SyNgeN-Z is still a new corp (only having been created on the 30th of December 2011) but we seem to have a knack of annoying people and being wardecced. I can't understand why myself, but we must be doing something right (I remember in the first week of the corps existence we operated without a war in place... those halcyon days of yore... but ever since we've been permanently at war with one or two (or three) other corps. It's another good learning exercise as far as I am concerned and I need as many of those as I can get. Fortunately as skills are trained the wars get easier. I think in another six months time or so we might be doing ok at them :)
We had a new war start yesterday ("Breaking Ambitions" decced us), so I thought I'd introduce myself to our opponents - another new corp (looking at their roster it looks like they have half a dozen experienced pilots with the rest being nubs like us). There's only one corp member online, so I run a locator and skillfully (sarcasm) track Tony Anthony's (for 'twas his name) location down to Gallente space near Alentene. On the arrival of my hopefully-soon-to-be-Orca-capable alt it turns out he's flying a catalyst. Thinking he might be bait I decide to take a more powerful ship than is needed (a Wolf) to see if I can draw blood.
Even taking the shortcut through lowsec, it's still quite a lot of jumping from Reisen to Alentene and whilst I'm en route another wt (from an older, ongoing war with "OP Wolf Pack") mysteriously ends up in the same system with the new target. I guess they're working together (we think the last couple of corps to dec us have done so because of OP Wolf Pack connections)).
Tony moves to Clellinon, so I follow and wait at the station undock for him to appear whilst checking local for the appearance of other war targets - none showed prior to Tony undocking in a Navitas and being popped along with his pod. Meh, shooting fish in a barrel isn't particularly rewarding but then I am easily amused.
Then soulreaper27 (an OP Wolf Pack member) appears in system in a Thorax. I'm not to worried by him (error #1: complacency). I've spent a lot of time playing station games with him and generally he refuses to shoot in order that he can redock without timer issues. After popping in and out of the station a couple of times (yawn) he finally approaches and puts a scram on me (error #2: fitting a Wolf to work outside of web/scram range and being dumb enough to get scrammed). Finally, an aggressive act! I open fire and tear through his shields and half his armour before the drones appear. With a 50m3 drone bay capacity on a Thorax I was expecting this. No problem, my mwd fit Wolf is way faster than the drones, I should be able to outrange and pop them without any issue... oh. *Pop*
[aside: the idea of this fit is to orbit out at falloff range (15+km with phased plasma/20+km with barrage) with a high enough transversal that cruisers can't track with their medium guns. I have no idea if it works since this was its first outing and it singularly failed to work but that's my fault not the Wolf's.
Even with the fitting mod the neut is offline and just acting as a heat sink (error #3: don't fit best named mods just for heat sinks, haha). Hopefully it'll fit better when my skills are up (electonics 5 coming real soon now). That's Tony's corpse in the hold, and what the hell I'm doing flying around with skillbooks... I fail at Eve.]
I've mentioned before that I tend to be hard on myself when I screw up; and really there's no point fitting a ship to work outside scrambler range and then starting the fight already scrammed. D'oh. It's another one to chalk up to experience, and hopefully an error I'll not be repeating any time soon (I don't generally count losing ships during combat as big errors unless they're lost due to stupidity. So far I can count two acts of real stupidity; orbiting a gate at default orbit range not remembering that I'd set it outside of jump range, and this one).
After a visit (i.e. being station camped - dumb Gallente kick out stations) from one of Breaking Ambition's more experienced pilots in a Rapier where my manhood was, in effect, questioned (hey, I didn't enjoy killing a Navitas in something so overpowered, but it was you guys that decced us so stfu :) I clone jumped to Tash-Murkon where soulreaper had appeared to hassle some other corpies. The only ship I had that was close was my ratting Thrasher so I took that (it actually works surprisingly well for ratting in null sec, although I suspect now I'm trained for it an AF might be better). After more station games (yawn) he finally agreed to a fight at a planet. Out come his drones (five hammerhead IIs) which I start popping. With two remaining he pulls them back in and warps off. If only I'd had some tackle I'd have killed the Wolf-killer in an autocannon fit Thrasher (there's something that's just wrong there! Error #4: fit some damn tackle). At least the subsequent smack talk in local was entertaining (I love it when other people in local join in on your side).
