Monday 29 June 2009

Blog Banter 9: What could you do without ?

Its blog banter time again, and following on from last months 'what would you like to add to Eve' this month we have:

"Last month Ga'len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith "WebMandrill" Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completelyfrom EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?"

This one's always going to have lots of controversy associated with it - some people may really like one mechanic, whilst other people despise it and think its the worst thing ever... suppose it should raise a few discussion points at the very least.

Getting down to business though, the subject I want to discuss is one that has been said many a time before (yeah, sorry, I've wimped out of the real controversial subjects), and thats one about suicide ganking in High Sec space.

I can almost see the entire pirate population of Eve collectively screaming 'go back to Jita ya carebear' but still... hear me out.

Firstly, theres nothing wrong with highsec ganking, as long as theres some downside for the ganker - the person getting ganked loses everything, and the ganker, with enough insurance, doesnt lose anything other than sec status, which in many cases, they arent bothered about losing anyway.

Lets look at 2 particular cases, both of which are high profie. The first is highsec ganking of mining vessels (Hulks/Mackinaws in particular) and secondly with the ganking of traders travelling in High security space.

Hulk ganking is becoming big news, as it seems that everyone and their granny wants a high sec Hulk killmail these days (at least if the vocal mob on the forums are to be believed) and to be honest, I can see the reason why - theres no real loss for the ganker.

With 1 gank fit battleship, or 3 cruisers, you can have a guaranteed Hulk kill (unless said ganker is completely inept) as the simple fact is that the Hulks are not able to withstand any sort of level of concentrated fire. If you get decent luck with loot/modules you can pull a few million from the Hulk, and admittedly (though its their own fault) a fair few Hulk pilots still go all out for massive faction type boosters as thats whats reccomended in Halada's guide, even though they are nowhere near needed in highsec mining, and one of those can pay for dozens of future kills.

Add in the cost of insurance (and an accomplice to grab whatever modules survive the death of the ganker ship), and the ganker runs off with little to no loss, or perhaps even a fairly sizeable gain depending on what the Hulks had fitted, and the Hulk pilot is left massively out of pocket due to the fact that insurance wont cover the cost of their ship.

Ultimately, there needs to be something changed for this, the common argument is that there should be no insurance for criminal activities, which I wholeheartedly agree with - although of course, the cost is somewhat negligable even if the insurance payout was removed - instead there must be a way to make the hulks survivable enough to protect them long enough to survive a single ship/small group of smaller ships until Concord intervenes, but as a downside it should offer considerable reduction to mining output - then you can decide if you want survivable, or maximum output.

The obvious answer is a module which reduces the mining yeild by a certain percentage, but increases CPU and powergrid output large enough to fit a decent sized tank on the ship so it can survive for more than 2-3 salvoes that it takes Concord to respond even in 0.5 systems.

Coupling that with a reduced (or even completely negated) insurance payout would bring a lot more tactics into play from the ganker contingent, rather than being completely guaranteed an almost zero risk kill they would have to scan out the ship, see if its worth targetting, then bring out the big guns. There are ways and means to do this without making it blatantly obvious what you intend to do (passive targeters come to mind) or more obvious ways such as looking for a reduced number of lasers that fire from the ship which obviously should have 3 firing at once.

The second viewpoint is one of highsec ganking on haulers. I'm going to play Devils Advocate here and say that theres nothing really worth worrying about here. Theres the obvious issue with smartbombing battleships going to pop a shuttle fairly quickly if you're trying to move large value low size items, but thats a risk that can easily be negated by using a larger transport if youre worried. The same goes for haulers - if youre autopiloting without manually warping to 0 on each gate (theres one that im expecting a lot of the pirates to ask to be removed, since a lot of them lament the day warp to 15 was removed) you almost deserve to die if youre carrying an expensive cargo in a paper-thin hull.

