Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Drones are handled the exact same way as ships from a physics engine standpoint. As outlined, this module would have the aforementioned effects on drones. (As an aside, It would be wonderfully comic to see drones flying across the battlefield like that. Horrible imbalanced, but still wonderfully comic.)

As someone who has witnessed the efficient carnage of CODE. freighter gank ops first-hand, I can tell you from experience that the freighters that died were flying solo without web support. (I did a brief stint flying anti-gank ops during Burn Aufay. Mainly to collect bounties, but still.)

As someone who has flown a freighter with web support, I can tell you that a properly fit (i.e. not fit for capacity) freighter will be in warp before they get a chance to get bumped. This was largely true even before the change to freighters that allowed them to fit modules.

Stations aren't a common engagement point for suicide gankers against freighters, but alpa-strike based gankers love to linger there for smaller targets. Proper bookmarks keep those smaller ships safe, as well as freighters.

The tools work. Some don't use them, and others don't use them properly. Those who use the tools properly are generally safe.

And none of this changes CCP's official stance that suicide ganking is not a broken mechanic.


Please understand, I'm a suicide ganker, I'm not someone telling you to HTFU while I collect your tears. I'm trying to help you understand that as long as freighter pilots keep failing to use the tools at their disposal, there is little you can do to help them. Most of the ones who do fly safely and happily deliver their cargoes.

You can't help those who won't help themselves.

Depends entirely on your interpretation of affecting the game.
If you use the "I killed ships" or the "I caused people to rage quit" or something similar as your definition of affecting the game then you are right.
If you use any common sense monetary way of looking at the affect on the game then you essentially have none, save for a little bit of wealth redistribution.

I require 20+ to gank one and here you are bitching about flying with ONE friend.

How does a jump freighter get ganked in Jita? I thought jump freighters undocked and instantly, you know, JUMPED to whatever cyno they have out in lowsec. I mean, that is the entire point of the jump freighter, right? If you don't have a cyno lit, you'd use a regular freighter instead, wouldn't you?


Anyway, people need to stop being dismissive about escorting freighters. Getting a friend to come along and web you into warp is insanely easy. You could even practice having him web you freshly through a gate a few times in higher sec systems before you trip through 0.5 systems, just to make sure you have the system down pat. Practice makes perfect after all.

Can't find a friend/corpmate to help you move 5 billion worth of goods through dangerous territory? You need new friends and a new corp. Your corp should at least be passingly interested in making sure you don't lose your stuff.

Don't want to interact with people to make friends and get your corp to help? Get over it, this is an MMO, interaction is required and imminent.

Your friends/corpmates are hesitant to pull themselves away from their activities to help you? Give them an incentive. Offer up a trivial 1million isk for a successful escort. At least they got something for their trouble. You're flying a ship worth over a billion isk, plus cargo, shell out some isk to make sure that investment is safe.

Hell, let's say your corpmates don't want to spend hours escorting you. Work out a compromise. Have them web you through the most dangerous spots in your trip. You are most likely to get hit in chokepoints/0.5 systems because the gankers have the most time to get you in those parts, so have people meet you there. You might get ganked elsewhere, yes, but if your corp doesn't have all the time in the world to escort you, helping through the most dangerous parts is better than nothing.

Let's say you do have good corpmates willing to escort you, with or without compensation doesn't matter. They're willing to spend the time jump after jump making sure you stay alive (they should anyway, since every person in a corp doing well helps keep the corp healthier anyway, but that's a longer topic). But there's nobody to help you right now? So ship your stuff in a few hours, or do it tomorrow when you have the escort.


TL;DR get your friends to escort you. It's not the monumental obstacle you make it out to be. And if it is, get new friends and a new corp that is willing to take a little time out of their lives to ensure your survival.

If you don't, accept the fact that you're a fat cow worth a lot of money waddling through the valley of the wolves and stop acting surprised at the results.

Quite frankly, Bull.
If the gankers decide they want you dead, you are dead.

The basic game mechanics simply don't allow you to avoid ganks in the high sec chokes without even more suicidal detours through low sec with freighters.

You can make it a bit harder for them, sure, but at the end of the day their killboard still looks amazingly green, your killboard is pure red, and they've gotten their LOLs making your day worse. And that's assuming you weren't carrying anything worth looting and they just wanted LOLs. Otherwise they have that also.

Is ganking a good part of EVE at a basic level, I think so.
Is the second class treatment of Industrial ships by CCP who refuse to give them real PG, CPU & Fitting options a good thing? No, that's a terrible thing. Obviously Industrials shouldn't be able to fit significant guns or missiles, but they should be able to fit the same kind of non gun/missile fits as any other ship of a similar size.

For normal Industrials, that means Cruisers, (DST's actually get semi reasonable fitting options now at least), for Freighters, that means Carriers. They should have the same kind of slot layouts.... including high slots. And the same kind of PG & CPU. Not the current oh look, 3 slots only, 0 PG, 0 CPU options they get.

Yes, this will require some adjustment to EHP levels to make a normal fit with some T2 tank and some utility like warp speed & agility to be at the same EHP levels. And probably some cargo adjustment to make said normal fit with some cargo expanders also similar cargo. (IF Cargo extenders stacking penalised that would solve a lot of the worries about being able to fit 11 counting rigs to a ship for example as it would be silly after 4 or 5). But it would actually reward people a lot more for good fitting skills on industrials. And make for funny fits used for combat as well.

That is quite the defeatist attitude. Even the most skilled and dedicated ganker cannot take your stuff in the station or be in every chokepoint 24 hours a day. You completely control when and what you risk to them.

Now sure, if you accept a 25B scam courier contract, every ganker and their cousin will be out gunning for you and I would give you less than the near 100% chance I quoted even with a webbing escort. But this how it should be.

Freighter ganking is so rare, just tanking and keeping your cargo to a reasonable limit will keep you safe from most ganks and you will have a greater than 99% chance of your freighter arriving safely even AFK. With a webbing escort, and a quick glance at Dotlan to see if gankers are currently active somewhere on your route, that goes to way above 99.9%. Even if you do land in a system full of bumpers/gankers waiting specifically for you, you have to be quite unlucky to have one of them reach you before your webbing escort gets you into warp. Are these simple things too much to ask a player to do to keep their cargo and ship safe? Maybe some players think that it is.

You are not entitled to fly an industrial into a ganking warzone (I hear Hek is currently burning) unprotected and unescorted and expect it to survive. Take responsibility to find when and where those warzones are active (you have all the tools) and tank your ship and don't overload it (you also have all the tools) to make yourself a less attractive target then the next guy.

Like everything in Eve industrial ships are a series of tradeoffs. There are DST for your medium sized high value cargo which can be tanked like a brick to the point they are essentially ungankable in highsec. There are Jump Freighters for the high value/high volume cargo you need to move around as well which are almost invulnerable if flown correctly. Freighters are best for lower value, bulky cargo. Buffing freighters more so that "if a ganker decides they want it dead" they no longer can would obsolete the other ships and reduce the game choices that players have to make.

Nope.
This is obviously for haulers use only and why would anyone care about anything that isn't large volume hauling anyway?

Key difference here is that there is nothing to fix with ganking as you already have all the tools you need to counter it.

off topic a little, Concord should be changed to discriminate against certain ship every week. One week its amarr the next it HAC's then it minmatar and so on. Reason not all police forces are reactive.

edit: it would be up to the player to figure it out.

Eve is not supposed to be safe, this should be SOP if you don't want to lose ships.