So all in all a rather disappointing evening, although possibly one of the most educational I've had recently. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I have absorbed all the lessons and the errors will be avoided in future.
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Monday, 27 February 2012
That fit, I don't even...
I'm enjoying myself in Jakanerva. There seems to be a good supply of jetcan miners. As usual I'm scanning the belts and find a target - some guy mining in a Cormorant and dumping ore into a can. He's a new character in a new corp.
Acting as any self-respecting griefer would, I swoop in and flip his can - hoping for at least one weapon on the Cormorant I hang around for a little while, but no dice. Maybe he'll be braver once I'm not in his face so I warp to my safe just off the belt and wait. After a few minutes a new ship arrives at the belt - a Drake of all things.
This is interesting. The Drake pilot isn't much older than the miner, and certainly looks too young to be flying a Drake well. I've been involved in fights with Drakes before and they fail to damage Rifters significantly other than with their drones (of course this one could be fit specifically to kill this frigate but I don't think the pilot will have thought to do that). Whilst I'm a bit wary of drones after previous escapades, I don't think the pilot has enough training time to have decent drone skills and a Drake. It's worth a shot...
Back to the belt I warp. We watch each other for a minute - long enough for me to check my aggression timer to make sure I do still have corp aggression (I do). Then he locks me up and starts shooting at me. His damage is negligible so I return fire and put a point on him, still a little worried that the Cormorant might have something up his sleeve, then the Cormorant warps off.
Even badly fit Drakes have quite a lot of tank to chew through in a Rifter so we're both still at the belt pewing when the Cormorant pilot returns in a Badger. I don't know what they're thinking but the badger tries to steal my ore, and I was going to use that to pay for some ammo! I worked damn hard for it. Point is on the Drake, he's not damaging me, so the now-flashy red Badger dies (I assume all the ore wouldn't fit in in one go, hence the empty cargo hold).
More minutes pass, and with the Drake's tank broken and its armour getting low, the Drake pilot ejects. I can't fly a Drake, and I want this kill anyway, so I keep pewing away as the pilot starts talking to me in local. I don't know if he thought he wouldn't be on the lossmail if he ejected, or was trying some kind of diversionary tactic. I'd guess he was hoping his buddy could return in the Cormorant and I'd transfer my attention to him so he could get back in the Drake whilst my attention was elsewhere. His buddy did return in the Cormorant, but I ignored it and continued to shoot the pilot-less drake (the Drake pilot was now directing the Cormorant pilot via local, but the destroyer was doing nothing) until the Drake was no more.
Since the Cormorant was still doing nothing, it died too.
The Drake pilot convos me and asks what kind of bounty I'd like. He ended up being cool about the whole thing and added 3m isk to my bounty. I give him some advice to avoid this kind of thing in the future, whether it'll be taken or not I guess we'll see.
After chatting a while, we part and I return to Reisen to have a bit of a break - it's not until this point that I actually look at the Drake killmail... *facepalm*
Acting as any self-respecting griefer would, I swoop in and flip his can - hoping for at least one weapon on the Cormorant I hang around for a little while, but no dice. Maybe he'll be braver once I'm not in his face so I warp to my safe just off the belt and wait. After a few minutes a new ship arrives at the belt - a Drake of all things.
This is interesting. The Drake pilot isn't much older than the miner, and certainly looks too young to be flying a Drake well. I've been involved in fights with Drakes before and they fail to damage Rifters significantly other than with their drones (of course this one could be fit specifically to kill this frigate but I don't think the pilot will have thought to do that). Whilst I'm a bit wary of drones after previous escapades, I don't think the pilot has enough training time to have decent drone skills and a Drake. It's worth a shot...
Back to the belt I warp. We watch each other for a minute - long enough for me to check my aggression timer to make sure I do still have corp aggression (I do). Then he locks me up and starts shooting at me. His damage is negligible so I return fire and put a point on him, still a little worried that the Cormorant might have something up his sleeve, then the Cormorant warps off.
