight. The belt was covered in mackinaws and hulks greedily chewing away at the ice. If that wasn't bad enough, the place was completely covered in secure containers. There must have been ten or twenty of the unsightly things for each miner. Outrageous.

I was completely disgusted. In front of me was what could have been a gorgeous Ice Field. Instead, it was polluted top-to-bottom with filth--and the containers. The miners were happily going about their work, sucking the life out of the Ice Field like it was an ATM. They didn't have a care in the world. To them, this was Eve, just mindlessly racking up the ISK (slowly) and being totally unconcerned about the possibility of death. That was about to change.

I asked if anyone else was willing to sacrifice his own ship for what he believed in and was met with silence. Eventually I was able to negotiate a 1v1 fight with a saber-rattling raven pilot. Unlike her predecessor, she was unwilling to simply CONCORD her prized PvP rokh. But she was willing to arrange a duel where I would steal from her container, allowing her to engage me without CONCORD interference. If she won the duel, I was to leave the system forever. If I won, nothing would happen. But in exchange, prior to the duel, she would CONCORD her mining ship. I accepted these terms and waited in the Ice Field with my Ibis while she took the time to fit her ship with mining equipment.

When she warped into the Ice Field, she was out of range, so I instructed her to attack one of the miners with her attack drones. She did, and she was promptly CONCORDed for her troubles. After her aggression period expired, she launched her rokh and asked me to meet for our high-stakes duel.

I demurred. I announced that although I was canceling the duel for lack of interest (on my part), I would continue to shoot all of her miner friends in the Ice Field. In disbelief, she asked if I would reimburse her for the ship and the rigs destroyed in her unnecessary suicide attack. I considered it, but ultimately decided against it because I hate highsec miners. Needless to say, my decision was exceedingly unpopular with the locals. But hey, I was already at "terrible" standings.

By the next day, the miners were baying for my blood. They had a devised a new strategy to deal with the James 315 problem. They would leverage their financial power (because you know, people who mine ice are rich). A member of the highsec mining corp put a bounty on my head. It was only for a few million, but he encouraged others to do the same. With any luck, they would be able to entice some powerful nullsec corps to come to the rescue and hunt me down. I tried in vain to explain why the "bounty" mechanic is utterly pointless, especially in highsec, and especially if I'm already suiciding my own ships and have an implant-less clone. But incredibly, the defiant miners put in one donation after another. I now had a bounty of over 100 million ISK on my head, which remains to this day.

Two things. First of all, bounties are soooo 2005. Second of all, how dare you?

I tried to reason with them, carefully going through point-by-point all of the reasons why they should stop mining in highsec, for their own good as well as Eve's. They howled in response, cursing me endlessly. I asked them, "Why are you shouting at the first person who ever came to Arvasaras and told you the truth?"

As days went on, the miners continued to die helplessly in the Ice Field. At times they would attempt to draw CONCORD into the Ice Field early in the day, but that would only put the hulks in the asteroid belts at risk, as I would strike there and redirect CONCORD. After all, those people were just as guilty of defiling highsec as the ice miners. At other times, the miners' corpmates would stand watch at the system's main station and call out when they saw me undock with a brutix. But the warnings largely went unheeded, as their miners were AFK, not watching local. Sometimes the "watchmen" would go AFK themselves. It must have been boring work since I remained in system all day and only undocked moments before each attack.

Typical of carebears, they gave up. The "PvP" contingent of the highsec mining corps made no pretense of protecting their comrades anymore. When a miner came under fire, the rest would scatter, leaving their friend to die. I pondered what species these people were. What do you call people who, when they're faced with a condition or fear, do nothing about it, they just run and hide?

...Civilized?

No.

As the days went on, the miners began to cede control of the system to me. What once was a crowded Ice Field covered in mackinaws and hulks was becoming empty. Sometimes there would be a few miners. At other times the belt was completely abandoned. When miners were killed, the mission-runners who inhabited the system would mock them in local for being foolish enough to mine when James 315 was around. Even the omnipresent secure containers thinned out, as the miners weren't there to refresh them (even anchored containers must be refreshed once every thirty days). Slowly, my dream was becoming a reality.

I remarked at the beauty of the Ice Field when it was devoid of miners. Sensing opportunity, one miner tanked up a hulk completely, replacing mining-enhancing modules with more tank mods. He went to the Ice Field and dared me to clean him out. I told him that I would kill whomever I chose to kill, at the time of my own choosing. The miners did not control my game; I controlled theirs. Duly chastened, the miner and his cheerleaders in local crawled back into their holes and wept. I resumed killing miners whenever I felt like it, which was pretty often.

Whoa there is no way you wrote that without using a bot.

And, naturally, I have great admiration for the Goons. The highsec miners knew they hated Goons--they couldn't quite articulate why--but they had only the dimmest sense of Eve's history. In a few sentences, the basic history of Eve is this: Once upon a time, there were two forces in Eve. There were the Goons and the Band of Brothers. BoB represented order, dominion, and an empire without end. An empire based on the oldest players in Eve--the elites--and the developers of the game itself. They would run it all, a single invincible alliance that never lost. The rest of the players would be--if they were lucky--shunted into a series of slavish renter corps, which BoB called "pets." Nothing would ever change, and nothing would disrupt or challenge their order. A steady state end to the galaxy of Eve. Boredom.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Goons represented chaos. A mercurial force, they were as prone to internal combustion as they were to destroying (or at least offending) outsiders. They were uncontrolled and unpredictable. They had a fondness for originality and disorder.

For all the different alliances and coalitions in Eve, and for all the multitudes of different names on the Eve map, there were only ever two choices for Eve. There was BoB, and there was Goon. That was it. For the most part, the people of Eve leaned toward BoB. They wanted order and peace. They wanted to be ruled by the elite. They wanted to be renters, pets, and slaves. So they served BoB, feared BoB, aspired to become members of BoB, and believed in BoB's ultimate victory no matter what. Like the highsec miners of today, they didn't want to challenge anything. Eve shuffled down the path toward BoB rule.

I had a different idea. At the critical moment I gently persuaded Eve onto a different course. The Goons won. BoB is dead. And so the animating force in the Eve community is the Goon. Their culture is at the core of the post-BoB Eve. The Goon influence is under the surface of everything. As I said, even the highsec miners unthinkingly parrot the Goon memes.

That was the decision I made, based upon the vision I had for Eve. I still believe it was the right one. Regardless, it's the one that everyone else will have to live with.

The highsec miners hate the Goons, and they barely recognize the name of BoB. But they do seem to understand that whatever BoB was, it was a bad thing. That makes me smile.



Gentle Eve forums reader, I hope you have enjoyed reading my thoughts. It's been my privilege to share them with you. I didn't mean to drone on for so long, but I had to do something while waiting out all of those 15-minute aggression timers.

I hope that I have given you a better understanding of highsec miners and suicide gankers. And a better understanding of my dream of a highsec without any mining.

And I hope, dear reader, that you will destroy some highsec miners of your own.

-315

Holy ****, you're a lunatic.

10/10

Is there a tl;dr?

You're an idiot. Finished the whole first post, wasn't worth my time to continue on.

An interesting read which succeeded in inverting my opinion of highsec miners and the gankers who target them.

Though this entire thread is going to be just people commenting on the sheer number of words, as if they've never read a book before in their life.