Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think it worth noting that changes to the game have made it too dangerous to actually fill a freighter full of anything but the lowest value and highest volume things (like scrap metal back when it was 50m3). Even filling a Charon with veldspar will push it over the break even limit for a gank.

Freighters cannot effectively use their entire cargohold for much anymore. The only legitimate and specific use of freighters with that much cargo is for carrying station eggs.

EDIT: That being said, I don't support an EHP nerf. I don't think Freighters need a nerf in that department at all.

I would however support the removal of some cargo space and a reduction in agility in order to add a single low slot and rig slot, as suggested early in the thread. The ability to tank, increase mobility, or bring cargoholds back to egg-carrying ability would be the best option.

Freighters do not need to be easier to gank.

Current platinum insurance quotes for a Charon located in The Forge, as of 04:00 2013/10/21

Deposit: 326,044,800 ISK
Payout: 1,086,816,000 ISK

That entirely depends on context. To take your analogy farther, moving goods in high sec is like taking a semi full of valuables through a freeway where you have to stop every few minutes and each stop may or may not have a swarm of thieves peeking at your cargo to see if you're worth brutally murderating so they can loot the wreckage. If your dirt is valuable enough to be worth the effort, someone will take you up on it.


Seriously, we can throw examples at each other all day, but there's less than a dozen freighter ganks on an average day in all of high sec. Since everyone seems to be successfully getting their **** from Point A to Point B, we have to assume that means they're very good at their jobs.

Again, as a carebear mining pilot I am firmly of the opinion that freighters are fine as-is. If anything, I'd like to see them with a very minor nerf to EHP to make ganking more common rather than less. There's less than twelve lost a day in high sec, and nearly a third of those are all in Niarja.

RF's rates make an excellent case study. Red Frog charges 500,000 * (n + 2) for a courier contract, where n is the number of jumps. I'm going to guess the average length their courier contracts is six jumps, so if they kept all of the proceeds to replace lose freighters, then they would break even if they lost a freighter once every 227 runs. If the pilot keeps half then they're making roughly 20 million ISK/hour and suddenly RF breaks even if they lose a freighter once every 454 contracts. Note that none of this accounts for money paid out in collateral.

Assuming RF is making a profit (and you know they are) then the average freighter pilot working for them has at *least* a 99.99% chance of making it alive. I can't imagine many other ships in New Eden can claim that kind of success rate, with the caveat that they are limited to 1 billion ISK in goods per run.


Blue Frog is a little different. They offer rates for up to 2, 3, 4 and 5 billion ISK in collateral, but the math is still quite straight forward. To move Collatoral C in C=[2,3,4,5] a distance of n jumps:
Cost = C * 625,000 * (n + 2)

So again assuming a distance of six jumps, the upper limit for all costs per contract approaches 5 million ISK * C, including the wages of all pilots involved, the replacement of dead freighters and the cost of paying out multiple billions in collateral.

It wouldn't help your scenario much because medium slot scanners are certainly the lowest value junk that actually gets used in all of EVE. Bu it's also not very fair. Why should I get CONCORDOKKENED when I scanned a ship for a reason other than ganking it? And I'd also like some time to sift through my results if I'm new at scanning.

Scanning a ship causes no direct damage, therefore it should not be a criminal offense.

Or do it carefully.

What is suspect in looking through a car window? If you don't want that, you should choose a car with blackened windows (= Blockade Runner)

I certainly wouldn't have him shot or arrested for looking through a window. Maybe he just admires car interiors?

Hahahah. #burn

well, there's not really a "move along now, citizen" option in EVE ... so ... makes that kind of hard.

As I said, at absolute worst case it should be a suspect flag (not criminal like someone was saying). I'm fine with it being a 'no harm' action right now and people being able to scan (not so) empty freighters all day leaving Jita.