I said that before already. Scroll up. 
Besides, the last 10 or so posts were solely about debunking your false argument that omega gankers had any account subscription cost. Scroll here for reference as to why I mentioned alphas:
Don’t take that from me about the account cost, take it from Ima Wreck You instead:
Train reading to at least 1. We don’t gank with alpha accounts. It is however possible to get “almost” free OMEGA accounts by draining and selling the SP.
Ok, so to address the 2 arguments seen so far:
Fleet vs. Fleet. Gankers lose. You can’t claim 10+ to 1 when 9+ of them are eating dinner or 2 gates back scanning other people. For the first bump either side is balanced. You have from the time the freighter jumps in until it can align to react, fleet vs fleet, regardless if that fleet is 1, 2 or 20. After that we can discuss reasonable time frames for how long a ship can be held with out available counterplay. “Stop Playing” is never reasonable counter play. This does not mean freighters need to give something up, the situation is currently not balanced, so balancing means that a time limit or other limitation of some sort needs to be in place to create a balanced situation.
Cost- Real Money or just ISK- Gankers lose. The minimal in game cost for the target to be in space (not counting cargo and collateral) is roughly balanced with the minimal cost for the gankers to be in space. The rewards, however, heavily favor the ganker as half the value of the cargo–regardless of overloading and lootfairy whims-- is typically far more than the freighter was going to get in delivering it. In terms of the real money argument about Plex, the gankers loose utterly. No part of a gank fleet is required to be omega, with the possible exception of another freighter to scoop the loot, though much of that could be done in industrials with alphas depending on the freight, and claiming the loot has not really entered the discussion-- I actually count it in favor of the ganker argument though it’s not at the risk that the target freighter is in. You can Alpha the scout, bumper, and all the dps you want. The Freighter must Omega the freighter itself no matter what, and even the escort isn’t considered effective with what’s available as to an Alpha pilot.
On (1), thanks Nevyn. We often sit as polar opposites on these sort of issues, but of the people that have been here for a long time (across the original forum, the last one and now here), you are still pretty reasonable across discussions generally.
On (2) though, I’ve been back and read them all. I’ve become much more polarised in my views in the forum over the last 12-18 months. Maybe it’s forum-vet syndrome or something, but maybe it’s just that the same discussions come up time and time again and no one takes even take a few seconds to search for whether the thread they want to open has already been made and argued to death (and all of them have been) and in many cases debunked (by people much better than me). There’s no point trying to be reasonable any longer, because that approach generally gets ignored anyway. So may as well just put the counter opinion as bluntly as it can be. It’ll all have to be done again in the next day or 2, or next week anyway. Unfortunately the concept of personal responsibility isn’t a popular one, but I can live with that. I’ll still express it though and not to bury reasonable arguments (this format for communication doesn’t encourage proper, reasonable arguments).
Personal responsibility is fine, as far as it goes. However victim blaming isn’t a valid tactic for game balancing.
Sure, don’t overload your freighter. That still leaves empty freighters that get bumped and popped for the sheer lulz.
Regardless of what falls out of the freighter when it gets destroyed, the problem still exists that bumping is being used to initiate aggression without the penalties for doing so that are supposed to be in place in High Sec.
But Ok, When you jump there is a window of less than a minute to get the first bump, and how small that window is gets controlled mostly by the hauler with some variation to the gods of RNG for placement in space and and Internet Ping.
Up to this point, since bumping is being used as tackle, the gankers have risked exactly nothing except a little time. As has been discussed, the further wasting of time does have potential impacts on the hauler, while the ganker loses nothing, considering he’d be on that gate regardless, and if something better came along he can disengage and do that at any time.
Since no one has exploded, the fight continues. It didn’t end just because the ganker managed to tackle the freighter with bumping. Some kind of shooting needs to occur, or other means of contest to end the engagement. As such, counterplay options need to be available. It is not a balanced nor harmless situation to allow the unlimited tackle to continue— if that tackle was being held by normal means the escorts could engage and neut, shoot, or whatever.
As we have deemed it OK to use the bumping as tackle, we need a way for the escorts to get the freighter free of it that does not involve concord, just as they escorts could assist if the tackle was a point of some kind.
It’s that simple. It’s not really the bumping that’s an issue, it’s that it’s aggression not ended by concord in high sec, and there is no way short of concorded aggression to stop it once it begins.
It’s not victim blaming.
If freighter pilots used the mechanics of the game to their advantage and still couldn’t control the risk of the loss, then I’d be all with you that the situation needed to change.
However they don’t. Go analyse the lossmails. There’s a reason why the lossmails are dominated by untanked, partially or fully expanded, high value losses, with no gathering of intel, no use of assistance, etc. Those are all choices made by freighter pilots, not those that want to target them.
