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Should Ganking be profitable?

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Theron Vetrus
Doomheim
#181 - 2013-03-20 18:15:28 UTC
I'd like to thank the OP and his care bear brethren.

After being a mission runner myself since I started in mid-December, I decided to biomass those toons and start completely over as a pirate. Having nothing to show for myself in my previous months of play, I'm happy to report that I've been a content provider for the last 4 days.

More yarr to come...Pirate

Take what you can, give nothing back. Psychotic Monk for CSM8
E-2C Hawkeye
HOW to PEG SAFETY
#182 - 2013-03-20 19:10:33 UTC
Georgina Parmala wrote:
HollyShocker 2inthestink wrote:

What mentality are you using that justifies your ability to use high dps low value ships to kill high value ships little effort or risk. You decide who when and where the attack happens and if you have enough dps. If this isint pure welfare queenesque entitlement thinking then I dont know what is.


The mentality that a coordinated group of individuals should be able to accomplish feats above and beyond what an individual is capable of. It's at the heart of every multiplayer game.Their teamwork and time is a resource that is used instead of something that can be measured with ISK.

Oh wait, that can be measured with ISK too!

Before we even start to look at what loot drops and how much the gank ships cost, we have to consider the opportunity cost of the gank. Lets say it takes 15 minutes for everyone to get their gank ship together in the station and prepare, pick a target. After execution is complete, there is a 15 minute GCC to wait out. So let us say we use half an hour per person. Lets say 3 Catalysts. That means 4 people. You need a scout to provide a warp in and loot/salvage.

That's 4 people that could have spent the half hour running missions and making ~15 million. Each. Unless the gank yields a profit of more than 60 million, it is NOT "profitable" for them to engage in the task.

It's not about "oh on average we're one million ahead of losses". Hell, between the four of them, they could have made 20 million mining in retrievers themselves in that time. Ganking barges is far prom profitable. Adding more people to the effort increases opportunity cost while dividing the reward into smaller chunks.

Then there's risk vs reward. You say ganking is risk free. People say It's all math of scan ship - get ehp - eft sufficient dps.
Your looter goes suspect. It takes time to salvage all the wrecks too. In my aforementioned gank, there was an assault ship in the mining fleet that warped in on the gank and tried to drop one of the gank ships. He forced the looter to scoop the barge loot as he entered warp and leave everything else behind. Others can salvage and loot the remaining wrecks. There are countless things that can go wrong to eliminate profit, all at the hands of the miners. Or even putting said profit in the hands of the miners.That is, if they work together. Because multiple people working together can and should accomplish far more than individuals ever can. See how that works?

Just imagine. An entire mining fleet playing at the keyboard. Mining fleets running shield and armor gang links with some tank implants. With not tank in the mid slots, but ECM. Imagine calculating not how long until CONCORD magically appears, but how many successful jams you can expect from these 20 barges huddled together all fitted with ECM. All ready for the gank, with a plan to distribute jams accordingly. With combat drones aggressing when you go GCC, all on a called primary and dropping a gank ship before concord even shows up. And guess what? by the time the GCC times out, so does the limited engagement with assisting barges.


Now for the part of why should it be profitable?
Every activity in eve that gives any kind of reward carries risk with it. Even the missioner has risk from NPCs. I know people who stopped their guns in a blinged Mach to step away for a minute and came back to a pod (drones killed a trigger). Mining in high sec is the only risk free income. I've literally started my lasers in a belt and walked away for 12 hours unmolested in a max yield fit barge. I should not be able to do that.

There should be risk, especially to effortless ISK printing in a "max gank" fit. The only risk a high sec miner ever faces is ganks from other players. Therefore the ganks need to be profitable. Otherwise the risk disappears, breaking the fundamentals eve is built on. If there is no risk and no effort involved, the rewards are too damn high.


Its still risk free, you know concord is going to kill you once you engage. You can do all this at your leisure. No worries about anything else until you make the call to kill the target.

Should a bunch of torandos be able to take out a Tengu? Sure you bet. Should they be able able to profit from it? Hell no. You have to decide what is best for you and what is better for your time vs reward. Should you decide to kill retrievers you can. Just have to determine if you want to take the loss. This should be no different for anything else in hi-sec.

Gankable yes profitable no.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#183 - 2013-03-20 19:13:34 UTC
HollyShocker 2inthestink wrote:
Its still risk free, you know concord is going to kill you once you engage.
…which doesn't remove the risk.

