Anti-Gank (AG) Methods:

Communications Center General Discussion
163

These steps before the shooting starts are all prevention steps. What the OP wants to know is not how to prevent a gank or minimize the risk of a gank. He has already taken these steps. The scenario is a completely different: He is already educated, he is getting bumped despite his best efforts and now a gank squad arrived. What he wants to know is how AG can prevent the success of this gank. He even gave a list of things he thought AG can do and wanted to know what people think about it. And all you and Ramona talk about how to prevent getting into this situation he got into despite following your advices. Is this really this hard to understand? :thinking:

Yes, that’s one thing I already suggested far up in the thread. Probably got drowned by Ramona’s, Jonah’s and Teckos’ talk about how to prevent the scenario the OP is in and requesting tips. :man_shrugging:

164

So what you’re saying is that proactive prevention doesn’t change (intervention) the chances of a gank being successful?

No he hasn’t, if he had he wouldn’t be at the mercy of a gank squad, somebody else would. Have you somehow missed that people have been advocating the use of webs and scouts for years? Not to troll or mislead people, but because it works.

Reactively, and if they had the numbers, pretty much everything he listed; with limited numbers it’s already been covered and for the most part neither you nor he want to hear it.

Not getting into the situation in the first place because you plan for it IS an intervention, as is showing other people how to do the same. Proactive interventions allow you mitigate your risk to a level where you’re essentially immune to gankers.

1 Like
165

I don’t often see eye-to-eye with Salvos, but I respect him enough to know that one aspect of this thread might be trying to provide alternatives to the typical - come to the forum and whinge - approach to stop ganking.

However, the come to the forum and whinge directly results from the focus on preventation/interference only after the final stage of the gank has started.

By then, all antiga can do (other than admire the explosions) is whore on CONCORD’s killmails, pat themselves on the back for their green killboard and then realise how futile that all is -> hence, come to the forum and complain about how there isn’t anything they can do to prevent a gank.

The focus on preventation/interference has to be earlier.

Despite education, there are always going to the haulers that take too much risk, or are just lazy/uninformed and who really deserve what happens.

So in that case, antiga need to get over complaining on the one hand that there are no consequences for gankers, but then say they can’t gank the bumper or scanning alts because the consequences are too much.

Fight fire with fire and kill stuff is the best way, if you want to interfere to protect the lazy/uninformed.

Kill the bumper. Kill the scanning alts and do it over and over and over.

3 Likes
166

:man_facepalming: Webs can be easily countered by a suicide Blackbird because this Blackbird locks faster and applies the point sooner than the webber applies the webs. Scouts can only scout so much. I am using a webber myself and I scout myself and I limit my cargo and I take detours to avoid the direct route into unavoidable gank systems, I even wait sometimes or do the haul in supposed off hours. Yet, I still have been in the situation where a Blackbird trumped my webber, where even Concord conspired against me and bumped my hauler before the webs could land, and then a Machariel kept bumping me. I take every proactive step to minimize the risk of ganking or bumping, yet I sometimes still end up in such a situation. Prevention only does so much. And this is not the subject of this topic

No, that is what you are putting into my mouth. What you are saying is that prevention prevents bumping and ganking, while it clearly does not. Preventive measures minimize the risk of these situations happening, but they can still happen. See above for an example. Now, here is where this topic begins. Taking preventive steps to avoid a gank situation has nothing to do with being in a gank situation, which is the point of this topic.

1 Like
167

It’s a little bit Y2K. We don’t really know how successful it is, so it’s easy to say it doesn’t prevent.

In the case of ganking, it won’t prevent all ganking, but even if it is saving some ships, isn’t it worth the effort also?

168

Yes, very much. I do not at all argue against that prevention helps a whole lot to minimize the risk of or even prevent ganks entirely. Prevention is, as you rightfully said, not a 100% get out of jail card, and no one expects it to be. But preventions is not the point of the topic. Using ways to potentially preventing the ship death in the worst case scenario is the topic, as post 1 clearly states,

And I am absolutely not arguing against that. I find it totally stupid when people fly double digit billions in minimally unsupported haulers. I am with you and Teckos and who not else when it comes to that. But the topic is about how a proactively flown freighter ended up in a gank situation and how AG efforts can prevent the success of the guys shooting the freighter so that the freighter does not have to enjoy the beauty of EVE explosions.

1 Like
169

During burn Jita, several freighters were saved by the sheer number of insta-lock ABC’s blapping gankers when they warped in. And that was with a much higher sec status and more gankers than there are outside of the event.

Smarbombing/ECM bursting may work if you dont mind the sec status hit.

Logi works, but you have to bring enough.

Bumping or ganking the bumper is essential no matter the above. You can save a freighter as many times as you like, but if you can’t get it into warp or logged off gankers can keep coming back.

