Player Features and Ideas Discussion

News flash, it is.

On the last page you said this:

Vincent Pelletier wrote:
Reasoned logic and facts I'm perfectly fine with even if people disagree with me. Uninformed dumb "logic" I discard as such.

So are you saying that what I have put is nothing more than dumb logic to be discarded because that's all you seem to have done?

I've put facts and asked a question and your response is to just dismiss? No logic and facts to counter or answer what I've asked?

Pity, but in that case what's the point? If you can't support your idea with facts and just dismiss inconvenient counter arguments, then that's hardly justification for the proposal.

Still thinking about what you said Shea~ I'll drop my two coins eventually ;-)

So I have no point according to your previous post where you discarded my question because of a new criteria about battleships.

Whatever. Waste of time at this point.

No problems. Thanks.

This is one I've also thought about a lot.

As a freighter/jump freighter piot who spends most of my time in game hauling, safety in hauling is something that is critical to my gameplay, so it's natural I have opinions and ideas.

On the one hand, it's important not to be too easy to gank because it's important to be able to safely deliver cargo and if taking reasonable precautions, there should be a high degree of safety when in highsec.

On the other hand, it's equally important not to be too difficult to gank either. If it becomes easy to AFK haul, then that favours players that aren't playing the game and disadvantages the haulers that actually enjoy that aspect of the game and who really participate in the gameplay.

So as with everything there is a balance.

At the same time, every ship in the game of similar size to the Freighter reduces it's risk and/or is only effectively usable with the support of at least 1 other character.

In relation to the current issue of packages in between the capacity of industrials and freighters, the only option is to take the Freighter and leave it much less than full, or carry multiple packages at once, but in doing so, increase the associated risk because of the increased value of the cargo.

So the existing counter: a webbing alt.

It provides near perfect safety, with the main counter being the possibility of running into a suicide Blackbird, which in theory negates the benefit of the webbing alt and allows the bumper to get a bump on, followed by a gank.

So, looking at the figures:

https://puu.sh/r6McF/67638a6ef6.png

The last 1000 Blackbird losses took 51 days, with 11 suicide losses in Niarja, 6 in Uedama and 3 in Madirmilire.

Because I have the figures for Uedama, hopefully it's acceptable to use that for comparison.

There are on average 17 Freighters moving through Uedama every hour (lower end 13, upper end 40).

So in that last 51 days, that's a bit over 20,000 freighter movements through Uedama with only 6 suicide Blackbirds.

So the real practical risk of facing a Blackbird is just 0.02-0.03% for all Freighters, whether using a Webbing alt or not.

Then, looking at the last 5000 freighter losses, the most frequent characters used for suicide Blackbirds are:

https://puu.sh/r6NJl/d6fc8d43f9.png

Aside from setting the main ones to negative standings on my scout/webbing alts to give me more intel, looking at the standard Blackbird fits from those characters versus my webbing loki fit:

https://puu.sh/r6P70/4f2840eafa.png

The Blackbird is at a huge disadvantage. They don't lock any faster than the Loki and the Freighter pilot has all the advantage in deciding when to drop out of gate cloak.

The lock and webs of the Loki are applied before the lock and point of the Blackbird and the Freighter is in an invulnerable state (entering warp), providing near 100% safety for a Freighter with 1 webbing alt, even against the hard counter.

The main variable in this is server communication, but that's not predictable and can happen to everyone in any situation. Losing a ship to server lag is just part of the game.

With everything working fine, a Freighter with 1 webbing alt is near uncatchable versus a gank fleet of 19 or more ships required to effect the gank in the first place.

Those are already good odds in favour of prepared Freighter pilots.

Why do we need a new ship?

Why isn't it reasonable for people to kill empty Freighters and Jump Freighters?

I kill ships all the time in this game without worrying about what they will drop or what they are worth - the whole point of this game is to kill space ships.

Suiciding in high sec?

If you know how to fly the ship properly, flying an unfit freighter is safer than flying an unfit battleship. Hell, I flew a freighter for years before CCP even made it possible to put a fitting on it.

Or you could try this radical thing called "asking for help." Last time I was in a highsec corp, I could easily get a couple corpmates to scout and web for me, simply to provide them a break from the tedium of missions. Alts are used when I can't get an actual human to provide assistance.

pretty sure back when i used to gank we targeted common mission running BBs like ravens more than freighters do to the higher chance of blue green and purple... and no we did not waist time scanning an empty BB was just as likely to get shot as a full officer fit