EVE General Discussion

so, i've wanted a jumpfreighter for a long time, and now im really starting to look into it and plan for it.

I realized in order to run a jumpfreighter without being a complete idiot, i'll need 3-4 seperate characters, with a minimum of 2 accounts.

1) My "main" JF pilot, in an alliance that is wardec'd 24/7, so that i can dock my freighter into the sov systems
2) My "highsec alt" JF pilot, so that i can warp my empty JF to jita 4-4 and load it, without being ganked by wartargets.
3) A cyno alt, for obvious reasons.
4) Optionally, a webbing alt to help move my Freighter though highsec when its full of stuff on a return trip.

Cyno alts are trivial, but they are the primary reason you'd need TWO ACCOUNTS.
Having to train the JF skills on two separate pilots is terrible. Yes, they can both be on the same account. But you are REQUIRED to train the same skills twice in order to responsibly use the same JF, because of other game mechanics (wars, killrights, etc)


Im honestly not sure what can be done about this, but its not right.

You could always team up with friends and accomplish the same task.

Alts are useful for many things - they are not required for success.

Well that is the official stance; you don't need an alt, you can just trust another player with your very costly ship. Yeah right.

So, I, too, wish for other options to the cyno mechanic; I don't want them to get rid of it, because within corporations and alliances people do trust each other and multiple capital ships can jump to a single cyno, which is fine and we don't want to take that capability away from the game.

But I'd like other options, like being able to pick a sun or planet as the jump destination, if no cyno is available. I figure there are enough drawbacks to jumping blindly into a sun, to justify CCP giving us the option.

Another option would be to put the jump-capable ship on remote control, which is an idea I stole from the X3 series. Capital ships are slow to fly, and nobody likes actually sitting in them in that game. So for EVE, you'd fly your cyno scout or your webber scout, and you'd ORDER your unmanned freighter to jump to you, and it can do so using the NPC AI scripts for flying.

Drone freighters, basically.

Hauling then becomes an escort mission, rather than "be stuck in a slow ship" mission. So when the freighter starts getting bumped by a gank squad, you could fly a combat ship and at least be able to try to save it, rather than being stuck in a weaponless ship calling friends or alts to help you.

or you know, make friends

If it was RL instead of a game Id actually say make friends, but in a GAME that we pay to play its the most absurd response to these types of threads imo.

@OP yes this was imo CCPs intended result for more money. Anything to make people that play have to pay more to grow their coffers. It is now a necessary evil due to game design.


@Memphis Baas I actually like some of those ideas. But yes I heartily agree that Id love to see a change.


I have multiple JF toons and multiple cyno toons. So none of this affects me in the slightest in this regard. Yet it always was one of those sorts of issues. It wasnt just trusting people with your stuff but being bound to their playtimes and whims. Then ultimately it was never a matter of just tit for tat either with a lot of people, in the end theyd usually take advantage of it, it IS Eve here and for things like this they have you over the barrel so to speak and most would realize that soon enough.

I have played Eve over the years realizing that denial of gameplay is one of the WORST ways to keep players. When its better to log off and do something else its bad. If you have to wait for others.... ultimately you will just stop playing. So I tended to ensure that I would never be in that situation myself. This is one of those areas unfortunately.

A cyno is visible by everyone in the system. You think an alternate mechanic that would only require cursory scouting of a system to safely jump caps would have sufficient drawbacks relative to a giant ******* glowing beacon screaming, "HERE BE CAP SHIPS" to anyone in earshot?

Really?

If you can't trust any of your corpmates, you're in the wrong corp.

Yeah and the sun can flare and/or announce to everyone that a cap ship has just arrived. Which is worse than a cyno being lit up. Also, sun location is worse than a cyno within the docking radius of station, which JF's usually are.

I'm not looking for safer options, quite the contrary, I'm looking for less safe options. I'm sure CCP can figure out ways to "balance" it so it's better to use a cyno alt than to not. I just want options.

Logistics are a hassle.

You could find friends to help you move the freighter, but it's a lot simpler to multibox a few accounts, and there's no waiting for yourself to be ready to go.

For everything else, there's always Black Frog.