Ah I just looked it up. Well that one I absolutely missed, it wasn’t the case when I lived in Low for sure. I see the reasons behind it, but I think there could have been better solutions.
@ Vokan Narkar
I follow most of your arguments, maybe other solutions are better then. However, I would like to see it be as follows:
Step1: more realistic loot mechanics:
There should be no way to steal from any wreck or container and instantly warp. Aka a ships speed must always be at most 25% max speed, else you cannot even start looting.
It takes 5 seconds to take in the loot (you get the suspect flag instantly if it is not yours to take) so people have 5 seconds to tackle or kill you before you even get it. This prevents the usage of a noobship or cheap frig as looter, you will have to tank it depending on how much resistance you expect. Because if you die before the 5 seconds are up, the loot attempt is failed.
Step2: “middle man” shenanigans nerfed:
It takes another 5 seconds to transfer the loot into someone elses fleet hangar or container, which means the amount of tank to successfully do it doubles. Both ships need to be under 25% of their maxSpeed (like above) to even initiate the transfer. If you are bumped out of range (or the other ship is) or you are killed during these additional 5 seconds, the transfer fails and you have to try again when back in range or you die with the loot.
Basically: If there is no one around, go for it and steal whatever you can. If there is competition (the owner, other looters or law-enforcement-roleplayers), you WILL be vulnerable for tackle and engagement for at least 5 seconds. 10 if you want to secure it in someone elses cargo. So bring some capable ship or let it be.
Step3: Station Ganking just removed.
NPC stations should tether. If an Astrahus can do it, Jita4/4 can do it for sure. (no Outlaws of course!)
The use alpha alts seems to be a concern for cirvumventing the dangers of looting - I suggest “Loot Suspects” being unable to transfer or eject the stolen loot for the duration of the time: Following messages:
You are unable to eject the contents of your cargo as it contains stolen goods.
You are unable to move the stolen goods as it is fresh contraband.
The “thief suspect” flag prevents you from doing those two things for 1 minute. That way, using a throw away ship will not work. In other words, if you loot and receive a suspect flag because of it, you will not be able to get rid of it, giving the owner of the kill / wreck a narrow window of opportunity to get it back.
You can save it and yourself by warping away quickly or by tanking an attack until you can dock.
Why not just disable jettisoning for alpha suspects (for the duration of the suspect flag)?
If they successfully dock up they can drop the loot into their station inventory even as suspects.
Though maybe they could exploit a fleet hangar of a neutral ship to drop stuff into it or if not near a station a mobile depot or MTU cargo bay so maybe would be better solution if moving stuff from ship cargo hold was completely disabled (but not moving stuff into it).
Kind of a messy thing if you think about how to implement a solution.
Lol, you can’t multibox with alpha and no real player will be your “middle-man” for this. Anyone using this strategy is using omega alt so restricting alpha to jettison stuff when suspect solves absolutely nothing.
Nobody is doing it maybe except the botters who also use script to loot.
Like is nobody using alphas to gank, nobody is using alphas to loot.
Anyway, so lets say nobody will be able to eject or put stuff into fleet hangar when suspect.
Here is my prediction what happens:
Nothing really changes for gankers outside docking area of stations, an align and warp will be used, if there are too many AGs, they will be ganking them till they leave the area. They will also station neutral alt wihthout killright who will make sure that if AGs attempts to steal it, they won’t get away with it.
At docking area like Jita a well tanked Orca will be used, such that can survive 1 minute of anyone shooting at it. And gankers switch from ganking docking ships to undocking - so it is very hard to bump it outside of the 0km. They will also have neutral Nestor alt ready to undock and remote rep it once it takes the loot. Remote repper can dock anytime, so if peoples would be firing at that alt, he can dock whenever it will be dangerous. Alternatively gankers will use DST with a bumping mach or stabber ready to bump it outside of the scramblers of any potential antigankers who would be there sitting and attempting to stop it.