Quote:
Should a bunch of torandos be able to take out a Tengu? Sure you bet. Should they be able able to profit from it? Hell no.
Why not? Why shouldn't you be able to rob people of their valuables?
Karl Hobb
Imperial Margarine
#184 - 2013-03-20 19:14:56 UTC
HollyShocker 2inthestink wrote:
Should a bunch of torandos be able to take out a Tengu? Sure you bet. Should they be able able to profit from it? Hell no.

wat

So what you're saying is that no loot should ever drop from any ship, ever.

A professional astro-bastard was not available so they sent me.
Jenn aSide
Worthless Carebears
The Initiative.
#185 - 2013-03-20 19:21:33 UTC
Karl Hobb wrote:
HollyShocker 2inthestink wrote:
Should a bunch of torandos be able to take out a Tengu? Sure you bet. Should they be able able to profit from it? Hell no.

wat

So what you're saying is that no loot should ever drop from any ship, ever.


That's exactly what he's saying, and I'm sure you can see how bloody insane the idea is.
Frostys Virpio
State War Academy
Caldari State
#186 - 2013-03-20 19:38:43 UTC
Amyclas Amatin wrote:
Frostys Virpio wrote:
[quote=Tippia]Why should you not be allowed to rob people of their valuables?
Why should you be able to hide your valuables behind mechanics rather than have to protect them yourself?

quote]

They still can protect thier stuff behind game mecanic. Those emcanics are called tank, EHP, resistance, ... If people want protection, there is all the protection in the world. People not using such possibility like my untanked retriever for example should just deal with the fact that they did not use what was available to them to protect thier wares.

I personally think if people were fitting a decent T2 tank with no stupid misstakes and still get ganked profitably, then maybe some of those tnaking module are not good. If you bling it or leave resist holes, then you deserve to loose your stuff.


Tank won't save you.

There are fanatics who will target tanked ships just to make an example of them. You trusted in your tank, and not in the mercy of The New Order. How dare you, and all that...

High-Sec is a fiasco, and the not-so-profitable ganking scene is now heavily subsidized by null-sec dwellers to the tune of billions. James 315 also pays 5 million isk for you to lose ships that he supplies at 4 million isk...

Sign up for terrorism today.


As long as you are not profitable to gank, the tank did it's job. If the attacker is willing to pour money into killing you, then you will go down but this thread is about profitability of the action. The tank is then doing it's job.
Murk Paradox
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#187 - 2013-03-20 19:53:53 UTC
Whitehound wrote:
Georgina Parmala wrote:
There are some people that would disagree with you. Traders and industrialists for example.
...
You want a good argument why someone should be able to gank for ***** and giggles? Because without that you can't do it when you have a legitimate reason either.
...
If you remove suicide ganking because it's no fun for the target, what's next?

No, not really. If the gankers were forced to do something else would they still participate in the overall game and its economy unless they decided to quit the game. Having a legitimate reason does not mean you cannot have your giggles, too. I have also not said to remove all ganking. The thread is still about profitable ganking, thus ganking for a reason, and I am saying it should be allowed. Only the kind of ganking where the only goal is to cause a random player a greater loss than yourself is what I am questing.



That kind of borders a bit on you defining how I should play doesn't it?

What if your anger or misery is more valuable to me than the 20mil I dumped into a gank ship?

Sometimes ganking just isn't all about the isk.

This post has been signed by Murk Paradox and no other accounts, alternate or otherwise. Any other post claiming to be this holder's is subject to being banned at the discretion of the GM Team as it would violate the TOS in regards to impersonation. Signed, Murk Paradox. In triplicate.
Karl Hobb
Imperial Margarine
#188 - 2013-03-20 19:57:15 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:
That's exactly what he's saying, and I'm sure you can see how bloody insane the idea is.

Please refer to my comment on page 1 regarding OP.

A professional astro-bastard was not available so they sent me.
Vaerah Vahrokha
Vahrokh Consulting
#189 - 2013-03-20 20:01:46 UTC
There's one thing that I have not understood.

What's the exact reason to ever fit some pimped modules? I mean, the ship WILL get ganked: every relevant mission hub has some scan alts outside the stations to detect pimpmobiles.

So what's the point of putting in game 5B modules if there's no use for them as it's dumb to fit them?

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Velicitia
XS Tech
#190 - 2013-03-20 20:05:51 UTC
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
There's one thing that I have not understood.

What's the exact reason to ever fit some pimped modules? I mean, the ship WILL get ganked: every relevant mission hub has some scan alts outside the stations to detect pimpmobiles.

