Player Features and Ideas Discussion

For weeks, months... no, YEARS, complaints (sometimes whining, other times straight-up salty tears) have been aired about the phenomenon of bumping freighters, which has further spawned other creative uses of game mechanics - most recently: hyperdunking.

One of the most ludicrous (and sadly, often offered) solutions is to assign criminal status to someone who bumps. To try to determine something so abstract and subjective as intent via something as concrete and objective as code would be virtually impossible. Imagine all the criminally flagged people floating around trade hubs like Jita - it would be absurd.

I fully applaud self-described "content creators" for their efforts to inject a little danger into highsec, and bear no hostility or ill will toward them. However, there is one aspect of freighter bumping (and subsequent ganking) that I find bothersome: the catalyst (pun intended) for the process is the bumper himself. Without active bumping, many freighter ganks simply would not occur, likely relegated only to those who are AFK autopiloting and occurring during the 'slowboat' to the gate (which leaves a 1- to 2-minute window to undock and warp to the target).

A common response to the bitter, angry bears is simply to bring firepower to counter either the bumper (better be able to unload 60-80k EHP quickly - or more), counter the gank ships, or to not AFK. The latter point aside, to counter the gank ships requires a well-coordinated effort (to avoid sec status degradation) and could be done; however, the bumper (already noted as the key figure in this game) is not affected in any way whatsoever and can continue bumping at will while the attackers reload (if hyperdunking). Attacking the bumper will incur a security status hit, as well, but over time security status will dip to the point where those trying to defend a freighter are themselves outlaws (and we all know how CCP feels about recycling alts to avoid the effect of negative security status). So, make the bumper a legal target, you say? Good luck with that, since they tend to hide in undeccable NPC corporations. At the end of the day, they get to continue bumping without any repercussions whatsoever, and that is where the imbalance lies.

The bumper relies on his navigation skills and related modules to disrupt the freighter navigation by denying the ability to align and warp out, effectively pinning the freighter in place for an easy gank. A fair counter should be similar conceptually - a way to disrupt the bumper's navigation ability. Bump the bumper? As the bumper is bumping a target moving often less than 50 m/s (as they are slowly aligning and gaining velocity), to insist that the navigation-based counter is to hit a target moving closer to 2,000 m/s would seem tp be less than fair by comparison. The solution is actually quite simple and would, in my estimation, be incredibly easy to incorporate into the game:

Make stasis webifers a non-offensive module.

Bumpers, who disrupt navigation without repercussion should be able to be countered by having THEIR navigation disrupted without penalty - aggression-free webbing would make this happen. Implementing this change would make the freighter ganking chess game more complex, requiring more decisions in tactics to counter the counter (do the carebears honestly think the gank squads would allow webbers to roam free to pin their Machariel pilots?).

Outside of this specific scenario where this change would be beneficial, I cannot see where free use of webs would be a game-breaking change. Sure, there are those who would be inclined to abuse the mechanic to grief - but that was addressed with "bumping just for the sake of bumping" with no gank or ransom demand. A rule in the same spirit could apply. It would make friendly freigher-webbing easier to accomplish: those in an NPC corporation, or in a player corporation that has banned friendly fire, would no longer have to rely on using the duel mechanic for an unintended purpose. Plus, it would eliminate the irritating 60-second aggression timer for simply webbing.

I welcome your comments, and should I ever be ganked in a freigher, I offer a "o7" and "gf" in advance, because the chess board will be a bit more level with the implementation of this suggestion.

1: Duel your alt in the freighter.
2: Web them into warp before bumpers connect.
3: ?????
4: Profit.

Please see the already linked response. Thread locked.