EVE General Discussion

There is no risk of ship loss in suicide ganking; ship loss is guaranteed and thus ganking is done in the most cost efficient fit possible, usually on an alt rolled specifically for the purpose in order to minimize the effect of being -10 on the player's meta game.

The only risk at play in a gank is the risk of failing to destroy the target with the allotted number of cost efficient gank ships which is virtually nonexistent if 1) the ganker has a complete awareness of the situation on grid (i.e. the presence or not of anti-gankers and the defensive capability of the target and 2) the ganker is proficient in the use of a calculator.

A guaranteed outcome is not a risk. Ganking is not risky because of ship loss, ship loss is guaranteed. Ganking is extremely low risk due to a rich environment of soft targets and a highly quantifiable question of success/failure.

I don't really disagree with anything else you've said but calling ganking risky due to ship loss is disingenuous and I wish people would stop. Those of us who understand how it works know better.

A guaranteed outcome is not risk. I don't risk the loss of ammunition in my mission runner, I know it's a certainty and factor that into my ISK/hr.

The only risk in ganking is due to RNG and the occasional anti-ganker, and RNG is irrelevant if one is more concerned about kill- and tear-mails.

TLDR CCP is bringing the risk/reward for highsec pvp into line with the rest of the game. Be a better pirate, cry less.

100% risk is a certainty, but in accounting terms you are both right. But he is right in that when you choose to suicide gank there isn't a chance you are going to lose your ship, you are going to lose it, no matter if you complete your objective or not.

So cry less, factor the price of that ship into your play and focused goal.

And on that last part, how many times do people have to tell you that you have no idea what the intent of all players is? How do you know that people don't sub for this game just to sit in a Retriever mining ice all day? And why are you so self important to be able to tell someone they can't or that they aren't allowed to enjoy doing that?

No, the actual definition of risk is: "Risk is the potential of losing something of value. Values (such as physical health, social status, emotional well being or financial wealth) can be gained or lost when taking risk resulting from a given action, activity and/or inaction, foreseen or unforeseen. Risk can also be defined as the intentional interaction with uncertainty. Uncertainty is a potential, unpredictable, unmeasurable and uncontrollable outcome, risk is a consequence of action taken in spite of uncertainty."

There is no uncertainty, there is no potential, so you can't call it Risk... you can however measure the impact because of the certainty.

Certainty dictates that we call it what it is, a consequence.

Disingenuous rubbish. PVE targets get hit more as a source of income and they basically can't fight back. The guy trying to haul stuff 7 jumps in sov null doesn't want to hear any stupid nonsense about hisec being more dangerous than null because *stats*.
You're clearly advancing some troll/agenda behind a simplistic reading of the f10 starmap filter. Did you just find them now? I've been using them to hunt ratters for years.
Hisec is the rookie pond.
Get out of hisec.

I'm sure we can come up with a few dozen definitions of risk drawn from different disciplines but I stand by my point that risk is commonly understood as having to do with the potential for harm, and as ship loss in a gank is 100% guaranteed it doesn't make sense to see it in terms of risk.

The risk, in a gank, is that you don't generate a return on your investment by destroying the target, and of course ganking for profit is dependent on RNG and the ability to retrieve the loot.

The quantifiable nature of ganking puts it closer to PvE than any other form of ship vs. ship PvP in the game.

On the subject of null, I'd argue that by virtue of their emptiness and/or the defense and intel capacities of alliance null, individual systems or clusters of null are for the most part extremely safe.

The danger comes from trying to transit through lots of different systems and clusters with a wide variety of inhabitants in want of targets.

You can find an empty null backwater and PvE for days without seeing another soul; getting there and back is the trick.