Even badly fit Drakes have quite a lot of tank to chew through in a Rifter so we're both still at the belt pewing when the Cormorant pilot returns in a Badger. I don't know what they're thinking but the badger tries to steal my ore, and I was going to use that to pay for some ammo! I worked damn hard for it. Point is on the Drake, he's not damaging me, so the now-flashy red Badger dies (I assume all the ore wouldn't fit in in one go, hence the empty cargo hold).
More minutes pass, and with the Drake's tank broken and its armour getting low, the Drake pilot ejects. I can't fly a Drake, and I want this kill anyway, so I keep pewing away as the pilot starts talking to me in local. I don't know if he thought he wouldn't be on the lossmail if he ejected, or was trying some kind of diversionary tactic. I'd guess he was hoping his buddy could return in the Cormorant and I'd transfer my attention to him so he could get back in the Drake whilst my attention was elsewhere. His buddy did return in the Cormorant, but I ignored it and continued to shoot the pilot-less drake (the Drake pilot was now directing the Cormorant pilot via local, but the destroyer was doing nothing) until the Drake was no more.
Since the Cormorant was still doing nothing, it died too.
The Drake pilot convos me and asks what kind of bounty I'd like. He ended up being cool about the whole thing and added 3m isk to my bounty. I give him some advice to avoid this kind of thing in the future, whether it'll be taken or not I guess we'll see.
After chatting a while, we part and I return to Reisen to have a bit of a break - it's not until this point that I actually look at the Drake killmail... *facepalm*
Friday, 24 February 2012
Carebear evolution
On reflection, even the most naive of mining carebears find Thrashers and Wolf assault frigates a little intimidating. This might be because they show info on the pilot and find he's both wanted and with a negative security status but on the off-chance that it is indeed to do with the ships I changed over to a Rifter, hoping people would be more likely to engage.
It wasn't long before I found a likely target or two, a Hulk and a Retriever jetcan mining in a belt. I flip one of the cans and one of the targets warps off for a combat ship. Back comes a Myrmidon. Now usually I wouldn't attempt a Myrmidon in a Rifter but after my previous success in a Wolf I was interested to find out how the Rifter would fare.
The answer was surprisingly well, actually. This was a pretty tough fight from my point of view since the pilot obviously knows how to fly Myrmidons and manage their drones (I'd not been on the receiving end of a pilot pulling their drones in and sending them back out again over and over, and it's a tactic that works pretty well I think. I hope I have the focus to remember to try it after I've trained drones up :). I managed to pop a few drones before the inevitable fiery explosion. T2 drones were too much for this ship, although I was happy not to take too much damage from the Myrmidons guns.
Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure I managed to pop a fair few drones. I did better than I should have done because I wasn't webbed I don't think, and no small drones appeared on the field. In the end my single repper couldn't keep up with the incoming damage. In addition, this was clearly a pilot who knew what they were doing and wasn't afraid to engage a Rifter, which maybe is something that would be useful in the future.
The next day, in the same system, the same two pilots are in local and I scan them down to a belt, jetcan mining again. Knowing that my Rifter wasn't a match for the expected Myrmidon as it was fitted previously, I figured I'd see if I could do better with a different fit, so I swapped my cookie cutter plate + single rep + nos fit for a dual rep cap boosted variant. Hopefully this one would repair the damage fast enough for all the drones to die and I could vapourise the battlecruiser afterwards. As expected the Myrmidon pilot warped off after the flip, returning quickly with the battlecruiser.
It went better than the previous day, for a while at least. More drones were popped, the pilot again managing them effectively - and the dual rep tank was holding up quite well against the medium drones. Then out comes a flight of Hobgoblin IIs. These are far better able to hit my frigate, and the reppers can't keep up. I'm pretty sure there were no smalls the day before, so obviously I'm not the only person that can change their ship fittings (are drones even classified as fittings?). Again, the expected explosion but I found it to be an interesting fight.
I think the lesson for me here is Rifters don't like t2 small drones :)
Still no tears extracted yet, but plenty of fun had.
It wasn't long before I found a likely target or two, a Hulk and a Retriever jetcan mining in a belt. I flip one of the cans and one of the targets warps off for a combat ship. Back comes a Myrmidon. Now usually I wouldn't attempt a Myrmidon in a Rifter but after my previous success in a Wolf I was interested to find out how the Rifter would fare.
