EVE General Discussion

Most of us have seen them, those threads that come along every now and then and complain about the lack of risk those who gank freighters face. And on top of that there is all that ISK they make. Goons appear to have a cutoff of 6 billion in cargo: then gank.

Yes, at first glance it looks like there is an imbalance here. People understand the game mechanics are using them to make substantial amounts of ISK with little actual risk.

I believe the proper response is to point out that freighter ganking is where people are taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities on risk. We know what it means to do this on the market with prices, you see something for a low price in one market and a high price in another, you buy low and move the item to sell high. Or you might put up a buy order at a low price with the intent to sell at a higher price and thereby take advantage of people’s impatience when buying and selling items. Nobody seems to have a problem with this.

But when we switch over to risk, for some reason most people just can’t think through the process the same way. What is almost always ignored is the freighter pilot’s actions to take on very large amounts of risk. In fact, the opponents of freighter ganking not only appear to ignore this aspect of the freighter pilot’s choice, they argue as if they want to protect such behavior.

My argument has been, that when somebody takes on large amounts of risk, it is fine that somebody else comes along and takes advantage of it. That this is perfectly in line with the nature of the game. In fact, it is the very idea that underlies one of the primary rules of the game: do not fly anything you cannot afford to lose….do not take on excessive risk.

Why suddenly this does not apply to freighters with 7.8 billion ISK worth of cargo is never explained by those opposed to freighter ganking. In every other instance where this applies there is no similar opposition. If you put modules on your mission BS that put its ISK value over 5 billion and you get ganked...nobody defends the imprudent mission pilot for foolishly put such valuable modules on his BS. When an imprudent player puts 10x PLEX into the cargo hold of his shuttle and is blown up, nobody defends this imprudent player who foolishly put such massive value into a squishy target. But put those same 10x PLEX in an ungainly freighter and the opponents of ganking come out of the woodwork and make the argument that there should be more risk for the gankers.

In other words, when it comes to freighter ganking “it takes two to tango”. On the one side we have to have a player taking on excessive amounts of risk and on the other side we have the players who understand how to take advantage of that risk. Yes, gankers face low risk...but they only exist because another player took on high risk. Or to put it differently: freighter ganking is very much an example of the sandbox game in action. One player is taking on too much risk and there are those who take advantage of it. This is totally fine everywhere else in the game...but apparently not HS and not if you are in a freighter. Blind jump your super to a cyno beacon and get dropped...sucks to be you. But undock with 6 billion ISK in your freighter and blind jump into Uedama (a well known gank system) and suddenly it is killing the game. No! That IS the game.

Dis gon b gud.
*popcorn*

just start hauling trillion of isk in freighters and call the militia to save you.
gg izi

Why there is any sympathy or at all for freighter pilots that make a mistake and overload their hauler out of ignorance/greed/lazyness is a bit of a mystery for me. I get that the friends of the pilot might want to step in and try to do something, but this phenomenon of 'white-knighting' for strangers is a bit baffling. In almost every other area of Eve players congratulate each other on calling their opponents on their mistakes and capitalizing on them, except for some reason, freighter pilots.

Content is content however, and if players want to organize and tear themselves away from their mindless ISK-grinding to mess with gankers that can only be a good thing. Hopefully, the desire to beat the gankers is the place this is coming from, and it is this competetive impulse that motivates them rather than some delusion that they are "the hero" when they are really just trying to shelter bad players from the consequences of their bad play.

In any case though stuff like this is what makes Eve a great game. The myriad of different motivations and instrinsic monkey-brain behaviours we all have manifest in unpredictable emergent game play. It's why we all need to be vulnerable to each other, and why CCP should stop with buffing safety everywhere in this game which most of the player base continually whine for, but all it does is prevent interesting things like this from happening and slowly suffocate the game.

I was gonna skip reading and just post (or not) what first comes to my mind about you, but I read a little bit and it got me to read it all through until the end.

Was well written nontheless.

You overly overestimate the amount of freighters that are needed at any one time in this game.
No not so many, 4.6 a day (full of goods) is a huge amount.

I do 5-6 freighter-sized, though not 100% full, courier contracts per week just for my raw material - nevermind my output. I am not a large producer.

I think it's possible you have no idea what you're talking about.

I always find it amusing when people defend the fact that so many freighters are ganked completely empty and people go right to "its ok" and "nothing is wrong".

Its a pretty typical reaction that people don't like to look at a problem that directly effects their gameplay.

I definitely think something is wrong. Absolutely. Look at what I wrote above? "How is freighter ganking even possible" is the real question.

You know what you never see these days in EvE? A freighter being escorted by a BS or two with hull/armor/shield reppers. Nobody does it at all. Not since before jump freighters, when there would be escort fleets with freighters going to null. Since then... nobody at all flies with support. That's what's wrong. ...but then the odds of getting ganked are so very small.