I have had an idea, and like many people who think they have great ideas, I do not have a massive amount
of experience in the area I am going to address.
So bare that in mind and be gentle. I suicide a few t1 industrials 9 years ago and I didn’t bump anything, actually I found it quite boring and I didn’t have the patience, or the sense to join a group and do it properly.
I add this for context, so you know what you are dealing with BUT…
what if activating scrams points and webs in high sec only gave a SUSPECT timer, so no concord response but attacker can be shot, then nerf bumping
Only issue I can see is that bumping has other uses outside of high sec ganking.
In other words: indefinite pointing of freighters instead of suicide pointing? Because, let’s face it, barely anyone engages a suspect in high sec. Under your suggestion, they can suicide tackle a freighter, warp their Blackbird off to a safe citadel and have the freighter immobilized (for lack of a better word) and then can start bumping, or keep it tackled until the gank fleet arrives – all without having to sacrifice the tackle like today.
Someone will probably argue that this would this would create opportunities for players to fight against gankers more actively. Surely, but the disadvantages far outweigh the remote chance of this kind of engagement happening.
No offense, but your last line sadly sums it up to the point.
My guess is this will go nowhere. I started a similar topic and included two ideas from @Black_Pedro and the thread died quickly.
People absolutely love to bitch about bumping, but when it comes to solutions they don’t give a flying feck unless it is:
nothing
completely eliminated.
Anything in between both sides hate with a passion.
Oh and people bifurcate into one of those two groups. My advice is just let this thread be for a day or two and see if you get anything that is even remotely positive. My guess is you’ll just draw the ire of everyone involved.
Metrics needed. Everyone loves to complain about bumping, but I wonder if it’s a problem that’s louder than the actual effect. Granted, it’s not a fun mechanic, but is it actually widespread enough to justify the chaos this kind of response would provoke?
But… if bumping WAS nerfed they would have to hold the point, and the gank ships would get criminal flag and concorded, so instead of a neutral webbing alt to instawarp freighters, a freighter pilot could have an escort that could actually fight the tackle, instead of a bumper who is protected by concord
It would also enable miners to call for backup to destroy the tackle, or use their own drones
It would enable miners to have combat alts logged off ready in belts to kill the tackle
Obviously this is still all balanced around group play, and would involve am awereness of pvp and mechanics on the part of the freighter pilots and miners- I personally do not see this as a bad thing- it would actually give people a reason to group up in high sec and organise
The more I think about it, the more I think it could have a great impact on the game over all
Is there a middle ground? Warping is a yes/no question, therefore so is tackle. What other kind of solution are you looking for? Either bumping as tackle sucks and should be removed, or it’s fine and it shouldn’t. OP’s point was to make it obsolete without removing it as an option.
I don’t think making it obsolete is the way to go. It’s too powerful as it is (which is what makes it unfun), making something more powerful to replace it is just as broken.
My contact list has about 80 characters that are known for Machariel bumping. Depending on how much I fly around myself, I see around 30 of them on a regular basis, another 20 or so occasionally and the rest rarely.
@Teckos_Pech CCP’s suggestion of that 3 minute until definitive warp seemed to be a silver bullet: you could still bump and suicide tackle the target with a noob ship to reset the timer if your alt armies really were not ready quickly, but it would require more effort to keep this perversion going.
You are also way too attached to bumping. In the past, it was not necessary at all. People warped in and ganked the aligning freighter/the gate approaching freighter. Granted, it required them to be in system and not several systems away, which requires preparation of the target. Which brings me back to perversion of an activity that was fun and great in the past.
@Patti_Potato_Patrouette
Stop dreaming. Escorts are one of the most boring activities that you can imagine. Try it before you expect others to do it. Fly with a freighter dozens of jumps, day in, day out with nothing happening. Or something happening and you were still not in a position to safe your target because 20 or 30 Taloses still overwhelm your reps or stay long enough alive to out-DPS your DPS killing them. And who should pay for the escort? With 1M/jump?
Escorts are, as players and CCP alike admit, really nice in theory but in practice they just don’t work.
No, but not because of mechanics, but because nobody wants it.
I would love to be wrong on this, but we already have @Rivr_Luzade poo-pooing the idea. If anyone else showed up that is involved in ganking (either as a ganker or a gankee) they’ll hate the idea. One side likes the status quo. The other side wants to play the game totally unimpeded by other players and thus, giving others the ability to impede their game play is always bad.
This really depends what ‘nerf bumping’ means. But…
I’m against the suspect timer for pointing someone. It’s easy to get a point on someone (say someone in a mission) and just hold them there forever. They cant log off because they have an engagement timer and it wouldn’t be too difficult for me to make a t1 mwd frig that can perma point some poor bastard in a mission (and even go afk while I hold him). And that person may have no friends to help.
On the other hand it’s quite hard to bump someone. And they can log off safely. And I can’t go afk whilst bumping someone.
Now you are just being dumb. Sorry, but you are. As I indicated I started a topic like this on the last iteration of the forums and there was virtually no interest. None. I’m fine with nerfing bumping provided their is an alternative.
Probably not. CCP gave up on the 3 minute timer because of lack of interest and that wasn’t a rework of the interdiction mechanics, just a straight out nerf to bumping. I can’t believe they have the stomach to re-imagine how freighters get shot considering how niche an activity it is in the grand scheme of things.
