The fun thing about having these game play loops, people can also play as the cops trying to stop piracy and crime.
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I would like the creation of mid-sec (keep .8+ as is), for 0.5-0.7, where there is less concord presence. Outright shooting ships, or pointing are still criminal (and gets you concorded), however there are more actions that give suspect timers. EWAR is possible, but earns you a suspect timer.
You mean low-sec “lite”? 
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Yes a mix of low and high, hence the word mid 
But didn’t you want the opposite suggestions originally?
I will try to actually reply to your OP.
Theft is already possible. You can “steal” sites. You can steal from wrecks, you can steal jet cans that some miners put their ore into. And obviously you can steal loot from the player directly after you kill him → it still belongs to him and only him, it is yellow for anyone else including killer (who can’t take it in most cases anyway) and incurs a suspect penalty. Also corp thefts are possible.
Not much else is possible or healthy. I don’t think that it is good idea to steal something directly from players’ ships. What else is there to do? I can think of nothing really.
Hijacking. Unless you somehow persuade the player to eject, you cannot do it and since infinite bumping is no longer possible, there is no way to actually stop player in space for so long so he can be persuaded to do that. It is not a good idea anyway. Players are simply not require to eject from their ship at all and in highsec the atackers cannot really stop them. It can happen in lowsec though, sometmes when I am caught in gatecamp I eject and continue in capsule, but they always destroy the ship anyway. In highsec however unless it is wardec, you just cannot hold osmeone in warp scram indefinitely. And even if you could, the longer you keep him alive the more chances he has to call reinforcements to fight you ,so why would you? It is risky, targets will always try to avoid it in any means and you are in ship already so how do you get the ship to your possession anyway? If you dock, the original owner can come back and take it. It just makes no sense.
Ransomning: Is what BLACKFLAG. does isn’t it? They ransomn every citadel owner and f they don’t pay they destroy their citadel. Ransomning to “let go” in highsec is pretty much impossiblle from same reasons as above. And in lowsec I am not gonna do it anymore either, the last time I did,. and I risked by doing this as anytime some other hunter could come and kill my target and me too, my target was trying to avoid it and negotiated for 15 minutes until he paid. After I let him go (and in no way you can actually force pirates to honor their deal which is why majority of players will never accept it anyway) he started mocking me and swearing and wishing me cancer in local just like majority of players I gank in highsec. So next Retriever I catch I am gonna destroy.
Well that still isn’t any suggestion to expand crminal activities in highsec…
So I give you one. Allow wardec corporations that has no citadel (optional: by corporations that has no citadel). Perhaps add some other restrictions like member count. Now that expands criminal activities in highsec!
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Allow tractor beam and MTU yellow wrecks by incurring suspect flag. This could make “stealing” abandoned combat sites much more viable. Alternatively, automatically abandon the wrecks and make the blue after certain time, say 30 minutes if the owner left, unless the owner left MTU there.
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Allow to shoot POSes and POS structures without wardec (as some of the owners cannot be wardecced anymore) with incurring suspect flag.
Hmmm, for Cargo- and Shipscanning I would disagree. Currently it is just an alt who scans ship after ship after ship for lucrative targets and no one can really do something about. Bumping doesn’t prevent the scan, ganking him is useless because it does cost 10times more than the scannership, which will be replaced within 1 minute anyway.
If scanning other ships would create a suspect timer, he would need to be mobile, paying attention and always be on the run from others who might want to play a cat/mouse game over it.
It’s in no way impossible that way, a fast frig can still do it from range. But at a risk.
And even from an immersion point of view, it would make sense. What is more suspicious than an associate of a known gang of robbers that lurks around in the neighborhood and scan-sweeping cars and houses? I was really surprised to learn that this doesn’t give a suspect timer…
Yes, you could call it “another nerf for ganking” because it is no longer doable by just another multiboxed alt that isn’t really paid attention to, unless a possible gank candidate appears. But it would also create options for engagements, because people could also be tricked into agressing… you know, suspect baiting. People have litereally asked in the past for more options to go suspect so they could lure others into attacking them. Scanning could work that way, just saying.
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It increases anti-criminal activities. If the OP was about increasing PvP in general, then you would be right.
Either way it is total nonsense to incur suspect flag from scanning. Arguments were already given by others, you are classically ignoring them.
The only thing that makes sense is weapon timer flag, but that won’t change much except for Tornados at tradehub with killright. Scanning alts at gates has no killright and if they use Gnosis it is pointless to gank them as you pointed out. And everyone sooner or later switch to Gnosis after his frigate or Sunesis gets ganked once.
I learn more from the ’ Oh crap…that’s not actually how it works’ moments.
I take your original points. But it does not have to be an either/or thing. One could instead apply a percentage risk of going suspect…say 5% or something.