The answer was surprisingly well, actually. This was a pretty tough fight from my point of view since the pilot obviously knows how to fly Myrmidons and manage their drones (I'd not been on the receiving end of a pilot pulling their drones in and sending them back out again over and over, and it's a tactic that works pretty well I think. I hope I have the focus to remember to try it after I've trained drones up :). I managed to pop a few drones before the inevitable fiery explosion. T2 drones were too much for this ship, although I was happy not to take too much damage from the Myrmidons guns.
Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure I managed to pop a fair few drones. I did better than I should have done because I wasn't webbed I don't think, and no small drones appeared on the field. In the end my single repper couldn't keep up with the incoming damage. In addition, this was clearly a pilot who knew what they were doing and wasn't afraid to engage a Rifter, which maybe is something that would be useful in the future.
The next day, in the same system, the same two pilots are in local and I scan them down to a belt, jetcan mining again. Knowing that my Rifter wasn't a match for the expected Myrmidon as it was fitted previously, I figured I'd see if I could do better with a different fit, so I swapped my cookie cutter plate + single rep + nos fit for a dual rep cap boosted variant. Hopefully this one would repair the damage fast enough for all the drones to die and I could vapourise the battlecruiser afterwards. As expected the Myrmidon pilot warped off after the flip, returning quickly with the battlecruiser.
It went better than the previous day, for a while at least. More drones were popped, the pilot again managing them effectively - and the dual rep tank was holding up quite well against the medium drones. Then out comes a flight of Hobgoblin IIs. These are far better able to hit my frigate, and the reppers can't keep up. I'm pretty sure there were no smalls the day before, so obviously I'm not the only person that can change their ship fittings (are drones even classified as fittings?). Again, the expected explosion but I found it to be an interesting fight.
I think the lesson for me here is Rifters don't like t2 small drones :)
Still no tears extracted yet, but plenty of fun had.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
A griefer's life for me...?
My kill-board stats suck at the moment. It's to be expected for a character that's around 2 months old, in a corp of other characters that are around the same age. It's hard to find (winnable!) pvp at the best of times and a moderately skilled solo (or very small gang) Rifter isn't exactly going to set the world on fire - even though it can provide excellent kindling.
Whilst looking for ideas for ways to find targets I came across the my loot your tears blog. I've already tried some suicide ganking which is entertaining; but since I haven't yet decided whether to move fully into low and null security space yet, maintaining a sec status greater than -2.0 involves more pve than I like, so spurred on by the Suddenly Ninja's shenanigans outlined in the blog I thought I'd try some griefing.
I've had to change the modus operandi a little from that described; for one I can't yet scan with this character. That means that griefing mission runners is out of the picture for now, leaving only miners that are jetcanning and players that are prepared to loot my wrecks and cans available as targets. Since I also don't have an Orca capable alt (I'm working on that) if I'm going to swap ships it needs to be at a station. Of course my choice of ships is quite limited at the moment anyway.
Initially I decided to use a thrasher to flip a couple of miners in the hopes of getting engagements but that ship must have been a little scary because none were forthcoming for a long while until somebody with a Myrmidon decided to bite; I flipped their can, they attacked my flashy thrasher and took out half my armour with drones before I could warp away. Whilst I headed off to the station for repairs, they reshipped into an industrial and was back at the site collecting "their" ore for my return. On a hunch they'd be back with the Myrmidon (knowing the Thrasher was no match for it), I reshipped into an Assault Frigate - and my hunch was correct. No words were exchanged after these kills, so no tears were collected.
I think I might grow to enjoy griefing.
Whilst looking for ideas for ways to find targets I came across the my loot your tears blog. I've already tried some suicide ganking which is entertaining; but since I haven't yet decided whether to move fully into low and null security space yet, maintaining a sec status greater than -2.0 involves more pve than I like, so spurred on by the Suddenly Ninja's shenanigans outlined in the blog I thought I'd try some griefing.
