EVE General Discussion

The huge majority of journeys by empty freighters do not result in the freighter being attacked. We can easily infer this from the fact that people routinely fly their freighters AFK, which is something that one would only do if the perceived risk was very low.

Would you agree with the following proposition

"If the risk of an empty freighter is being ganked is so low that it's not worth the effort to actively fly it (never mind take more active precautions), then that risk is already low enough that it does not require rebalancing."

If not, why not?

Define "Significant". Additionally, you presume that the only reason to get these kills is for money. Not everyone in the game really cares about that; heck, I don't care about it. I get 0 ISK from everything I blow up and even I'll lose ships without getting anything on the killboard to show for it - and these are more expensive ships than CODE. files most of the time, and this is talking as someone who doesn't suicide gank. It's a game, I want to have fun, and I'm not going to let a concern about short term quarterly profits get in the way of that. Why should Highsec be any different in that regard?

So did you miss the part where the players mainly engaging in those activities (i.e Goons / Code & friends) are capable of doing so because it does not affect their actual EVE gameplay. It is all about having amassed too much ISK/power/whatever you wish to call it, so you can have multiple accounts with multiple alts and an endless supply of disposable ships. But everyone knows that right?

I do believe ganking, suicide or otherwise, must be a part of the game. However it has to be accessible on equal terms and consequences to all. Can anyone honestly say that a player with one character/account without a huge wallet or a huge corp supporting him can engage in non stop suicide ganking of that scale? You need to be able to fund this or you will be left with a -10Sec character in a rookie ship and 1ISK. But guess what..Most if not all of the leet suicide gankers dont care beacuse "Hey its not my main anyway" Anonymity at its finest. And power stuggle is a b****h yeah. But in this case power struggle seems to be extremely outbalanced.

My bottom line on it: Let it unfold for as long as it can sustain itself and see where it takes us. And have someone taking the ISK bets.

Using one character is unnecessarily restricting, whereas with one account, all 3 slots used for alts and some knowledge I'd say yes there's a definite possibility that a solo player could fund, not necessarily non stop, but certainly a double digit amount of ship loss a week

IIRC CODE./James don't restrict their SRP to alliance members, if you kill in the name of James 315 then the odds are you can get at least some of your costs back if even if you use a non sanctioned ship or fit, although many find their operations self supporting.

Anonymity which is available to all, there's nothing stopping anybody using an alt to haul, an alt to trade, an alt to mission, an alt to scam or gank etc.

See both of the above.

How is it out of balance?
Is AFK piloting a major risk factor?
If it is, how do you reduce that risk?
Is the current level of freighter traffic not reaching its destination due to suicide ganking excessive?
What would you consider to be an acceptable loss level of freighter traffic not reaching its destination due to suicide ganking?

Personal freighter use certainly, 3rd parties like RedFrog and Push-X are a win-win if you set your collateral at the right level, it's a no brainer.

The big issue with this is that anything an individual can do, a rich, powerful organization of experienced players can do much, much better (the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts and all that). If you make it more expensive for an Alliance to do a thing, then it'll have to be more expensive for the individual to do as well, otherwise the Alliance's members could do things as individuals with alts or even on their mains and due to having greater numbers and resources, will be able to do this better than an individual or a smaller group would be capable of doing the same activity. Given that Hyperdunking is a good example of this - it's more expensive and difficult to pull off overall than a large group of players making the same attempt - removing it wouldn't really affect much; and given that I doubt most of Goonswarm's money comes from Freighter ganks (nor, I understand, does CODE.'s - they rely on donations I think), changing highsec mechanics really isn't going to affect them that much. There might be an argument to be made about rebalancing things, but that's a bigger, more complex argument, and it's not going to be solved simply by changing a single mechanic, and it's not going to be changed with a mechanics change in another area of space from where their money is made.

EDIT: Additionally I might also note that simply being in a Nullsec Alliance doesn't grant you an army of alts; there are many that I know of that rely entirely on Alliance services because they can't/won't create an alt to do these things themselves - in fact I rely on Alliance Jump Freighters because I don't feel comfortable making routine runs in a Jump Freighter quite yet - and although I do have a large amount of alts, these were actually created back when I was in Eve University. Which doesn't furnish these sorts of things, or support you in skilling them up (skillbooks are only for your main and all that). The reason I have them is there's an obvious improvement in gameplay to using them for various reasons. Given that I was a poor noob when I created them, the idea that only the wealthy nullsec dwellers can afford to use them seems to be a bit mistaken; rather it's likely that they are capable of being wealthy nullsec dwellers because they have these alts to assist them in their gameplay.

Ok, then what was the obvious reason?

Given that there's been several stories of out of corp alts hauling stuff for null power blocks being ganked, as well as a number of nullsec bloc members who have been ganked, I don't think it's entirely that (to be honest, I'd wager that most freighters are carrying stuff for Nullsec bloc members, either for stuff eventually destined for Nullsec, or to assist in their money making).

Additionally, Goons are more than happy to shoot at people from other power blocs and there is some bad feelings between some of the varying blocs. I don't think they'd hold fire just because you're part of a power bloc; if anything I'd think if they found a freighter from my own Alliance they'd be more than happy to explode it in Highsec.

I think the politics in this game and the mechanics are far, far more complicated than you're giving them credit for.

Many eve players aren't tolerant of anything these days. But I digress. Personally I have a real hatred for game companies that make their game "cheat" in order to introduce difficulty into it. I have to say that I really LOVE CCPs blackboard idea for NPCs to make them act more human without giving them stupid stats, or making them able to ignore rules that players can't. I'd love it if concord were also to get this Blackboard and be able to act in reasonable ways to dampen criminal activity without altogether removing it. See the argument for realism works both ways. Even in our modern lives crime still exists, and to be fair a lot of it is not prosecuted due to a lack of evidence or lack of police capability. The difference is that criminals in real life are doing it hidden whereas these ganks are happening in front of the police in front of 50 witnesses in broad day light. And people want to sit there and argue that there wouldn't be a massive man hunt to bring perps like that to some immediate justice?! That's really hard for me to believe.



Considering that none of my suggestions that I've offered would change the mechanic so that gankers can't operate at all, we will have to agree to disagree.



Well I agree with you there, which is why I haven't argued for it to be effectively impossible. The ending to Breaking Bad is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. People have short memories and after a few months a lot of the steam of the manhunt for Walt had died down. My point is merely that while we do have short term memories because people go back to their daily lives, they aren't 15 minutes short. I think maybe introducing a jump fatigue like mechanic to ganking in hi sec would likely be a good way to make things more realistic without removing it completely.

I know exactly what he's saying. His argument boils down to "I believe this mechanic is balanced and CCP has stated they believe this mechanic is balanced, therefore it shouldn't change."

My point is that CCP has been that way on other things before, but players have changed their mind and changes happened. I respect other people's opinions, but at the end of the day that argument is not going to dissuade me from trying to show CCP a different line of thinking.



No I'm not. No where did I make that argument. Please see my original post.