Memoirs of a Suicide Ganker

[IainC]

While I agree broadly with what Pezzle says, anyone who flies AFK in a ship worth ganking is an idiot. I fly my freighter exclusively in hi-sec and still never autopilot it even when it's empty. If you're in a war, are carrying expensive cargo or are just flying something that might be a grief target (faction ship, freighter, etc) then you simply shouldn't be AFK unless you're docked or in a secure POS.

Being afk or not is basicly irrelevent because they are too slow to align.  I caught normal industrials that weren't afk when I was ganking, catching a non afk freighter would be 10 times easier then that.

I set all Goon and Privateer corps red (my freighter alt is in an NPC corp) and if I jump through a gate and see suspicious hostiles on the other side I ctrl-q immediately and come back later.

[Fordel]

I want to say anytime Ctrl-Q is the counter measure, something is fucking broken/silly/stupid.

[IainC]

The only other thing that will reliably get you through a hostile gatecamp im Empire is a cov-ops cloak. There's no way a single ship of any class is going to fight its way out of any halfway competent gank.

[Endie]

Sounds like you freighter guys need a comm channel called 'achtung goons'

I promise you that within a matter of weeks the channel admin and most of the top intel providers would be goon alts.

[Comstar]

CCP won't do anything about it till it hurts their bottom line.

As a person who would like to one day AFK a freighter full of stuff from point A to point B without needing a 2nd account to do it, I think I need to go join the jihad.

[Slayerik]

The all seeing, all hearing goons. 

Most likely, but its not the worst idea ever.

[Phildo]

Whatever happened to the idea of nerfing Concord insurance payouts to make suicide ganking less profitable?

Also, to quote someone on goonfleet.com who was similarly quoting: "It's not about making money, it's about taking money!"

[Pezzle]

I can understand and appreciate do not fly what you cannot afford to lose.  How many hours should players have to spend flying shit around empire?  Should it require a second account?  (if you say yes, die).  I am not angry about the suiciders.  I find the hauling a terrible time sink.  Without those haulers that cannot defend themselves, the economy would crash.  Most players are simply not willing to spend those mindless hours at the keyboard.  Who can blame them?  Why punish them?  PVPers reduce risk with disposable alts.  Is this EVE online or EVE afk?  The exposure for non pvp pilots is potentially greater.  This is outside wars and personal flags. 

Maybe the answer is, gank the shit of of them until the system gets changed.  Who knows.

[Endie]

How is suicide ganking in empire any different from suicide ganking in 0.0, except that it's a bit more of a surprise to the gankee?  We don't have a wardec on Atlas, after all, any more than we do on Deep Core Mining Industries.  We just happen not to like either of them very much.

And Pezzle, of all people you should be backing us to the hilt on this one.  We follow Sheikh Karttoon (blessings be upon him) and his jihad against those Crusaders that despoil the purity of Empire and, God willing, we will purge those lands of the infidels and the unclean, who clutter space with their towers - little more than illegal Zionist settlements - and whose usury and profiteering clog the ways of space until they resemble little more than sclerotic arteries.  Nothing is haram in the war against the impure, who are warned that they live in the Dar al-Harb, the House of War.  Eternal jihad upon they who profane the lands of the future Caliphate!  The legions of our suicide pilots are without number!

A bit more convincing as a motivation than disliking a specific sort of cutlery, n'est pas?

[Amarr HM]

I can understand and appreciate do not fly what you cannot afford to lose.  How many hours should players have to spend flying shit around empire?  Should it require a second account?  (if you say yes, die).

Yes, if you can afford to fly billions of ISK around without a care in the world you should be able to afford a second account, lets do the math 30d game time <= 1/10th of your cargo. If the freighter is running corp errands then get someone from your corp to scout in a ship with multiple webs it will speed things up for both of you, Eve never makes life easy for the lone pilot in any instance.

There is a hugely simple solution and the answer is so fucking obvious that I don't think it's even worth mentioning(plus it would fuck up profits), I'll give you a hint though Eve is a sandbox MMO.

[lac]

Can I buy a vowel?

[Pezzle]

In 0.0 the escort can shoot first.

Read my first message.  This is not about the numbers it takes to be successful or the number of accounts I can afford.  If you grief enough people in Empire it will get changed again. 

