Ships & Modules

My freighter is armed.

Probably a few battleships.

Yes. The idea of Armed Merchant Cruisers has been floated around more than a few times but never seems to get any traction. Freighters were going to receive rig slots as an upgrade, but received low slots and more fitting instead. I agree that a few mid slots and more fitting (CPU, power grid) would give some interesting options. The biggest threat to freighters seems to be from getting bumped off gate, so I'm not sure having the ability to arm them would be any deterrent to waves of cheap gank ships. Nor would there seem to be much point in an armed escort, since the only valuable ships seem to be interceptors to scout and web freighters into insta-warp.

while armed haulers sound nice, cloaky ones will always be a lot safer. i cant imagine anyone whod prefer a pvp ship to haul all their shiny stuff in. it´d probably only be used as bait with a hold full of cap boosters and quadruple reps or something ridiculous like that.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I'd imagine they're defenseless to make you have to choose, be able to defend yourself, or haul a crap ton of stuff. Having friends to escort you is useless. Remind me again what an escort could do against a fleet of suicide ships? Maybe jam them, but not much else.

And ever try and get someone to regularly escort you and/or guard say a mining fleet? It's boring as hell, so no one is going to do it more than once.

I don't really think freighters need to be armed, yes a bit more fitting options would be nice, but eh. But claiming "make friends" is completely erroneous.

So, you basically say "No, you're wrong" and don't suggest any firm suggestions. That's real good thinking there, buddy.

Dawh, thank you, I thought it was only simple thinking, but thanks for the compliment

And yes, you are wrong. Having friends is not a valid suggestion. I don't think there are any major problems with freighters as they are (maybe some mechanics with ganking, but not with freighters themselves), so no, I don't have any firm suggestions.

Thanks again for the compliment, buddy

This and all the others like it just kill me. While it may be true from a technical perspective do you really think it is a viable option?

So let us examine the life of a convoy guard in high sec.

Countless hours spent flying from here to there watching the paint dry on the hull of a giant whale of a ship.

And then one day it does happen the freighter you are guarding is attacked by gankers so you rush in to kill said gankers.

And about the time you manage to start to kill some of them you explode in that blinding flash of light that signals the arrival of Concord on the scene and when it clears.

You find yourself in your pod floating amid the wreckage of what used to be the ship you were flying as well as those of the gankers AND the freighter you were supposed to protect.

Yea I can just see the thousands upon thousands of players that would sign up for that job when there are other more fun and more lucrative things they could be spending their time on.

As I said it is all good in theroy but in the practical world of high sec aggression mechanics there is no effective way to guard a ship against gankers with guns / missiles unless the guns / missiles are on the ship being attacked.

As I state over and over, I am OK with ganking and I agree that there are many ways to avoid becoming a gank target and to escape from a situation but please stop with this lie about how you should just bring friends with guns / missiles.

Well, being more needlessly suspicious and wrong for it is, in my opinion, better than being less suspicious and being wrong. And the whole "trust no one" liner is more or less a hint at the notion that in Eve, treachery and foul play is not only permissive, it's even in some instances somewhat encouraged whereas in other MMOs it's often against the rules and bannable...that doesn't neccessarily mean that your own corp mates will turn on you in a heartbeat just by having the chance to, just that it's not against the rules CCP wants players to live by and that players can do so without fear of CCP's wrath.

The combination of the two are not necessarily contradictory if you really stop to think about it. "Trust no one" should actually be reworded into "Trust no one that hasn't earned your trust yet; if any, trust only those who you personally know have your back, but not just because they show up on overview as green or purple." Just because you're corp mates doesn't always guarantee allegiance and you should give your trust out only to those, again, who have earned your trust. You're not wrong to question that, though -- both ideals being phrased often by one player to the next is quite misleading.

If anything, you should use your own judgement to predicting potentially scummy behavior rather than solely rely on some in-game player/player rating system; just like any pilot would tell you to "get your head out of the cockpit", keep your head on a swivle. If you don't know or trust the other members flying your wing, scrub the op until you get word from someone you trust to vouch for them.

Logi and reppers are the best defense for a freighter. If you really don't like being ganked, get a Jump Frieghter, and take a different route. Freighter ganking only occurs at certain bottlenecks. JF eliminates bottlenecks because you can take a jump into low and then a jump into high to get around them.