Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Autopilot is not a sinful, but nerfing ganking to the point that AFK hauling is the most efficient way to "play" the game is poor game design. If you want logistics to be safe, then just make them safe and remove the ability of gankers to attack haulers. But if you want hauling to be a profession, and logistics to matter, there has to be some risk of failing at the task so "good" haulers can be better at the job than "bad" haulers.

To be honest, freighter hauling is already way too safe making it almost impossible for new players, or anyone not mostly AFKing a freighter, to make a competitive income as a hauler. Haulers get paid peanuts because as a profession it has been devalued by AFK freighter haulers taking most of the business and then going off to watch Netflix or doing something else out-of-game. The current ease of AFK hauling, mining, and ratting in this competitive PvP sandbox game is downright absurd. If there are any issues of "balance" CCP needs to address, it is in the parts of the game that provide benefits that do not scale with player effort or risk.

They definitely do not need to buff AFK hauling by increasing the costs of suicide ganking. If a replacement is needed for bumping, it will not come in the form of more in-built, free protection for highsec freighters, but rather something the freighter pilot will actively have to do. There needs to be ways to reward, smart, conservative, and attentive haulers, while leaving the stupid, lazy, greedy and AFK ones to be culled by the wolves. Raising the cost of suicide ganking will just turn more of the first group of "good" haulers, into the second group of "bad" haulers.

I like the snide insinuation by the carebear that the only freighters that should ever die are the ones headed out of highsec. Meaning exactly zero of them, since people use jump freighters for that.

Does he think his bullshit is fooling anyone here?

Freighters heading to (sov)null exist, but you will never, ever find them wondering alone, though HiSec (let alone leaving it) without considerable support. We're talking considerably more than a mere web friend.


Looking through your history, the most recent suggestion you seem to be referring to is to disable bumping but introduce a special module that allows you to bump at the cost of being made suspect.

The problem is that this idea does indeed buff AFK freighters. Specifically, I refer to the effect imposed by opportunistic PvPers. Not the carebears, not the white knights, but just random players that happen to spot a valuable ~450mil ISK faction battleship with a gimped tank (and in all likelihood a decent bounty which, for once would actually work as intended, so you've got that going for your idea, which is nice) that's free to shoot.

Should any opportunistic player engage that Mach, there's no defence. The Mach, with its poor tank and total lack of support is easy prey. Do note that shooting a suspect only creates a limited engagement, the Mach's fleet mates can do nothing to support the Mach.

Clarification from ye pirates that be: Would remote repping of a suspect ship confer suspect status to the relevant logi ship? Pretty sure it does in which case, yes, the Mach is definitely toast.

What they don't get though, is picked off at gatecamps by gankers. Their window of vulnerability is much, much smaller than freighters.

how is their vulnerability much smaller? genuine question, they cant jump straight to jita so still have that trip from lowsec to trade hubs, but i guess the extra 7bil in cost is what gives it that invulnerability?

bumping needs to stay its a legit tactic in all spaces will kill alot of pvp removing it

Jump the freighter to the low/high border, then just wait for the undock to be clear before you web the JF into warp. My corp always had someone fly shotgun in a rapier all the way to the trade hub when we made supply runs.

I see someone's never been involved in capital ship combat.

It's you who is doing it wrong. Arguing from a position of ignorance is always doing it wrong.

Ignorance suits you.

Argue away.

That's as silly as saying "if you have to shoot someone to PvP, you're doing it wrong".