Crime & Punishment

This is not a rant about CODE or other similar suicide gankers. Although I do not (usually) participate in that particular style of gameplay and I can understand why some people would consider it a form of griefing, I think it's perfectly valid and in some ways even useful. They've unified a group of people behind a cause and are proving to be very effective at implementing it. I call that a success story.

I say kudos to them.

No, this post is about the people ranting about suicide gankers. For all the uproar you read here and see in local, you'd figure that someone would have organized a movement against CODE by now to slow down their wave of suicide ganks. Unless said movement is very quiet about their actions, I've seen no sign of it's existence. This could be partly because the most basic counters to a CODE-esque gank are best carried out by individual pilots, not organizations:

Don't autopilot.
Don't haul goods worth more than it would cost to gank you.
Don't fly expensive ships with paper-thin tanks without proper support.

People could go beyond these basic measures, yet few, if any do. Why haven't all these people complaining about suicide ganks banded together and:

Started flying cheap ECM fleets to jam gankers?
Started flying cheap logistics fleets to rep miners/haulers?
Scanning down gank fleets and pre-emptively ganking them?



I am not the person to organize such a movement; I have neither the time nor the inclination. But I do think it would be interesting to see it happen and I'd love to watch it in action.

If you really don't like the impact that suicide gankers are having on your gameplay, try standing up and doing something about it instead of complaining that they ganked your expensive ship.

This is EvE. You are never safe here. Get used to it and take steps to protect yourself.

Here is the funniest one: http://gankerbumping.blogspot.co.uk/

The main reason that every anti-Code movement fails before it gets off the ground is because all of them, to date, are based on a sense of entitlement, and a hatred of players who they perceive as being bad people in real life. By contrast, the New Order is based on fun video game content. You aren't going to attract and retain a group of gamers if your cause isn't fun. I always figured that the only way that an anti-New Order movement could have a chance of persisting is if they embrace the same tactics that the New Order uses - ganking, AWOXing, etc.

Even then, the odds are slim that they could ever match the New Order at that game. The special genius that James 315 has is that he keeps this fun every day, even after all this time. That's why you see so many people who start out fighting us end up on our side.

Interesting. I totally get what you're saying about entitlement, that's one of the underlying roots of most good whiny rants.

Given how paper-thin gank-fit ships are, I'm surprised that more people haven't tried stepping up to gank the gankers. If not to protect miners/haulers out of s sense of entitlement, then just for the entertainment value. Kind of a Red vs Blue kind of situation, but with gankers and anti-gankers.

But if, as you say, they all seem to end up ganking alongside you instead of ganking you. Why gank each other when you can gank more together, right?

This makes sense.

Bingo. If you protected a freighter, you would get nothing from it, maybe a thanks from an ingrateful AFK individual, but no measurable gain of any sort, and most certainly no compensation for ships used. If there were that many white knights and they were organized they'd have the sense to suicide the bumper ship - repeatedly. Think about this one for a moment - this would hamstring a gank in more ways than one.

But again, this would require coordination, commitment, leadership, etc. Not going to happen.

Bronson Hughes,

As an anti-ganker, I will hereby try to make it more clear about how anti-ganking works and why there's a lack of organization.

Several months ago I had written some sunday wall-of-text about the view I have about this subject. There are indeed some dedicated, anti-gankers out there who operate mostly individually and stop ganks almost in daily basis. The problem, and the lack of organization, appears with the gameplay of anti-ganking which comes with its own set of problems. You have to be extremely and obnoxiously patient.
You literally warp to the belt and wait there for hours in this position, while constantly checking local and D-Scan so that maybe some Anathema (ironically named as "salvager") will provide warp-in on top of a Mackinaw which you seek to protect.

The action you get is created by gankers. If they aren't in your area, there's no "anti-ganking" action for you.

As I had said in my previous posts, during special and on-going (for a month or so) events like the ice interdiction, believe me, we were organized.
23/7 AG fleets were up, along with their comms. People were motivated to form ECM fleets, because surely there would be some action coming up: either a suspicious Helios was sitting on top of an Orca, or a Catalyst fleet was on its way to a fail-gank.