So what's the point of putting in game 5B modules if there's no use for them as it's dumb to fit them?


probably didn't originally intend them to be that super expensive

looking back to '08 or so, I remember getting a 5 run guristas tower BPC (small), and thinking that the 400m ISK profit was going to be amazing. They're going for ... what, a bil and a half now?

One of the bitter points of a good bittervet is the realisation that all those SP don't really do much, and that the newbie is having much more fun with what little he has. - Tippia
Whitehound
#191 - 2013-03-20 20:06:39 UTC  |  Edited by: Whitehound
Murk Paradox wrote:
That kind of borders a bit on you defining how I should play doesn't it?

Oh my... No, it does not just border on it. It is about defining how one should play it.

What is wrong is to believe that one is not forced already. Or tell me, can you jump from the first day on into a Titan? Can you fly into any system you want to? Can you buy everything of the market? ... No.

Fact is that the game is full of "no can dos" and players who complain about being forced are just trolling you. So do not pick this up as an argument, please. You might as well be standing in a fully crammed bus and start complaining to the next passenger not to touch you with his coat.

Loss is meaningful. Therefore is the loss of meaning likewise meaningful. It is the source of all trolling.
RubyPorto
RubysRhymes
#192 - 2013-03-20 20:18:09 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
an essentially empty ship shouldn't be profitable to gank though. while i appreciate the game shouldn't be risk free i don't think simply undocking [in high sec] should be a reason for some one to want to actively gank you just because they make money doing so. exceptions being, if that profit is from bounties.


Sure. But ganking unfit ships has never been profitable.

Quote:
should it be profitable to gank a bog standard t2 fit ship with nothing but a few reloads of ammo in it's cargo? no, i don't think it should. it should, however, still be possible. did he insult your mother? open fire.


If they don't fit any tank whatsoever, why shouldn't it be profitable?

Why do you think the Tornado should get large amounts of extra EHP? (Common, untanked sniper fits have under 10k EHP and have ~50m worth of fittings subject to dropping. 25m is plenty to make ganking a T2 gun Tornado profitable.)

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths." -Abrazzar "the risk of having your day ruined by other people is the cornerstone with which EVE was built" -CCP Solomon
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#193 - 2013-03-20 20:25:57 UTC
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
So what's the point of putting in game 5B modules if there's no use for them as it's dumb to fit them?
No-one put 5bn modules in the game, though.
That's just how much people are willing to pay for them for the minute (and often questionable) advantage they provide.

They also have their uses — costing 5bn being one of them — and there are plenty of ways to make use of them without being ganked.
Andski
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#194 - 2013-03-20 20:32:05 UTC
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
There's one thing that I have not understood.

What's the exact reason to ever fit some pimped modules? I mean, the ship WILL get ganked: every relevant mission hub has some scan alts outside the stations to detect pimpmobiles.

So what's the point of putting in game 5B modules if there's no use for them as it's dumb to fit them?


it's called risk vs. reward, you see

if you're willing to put a 5bn module on the line for a marginal gain in performance, that is your choice, but do not cry when that choice backfires because you take no extra caution with your pimpmobile than you did with your t2 fit mission raven

Twitter: @EVEAndski

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths."    - Abrazzar
Georgina Parmala
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#195 - 2013-03-20 20:35:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Georgina Parmala
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
There's one thing that I have not understood.

What's the exact reason to ever fit some pimped modules? I mean, the ship WILL get ganked: every relevant mission hub has some scan alts outside the stations to detect pimpmobiles.

So what's the point of putting in game 5B modules if there's no use for them as it's dumb to fit them?


A) Fitting half a dozen different modules that add up to 5Bil is a player choice. Do you really need ALL of them? The extent of pimp on my mission navy apoc is a core B repper and one navy heat sink. I don't see any sense in quadrupling the cost of that ship purely for the purpose of shooting crosses.

B) These rare modules were probably intended to be accumulated as an alliance level asset and fitted to Titans and Supers. Not every John Smith's personal Machariel for shooting petty pirates in high sec.

Science and Trade Institute [STI] is an NPC entity and as such my views do not represent those of the entity or any of its members

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=276984&p=38
Eternum Praetorian
Doomheim
#196 - 2013-03-20 20:38:51 UTC
HollyShocker 2inthestink wrote:
Dev soundwave wrote.

"Yeah my point is that I don't think they should be profitable to gank. I think it should be possible, but not necessarily profitable (profitable might be the wrong word, but more that the expenses should be higher for the attacker than the defender)."