[Amarr HM]

Instead of players creating solutions to player made solutions, they create problems.

That's the problems.

[Reg]

There's no point in even discussing it with them Pezzle. These are the same people whose lack of self-restraint was responsible for the Trammelization of UO.  They chirped endlessly about "risk versus reward" back in those days too.  But then, there was no social contract limiting their griefing after all.  Who knew that eventually the devs would over-react and destroy their game?

Seriously guys. Getting together with 20 of your closest friends to destroy a freighter just for the fun of ruining someone's day doesn't put you in the same league as the Guiding Hand Social Club. You aren't a great EVE hero. You're just a problem that the developers will eventually solve by taking a hammer to your playstyle.

[IainC]

... the Trammelization of UO...

I think that counts as a Godwin in these sort of threads.

CCP though have indicated multiple times that they are fine with the risk of suicide ganks, it's an intended and implicitly understood cost of doing business. No it doesn't make you a hero but the motivations of the ganker shouldn't be a factor when considering the problem. It doesn't matter whether people are doing it because they are bored or because they are unironically role-playing space terrorists or because they are disrupting the empire logistics of an entity they are opposed to. The end result is the same.

[Endie]

I say again, but spelling it out this time: Jihadswarm is roleplaying, and they're doing it damned well.  It is a shame for some people that they are roleplaying suicidial space-terrorists who are not motivated my money, but threats of "you'll get it nerfed and then where will your money source be?" are hardly that worrying when the point at which this all got so heated was when it became clear to some that it's not being done for money, anyway.  There are, in any case, plenty of other acts of unspeakable terror which would remain to be perpetrated, anyhow.

And Reg, accusing large numbers of people of being unencumbered by morality and incapable of trustworthy interaction just because they blow up wholly virtual items without a formal wardec is a bit daft.  For one thing, were it true then you would be down ten billion.

[Comstar]

The solution is simple- if you get blown up by Concord, you don't get insurance. This makes the risk equal the reward. By all means go ahead and suicide gank, you're losing 120million ISK x 20 at a time. It'll cost you about 2 billion every time you attack one. Still totally risk-free from any player retribution.

[Pezzle]

Endie, you do not need to justify it to me.  The chances I will get ganked (I can fly a freighter) is very low unless someone is after me specifically.  I know all about risk vs reward and every other pvp mantra.  I also know that once I get to empire I autopilot to my destination and go do laundry/dishes/whatever else because it is a better use of time than sitting at the keyboard doing essentially nothing.  It is a forced grind.  Nothing I can really do if I get attacked.  The mechanics make escorts rather pointless.  Yes of course people hauling goods will earn profits.  It is a necessary tedium, like fueling towers.  Do I really care about freighters getting popped?  No.  If you are having fun with Jihadswarms that is great.  The people afk flying freighters are not.  Maybe the economy is hopelessly screwed up.  There is a tipping point on that level of activity though.  Maybe the bar is high enough, maybe not.  What is the break point, around 3 billion?  

This is of course just chatter.  I do not keep track of daily freighter kills.  Kill enough in a short enough span and the noise will increase.  Eventually a change will be made and the noise will decrease.    

[Slayerik]

Even as a ganker, I've always thought the insurance payouts from concord made no sense. It was awesome, but lacked the appropriate risk.

Though Freighter pilots need to be accountable for their shit. They know they are untanked, unprotected, and driving through fuckin Niarja. Dont haul 10 billion.

[Vedi]

I wonder if this is a case where behavioural economics can magnify the effects of suiciding freighters. I mean, in theory, the risk of being killed if AFKing a freighter through high-sec is probably less than 1%, even if you do carry 10+ billion. So, you'd think that the people doing this would just factor in the risk in their profit margins and stuff would become 1% or whatever more expensive. No big deal.

The problem may be that there is no real insurance industry in Eve, so there's no real way to simply pay that 1% extra and avoid the risk. Probably, this leads to each individual corp or trader building a much larger capital reserve. If you might lose 10 billion by having a freighter suicided, you want to ensure that you can carry that loss, which means having at least 10 billion in reserve. If all traders suddenly must keep a much larger capital reserve, it will greatly reduce the working capital in the game economy. In addition there is the behvioural effect - people tend to hate low risk/high loss scenarios and modify their behaviour to avoid them. It may be that these cost to the efficiency of the economy are much greater than the actual losses.

