Crime & Punishment

Capsuleers of the White Knight Community,

I'm not here to talk about morality, alleged sociopathic disorders, or even James315 and the followers of his Code with you. I'm also not here to talk about how to avoid becoming the target of a suicide gank. These topics have been discussed at length and I feel that nothing I say will add to them. No, I'm here to talk about basic game mechanics with you.

Quite frankly, you're all doing this whole "White Knight" thing wrong.

A suicide gank is like any other PvP encounter: each side has a certain number of ships, and those ships have certain abilities and durability. Instead of looking at a suicide gank as the destruction of some poor, unarmed target by a bunch of raving sociopaths, look at it as a fleet fight. For the sake of this discussion, I'm going to be referring to ganks of large targets such as Orcas, Freighters, etc. as solo ganks of smaller targets present an entirely different set of dynamics.

The Red Team ("the gankers") have some number of ships that tend to heavily favor DPS at the expense of mobility, durability, EWar, and tackle, while the Blue Team ("the victims") have at least one ship, their HVU (High Value Unit), that is generally unarmed but very durable and, in the form of CONCORD and other NPCs, enough DPS, tackle, and EWar to totally wipe the Red Team off of the field in 30 seconds or less.

Red Team's goal is to do enough damage to the HVU to kill it before they die, and Blue Team's goal is to not let the HVU die. Pretty straightforward, right?

Now, let's add some extra ships to Blue Team. These are piloted by you, the White Knights, trying to keep Blue Team's HVU from dying. Blue Team already has more than sufficient DPS, tackle, and EWar, so what do they need if their goal is to keep the HVU alive?

They need logistics. Lots and lots of logistics. No DPS, no tackle, and no EWar. They already have plenty of that on the field.

Given current game mechanics, remote reps are insanely powerful, especially if the unit being repped has high resists. Assume a unit has 25% resist against incoming DPS. 100 DPS gets reduced to 75 EDPS (Effective DPS), but 100 RPS (Reps Per Second) gets boosted to 125 ERPS (Effective Reps Per Second). Each 1% of damage resistance gives almost a 3% edge to friendly reps. That's a huge advantage!

Many will say that a handful of logi cruisers will never be able to counter the DPS that Red Team fields. The thing is, you don't have to. All you have to do is counter enough of Red Team's DPS for them to not be able to chew through the HVU's pool of hit points before all of Red Team's ships die.

In this scenario, remote reps have a few additional advantages. Unlike DPS and EWar, Blue Team can have the HVU locked and ready to rep before Red Team even lands on grid. DPS and EWar for Blue Team get their application delayed by the time it takes to lock Red Team, but remote reps are instant. Also, there is the deterrent factor. Red Team is smart, they won't engage if they don't think they have the numbers. A gang of logistics cruisers, properly fit and located, would likely serve as a viable deterrent force.

This is what I propose for White Knights. Put away your combat ships and form up gangs of AB-fit, T1 logistics cruisers. They don't even need to be cap stable, they only need to be able to run all of their remote reps for about 45 seconds, then toggle some off for cap stability after the fight if necessary. Orbit your HVU 50+km at high speed and avoid clumping up. This would allow you to land effective reps on the HVU instantly while presenting a difficult target for Red Team.

Unfortunately, even this will only delay Red Team. If they fail on their first attempt, they will likely be back soon after as their bumping ships will keep the HVU from warping away. All you can do is keep the HVU alive as long as possible in hopes that it escapes.

In the end, being a "White Knight" is about saving the HVU, not killing the Red Team. Perhaps you should re-brand yourself as "Guardian Angels" to reflect your true mission, which is saving ships, not destroying them. After all, taking cheap shots at ships that are unlikely or unable to shoot back just for profit, killmails, or, heaven forbid, fun makes one a sociopathic bully who sucks at PvP, right?



Glory be to the Blessed Mother of Acceleration, Mover of All Things.

Bronson Hughes
Grand Knight Accelerator



EDIT: Thanks for the catch Tengu!

Follow link in Sig for hilarious white knight proteus.

Thing is, the WK crowd is pretty terrible at eve.

I think I've lost more brain cells (due to head->desk) to their fitting advice and general tactics than any other activity I can think of at the moment (incl. binge drinking and watching cult-classic movies, etc.).

I was talking with some of their "uppers" (I guess?) about actually doing something about "the ganking problem" (a.k.a. "creating more fun emergent gameplay, and probably getting wardec'd by marmites among others"), and the response I got was to the effect of "but ~effort~".

What the hell? Angel cartel is there, so who was running a mission? Story! I demand it!

Thanks for the catch. I meant Red indeed!



As long as the Guardian Angels don't loot any of Red Team's wrecks, they shouldn't go suspect. Suspect-free remote-repping of neutrals has been a bone of contention with certain folks for quite a while. Whether the Guardian Angels can keep their grubby paws off of someone else's loot is another matter entirely....

So I'm bad at ~Elite Hisec PVP~, but isn't repping someone ignored by crimewatch (same as ship/cargo scanning)?

God damn man. That's a great short story!

Great fight.

^ Something like this could work ... you'd just need to form a group of WK who don't belong to the current WK community, as it will take too long to get them useful (i.e. not fitting terribad) ... not to mention having to teach them how to do cap and rep chains...

Edit -- on the other hand, you're ending up being a reactionary force ... better to just try taking over a system somewhere with like-minded people, and not trying to bother protecting the lemmings from themselves.

I would counter that it's not all of them -- sure, the ones in player corps, who end up getting kicked around enough to realize that the should go on to a group that knows better (lowsec, nullsec, w-space) ... but the NPC corp ones are usually stuck in their "gankers are teh ebil!" mentality.

(Note, the above is a gross generalization of types that make up the WK community, of sorts.)