2 Likes
170

The real problem for the OP is that almost no-one present appears to agree with him. That’s disheartening, I get it, but it’s part of the risk of sticking your head above the parapet.

I think it’s too late to save this particular ship, and that it should be left to sink without trace, Captain and all.

There’s no harm in starting a new thread, with a re-written header.

A suicide-gank is an ambush. How would you stop an ambush in progress?

As someone intelligent pointed out earlier (in a different thread), your opportunities begin long before the Kusion clan has actually undocked, and go right through to the point before CONCORD gets its act together. Theoretically, your opportunities don’t even stop there.

Someone (You perhaps, OP?) should write a guide and host it on a blog (but not the Highsec Militia blog that nobody reads, that would be silly).

1 Like
171

Thank you so much for this post. Finally someone who again posts something on topic. :smiley:

172

If I was putting words into your mouth I wouldn’t have phrased it as a question, it got me the particular answer that I was interested in, and I don’t disagree

Nothing in Eve is absolute.

I make my choices and I take my chances, knowing that I have done everything in my power to weigh the odds in my favour.

Everything else is in the hands of Bob.

One day I may well get ganked, it won’t be for lack of effort on my part and the gankers will have to work hard for it; GF’s all round; meanwhile being a less desirable kill than most people is working for me.

173

These days it is an ambush with lots of advance notice because of the bumping that gankers do. You have many minutes before the actual gank happens and you have a window of opportunity to get people and ships in place near the freighter until the gank squads arrive.

In the past, this was a lot harder. When I ganked a couple of things many years ago, we would just stage an actual ambush in a freighter aligning to the next gate. There was no advance notice, just a freighter stalked from a couple of systems ago, a warp in on the gate, the gank and explosions. This type of ganking would be a lot harder to intervene with than the current bumping gank style.

1 Like
174

Yes. No. It’s not just “numbers”. It’s not “as you say it”. Stop being so one dimensional, okay? Stop being so … wrong, too! Okay? Any idiot can make an alt farm for this. What they need is an actual community, with an actual leader, making actual decisions. The gankers have that, PLUS alt farms.

Additionally, this whole situation is MUCH older than alt-farms, so what does it have to do with it in the first place? AG was just as worthless back then as it is now, Rivr! Why are you saying this, despite it having nothing to do with it? Why do you blame the gankers for the inadequacies of those who simply aren’t cut out to be what they so desperately pretend to be?

In carebear land apparently everyone’s a leader. Everyone’s special. Everyone’s important. Everyone’s smart. Everyone’s equal. Everyone also suffers from seriously inflated egos. Gankers aren’t just better because they have alt farms. They’re better, because they’re friends, a community and know damn well that the smartest ones need to call the shots!

I don’t even know why you bring this alt-farm stuff up, because it has nothing to do with it. The situation is much older than that and you should know that.

Sheesh. I’ll make my own ■■■■■■■ AntiGanking. With BlackJack and Hookers. These guys aren’t worth the time wasted talking about them. Apparently the ONLY people who can actually make a proper counter to gankers IS gankers.

It’s a shame. But hey … CCP will fix it by attempting getting rid of the single playing, self entitled, protection demanding carebears … and HOLY ■■■■, I APPROVE! :smiley:

Now might someone please buy a couple thousand BCC to cause a wave of BUYs? Thanks! :slight_smile:

6 Likes
175

Maybe instead of attacking people who are trying to understand their “superior intellects” and get to the same page with questions, they could have some patience and let us set up our own answer to the questions in the op?

No?

Just attack us and put words in our mouths I suppose does show us our place, in your minds anyway.

2 Likes
176

I was like the others at first, it wasn’t all that clear. But if that is what this thread is about, there it is…

It must be said though, the best way to protect against ganking is most certainly by preventing yourself from being bumped or tackled in the first place.

6 Likes
177

I’m just sticking my nose in at this point, without reading further atm, very interesting and civil

I just wanted to say, from reading everyone’s comments up to this point (of my reply):
isn’t this always going to come down to numbers as pvp always does? And what is your actual operational goal?

You have to decide, am I a)doing this to help the haulers, b)doing it for ‘content’, or c) doing it to thwart the gankers. Of course it can be all three- but the emphasis you place will govern any cost/benefit analyses you do, are you willing to put x amount of assets at risk to ‘protect’ x billion hauler, or are you willing to put x assets (time is also an asset remember, and also multiplied by number of participants) to ‘thwart’ x number of gankers?

However, CCP have made high sec the zone with ‘police and thieves’ as it were, so they have kind of set it up so the criminals ARE criminals because of their interactions with NPC police force.

Of course others ‘protect their space’ but they are not omnipotent omnipresent police, with predictable pattern and poor AI as concorde are.