Perhaps there is a market for player-run suicide attack insurance? For instance, if you pay some amount of isk per month and provide full API keys (to ensure that you don't fake killmails), you will get reimbursed any loss (or some high percentage of a loss) if killed in a freighter or transport in high-sec. Something like this would remove the need for a large capital buffer by the individual traders, although I don't know how doable it is with all the histories of fraud in player-run financials. There's also some potential for insurance fraud I guess, since not everything is destroyed in the kill.

[Jayce]

It's unrealistic to expect any appreciable numbers of PvPers to exercise "restraint" and not do something that game mechanics allow, let alone what is not even proscribed by the company that runs the place.  For starters, the concept of restraint absent specific rules leads to ambiguity and there are people who feel that no one should attack anyone unprovoked anywhere, even in 0.0.  Our viewpoints are not on one side of the argument or other, they are locations along a sliding scale.

Also, while in real life a society can put pressure on the individual to exercise restraint, it doesn't work that way online due to the simple strategy of logging out, a luxury we don't have in the real world.  The "restraint" approach is a non-starter in online life - game mechanics and EULAs are the only recourse.

Though noise about being ganked has some chance of influencing game mechanic or EULA changes, CCP has pretty consistently committed to preserving the dangerous and treacherous nature of the game, even in highsec.  So you might be right, Pezzle, but I doubt it.  The Trammelization of UO was a specific choice by the UO development team to take the game in another direction, which appears to have (financially) worked out, but that doesn't necessarily predict what might happen to EVE.

[Reg]

CCP though have indicated multiple times that they are fine with the risk of suicide ganks, it's an intended and implicitly understood cost of doing business. No it doesn't make you a hero but the motivations of the ganker shouldn't be a factor when considering the problem. It doesn't matter whether people are doing it because they are bored or because they are unironically role-playing space terrorists or because they are disrupting the empire logistics of an entity they are opposed to. The end result is the same.

You're right. CCP did say that. And they've also nerfed suicide ganking at least twice now when it got out of hand.  I have no reason to think they won't do it again.

And I never claimed that people's motivations should be taken into consideration.  I said that if you gank someone just to spoil their day and not because they're an enemy or to make money then you're being an asshole.  And I don't like assholes. OK?

As far as I'm concerned a freighter pilot carrying some ridiculous cargo is making a target of himself and deserves anything that happens.  Or if one of my competitors ticks me off enough it might be fun to hand out free battleships to 20 of my closest friends and interrupt his next delivery of ships to Dodixie.  That's all just fine by me. But if you're doing it just to be a dick then well, what can I say?  You're a dick.

[Sir T]

There's a much simpler solution. Have people be able to sell off Kill rights to people that gank them. The person ganked makes a bit of extra cash, and there's a consequence to the ganker.

[Amarr HM]

There's a much simpler solution. Have people be able to sell off Kill rights to people that gank them. The person ganked makes a bit of extra cash, and there's a consequence to the ganker.

That's fairly complex and not so much a solution as it merely eases the victims pain doesn't get all their stuff back.

Can't believe noones copped it but the simplest solution I hinted at earlier is actually for these whining little babbies to do something proactive like um I dunno ..... setup an intel channel to report sighted gank squads? But I know this is quite a complicated procedure for our disorganised and fragmented Empire pubbies to conceive so we have no fear of that, I guess we'll continue being assholes and milking the retard train til CCP again caves to the retarded end of the playerbase.

[Reg]

Oh you mean the part of the player base that actually funds 80+ plus percent of the game?

[Fordel]

How is a intel channel going to save them? If the goons can infiltrate major alliances, they are going to be able to get into #nogankmeplz.

[IainC]

CCP though have indicated multiple times that they are fine with the risk of suicide ganks, it's an intended and implicitly understood cost of doing business. No it doesn't make you a hero but the motivations of the ganker shouldn't be a factor when considering the problem. It doesn't matter whether people are doing it because they are bored or because they are unironically role-playing space terrorists or because they are disrupting the empire logistics of an entity they are opposed to. The end result is the same.