People want to take risk and that’s perfectly fine. Yet they complain that they suffered a consequence because of their own choices and CCP should reduce the risk for them even before they control it better themselves.
That just leads to the totally unbalanced and biased proposals that only ever favour the person making the proposal, never give and take, just “give to me and take from the people whose playstyle I don’t like.”
Then kill them.You forgot that bit
Here’s the problem with “If you give, you must take”. It assumes the present situation is balanced. If it’s not balanced, then you correct for the imbalance.
Bumping lasting all day with no recourse is not balanced. There is no give and take on this, there is just correction of an imbalance.
I’m with you on people bringing an escort and all that. I get it. Where I am not with you is the unlimited time frame for the ganker side of things to form a fleet and actually gank after the ship is tackled. That’s not balanced.
Your argument of a gank fleet being super organized and everything falls completely flat in the face of the fact that people get bumped for more than 5 minutes before the gank fleet arrives.
That’s not reasonable if there is no counterplay possible past that point. If they are that organized, they can get on station and finish the job in just a few minutes. Not 10 minutes, not an hour. More than 5 minutes is hilariously over generous.
If we weren’t discussing bumping, this conversation would not happen at all. If the hauler was pointed, everyone would just laugh it off as him being dumb. On the other hand, if the hauler was pointed, his escorts (assuming they existed) could engage the tackle and do something about it.
So if you want to stretch the engagement to outlandish timeframes, you need to have something for the other person to be able to do in that time other than sit there, or at least for his escort to do, that is of a similar risk factor—IE, not Concorded for self defense.
It doesn’t happen and there is recourse.
However, if someone is being bumped for 23 hours, then yes, I agree that is unreasonable. If there is no ransom paid or gank initiated, then end it. But I’d rather CCP respond to stuck tickets in that case, than set a limit as short as 5 minutes.
What argument? Sorry, I don’t recall ever making that argument. It wouldn’t be true in any sense that I could know, so not something I would write.
Now you are trying to play games with semantics.
Either the timeframe of bumping is limited, or it is not. Is there a limit to how long it can go on?
Short of an extremely lucky counterbump, is there a way to interfere that does not involve being concorded in self defense?
Not currently no. However that isn’t the only recourse; and bumping doesn’t happen for all day, or even for several hours.
There’s always stories of someone being bumped all day, but never 1st hand evidence. Given that very few people in the forum actually try to validate the claims they make, and often just make up “facts” to support their claims, without evidence of it, the 3rd party claims in forum threads aren’t anything for CCP to action off.
However, in relation to recourse, there are several things that can be done, if someone having done their best to avoid being bumped in the first place, unluckily ends up there:
Gank the bumper.
Make best use of the game mechanics and get the freighter out of space by logging off.
Counter bump towards a warpable location (eg. citadel or station).
There are counters to being bumped. The only thing here is an unwillingness to use any of them, after deciding that a Freighter should be fine as a solo, low risk ship to fly around.
Ok… Glad we are on the same page then.
You accept that once bumping begins there is nothing other than a lucky bump or being concorded for self defense that can be done.
That Is Not Balanced.
Lets work on ideas to address that, rather than bringing in extraneous arguments from outside the source of the complaint.
No. They can logoff anytime and get their ship out of space.
By the same token, there is nothing a ganker can do but be concorded, because we can make use of wardec safety and remain in NPC Corps, or drop immediately to them when a war is declared.
Freighter pilots can use those mechanics to their advantage just fine, but somehow taking action to engage a target and get concorded is only fair one way.
So provide ways that gankers can legally engage freighter pilots hiding in NPC Corps (and I would think that proposal is stupid too, because that wardec immunity is fine and should stay), and then it’d be fine to claim that being concorded isn’t balanced.
But it’s what already happens to gankers. They have no choice but to be concorded because the game gives them no legal way to engage the whales in highsec, because the pilots stay where they are immune from legal aggression.
FFS… I guess I should just copy and paste a faq for every post to keep from having to crawl back up thread 100 posts to ground already covered.
“Stop Playing” is not a reasonable game design element. You want all parities engaged in playing. In any other combat this is mechanically avoided with engagement timers.
I guess I will restate… You will accept that once bumping begins there is no way to keep playing the game other than a lucky bump or getting concorded for self defense.
Now we are back to That Is Not Balanced.
Now, Proceed to actual discussion of the complaint at hand instead of trying to drag in extraneous elements from outside the complaint.
You mean other than do their hunting outside of high sec, an area of space specifically set up with rules against instigating aggression in an unlimited manner?
I think you just pinpointed a rather obvious part of the problem causing the imbalance, rather than provided a counter point supporting your own argument.
