EVE General Discussion

This is the core of our disagreement, so I'm going to carefully explain why PvP safe areas are game breaking for EvE and why a player able to make himself completely safe is fine.

Sitting comfortably? This is going to take a while.

Most of this applies to all of EVE, but let's keep this within context of HiSec.

The hauling profession requires the haulage pilot to make decisions about his trip. He needs to decide which ship is best suited to the role, what its fitting needs to be, whether he needs an escort, how much cargo (ISK value) he should be carrying to name a few considerations. Each of these decisions impact how quickly he makes money, what kind of overhead he needs to pay and most notably: whether or not he is able to reach his destination with his ship intact.

Consider Dave and Phil:

Dave could, for example fly a cargo worth no more than 100mil ISK, in his fully tanked Nereus, while actively piloting it to its destination. The ship is low profile enough and agile enough that ganking and bump-tackle shouldn't be a concern, hence no need for an escort. Alternatively, Phil could shoot for as much profit as possible, regardless of risk. He could carry a billion ISK in his fully cargo fitted Iteron and AFK autopilot to his destination. The latter decision can easily make a lot of money with very little effort, but the odds of actually reaching his destination are drastically reduced.

Dave's income might be lower on paper, but it's much more reliable. Phil's desire for a huge payout with little effort will likely cost him dearly.

As the Phils of HiSec make poor decisions that make haulage unprofitable for them, the Daves of HiSec enjoy a larger portion of the overall haulage industry. "What bodes ill for my competitors bodes well for me."

Additionally, there's real choice between various ships. How big is my cargo? Is it ridiculously valuable? What's the quickest way to move it? What's the best route? Is it insanely bulky? Do I need to move it outside HiSec? The different answers to these questions result in different ships being chosen for specific jobs.

What happens if CCP made HiSec safe? Let's say that all damage and negative status effects cannot be inflicted without some sort of legal agression. What happens?

Does tank need to be considered? Not if you're literally invulnerable, no. What about speed? Again, not really, considering that the most player-time efficient way of moving anything would be to simply AFK autopilot everything. Avoidance of danger zones, watching out for ganker activity, escort requirements? Nope, none of that. Suddenly there's no reason to choose Nereus over Iteron, ever. There's no real reason to consider anything but an Iteron, not even for very small packages. Freighters become the undisputed end-game of haulage. No reason to cloak or instant-align, no reason to use escort. Every reason to not use a freighter in HiSec today is gone. There's no reason to limit the value of a haul for loss mitigation. Want to move 100b ISK in a single run? No worries!

Under this system, players can move cargos of any size for a fraction of the price, today. PushX currently charge approx 120mil ISK for a 5bil freighter load from Jita->Dodixie (rush). In safe HiSec, that same service will offer to do the same job with no practical collateral limit for a fraction of the cost. Where do you think the newbie will fit in with that kind of competition? What will a newbie do with a 30,000m3 cargo bay when all potential customers are only willing to pay 100k ISK for a 10b ISK haul?

This is why a perfectly safe HiSec is broken. You take away a player's ability to differentiate himself from the rest of the player base. You take away a massive chunk of depth as all decisions become trivial. A player's sole concern is to fit for as much cargo as possible while cramming in as many contracts as possible.

Didn't you know? He never argued that point, instead it was a roundabout way of showing us that making yourself safe in HiSec is against the interests of the game.

Man you guys sure LOOOOVE to exaggerate. I have "demanded" exactly zero things be changed in this game.



Well if I thought I lost this argument days ago I would have stopped. But logic would follow that if you feel you won then it would be pointless to continue to respond to my posts in this thread. So are you claiming victory and leaving?

Apart from the constant calls for "more consequences for busy gank systems from faction navies" AKA, more NPC protection.




Yea well you haven't.

Read the post. Learn.

Oh, so it took you all of those words to admit that there is no such thing as 100% safety. Great. Same page.

Lol, no. You guys like to go down the rabbit hole, so I just followed you down it.

Well, for starters, when you were first pressed to give an example of a "perfect gank", you gave the incredibly ignorant answer of "gank the webber", as though you thought that such a thing would actually feasibly work.

So you're displaying a large level of ignorance of the very mechanic you've been trying to claim needs a nerf for the last twenty or so pages.

Let's start with that.

Just in case this wasn't clear the first time: "The point of my logic is to paint you guys into a corner"



So why the farce?

If you guys are constantly going to argue that only gankers are qualified to talk about the mechanics of ganking and you (besides CCP) are the only people that can speak to whether ganking is or is not broken (despite the obvious conflict of interest), then the ONLY way for me to get a point across is for YOU or someone in your camp to mess up. This means that the goal of me saying very little was to draw someone out and make the argument for me.

Since, Hiasa Kite has so graciously provided the necessary evidence and because it did not come from me, you can not argue that I don't know what I'm talking about.

So I will ask you again, since you continue to deflect without actually proving your claims are true, what is your choice?

Continue to claim that webbing a ship based on your methods is unkillable/unstoppable, or admit that there is at least one scenario where your tactics can be effectively countered.

You keep trying to force this, but that's not how it works. If freighters that can stay safe is game breaking, then what of:

• Cloaking devices?
• Warp core stabilizers?
• Interdiction nullificattion?
• Instant alignment?
• Local intel?
• D-scan?
• Combat probes?
• Jump drives?
• Tactical bookmarks (instant docks/undocks etc)?
• And indeed, player communication

All of these mechanics, used properly and/or in some combination allow pilots to attain a very high degree of safety and in most cases, near-as-dammit 100% in quite literally any area of space.

To argue that safe freighters are game breaking is to argue all of the above are game breaking, too. Shockingly enough, I don't think anyone's going to support the removal of ALL of those features.