Crime & Punishment

Newb here, managed to get my first ransom last night on a pod I found hiding at a planet in lowsec in me trusty Merlin - But it brought up the question, how the hell do I guess how much I should ransom them for!

I've heard others say "Check their history, who their corp is and how long they have been playing", but 1. I have no idea what is considering an "amazing rich corp", and 2. Looking at the guy from last night, he had been playing 9 months.... so how much should I have ransomed him for?

In the end, I just said 10mill, purely because that paid for my next little Merlin, and I was just having fun that I had caught someone! :D

What would you have ransomed him if you were in my position?

if you check any sort of KB history they appear to have alot of kills and losses in low or 0.0. Chances of them having an implant is zero.

That being said I popped a -10 pod in highsec the other day with 130mil worth of implants. So you will get 0.0 players with expensive implants as well.

So it really is a guessing game. If somebody is very eager to pay 50mil for a pod. Chances are they sporting some heavy goods that makes the 50mil ransom worth it.

EDIT: Bolded for blind people

A characters age isn't always in line with their implants (though nine times out of ten it is). If you scram a pod of a new pilot who joined a corp relatively quickly (i.e. a few days into New Eden) then the chances are it's an alt and he quite possibly be packing some decent brain hardware; I once ransomed a one month old pilot whose Merlin I'd just popped (as well as his two year old friend but he got his pod out). Because he was new I ransomed him for 5 mil. Once he'd paid and I let him go and his mate then mentioned in local that he (the one month old) had bought 20 PLEX's and had a full set of +5s as well as some hardwirings. Obviously there was no way to know that at the time so I don't feel too bad about it.

A general rule of thumb I use is 60-80mil for every year they've been playing, give or take. I've also found that a lot of people don't want to pay out because of the amount of asshats who have dishonoured ransoms which is a shame as I always honour them.

- Cable

If they decline your first offer, fire a volley at them (maybe ungroup guns first). Some people will offer a little more once their 300m capsule is in deep armor.

The trick is you've got to offer them little enough that they think it's worth the gamble of you shooting them anyway. Not many people would pay 100 million whether their implants are worth it or not; that's usually just an added expense to them already losing their ship and clone.

Don't forget to have fun with ramsoms. Get a pilot to sing I'm a little tea pot on voice coms, requiring they purchase and contract to you 10 exotic dancers from all the stations in the region, post their best fukung.net bookmark, and what not can all be worth as much as isk.

Noobs can't afford ransom. And nonnoobs won't pay. Only noobs expect you to honor your ransom these days.

The only reason the guy paid your the 10 mil is because it's chump change. He doesn't expect you to honor it anyway, but the amount is so little it's irrelevant. He notices that you're a young noob and decides to humor you.

you may want to make sure the pilot your trying to ransom has implants first because if they are a pilot like me who don't wear implants they will probaly laugh at you.

Months old multiplied by 5 million, unless I know him to be particularly rich or poor. Extremely young characters get a discount if they don't look like an alt. Carebear fees are doubled since they almost never lose clones and tend to invest more in them. At least that was the rule I used before CCP made piracy unprofitable. There's been a lot of inflation since then though.

You're right. I know I wouldn't want a billion ISK loss on a killmail. If it was a corp I thought I could trust I'd pay. Personally, I think nobody who has implants that pricey has any dignity left to lose though so your opinion may differ.