So while it might be a very good idea from a content point of view to try and effectively thwart the SGs
CCP have set it up so that SG is a form of PVE really- or rather a PVP encounter that is also PVE where one side must min/max WITH the NPCs and so tank, scout etc, wheras the gankers have to min/max dps over time given response time- time is their tank.

So you have to decide first what you want to achieve, to protect or thwart?

  1. Is it reduce number of freighters ganked in a given choke point, make gankers disperse, disrupt morale to get SG groups to lose members etc- are the gankers your target? I think then it comes down to
    a)numbers, yours and the targets- you need enough which might not be more as it is not going to be a DPS race, but you need to know what you are dealing with
    b)location of target
    c)timing- right place right time
    so
    d)spais, scouts all the usual eve pvp stuff- but without a few spais I don’t see it happening

  2. Or are you wanting to protect the haulers?
    Then I think education is the best policy because in this situation you are ‘intervening’ in what CCP has set up to be a ‘none-consensual’ PVP/PVE encounter- but it is a kind of none-cooperative PVE unique to eve.

So what you are proposing is going to be tricky,

because I think you will have to do all of the above, and better than your targets, but rather than simply ‘win the isk war’ against opponents who ALWAYS lose their ships, often enough to discourage them or make them disperse etc which I at least a sustainable tactic even if you don’t achieve your goal,

rather you would have to say this Freighter has decided to haul 6 billion with half a tank, so to ‘protect’ it we need to field enough to beat whatever they bring as you will be the target, you cannot quick switch to hard counters etc, you will be with the freighter I assume…and scouts of course but

you will surely have to factor the value of the ship and cargo you are protecting into your cost/benefit analysis when you build your escort fleet-
this could be very expensive, hard to sustain, and would probably demoralise your guys and girls quicker as they would ‘lose more’ and it would feel like they ‘won less’.

  • So if content is your goal, and thwarting the SGs for content or even ‘moral reasons’ or to RP ‘moral reasons’ which is all content really, the first option is the best bet, in my humble opinion.

  • If you purely and solely wish to protect the haulers then _education__is always going to trump interaction,
    because the first thing the guys and girls in your escort fleet will say to the hauler when he gets on coms is why have you put 6 bil in that, would you like some advice on tanking that etc or at least I hope so.

Nice thread so far by the way

Just my 2isk

1 Like
178

The alt farms would help with what I think is organized AG’s biggest problem (as I stated several times already): Numbers and location. With alt farms in several gank heavy places, just like the current ganker farms, AG efforts could be in several places at once and ready to intervene in gank attempts.

I do not blame gankers for anything when it comes to AG. But in order for AG efforts to be more effective, they maybe have to adapt the same methods gankers use: alt armies. That’s what I am talking about in that quote. :smiley:

2 Likes
179

Actually an ECM frigate with a gank or antigank hacking module to redirect some or all targetting from one ship to another with a hacking minigame might be kinda cool.

180

Lol, this thread is entertaining. Salvos seems to bark on anyone who has solid logical ideas relating to the matter at hand.

2 Likes
181

A CODE. compliant hauler is immune to ganking.
Flying “overstuffed” is not complying with The New Halaima Code of Conduct.
Ganking deserved.

2 Likes
182

Correct, the first step in a gank is the following:

  1. Putting cargo expanders on your hauler so you can…
  2. Put enough cargo value into your hauler so that suicide ganking your ship becomes economical.

If you stop numbers 1 and 2 you will stop the vast majority of ganks.

Once you get beyond 2…you are most likely going to lose your stuff.

Exactly. Drive by posts on the forums are not going to help any AG efforts. The problem is that for AG organizing is costly and the benefits for doing so are so sparse/ephemeral. And if you tried to monetize it, well the big worry is that your AG escort might turn into an SG fleet. On possibility is a re-working of the contract system to allow for this kind of thing. Over coming the moral hazard/adverse selection problems is not easy if you don’t have and cannot (easily) build an institutional framework.

On the other hand a NS alliance has to some extent overcome that. If a NS entity really, really had to move something big and expensive in a freighter and needed the man power to do it…it is much easier because they have overcome the “institutional” problem I noted above.

While there may very well be alot of truth in this observation, we can still “set that aside” and we’d still have a problem. The problem is how do players who have little reason to trust each other overcome the agency problem. Part of the problem is the lack of mechanics. There is not an easy way for such players to set up a system where they can solve this problem. Alliances in NS can do it because they are already a large group of players with a common interest/set of goals. They also have ways of punishing those who mess up such as kicking them from the group and stranding their assets deep in hostile space and more-or-less black listing the malfactor.

Note the issue I am pointing out (or running with after @yellow_parasol brought it up) goes beyond mere tactics/strategies/etc. Even if there are strategies and tactics that AG can use, the problem of organizational costs and benefits will be a significant stumbling block.

3 Likes