You're right. CCP did say that. And they've also nerfed suicide ganking at least twice now when it got out of hand.  I have no reason to think they won't do it again.

And I never claimed that people's motivations should be taken into consideration.  I said that if you gank someone just to spoil their day and not because they're an enemy or to make money then you're being an asshole.  And I don't like assholes. OK?

As far as I'm concerned a freighter pilot carrying some ridiculous cargo is making a target of himself and deserves anything that happens.  Or if one of my competitors ticks me off enough it might be fun to hand out free battleships to 20 of my closest friends and interrupt his next delivery of ships to Dodixie.  That's all just fine by me. But if you're doing it just to be a dick then well, what can I say?  You're a dick.

 

I'm not seeing your point then.

You say that suicide ganking in Empire can be a legitimate tactic that shouldn't be made impossible. I agree.

You say that pilots carrying valuable cargo should accept that they're a target and deal with that risk. I agree here as well.

You say that people who do it just to piss on others' cheerios are dicks. Well that's a valid opinion but not really germane to the discussion.

You say that CCP are vanishingly unlikely to ever make bulk hauling risk free. I agree with that too.

What position are you actually arguing here?

[Amarr HM]

Oh you mean the part of the player base that actually funds 80+ plus percent of the game?

No I mean the retards who fly 2b+ around empire on autopilot, unscouted and with no intel. Also stop trolling you know we aren't talking about everybody who decides to remain in Empire.

[tazelbain]

I can believe 80% are folks but I just got to wonder how much of that 80 are fronts for 0.0 players.  The numbers I saw in the econ reports were referring to pilots.  Data core mechanic allow would seem indicate that there are a ton of "pilots" who sit around just to farm rp.

[Phildo]

I'd just like to add for that record that I'm in it for the money much more so than the comedy.  And I'm pretty sure that all three of those freighter pilots were at least reasonably good-natured after their losses, very little flipping out about vengeance and the horrible things they'll do to get even.

On the other hand, there ARE those people that smart-bomb mining gangs for the tears.  THOSE are the assholes we should be arguing about, not the ones that go after single targets and (generally speaking) don't pod the guy who just lost his ship.

[Reg]

You say that people who do it just to piss on others' cheerios are dicks. Well that's a valid opinion but not really germane to the discussion.

Jesus freaking Christ! Go back to my original post.  It's all I was saying from the very beginning! And it was made in response to a few posts above it congratulating you for griefing and "pissing in people's cheerios" for little or no profit.

Little did I know that I'd be subjected to learned lectures on risk versus reward and the EVE Social Contract (that it appears I've violated by contradicting the Goonswarm groupthink). Trust me, it won't happen again until the next time.

[Amarr HM]

You say that people who do it just to piss on others' cheerios are dicks. Well that's a valid opinion but not really germane to the discussion.

Jesus freaking Christ! Go back to my original post.  It's all I was saying from the very beginning! And it was made in response to a few posts above it congratulating you for griefing and "pissing in people's cheerios" for little or no profit.

Little did I know that I'd be subjected to learned lectures on risk versus reward and the EVE Social Contract (that it appears I've violated by contradicting the Goonswarm groupthink). Trust me, it won't happen again until the next time.

Points at thread, points at original poster, points at fact original poster wasn't ever a member of Goonswarm. Points at my contribution to the thread while not in Goonswarm. Points at the fact that person I'm responding to isn't even trying to have a proper conversation, waves goodbye to concern troll.

Everyone assume normal ganking positions, oh and Samson you're not an asshole you're just preventing yourself from going to the back of the player queue with a well timed maneuver.

[Phildo]

The benefit of doing it as part of a gang is that I was able to go and fuck off for a few days in nullsec, and when I logged in tonight (to my pod, in Fountain of course) I was pleasantly surprised to see my wallet blinking with 500 million isk.  Being a dick pays.

[Amarr HM]

Funny thing is Reg probably pisses in peoples cheerios everyday by destablizing market values and I'm sure he has known competitors and griefs their prices just to fuck with their day. He'll never admit it of course but I'm fairly certain it's part and parcel of his market game. Problem is it doesn't make for an interesting thread so I think he's just jealous cause he could wipe his ass with the money most of us have made in this thread

 

[Slayerik]

Nerf Reg.