Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TheMeanPerson, you sound like your overcompensating for something....

1.) The concept that "cargo scanning immunity" proves that cargo was meant to be scanned is very flawed. Double wrapping containers to avoid cargo scanning has been around much, much longer than the recent (in game terms) change to blockade runners. To combat this, gankers historically gank ships with double wrapped packages on the mere assumption it is valuable. Why does this tactic no longer suffice? Last year, about this time, I'd never put a double-wrapped package in my freighter because it painted a big gank-me sign on it. Have gankers grown soft (or broke)? Why do we suddenly need this change?

2.) I believe highsec ganking is generally alright. At the same time, I also believe that it does need periodic balancing and rebalancing. CCP has been doing this for a very long time, from before Concord even existed. These changes include having the corp hangar of an orca scannable, or the loss of insurance to concord victims, or the introduction of ABC's, or the changes to concord response times, or .... The latest changes to freighters (+3 low slots) have allowed haulers to add some additional protections and shift the risk / reward balance. It also allows them to make some pretty stupid risk/reward decisions. Is there a massive increase in tanked freighters out there that dramatically changed the (r)isk/reward value?

3.) The marketing campaign for gankers sucks if this is your threadnaught. Yall shouldn't give a **** about double wrapped packages, and be focusing on have CCP fix Orca SMA drops (which I didn't know until just now). What a waste of angst!

4.) Ganking always favors the gankers. You're a moron if you don't believe that. I'm not saying that ganking doesn't involve a decent amount of organization and/or effort, but that doesn't change the fact that ganking still favors the gankers. Why? Because competent gankers don't bother attacking until they have an almost guaranteed mark. The ONLY risk in ganking is whether the target drops enough loot to cover your losses, but actually performing the gank is the majority of fun (for the gankers), loot be damned. Furthermore, any 7 year old can identify the criteria needed to make ganking profitable in the long run. A hauler has two options to not get ganked:
a.) Avoid the gankers. This is done by web-to-warp, by using fast ships, cloaks, and by avoiding key systems.
b.) Skew the ISK to EHP ratio. This is done by tanking, by obfuscating cargo, and by carrying less value each trip.

5.) It is not an EXPLOIT to use double-wrapped packages. As already pointed out, you get to see that someone is hauling something, even if you don't know what that is. Gank them, that's how gankers historically counter this. Don't be shy, don't be frugal, don't be a ******* pansy. Attack! Please explain why this tactic no longer works?

As much as I enjoy watching Gankbears cry, and while I have been guilty of double wrapping Carbon and sending an alt afk through trade routes in a hauler with it until someone takes the bait. I feel that Double Wrapping should be fixed, I don't consider it an exploit per say but a bug i feel that it was left in intentionally as a way to counter/deter gankers. I would like to see this bug fixed by either preventing double wrapping or making scanners penetrate it regardless of how many times it has been wrapped.

If / When is fixed they should introduce a skill or module that would either give a chance for a random selection of items to be hidden or if they are feeling dickish has a chance to generate false readings when scanned. Make it a low slot items (of even make it take up 2 low slots somehow) so freighters have to sacrifice cargo/agility for 'safety'.

I'm tired of hearing that no ships should be unscannable just because blockade runners are immune to scanning.
The venture and deepspace transports have +2 warpcore strength.. so they should be the only ones to be able to escape 2 points or 1 scram right? fitting warpstabs on other ships is clearly an unintended exploit of a mechanic because why else would those ships have that bonus if any other ship can have it too by fitting two lows. My solution: make a low slot mod that renders a ship unscannable (not partly, not sometimes.. 100% scanning immune). That way it will be 100% obvious that it's intended and working as such (as i believe it is right now).

ps. after the mod is introduced feel free to make cargo scanners see through layers of plastic wrap... :p

If, as OP says, a GM said it's a non-issue, I'd have to say I agree. Not really seeing the exploit here. Just makes it riskier for gankers, possibly gambling they'll get Concorded over a double-wrapped chunk of trit.

You know what else is down the line?
A light at the end of the tunnel
Except its a several ton locomotive barreling toward you with a 2 mile string of cars loaded with crushed iron ore.

Beware when CCP says they change things, for they are a harsh mistress and accept no bitterness from players

PS, kill everything and then you dont have to worry about the double wraps.
It worked for hanging judges with criminals, the logic can work for you!

This doesn't impact the customs scans. They have magic scanners that can see through anything.

And the statements "This is not an exploit" and "It's something we don't really like and want to change" are not mutually exclusive.

So I'm here confirming that everyone who disagrees from your point of view is not having a logical conversation, but everyone who agrees with everything you said is logical.

-You have failed to prove to me why this needs to get fixed considering this would break subcontracting a courier contract to someone else.
-You even contradicted yourself when you stated that double wrapping your items will not save your ship after you stated that the high end of double wrapping is 50 billion isk haul, which would mean only a fraction of the people who double wrap would need to have something more then carbon, and you could still turn a profit.

