Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Problem
Piracy often revolves around simply blowing up the target ship and sifting through the wreckage. Extracting ransom from an established entity for high value targets is at times workable, but the day to day pirate is often unable to effectively ransom targets due to the immortal nature of capsuleers making "your money or your life" an empty threat, and the tenuous nature of trusting an aggressive entity in an internet video game largely ludicrous.

Idea
Add a rightclick option for: "Propose Ransom" to formalize the legitimate business of sticking people up for their cargo or ship.

Y THO?
Simply put: ransoms are more interesting than just murdering people, and despite it being a "gamey" system, I believe a formalized form of ransom mechanics would incentivize more individual players and small groups to attempt and accept ransom agreements, where currently they are only seriously considered by larger groups with established trust and for very high value targets.

Use
You may "propose ransom" from the rightclick or radial menu for any ship that is currently unable to warp, on which you have a target lock and scram, and which has suffered at least 50% structure damage. You may only propose ransom once every 120 seconds, and if in a fleet this timer is shared for the entire fleet to prevent spam. Additionally, any pod that is unable to warp and has been successfully locked and scrammed may also be the target of a ransom proposal.

Effect
Ransom proposals would pop as a notifcation, not a dialogue, from the little notifications clicky button. This is to prevent the mechanic's use as UI spam to win fights against hull tanked vessels and generally to keep it out of the way if the defender is still actively working to win the fight. Skull and crossbones icon, which reads "*Player* Proposes a ransom" You are free to click this notification to enact the ransom window for both parties, or ignore it.

The Ransom Window:
The ransom window functions similar to a trade window. The sender (pirate) has options for "empty cargo" and an ISK field to determine what the demands are. The reciever does not have an input field, simply buttons to accept or decline. This is not a negotiation. This is a demand. No combat rules change during any part of this process. Targets can still be shot while proposing or interacting with an open ransom window. While this window is open, every player involved with the ransom is highlighted in local/overview so that the victim is able to determine who in system would be bound to this agreement.

Ransom Accepted? Be on your way!
If the target accepts the ransom, the funds are transferred, and if the "empty cargo" option was enabled, all cargo bays, drone bays, and ammunitions are ejected in a ransom can, owned by the players that proposed the ransom. Any drones controlled by the target are removed from their control and considered free salvage.

The sender's target locks on target are deactivated automatically, and the target is given 30 seconds of invulnerability from the now-presumably-richer player or fleet, and is unable to scoop loot or lock targets during this time. This player's invulnerability does not extend to players not highlighted during the ransom window. In short, this is a 30 second window for the player to leave, but it doesn't protect him from the ransom party's friends, other random people in system, etc, nor does it limit the pirates from taking actions other than interacting with the target for that 30 seconds. This 30 second counter may need to be adjusted to be a bit longer for especially large vessels with longer align times but the intent is that it gives the now-poorer victim sufficient time to align and warp out.

There are no Guarantees. Pirates are still pirates.
While this formal ransom system gives the victim sufficient info to determine who in system will be forced by it to let them live long enough to warp out in return for their cargo or ISK, there are no mechanisms to prevent the Pirates from utilizing other players warping in from a nearby gate, cyno, or other workarounds to try and catch then with a third party. It is the responsibility of the victim to take such variables in to account when choosing whether or not to submit to a ransom demand. Surrendering to ransoms in wspace is a ludicrously risky endeavor, and surrendering to ransoms in a ship with slower align times is also a bit riskier.

But Muh Killmails!
Ransoms shouldn't generate a KM, but it might be fun to have it generate a KM-like document as an additional tab in corp histories that the API could hook in to for bragging rights.

Out of that entire wall of text, you failed to provide one bit of information?

What's wrong with the player derived non-mechanic we currently use for ransoms?

In no way is this proposed here.


I do not see a problem with this.A "formal ransom" is not a get out of jail free card as written. It is a "here is a limited time offer from this exact group of people, accept at your own risk" Expecting free passage from all players because one guy let you go for some ISK is silly. Expecting Pirates to NOT try to screw you over on a technicality outside of the enforced agreement is also silly. This is also why, as written, this can be completely ignored by both parties quite easily and is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible. A ransom is a demand. As victim you choose to hear a demand or scompletely ignore it. if you choose to hear the demand, you choose to accept it or not. If you spend to long making any of these decisions, they can simply continue to shoot you to death just like they normally would.

This simply gives you a single "sure thing" to use as a decision anchor. it is still up to the victim whether his knowledge of surrounding systems and other intel is sufficient to safely accept the terms, and up to the pirates if they want to offer terms in good faith, offer terms as a complete scam, or simply not offer terms at all.

It is also far faster than typing one's demands in local, waiting for a response, etc. etc. for those that choose to utilize it.


The existance of a formalized system does not prevent players from continuing to extract sweet, sweet tunes. This system is a suplement to, not a replacement for existing methodologies.

This was specifically designed to be quick, easy, optional, and unobtrusive. No one is obligated to let that industrial live. If they take too long waffling over acceting the terms, simply continue shooting at them, or don't offer the ransom in the first place. Ransoms are an option, not an imperative. if it looks shady, simply don't ransom it.


It takes far longer to self destruct a ship than it takes you to shoot it to death. This is not a determining factor for EVE in general or this system specifically.

good then lets not screw with it


if something is being done well enough by players already the sand box does not need to be given any more structure in that area. The more devs try to formalizes how we play the less of a sand box it becomes

We're not screwing with it.

Point is not that you can't ransom. Point is that the purely social barriers that exist that prevent people from offering/accepting ransom are too steep for the majority of players. When was the last time you heard of anything short of a capital getting ransomed successfully by anyone who didn't hold sov?

The entire point here is, like hauling contracts, to create a system that encourages people that don't already have large corporate infrastructures and a list of verified diplomatic contacts to actually bother to ransom **** because the people they ransom have a reason to believe they'll actually escape with their ship.

It doesn't put anyone in a box. It does create greater incentive to ransom or pay for ransom, but in no way forces people to do so, the same way you can haul cargo based on mail and trust but you'll find people far more likely to haul cargo when there's a system of reasonable guarantees involved, even though that system does not create a guarantee that its not being creatively utilized as a scam.

Adding shovels to a sandbox doesn't prevent people from digging by hand if they prefer to do it that way.

So we should remove contracts from the game as well then, right? They're basically the aformentioned space magic.

This will probably get you a blank-reason ban today since it was determent by famous internet detective Ripart Teg that it violates the Geneva convention and resembles RL torture.

You are still salty some of your friends got banned over this?

No, I am angry if some idiot pushes the metagame to a level beyond any reason just to further his carebear agenda

Technically it is ban-worthy offense. But I still see and hear people doing it.

I honestly believe that the sentiment is; don't push a person to the point of exploding and then exploit that further. If they are "game" to sing, no harm and no foul. If not, cut em loose.

But this is pure conjecture on my part. You can always file a petition for a more "official" answer.