Loot scooping has been a handy, what I call “exploit” ever since Fleet Hangars were introduced.
For those that don’t know this ‘technique’ - loot can be stolen (that would normally make you Yellow Flashy suspect) - by “scooping” it with a cheap disposible ship directly into the fleet hangar of a waiting DST (Deep Space Transport).
Only the scooper goes suspect, the DST does not. This loophole allows looting with no counter, other than ganking the DST hauler, which is not what I’m making a point about.
For balance, there should be a way around this tactic, and the loot, which is a HOT potato, should not magically become a COOL potato, when its been moved into the hangar of a fleeted DST. Both the scooper and the DST should go suspect, and thus give players a way of regaining the ‘stolen’ loot.
This has been discussed many times waaaay back e.g.:
but the loophole has never been closed. I don’t think it was ever the intention that laundering the loot this way should happen.
CSM please consider closing this loophole, so the game is balanced for both gankers and those trying to prevent gankers getting away scott free with the loot, and without resorting to their tactics.
I’m not against this in principle - loot should make any ship that has carries it suspect until it reaches a station to generate content - but the main problem, other than development time, I see is that it opens a hole in the CrimeWatch mechanic which would could be exploited to make people go suspect with no action on their part. You’d have to lock use of the fleet hangers to yellow safety and even then, you are going to have some unhappy players upset when they are AWOXed by someone in their fleet.
That in itself could be a source of content generation so perhaps CCP should find the time, but I would understand if they didn’t want to open that loophole. Can’t hurt to ask about it I guess.
You have the safety settings mechanic already in place to prevent this. You cannot go suspect with a green setting. If someone wants to risk for that loot they could set yellow (or red)
While I agree with you, it’s just a different version of an existing “exploit”.
If the Thief steals from someone, they are flagged Suspect / Criminal (depending on what led to the theft). Because they’re flagged, all their possessions (such as Jet Can contents) are fair game. This was implemented to get rid of the old Can Flipping tricks.
So if the Thief stole from the Victim, and then immediately Jet the loot… the Getaway Driver could scoop the loot, free and clear.
You’re arguing the same process, just facilitated by Fleet mechanics. The Thief’s possessions are fair game, and the Getaway Driver is taking those possessions (into their Fleet Hangar) without a hassle.
Now… if you wanted to prevent this immediate hand-off, it wouldn’t stop the Thief from dumping their goods and the Driver taking it a second later. And it would mean creating limitations that prevent Fleet Hangar interaction while one side is flagged. Which makes things complicated if you’re talking about fleet battles and various flags.
You could try to include things like accounting for the Driver’s safety status. Are they set Green / Yellow / Red? If they’re Green, then they should not be able to perform any action that would flag themselves. That would include accepting stolen goods. So you’d need another check in there to decide of the Thief is allowed to access the Hold when the Driver is set to Green.
There’s too many checks. So if something like this happened, it would be very complicated to set up, and probably very prone to further abuse or malfunctions from either side. People figuring out ways to avoid getting flagged. Or people figuring out ways to make someone else get flagged when they were innocent.
And on top of all that effort, there are tons of other things that still need fixing, before they spend time and effort coming up with this.