Indeed. I basically proposed basically the same idea (although I would restrict it to capital ships only) and while I think it has merit, it is a big trolling tool that will seriously nerf the solo use of freighters. Reading the old forums, a vulnerable ship that requires fleet support is probably is more like what CCP intended when they released the ship, but I think it way too late for CCP to change the core use of the freighter as an AFK autohauler.
The one small sliver of hope I see though is the repeated hints CCP drops that they want to find a way for capital ships to return to highsec. For that, there needs to be some way to tackle them and shoot them given the current DPS race against CONCORD can’t work. Whatever they come up with could be applied to freighters as well and bumping removed. As I become more bitter and more veteran, I think it less likely we will ever see such a thing, but there is always hope that someday CCP will find the time to rework the highsec aggression mechanics.
Yeah, okay, hiding your actual stance by complaining that stances exist that aren’t your own just de-legitimizes your actual stance. Based on your response, yeah, nerf the hell out of bumping as tackle. If that’s what the “I want to suicide ganking to be the easiest activity in the game” guys are like, I feel good taking a hard stance opposite.
No, I’m talking about nerfing it as a mechanic so if someone wants to totally immobilize a ship they need to incur some sort of flag so they can be targeted and fired upon by others
but at the same time ensuring that players can use skill and knowledge of mechanics to gank freighters and miners
The thing about my idea- is it levels the playing field, it adds risk to the bumper, who is now tackle, but allows interdiction of ships in high sec and prevents breaking the risk/reward balance and breaking the game,
and some mining ships are really very powerfull combat ships, and some transport ships and mining ships, can carry combat ships that can be accessed and flown by other players, who may be in barges when the tackle and thus suspect flag takes place.
It would be cat and cat not cat and mouse- and once shooting suspects happens because they can and are destroyed, and miners learn to bait properly, then the whole oh no don’t shoot the flashy its a griefer trap narrative that keeps people afraid of loss, might change-
remember, this idea totally nerfs bumping, keeps high sec risky, and gives miners and haulers interesting options they do not currently have to deal with these threats
Now you are unreasonably melodramatic. Ganking is still possible without bumping. Virtually nothing would change if bumping was eliminated one way or another. CFCODE cargo/ship scanners know a target when it leaves Amarr or Jita, which gives them 3-5 jumps (10-20 minutes) advance notice until a freighter arrives in Niarja or Juunigaishi/Uedama or Isanamo. You accuse me of being dumb, but you are no better than I am if you think removed bumping would allow for “unimpeded travel”.
If I remember correctly, there was a lot of interest in the mechanic, especially by haulers, but there was a lot of opposition from gankers, in particular those who need the bumping to prepare their ISBoxer fleets. On the other hand, most of the suggestions to nerf or remove bumping (for instance, damage from slamming into a ship) would make the matter only worse because now you could just slam 500MN cruisers into a freighter and kill it this way. As said earlier, the 3 minute warp thing seemed to be the silver bullet to combine the best of both worlds.
This opens up a huge can of worms. It would be game-wide chaos, as pointed out above. To balance it, CCP would have to nerf tackle. Maybe something like a mini-game that breaks tackle, and now we’re totally into feature bloat.
But freighters are capital ships so if you cant pay someone to escort you or get a friend you need an alt
Not ideal but its an MMO. You wouldn’t just go through gates blind with a freighter, with no scout or webber?
Because if you do I expect you to explode and that’s just a good balanced game.
At least this way you get to kill a machariel.
They aren’t cheap, kill enough they might use something else.
You see, you only have to kill 50 of those 80,and the status quo changes immediately.
Your DPS ships would be logged off, and the ‘gank’ would happen at the place of your choosing, based on intel you have gathered.
For a miner just 3 gank BS logged off in belt, remember they are suspect you don’t get concorded, these machs don’t have tanks do they. So they have to be ready, no holding you for fifteen minutes they need their gank squad ready as soon as they get point, kill the point your miner can warp whatever the gank squad is doing. If the tackled barge does not fire back or assist, the gank ships will be concorded if they go for the miner, and if they go for the gank BS that vaporized their tackle, maybe they get a kill, but it was not the miner who just warped away without a permit.
Like I said, Cat and Cat not Cat and Mouse
Plus… once miners and high sec pve players learn to actually do stuff like this CODE are dead because they are no longer necessary. They still win obv.
Nobody will hero tackle with a Mach if you can apply a point and hold it with only a suspect flag. The best tool to hold a freighter is a Mach in the current rule set of the game but that would change if pointing only gave a suspect flag.
You need more than 1 person/alt to make a difference. I recently witnessed a Nestor and 2 Logi cruisers who were not able to rep a freighter against the gank fleet. This has nothing to do with MMO, it is simply not feasible. It also has nothing to do with freighters being capital ships. Contracts simply do not pay enough. Or would you pay 90M for a 1B contract from Jita to Amarr?
You also do not get to kill a Machariel because the Machariel does not tackle. Cheap, expendable cruisers or tanked frigates, or even rookieships tackle. Worthless targets.
CCP’s suggestion of that 3 minute until definitive warp seemed to be a silver bullet: you could still bump and suicide tackle the target with a noob ship to reset the timer if your alt armies really were not ready quickly, but it would require more effort to keep this perversion going.