I will agree that the value should be added to the killboard, but that being said, does it matter what your killboard says if you get the items in the wrap to drop anyways? It's not like it was really a 0 isk kill, unless of course you got punked with carbon.

Especially since everyone that got on the km get the full value of the kill, instead of dividing the value up among everyone.

Late to this party but it is an interesting read.
Nice to see that those who are normally laughing it up at others tears are shedding a few themselves so I guess it is all fair play.

Just my thoughts on this topic.

As others have pointed out because CCP admits that a situation needs attention does not make it an exploit. And because you think it is an exploit does not mean that it is.

What the OP is asking for is a risk free way of ganking to add to his KB. The op wants to be able to scan every ship(minus blockade runners) that wonders by so he can decide if the rewards are worth the loses he knows he will take completely eliminating any risk. To add an element of risk for the gankers to the situation there needs to be a way for the potential victim to balance the scales, double wrapping accomplishes this very nicely. As a ganker you know there IS CARGO in the hold you just do not know what it is or how much it may be worth and that adds the element of risk for you.

If CCP removes double wrapping then they need to give the potential targets something to balance the scales. Several thoughts are skills as mentioned above, partial cloaking capabilities, or go with a real world solution and give the haulers a fitting like the radar jamming capabilities of the real world we all live in.

It has been stated that if CCP wanted the haulers to be able to partially or completely hide the contents of their cargo bay they would give the ship a bonus like that given to the blockade runners and my response is this. In the world of EVE it seems logical that enterprising(or scared) haulers would adapt existing technologies to serve their needs, after all this type of thing has gone on throughout all of recorded history.

Another factor here is to look at this game wide. In a recent dev blog CCP admits that there is a lot going on in worm holes that they did not intend to happen. It is the result of enterprising players figuring out the best way to use the game mechanics to their advantage in the same way cargo haulers use the double wrap. If CCP is going to eliminate an unintended situation like the double wrap then to be fair to all players they need to go through the entire game and eliminate ALL unintended uses of game mechanics. To be honest I hope they never do that, it is the interesting ways that people find to use the game mechanics that helps make this game as interesting as it is.

To me the simple resourceful use of a game mechanic becomes an exploit when it is used to give one segment of the players in the game an unfair advantage over all other players, an example was the recently discovered(by CCP anyway) drones exploit. In my assessment of this double wrap it does not give one segment of the game an unfair advantage over all others, it point of fact it simply balances a situation that has always favored the gankers.

I found these on the bio page of a contract hauler I passed in space the other day. Never thought I would need them but they seem appropriate to this discussion.

Ganker = One that does not poses the abilities or have the stones to take on a fair fight.
Ganker = School yard bully trying to prove to themselves how tough they are by fighting those who have little or no possibility to fight back.

Every gank has a risk. There's only a what, 30-40% chance of any particular item to drop? That doesn't even account for neutral loot-whores or other third-parties who might go and interfere. If you don't execute your gank in a quick, efficient and coordinated manner, then it is entirely likely that you'll wind up with nothing but one less ship and less sec-status to work with before you have to pay for tags (which do add up if you aren't getting any drops). And even if you do the gank perfectly, it's also enirely likely that you just won't get a drop and will be out of money and lose sec for nothing anyway.

The risk is that gankers are basically going all-in for what is effectively a gamble. A gamble that 90% of gankees could have avoided, I might add. Most people who get ganked bring it completely on themselves by either hauling an insane amount of stuff, or by not practicing safe hauling habits.

Most ganks don't give you a lot of profit, since you don't get a good drop in most cases. What allows gankers to make money in the end is playing the best odds possible over multiple ganks. Sometimes you get an amazing drop, but a lot of the time you just break even, or make a small profit.



It's called not hauling 10+ billion in a single ship on a single run. Or having support there to web you along. Or paying attention to names in local that might be tailing you. Not even incursion runners actually fly around in their shiny fits. They take proper precautions to allow themselves to fly around between sites without getting ganked.

All plastic wrap does is remove any risk for the hauler. It lets them, effectively, haul just about anything they want with negligable risk because now their charon is a mega-crane. Some gankers might go after it on principle, but give them a couple weeks and I'll show you a bunch of poor, broke-ass gankers.



So we should add modules that protect a ship against being probed down too, right? Because it's totally not fair if they're just sitting in empty space, semi-afk in an expensive booster, only to be probed down and killed. Any sort of scanning should have a counter right?



So, unless you can fix all the problems at once, you aren't allowed to fix an obvious problem that is being pointed out right now? That is some extremely stupid logic right there.



But, it gives *all* of the advantage to the haulers. There's literally no way for people trying to gank to counter the plastic wrap. Which essentially makes the whole gameplay style of cargo-scanning useless. I would call any work-around that completely nullifies an entire other play-style an exploit. Or at best a toxic mechanic that needs to be fixed. If haulers need such sweeping protection, why not just remove the cargo-scanner from the game completely? Being able to decide whether or not something is worth it is totally OP. Why not remove local chat in all of known space too? Being able to know how many hostiles are in system so that you can plan accordingly gives so many people such an unfair advantage.