I've had to change the modus operandi a little from that described; for one I can't yet scan with this character. That means that griefing mission runners is out of the picture for now, leaving only miners that are jetcanning and players that are prepared to loot my wrecks and cans available as targets. Since I also don't have an Orca capable alt (I'm working on that) if I'm going to swap ships it needs to be at a station. Of course my choice of ships is quite limited at the moment anyway.
Initially I decided to use a thrasher to flip a couple of miners in the hopes of getting engagements but that ship must have been a little scary because none were forthcoming for a long while until somebody with a Myrmidon decided to bite; I flipped their can, they attacked my flashy thrasher and took out half my armour with drones before I could warp away. Whilst I headed off to the station for repairs, they reshipped into an industrial and was back at the site collecting "their" ore for my return. On a hunch they'd be back with the Myrmidon (knowing the Thrasher was no match for it), I reshipped into an Assault Frigate - and my hunch was correct. No words were exchanged after these kills, so no tears were collected.
I think I might grow to enjoy griefing.
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Fault (In)tolerant
I enjoy fleet ops. There's something about flying around hunting for targets that I find fun, even when no targets are found. Generally I find it quite amusing when people make mistakes. Having had a bit of a Britney moment last night (oops, I did it again (and messed up)) I've found I'm far (far!) less tolerant of my own mistakes than I am of others' mistakes.
I could make excuses for why I screwed it up, why I wasn't in the right place at the right time, making subsequent instruction from the FC out of context and therefore somehow filed in the "irrelevant chatter" section of my brain ("don't shoot" seems pretty irrelevant when you're peacefully floating on a gate and not shooting in the first place), but the bottom line is I messed up.
I'm not even sure what lessons I can learn here. Go easier on myself? Maybe I should. I'm pretty sure I won't though :). Pay more attention to comms? I thought I was paying attention at the time. It was reasonably late at night, maybe I was tired? I'd like to think I could excuse it with that, and it might even be true. Perhaps the lesson I need to learn is "don't play Eve when you're tired".
On the bright side, a kill's a kill even when it wasn't supposed to be :)
I could make excuses for why I screwed it up, why I wasn't in the right place at the right time, making subsequent instruction from the FC out of context and therefore somehow filed in the "irrelevant chatter" section of my brain ("don't shoot" seems pretty irrelevant when you're peacefully floating on a gate and not shooting in the first place), but the bottom line is I messed up.
I'm not even sure what lessons I can learn here. Go easier on myself? Maybe I should. I'm pretty sure I won't though :). Pay more attention to comms? I thought I was paying attention at the time. It was reasonably late at night, maybe I was tired? I'd like to think I could excuse it with that, and it might even be true. Perhaps the lesson I need to learn is "don't play Eve when you're tired".
On the bright side, a kill's a kill even when it wasn't supposed to be :)
Monday, 6 February 2012
Non-consensual combat restrictions?
Seismic Stan at freebooted has a post up about "non-consensual combat restrictions" summing up the Blog Banter discussion over whether people should be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve. Since this is a topic that has been affecting our new corp recently (and will continue to affect it) I figured I may as well put my oar in the water and cover this topic a little.
Our corp (SyNgeN-Z) was created in December 2011 and recruited members almost entirely from characters inhabiting the rookie chat channel at that time (I'd like to point out this wasn't direct recruitment; more an invitation to join together in pvp silliness in rookie ships, followed by sharing a chat channel ("syngen public chat"), leading to the formation of a corporation). The corporation has already been wardecced four times, so the newbies in our corp have all experienced this non-consensual pvp.
The corp basically split into three cliques during this time. The first group were quite happy to be involved in the wars, using them to hone their defensive skills and blow up in t1 frigates; this group actively sought out war (although perhaps not very successfully).
The second group basically ignored the wars, trying to stay in "safe" systems and docking up to socialise when wts appeared in local.
The third group (often previously members of the second group who had been forced to participate in the wars) were quite anti the non-consensual pvp.
Eve is a harsh mistress, and rule #1 is rule #1 for a reason, as I'm fond of saying. "Do not fly what you can't afford to lose" is a huge culture shock for most gamers coming from less extreme MMOs. Grinding through missions until you can afford a Drake, then losing that ship on its first outing can be disheartening. Losing in Eve carries real penalties. Learning the first rule isn't easy, and being forced to learn it very early on in your Eve career is difficult indeed (although I'm pretty sure will pay huge dividends in the future!). Add to that a general lack of understanding of hisec war mechanics amongst new players, and it's quite easy to see how people can become frustrated.