Ok… WIsh Granted. Go to Low, Null or a wormhole. Unlimited aggression without concord interference. It’s baked right in to every other area of the game, on purpose.
Alternatively, they can constrain their target selection to War Targets, or attempt to bait their targets into a suspect timer or getting kill rights put on them… I’ll not be dishonest and say any of it’s easy or broadly applicable, but there are alternatives even if you want to stay in high sec.
Haulers aren’t the ones taking advantage of a loophole here.
That’s a feature, not a bug.
The imbalance is created when you circumvent those rules. Haulers are already suffering longer trip times and constrained travel routes that channel them into suicide ganker chokepoints. It was baked right into the entire concept of high sec space, where the barrier to entry on aggression has been raised by design.
It’s not “stop playing”.
No one is saying stop playing except you.
Logging off can be just as much an active part of the engagement as anything else. It is a mechanic that will remove the ship from space.
Good on you if you think it’s just stopping and that somehow that is bad. If you ever end up being bumped, then stay logged in an get ganked. More power to your pride or whatever it is, but others are happy to focus on the outcome they are trying to achieve and willing to use the mechanics to achieve it.
But overall, just don’t be solo and don’t get bumped. There is nothing about the game that says every ship needs to be a completely soloable ship, and capital sized ships generally aren’t. There are plenty of others in the game that totally are. So be effective or don’t be effective, but stop the endless whinging and whining and dismissing every counter put down as unreasonable.
It’s not unreasonable to have and alt or a friend.
It’s not unreasonable to prepare so you aren’t a target.
It’s not unreasonable to use webs.
It’s not unreasonable, in the event that something goes horribly wrong, to gank the bump ship.
It’s not unreasonable, in the event that something goes horribly wrong, to get your ship out of space if you can do so.
It is unreasonable to be a lazy ass that couldn’t care less about trying to be safe and then crying to CCP about the potential for loss, with a request to change someone else’s gameplay. Change your own first.
Fun to see you abandon all pretense at real discussion.
Type that out again, really slow and just listen to it. Logging Off is not, by the very definition of what it is, an active part of play.
It is leaving play, turning off the game client and disconnecting from the server.
That’s not active play. That’s the exact opposite of active play.
I can’t even imagine the mental gymnastics it took you to try to formulate that argument.
Alt or Friend, granted. Not part of the complaint, as it assumes a bump happened and there’s not much an alt or friend can do once that happens. Good try on deflection yet again though.
Prepare so not a target. Granted. Not part of the complaint, as it assumes a bump happened and if you weren’t targeted, it didn’t. Good Try on deflection yet again though.
Use Webs. This is just a repeat of have a friend or alt. Already Granted. Not part of the complaint, as it assumes a bump happened and there’s not much an alt or friend, with or without web, can do once that happens. Poor try on deflection yet again, since you are now just repeating yourself.
Gank Bump Ship is unreasonable in this case, as the counterplay should not involve being concorded for self defense in high sec. Ganker is using bumping loophole to avoid concord, the counter to that should not be to suicide yourself in defense. So yeah, Unreasonable, unless you happen to be defending yourself someplace besides high sec where concord isn’t an option.
Get out of space, sure. However, logging off is the same as ‘stop playing’ by definition. Sure, it gets you out of space unless the bumper does shoot you before your emergency warp kicks in, which he may or may not deem worth the cost, but it’s also not continuing to play the game, which makes it an unacceptable mechanic as a counter play to being tackled.
Do you want to discuss ways to get out of space to someplace safe that do not involve stopping play? If so, that one becomes reasonable. If not, you are once again beyond the scope of the discussion, good try at deflection.
What is great is that you continue to ignore even suggestions that would limit bumping through the use of escorts…
Meaning the Hauler wasn’t solo, he was using an alt.
Such a suggestion would solve the complaint without affecting the ganking of haulers that were flying solo, and probably untanked as well. Those guys still die, and no one still cares, and the only ‘cost’ to the gankers is that a prepared ship with escort got away before they could form up… though they did have a chance since the suggestion even included a few minutes of spool up—far more than would be needed for a prepared crew to take advantage of.
Because let’s be clear… I’m not arguing that a solo guy should win against a prepared fleet. If only one side of the fight has a fleet, that side will most likely win unless something went spectacularly wrong. What is unreasonable is that a guy without a fleet can hold the other guy an indefinite amount of time until a fleet eventually forms up.
Every time you mention things like ‘don’t get targeted’ or ‘avoid the first bump in the first place’, you are beyond the scope of the complaint and are deflecting the conversation to your own personal strawman.
false
you can get someone to counterbump
you can get a mining permit
you can pay the ransom
you can get someone to gank the bumper, etc, etc
You were bumped for a whole day or are you just a liar?