If insurance was reduced/negated for this class of gankers, I cant see it being a major issue, as this type of activity is done in order to try and get a big payout from the cargo that is carried rather than to try and senselessly destroy the target (of course, some people may well also kill them just to cause them not to get the cargo they are carrying too, and not worry if its destroyed or not in the process)
So there we go... in summary, I would want the removal of insurance payout for ganking 'helpless' targets in highsec. Not necessarily because I see it as an unfair tactic, but simply because theres no way to prevent it (in the line of hulk ganking at least.) As well as that however, there needs to be something that the Hulk pilot can do to allow for ways to protect themselves, with obvious downsides that they shouldnt be 'survivable and able to munch through asteroids at the rate of space locusts.'


On to the other participants:

  1. Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE!
  2. EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
  3. Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter - It's the Scotch
  4. The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
  5. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, "Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!"
  6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
  7. Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
  8. EVE's Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
  9. A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won't You Die?
  10. Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
  11. The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
  12. Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
  13. One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
  14. Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
  15. Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
  16. A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
  17. Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
  18. Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
  19. Facepalm's Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
  20. Memoires of New Eden, You're Fired
  21. Kyle Langdon's Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What's a Titan?
  22. Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
  23. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
  24. I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
  25. Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
  26. Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
  27. Estel Arador Corp Services, You've got mail
  28. Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
  29. Deaf Plasma's EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 - Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
  30. Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 - Do we really need to go AFK?
  31. Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
  32. Harbinger Zero, Blog Banter #9 – War Declarations & Sec Status
  33. Warp Scrammed, Blog Banter 9 – Never Too Fast
  34. Ecaf Ersa (EVE Mag), Can a Tractor Tractor a Can?
  35. Thoughts from an Accidental Minmatar Revolutionary, EVE Blog Banter #9 - Aggression timers, WTs and Stargates
  36. Mike Azariah, I don't put much stock in it...
  37. Rettic's Log, Blog Banter: Overview Overload
  38. A Sebiestor Scholar, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #9: Slaves
  39. Diary of a pod pilot, [OOC] EVE blog banter #9: Because of Falcon
  40. Roc's Ramblings, Blog Banter #9 – Taking Things Slow
  41. The Gaming-Griefer, EVE Sucks, But I Love It: The Memoir of a Masochist
  42. Letrange's EVE Blog, Blog Banter #9: Bye Bye Learning Skills
  43. Lyietfinvar, Remove that monopoly
  44. Sceadugenga, Blog Banter #9
  45. Industrialist with Teeth, EVE Blog Banter #9

5 comments:

Spectre said...

Who needs battleships and cruisers? We usually gank with 3-4 Catalysts and it's enough for a Hulk kill and possibly his pod/hauler alt as well.

Anonymous said...

meh...I don't know the 'absolute safety of hi sec needs to be eliminated. I wish more would come to the low sec 0.0 sec space :)

Anonymous said...

Lyiet Here,
I agree completely, although wish that macro miners were also eliminated. I don't understand why pirates want to feed on people that are active when they could go after macro miners instead. It would hurt the EVE economy more by messing up production, and would hurt someone whom already makes way too much.
Of course, people whom do that are doing it to cause grief, and a macro miner can afford to buy another hulk, while we guys may say something back in local chat.

On another note, another thing that could be modified is the radius of stations to prevent ganking. Some stations have larger '0' range radius, which prevents people whom are close to them, from being affected by smartbombs. In Maruu Navorra's event on Sunday, several people were at a distance of 0 from the station and were still pod-killed while sitting in their pods, hoping to get ships.
You can see the link to his event here, which features a picture showing 65 pod kills in the last 24 hours in Tash-Murkon Prime. I was there when it happened. There were so many pod-kills that the entire system lagged a few moments. I could hear their screams...

Anonymous said...

Erm, link is;
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1087142&page=3

Karox Lominax said...

The pirates go after active miners as they arent bothered too much about the 'impact on the economy' but more the 'response of the gankee' (the infamous carebear tears they all harp on about.)

Killing macrominers is also done, but as they dont usually moan on about it in local, or get any response, most of the usual breed of ganker isn't too bothered about it.