Seeing how players respond to these challenges is very educational. Some don't accept (yet) that this is how Eve is; you can wish it to be different but as it stands, it is what it is. Many want to join a shield alliance (once they learn of the existence of such entities). Some drop corp and return to the less confrontational life in an NPC corp, or a less pvp oriented corp (hoping the latter will be less likely to be wardecced). There is a general feeling that there is, or should be (surely, surely there must be?) some mechanic written into the game that will enable confrontation to be avoided. Some learn the lessons and adapt.
It is this last group that I find to be most fascinating. The change in some, from a mother protective of a new battle cruiser, to a maniac throwing (cheaper) ship after (cheaper) ship into danger almost irregardless of the odds can be startling. These are the players that will be happy to lay down their ship during fleet engagements, knowing they will come out of the other end of the process a ship down, but an experience up. These are the people out in null sec, with no sov holding alliance to hide behind, ratting before they're a month old. These are the people that can buy a new ship, fit it, then fly straight into a gate camp and lose it, and laugh the loss off. These are the people I want to fly with.
Are these good lessons to learn? They're certainly difficult lessons. For some, maybe too difficult. But for those that learn them and carry that learning with them as they move on in their Eve careers, they are lessons of incredible value.
But wars cover only half of the non-consensual pvp in hisec. Ganking must also be looked at. The same basic lessons are of value here; a character's first Hulk is an expensive investment. If you haven't already learned rule #1 when you get ganked then it's likely to be a shock. Perhaps more of a shock than being blown up as a war target since the latter have had warning, and probably some instruction from the corporation.
I love a good gank as much as the next person, but it does seem to me that here the game mechanics are a bit... well... inexplicable. We like to think that risk and reward are balanced in Eve. The risk that miners run when mining is that they'll be ganked. The reward is the minerals that are extracted (or more precisely the ISK generated from the extracted minerals). What risk do we gankers face? What price is paid for our ganks (by us)? It seems very little. Even without insurance a poor gank breaks even, and good ganks show a profit - not to mention the entertainment value. To me, this isn't balanced.
There should be real penalties to ganking people. The relatively small drop in security status is insufficient. It should be much bigger. It should be harder to recover that sec status hit too. Grinding sec status not only provides the sec status, but also plenty of ISK off the killed rats. We gain ISK from ganking, and again from raising sec status in order to repeat the endevour!
I think a real use for lowsec could be found here. I think there's an opportunity for CCP to make hisec a little safer, but not substantially change anything that can happen there, and to make lowsec more interesting. I think:
To my mind at least, the non-consensual pvp aspect to Eve is what makes Eve Eve. It perhaps should be tweaked, and there may need to be some rebalancing of risk and reward for the gankers, but on the whole it isn't broken. I think hisec needs more valid kill targets rather than more draconian controls.
Our corp (SyNgeN-Z) was created in December 2011 and recruited members almost entirely from characters inhabiting the rookie chat channel at that time (I'd like to point out this wasn't direct recruitment; more an invitation to join together in pvp silliness in rookie ships, followed by sharing a chat channel ("syngen public chat"), leading to the formation of a corporation). The corporation has already been wardecced four times, so the newbies in our corp have all experienced this non-consensual pvp.
The corp basically split into three cliques during this time. The first group were quite happy to be involved in the wars, using them to hone their defensive skills and blow up in t1 frigates; this group actively sought out war (although perhaps not very successfully).
The second group basically ignored the wars, trying to stay in "safe" systems and docking up to socialise when wts appeared in local.
The third group (often previously members of the second group who had been forced to participate in the wars) were quite anti the non-consensual pvp.