If you are curious about what I personally do in this frame: my utmost priority in high-sec anti-piracy was making them better gankers, by giving them the guidance, awareness and the electronic education they need in order to improve themselves. (which is why I often left the system after I saw them switch to heavy ECCM Brutixes or Taloses, because my job was done and they were doing exactly what I want).

Secondly, it was also about saving the assets of highsec miners.

and that's why, in my vision of anti-ganking, there is no such thing as failing completely. because if you manage to jam the fail-fit destroyers, you save the miner/freighter. (=success).
and, in the contrary, if you see the gankers switch to the more expensive but magnetometrically powerful ECCM Taloses, it also shows your success on how you managed to force them to innovate and adapt.

now I see some posts above: Please don't listen to the guy above who claims that anti-gankers hate the new order people. I don't hate anyone. It's funny because I feel like it's quite the contrary. Some of the gankers always had some rage and misconceptions about the so-called white knights, constantly insulting, smack-talking in local towards them while also insulting and trying to humiliate miners with their bold claims and bingo stuff (special thanks to Gorila Vengaza for this realistic representation). I am not gonna name those insulters, the C&P community is smart enough to understand who I am talking about.

A common misconception is that "Anti-ganking is all about GCC KM ****ing", which is false, at least in my case. Tbh my understanding of anti-ganking has always been "preventing the gank itself", not GCC KM ****ing. Sometimes I see hurricane pilots who spread their guns and shoot a little each GCC ganker before concord. did they prevent the gank? no. not even close.

To come back to anti-ganking; recently I kinda took a break from excessive gank-prevention, simply because I didn't feel like having as much fun as before. (this might change, or not.) again, the gameplay of anti-ganking can sometimes become extremely boring as Voyager Errant said above and you have to invest energy on it.
(not to mention the other day I randomly jammed some 2 Code. enforcers who were enforcing fail-fit Catalyst bot-aspirancy (and they had an empty mid slot! Oh God).)

and I got tired of seeing countless AFK miners who pay ZERO (Z-E-R-O) attention to their own protection in this merciless sandbox, sometimes I really felt like "Damn, this guy doesn't deserve to be saved at all!"
Most of the miners were not even thankful to me after I saved their precious Hulks/Freighters while they were AFK doing a big poo or watching the World Cup match between France and Honduras. Some miners didn't even understand what had just happened after they came back to keyboard with their shields at %64. I had to explain them word by word the whole story by telling them how they survived...

I appreciate your ideas about suicide gankers. They are a part of this game and you can't imagine highsec without them.
There will always be people making sure highsec remains alive.

Also...

The last Anti-Ganking alliance that started up was swiftly put down like a rabbit dog by me a few weeks ago.

I do it because I have fun, they do it out of pure hatred. The minute they start having fun you might actually see more people flocking to their cause.

I am now waiting for the next one to rise. I have been seeing rumblings of one just pounding in AG now and again. Soon my pretty.. soon.

came expecting anti-ganker tears

left happy

Counter to CODE?

Current trend seems to be create blogs, cry on the forums, cry in local chat, bring 10 falcons to where we are ganking, the trouble is, you cant stop us. We have the Code on our side

Join the anti-ganking channel with an alt and you will find it out for yourself.

There are a hand full of players who actually try to counter us. What they actually do is whoring on CONCORD killmails while the gank still succeeds. They will then post this CONCORD killmail in the anti-ganking channel, pat each other on the back for the great success, open the champagne and probably start a new blog because of it.

The rest of the channel are dead miners who whine about how ganking is bullying and a good part of the population are New Order alts who sometimes try to give useful advice about game mechanics ( which usually results in an immediate ban ).

Sadly, the whole anti-ganker crowd seams to be so full of hateful players that the few decent pilots they sometimes have get driven away as quickly as they join. Some even get flipped and join the fight for a better highsec.