What is everyones opinion?



Guess what... the nerf bat cometh.




Told ya. You gone and done ruined it.

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Montevius Williams
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#197 - 2013-03-20 20:38:51 UTC
If we are talking about the serious ganker, the guy or gal that takes their time to plan, research, scout their targets, I say, yes, I have no problem with them turning a profit.

If we are talking about the random ganker who just takes whatever comes to them without doing any research, or just wardecs anyone just to be able to shoot hi sec targets, I'd say, hell no.

"The American Government indoctrination system known as public education has been relentlessly churning out socialists for over 20 years". - TravisWB
Andski
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#198 - 2013-03-20 20:43:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Andski
as for projecting Soundwave's opinion on the profitability of ganking exhumers for salvage to ganking pimp fit mission boats, that is goddamn stupid because there is huge difference between ganking an exhumer solely for its salvage and targeting a shiny mission Machariel because it's a loot pinata

in the former case, exhumers were profitable to gank from the get go, before any modules were fitted. in the latter, the pilot made the choice to paint a bullseye on his ship.

however, wretches desperate to tell everyone "GANKING MY 20B OFFICER FIT MACHARIEL SHOULDN'T BE PROFITABLE" quoting Soundwave out of context does not surprise me in the least bit

Twitter: @EVEAndski

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths."    - Abrazzar
Georgina Parmala
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#199 - 2013-03-20 20:51:58 UTC
HollyShocker 2inthestink wrote:

Its still risk free, you know concord is going to kill you once you engage. You can do all this at your leisure. No worries about anything else until you make the call to kill the target.

You covered 30% of the process there. Let me spell it out for you.

We are talking about profitability of a gank
In order for a gank to be profitable, you have to EARN money
In order to make money from a gank, you have to:
1) Loot the ganked ship. This has to be done by someone not involved in the shooting and triggers a suspect flag.
2) Salvage the ganked ship. This requires you to sit there for the module to cycle. While suspect.
3) Loot n gank ships. While suspect.
4) Salvage n gank ships. While suspect.

Did I mention the looter is a suspect? As in anyone in system can and will shoot at them?
Did I mention you make (back) the money you were guaranteed to lose to concord by selling the loot?

Notice how the suspect is gathering the loot for an extended period of time, vulnerable to being driven off and/or destroyed before being able to secure and sell the loot?

That's a RISK. You're right, I'm almost guaranteed I'll kill the target. When the target is afk and unprepared and has no friends. It would be a failure the likes of dying to rats in a L4 mission not to. But there is PLENTY at risk as far as getting the loot to turn the profit. All it takes is an opportunist assault frig with a salvager to pop your covops warp-in provider/looter/salvager and steal all the loot and salvage. Including looting and salvaging your lost covops, which you were not counting on losing. Hey, that means you're RISKING your loot/salvage ship as well as risking not getting the loot and salvage after the kill.

Science and Trade Institute [STI] is an NPC entity and as such my views do not represent those of the entity or any of its members

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=276984&p=38
E-2C Hawkeye
HOW to PEG SAFETY
#200 - 2013-03-20 21:10:55 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:
Karl Hobb wrote:
HollyShocker 2inthestink wrote:
Should a bunch of torandos be able to take out a Tengu? Sure you bet. Should they be able able to profit from it? Hell no.

wat

So what you're saying is that no loot should ever drop from any ship, ever.


That's exactly what he's saying, and I'm sure you can see how bloody insane the idea is.


I am glad to see that you both seem to suffer from the same reading comprehension disability. I understand someone is trying to take away your easy hi-sec ganking and you don’t like, but please don’t be stupid and try and speak for me. Take the time to go back perhaps and re-read (gasp... read I know right...not skim)

I never said nothing should ever drop . I referenced that rigs don’t drop as it is now and that also it is not profitable to gank the retriever. Has the game exploded from this change yet? I said perhaps a way to achieve the no profit would be to make it cargo only drop as a possible solution. This is probably the part that confused you the most. I didn’t just sit here and cry and stomp my feet and post like a whine baby on the forums. I stated my opinion as well as perhaps a way to achieve the change. Didn’t just bring the problem to the table but offered a possible solutions. Didn’t say it was the best or perfect one just a possible one.

Go back to page one post one in reference to Dev Soundwave quote. He as well stated that ganking should be possible but not profitable per say. This concept could and should be carried over to encompass high value ships as well. Gankable but not profitable. Can’t say it or dumb it down any further than that for you sorry.