Eve is a harsh mistress, and rule #1 is rule #1 for a reason, as I'm fond of saying. "Do not fly what you can't afford to lose" is a huge culture shock for most gamers coming from less extreme MMOs. Grinding through missions until you can afford a Drake, then losing that ship on its first outing can be disheartening. Losing in Eve carries real penalties. Learning the first rule isn't easy, and being forced to learn it very early on in your Eve career is difficult indeed (although I'm pretty sure will pay huge dividends in the future!). Add to that a general lack of understanding of hisec war mechanics amongst new players, and it's quite easy to see how people can become frustrated.
Seeing how players respond to these challenges is very educational. Some don't accept (yet) that this is how Eve is; you can wish it to be different but as it stands, it is what it is. Many want to join a shield alliance (once they learn of the existence of such entities). Some drop corp and return to the less confrontational life in an NPC corp, or a less pvp oriented corp (hoping the latter will be less likely to be wardecced). There is a general feeling that there is, or should be (surely, surely there must be?) some mechanic written into the game that will enable confrontation to be avoided. Some learn the lessons and adapt.
It is this last group that I find to be most fascinating. The change in some, from a mother protective of a new battle cruiser, to a maniac throwing (cheaper) ship after (cheaper) ship into danger almost irregardless of the odds can be startling. These are the players that will be happy to lay down their ship during fleet engagements, knowing they will come out of the other end of the process a ship down, but an experience up. These are the people out in null sec, with no sov holding alliance to hide behind, ratting before they're a month old. These are the people that can buy a new ship, fit it, then fly straight into a gate camp and lose it, and laugh the loss off. These are the people I want to fly with.
Are these good lessons to learn? They're certainly difficult lessons. For some, maybe too difficult. But for those that learn them and carry that learning with them as they move on in their Eve careers, they are lessons of incredible value.
But wars cover only half of the non-consensual pvp in hisec. Ganking must also be looked at. The same basic lessons are of value here; a character's first Hulk is an expensive investment. If you haven't already learned rule #1 when you get ganked then it's likely to be a shock. Perhaps more of a shock than being blown up as a war target since the latter have had warning, and probably some instruction from the corporation.
I love a good gank as much as the next person, but it does seem to me that here the game mechanics are a bit... well... inexplicable. We like to think that risk and reward are balanced in Eve. The risk that miners run when mining is that they'll be ganked. The reward is the minerals that are extracted (or more precisely the ISK generated from the extracted minerals). What risk do we gankers face? What price is paid for our ganks (by us)? It seems very little. Even without insurance a poor gank breaks even, and good ganks show a profit - not to mention the entertainment value. To me, this isn't balanced.
There should be real penalties to ganking people. The relatively small drop in security status is insufficient. It should be much bigger. It should be harder to recover that sec status hit too. Grinding sec status not only provides the sec status, but also plenty of ISK off the killed rats. We gain ISK from ganking, and again from raising sec status in order to repeat the endevour!
I think a real use for lowsec could be found here. I think there's an opportunity for CCP to make hisec a little safer, but not substantially change anything that can happen there, and to make lowsec more interesting. I think:
- Illegal killings in hisec (i.e. from ganking, where no kill rights existed previously) should hit sec status harder. Maybe a 30% change, or a 50% change. People could (and would) still gank, but there would be a larger penalty to it. It could be fun if CONCORD could add bounties to players, and have other players act as the police to hunt down people in hisec - this would perhaps give current hisec wardec corps other targets to hunt (and yes, I am suggesting CONCORD gets a nerf to enable this).
- Sec status gains + NPC bounty payments should be removed from null sec (after all, it's not policed so why should CONCORD care what happens there?). Nullsec still has a role due to the improved resources obtainable there.
- Lowsec space should be the place where the transition between hisec + null sec takes place. It's monitored by the empires, and CONCORD, but it's the wild west of space. Sentry guns still intervene but CONCORD itself doesn't. Ratting here, or killing others with low security status, is rewarded with sec status gains + bounty payments. Unlawful killings cause the same standings changes as they do today. Lowsec rats could be buffed, moving the battleship rats to (or at least including them in) lowsec belts.
To my mind at least, the non-consensual pvp aspect to Eve is what makes Eve Eve. It perhaps should be tweaked, and there may need to be some rebalancing of risk and reward for the gankers, but on the whole it isn't broken. I think hisec needs more valid kill targets rather than more draconian controls.
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