Well, no, in this case I think it's relevant here in a discussion about suicide ganking. It is missing the point, in a way. In the case of a suicide gank, there is no risk of ship loss. The ship is a transitive good, essentially the ship is ammunition. The actual risk involved, the only reason it might "fail" in this casr isn't that the ship is lost, it is if the ship is lost before the target ship is destroyed. For the most part, the risk in suicide ganking is partially in the player response, but more than anything given the circumstances it is a race against CONCORD.

And that does have a potential to make hisec more dangerous, especially for certain classes of ship and player skill levels, both of which are relatively easier to find in hisec. And with the population so lopsided in regards to the easiest targets, I can't say I'd be particularly surprised if that wasn't a number source. It certainly makes hisec more dangerous for many kinds of ships and players. With the present situation in nullsec, given the comparative mean skill levels of pilots, the comparative traffic in the areas, and the likelihood that a nullsec pilot is flying into friendly territory or in a ship that mitigates the danger (e.g. a jump freighter), you can probably make more money shooting noobie haulers using your ship as the ammunition equation. As long as you can do it reliably, and there is no reason to try to be dangerous in nullsec if you can go to hisec, swim in a sea of targets that are far easier to kill, and all it costs is one ship per target.

Now, granted, I think the point you're trying to make is that it SHOULDN'T be more dangerous, and for all intents and purposes it doesn't make any sense that you should be more likely to die in PVP action in hisec, but that's the problem with completely player-driven systems. If there aren't enough reasons not to, you can always count on players to make it easy on themselves. The game should be harder the further you get from starter areas, after all there are supposedly more expensive hauls out there and CONCORD doesn't cost you a ship. But from a pure player self interest standpoint, it is probably worth a ship per target if you can kill those targets 10 times faster and you can do it everytime.

It shouldn't be that way, but it can't surprise anyone if it is. Just because it's a player-driven sandbox game doesn't mean EVE isn't predictable and regular. It just operates by rules of player self interest, something we here on Earth have turned into a science. I don't know for sure that it's the case, but between the skewed hisec-nullsec populations and the calcification of the nullsec situation, I don't think it would surprise anyone. If trends continue, with nullsec becoming more desolate and benign while hisec becomes more populated by the majority of solitary players, I certainly expect that hisec would also contain more of the PVP, if we can refer to suicide ganking as PVP.

Though given that the only real risk is being killed by CONCORD, it might be more accurate that it's a PVE activity. Sure, a player loses his ship and cargo, and that should constitute PVP, but the ganker isn't really fighting the tanker, he's racing CONCORD more than anything.

"versus" implies opposition, whether both parties are actively fighting or not. Only if CCP finally took my advice and removed miners from counting as players would it count as PvP.

If you are acting in opposition to another player, especially in combat, it is a PvP activity. Rolling into someone's DED site, killing the faction spawn and taking their loot is PvP, doing it by yourself is not, there is no opposition present.

Here is a pretty important point. A lot of people tend to miss it, and start taking discussions very personally.

1. If you enjoy mining.. you love mining.. then the discussion is not about you. You can continue mining or doing anything else you love to do. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that PVP is nonconsensual in this game, and all pervasive the moment you undock.


2. If you hate mining, but you do it so you can pay for other aspects of EVE you do enjoy, then this discussion is not about you. Keep on grinding, but we know you'll stay because you have a goal in mind for having fun in the game.


3. If you don't enjoy mining, or you don't know if you enjoy mining.. then you are statistically significant. The discussion is about you. Most likely you're in an NPC corp, and it is very very likely you will quit the game within days or weeks of you doing this activity.

If we are talking about making EVE more exciting for players, then we are only talking about demographic #3. We don't care at all about the first two groups.

So I would suggest you (or anyone who falls in the first two demographics) not take the discussion personally. The problem is.. just because you enjoy mining doesn't mean everyone does. In fact, most people do find it boring and it puts them on the fast track to quitting the game.

Risk mitigation can be done by CCP. I think we see a skew towards crime being less risky. I don't know why CCP supports crime so much, but right now crime is the least riskiest thing to do in EVE.