EVE General Discussion

Please provide evidence on how you came to this conclusion. (Hint: contrary to popular belief, the forums is not an accurate representation of the actual playerbase)

In my experience, most gankers are not in it for the tears. Tears, like bounties are simply the cherry on top of the gank sundae.

It's about wiping out competition.

A small enterprise player only needs to lose two or three shipments before he is so far in the hole it's better to walk away.

There are a few ways to make it work. First off, you need to be using the right ship with the right fit. People like to fly around in Talwars and Thrashers for their suicide ganks. Which is fine, but a Catalyst is cheaper. Another thing I've seen a lot of new gankers try is fitting T2 stuff. If you're guaranteed a ship loss, why waste the money on T2 mods? A meta4 fit catalyst (fits can vary a bit) with the right skills and implants can take down a fairly well tanked Hulk before the Concordoken. All together, I usually never spent more than 3.5mil on my Cat fits. The implants can be pricy depending on where you buy them, but you can avoid having to replace implants by warping to a safe spot immediately after the Concordoken, then dock up as soon as is safely possible (I use the term "safe" relatively, of course).

Secondly, when you loot the wreck in your alt, you want to be looking for something specific. For me, it was the strip miners (especially the T2s). Skiffs and Procurers aren't the best targets because they only have one high slot, so unless they have strip miners in their hold (which is unlikely) you're only going to get one strip miner from them. That's assuming the strip miner drops, of course. Then what you do is sell the strip miners BACK to the miners on the market at an elevated price. It's important that you at least sell them in the same region that you ganked them. No point in selling to miners who you aren't ganking. Naturally, the requires you to gank a LOT. Ganking with a pirate corp will help a lot, too. The more people there are ganking strips, the higher demand there will be for strips. The higher the demand for strips, the more you can inflate the price.

Sorry if this isn't the algebraic answer you were looking for, but that's basically how it works. Basically, you're stealing a ~3.6mil (Hek prices) lolly-pop from a toddler and selling it back to them for 4 or 5 mil (or what ever you've managed to elevate the price to). Considering the meta4 Cat only costs a total of ~3.5mil, you're making a decent amount more than you're losing. Even if you only manage to sell one strip miner for the normal price of ~3.6mil, you're still making more than enough to replace your loss. I hope this helps you to understand the profitability of suicide/hisec ganking. It isn't exactly the most lucrative profession (especially when the miners catch on and won't come out to play for a few days), but it gets the job done.

This is genius. Perhaps we could consider the cost of ganking a pod with no implants a price worth paying for the good ones to be found?

Economic justification my ass. Try getting into the implant market, and telling me that podding isn't a strict necessity to keep the economy going.

I am actually disappointed with the answers so far. I was hoping someone would make an attempt at an algebraic forumula that would include such variables as tears, quantity and quality of the victim rage mixed in with some irrelevant ISK considerations.

But I am glad that Veers posted an unpopular opinion to spark animosity.

Profitable? Compared to what? If you have to "pick the right target," which means you have to "wait around a lot," how is that profitable in terms of ISK per hour? If you're after tears, just any target will do. If you don't get the target's you'll certainly get your own, unless you're not even sensitive to yourself (which wouldn't surprise me.)

Even with the above said, there is still too much profit in ganking. Ganking should be costly. They should pay dearly for those tears, especially if it's that important to them. They'd pay any price to do it. Make them pay an actual cost,
guess what...they'll find something else to do.

CCP is doing the ganking. Not you.

Whether you become 'emotionally distressed' or not has nothing to do with the pleasure and lolz I take in removing something from your possession that you were not entitled to, by virtue of your inability to defend it. Additionally, what you find abhorrent is irrelevant to what is and is not actually abhorrent. Your personal subjective application of morals to pixels is about as mundane as a bricklayer's lunch hour.

That's not right, you should ask an actuary about it.

Here is Buck Futz's gank rating scale:

Did their mining barge/Exhumer pop? Awesome!
Did I pop their pod and hit implants? Even better!
Did I pop them previously? Bonus!
Did I collect my own bounty? Bonus!
Was I able to move all my T2 weapons & mods into the Orca's fleet bay before getting Concorded? Bonus!
Did I scoop their wreck, get good drops? Bonus!
Did they send hate mail, call me a ****** (ie. black-skinned) in local chat, or petition me? Boner!

Did they quit EVE forever and stop sending $$$ to CCP? Priceless.

More pink slip announcements for DEVs/GMs is the long-term goal...until Ero1, Fighter Jets, D400, DJ Entropy, Bob Starseeker and the rest are unbanned, a public apology from CCP Falcon is rendered and SP refunded.