So effectively, your goal will fail anyway. Gankers will always adapt. The harsher is the punishment for looting, the less is the activity available for anyone else then them.
Not sure why you reply to me as I am not the OP I just replied to a post in this thread, a part of it actually an aspect I am familiar with so provided my insight.
Didn’t even imply I think or agree with the main suggestion itself. Not interested in discussing the main suggestion for the reason I’ve pointed out at the end of my reply, it is a mess to even think about let alone implement a system not exploitable but am willing to provide some feedback if I see it fitting and useful to the discussion but that’s it.
Maybe you didn’t intend it to me just hit reply under my post instead of the thread itself but whatever.
Sure, but that is one reason of many “give everyone a weapons timer whenever they go suspect” is a very poorly-thought-out solution. Too many side effects on other gameplay styles than the surgical precision of a very specific problem you’re trying to address.
Whenever I hear people say “there can be better solutions” but fail to actually come up with one - it means they have not come up with anything, cannot come up with anything but that the suggested solution inconveniences them in some way.
And? What’s wrong with the status quo as being the “better” solution when judging a new idea?
Whenever you’re looking at engineering a change, you look at various costs and benefits of various solutions. Including the “do nothing” option. That’s just sound reasoning.
People like you that try to force change under the guise of “Sorry only Ideas Guys™ get to criticize ideas, you need 1 New Idea to Enter” are why bad things happen because of the "we must do something " crowd of bad wisdom.
After saying all that, here’s a still not great but a novel idea for you:
Have looting be an action that actually takes time. Instead of it being an instant drag-and-drop action, have it begin a process that takes 10 seconds to finish the loot action. Yay progress bar. That’s 10 seconds of sitting in space – possibly suspect – within 2500m of a can/wreck. People who hunt explorers and people who bump will love you for this.
That is best “solution” this thread generated so far.
Jita 4-4 dock specifically, all the loot bots would go suspect not just one, and you would have 10 seconds to interact with them, bump them out of range and/or kill them.
Sure, with such change, looting would get far more dangerous. Especially around crrowded places like Jita or Uedama, however I think that real human pilots will manage. I can see a way around this, it just isn’t 100% but that is fine, I can live with the fact that myself.
It can still be gamed by middle-man loot strategy, but I don’t think that can be solved at all without creating some new stupid mechanic that makes no sense anyway. Even if this becomes prevalent strategy, it raises ceilings - not everyone can do that, and if nothing else, at least players get to kill one looter and that should make their mouths to shut up.
EDIT: The only drawback I can see is that looting/scavenging large number of yellow wrecks becomes chore. I do that sometimes when I arrive into completed anomaly, and with this mechanic, I would not bother doing that…
I wondered for a long time why wrecks don’t become automatically “abandoned” once you leave grid. Your MTU could still collect them if you want to come back later and whatever is inside can’t be taken without getting suspect for shooting the MTU. But the wrecks should be free for all once you warp off. Would definitely buff ninja-looting as a profession and lets be real: there are thousands over thousands of wrecks that remain after missions or anos and will never get looted or salvaged because the “owner” doesn’t care and for everyone else its just a mess to loot and salvage them all one by one instead of being able to tractor them in.
Since always afair if you take a FW gate without being officialy in the militia will make you a suspect.
Where did this came from? What?
So you want to hurt the gankers and hurt the loot thieves too, this will also hurt people stealing in low sec.
I get it why you want it, sometimes even I wanted that, but the consequence will be that people will engage less in dangerous activities which will make EVE a sad place.
Um yes that is the idea. Right now people loot and dock immediately with zero chance for revenge.
Thats the whole point - make looting dangerous. Right now, its not. You can loot and dock immediately. Your logic is bull**** basically. The whole dangerous part of looting is that you can get killed doing it but the station monkeys right at undock, can dock immediately - hence zero risk activity. And you are saying that keeping the riskless looting makes people not do risky things?!!! You see how zero sense that makes?