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I honestly don’t care what side of the isle you fall on, or whether you personally agree or disagree with any of the suggestions (especially mine). Let’s just not let it devolve into what usually happens in these threads (this isn’t aimed at anyone specifically - just a general comment).
This was a general suggestion for something that might be interesting. It doesn’t necessarily have to literally mean commandeering the ship - it could also mean some form of temporary disabling while it’s pillaged for cargo.
Yeah, sure - “unofficially” I’m sure that happens sometimes. I was thinking more along the lines of an actual game mechanic.
I think most players would agree that WarDecs suck in their current form.
I’ve honestly never tried to tractor yellow wrecks (or containers) while suspect. I take it by your comment that it doesn’t work? Yes for ships - no to MTUs (not sure I like the idea of inanimate objects becoming automated pirates).
I don’t have any thoughts one way or the other on POS.
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Can you link me? I have scrolled up like two pages and not found any. And in all honesty, it’s hard to think of many reasons why it should not create a suspect timer.
It’ still doable, fit a fast frig, warp to 50, lock the target, do your scans, burn away or warp off. Use a Ceptor even, fitted for full speed, orbiting the gate at 50km, doing 10k m/s. 99% of random dudes won’t even able to do something against it. But someone could try and bring a specialized fit against it. You notice a Loki, Rapier whatever sneaking up to you to get in webrange… Now the ball is back in your court: can you trap this guy? Make him agress you, looking like an easy target, but in the end having just waited for that to kill his ship?
It could really spice up some of the player combat interactions in HS if we had more mechanics that create a suspect flag. Just because scanning ships/cargo is useful for ganking and so conveniently done on just another alt, it should not be excluded from thinking about it. The difference is: That would be challenging PvP, not just sitting there and waiting to hit the F1 button on the right target. From my point of view, the more possible engagements, the better. And suspect-engagements are all but onesided, if the guy going suspect is indeed skilled.
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@Syzygium is absolutely right - we should be encouraging more (and not less) game mechanics to create suspect flags. Scanning ships would be a great start. We could (and should) also add a 60-second weapons timer along with the suspect timer so that they can’t immediately dock-up or leave the system through a stargate.
It may mean that scanning alts are no longer feasible in some high-traffic systems in cheap, throw-away ships. They may actually need to be combat fit…
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It was I who originally suggested making suspect status for all attempts at scanning. Vokan presented a good case that that was not workable. So I’ve now altered the suggestion to be that there should be a risk ( maybe 5% ) of going suspect on scanning…or something of that nature.
The point being that I really don’t think being able to scan 24/7 in one location should carry no penalty at all. There has to be some way of making it incur greater risk.
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I’d consider something along these lines. Bare-bones outline right now because on my way out:
- Remove Concord or limit it to 1.0 and 0.9
- Replace bounty system, add mercenary contracts/corp projects/freelance to hunt targets for decent pay (eg. not ‘20% of hull’ which was crap)
- Add protection contracts of various sorts (eg. “2 billion a month to defend my Citadel X with 10 Billion Collateral if lost”)
- Escort contracts for cargo delivery or mining ops.
- Ganker/pirate penalties now become permanent, can’t be bought off (except in one manner, coming up). Criminal status lasts longer. Various restrictions start to apply at -1.0 and lower standing. At -3.0, can no longer dock at regular stations (you’re a known crook). Can only dock or re-clone at ‘pirate’ citadels (eg. player citadels owned by a pirate corp, known as illegal)
- Pirates may suffer small SP loss on death due to shaky pirate cloning systems (??)
- Any char reaching -5.0 status cannot be deleted, permanent on account.
- Various rewards/status/payments for hunting pirates, paid as % of destruction. Earns special bounty hunter LP for various rewards. Increases standing. Is only way for a pirate to improve negative standing (hunting other pirates).
- ‘Crimewatch’ modified to report known locations of active pirates.
Basically, create a web of tools for putting both crime and policing in players hands, and for making the contest active and destructive. Rather than the current stale repetitive process.
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I’d be down for this, but ONLY if the ship and or fit required for this was super expensive. But of course, gankers wouldn’t like that. They want to be able to do everything with trash ships and equipment which means no loss while they destroy or steal expensive stuff. But make it MEAN something to fail. Make it HURT. Billions of ISK lost each failed attempt.
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Can you link me? I must be blind, I can’t find it. Really.
You know that clone tags to regain status, plus ‘Concord fee’ are actually most of the cost of many ganks ? (One tag covers about 3 ganks ). I think a lot of people assume its just the cost of ‘cheap’ Catalysts…but for anyone who wants to regain status the largest component of a gank, if you divide out the costs, is that of tags etc. So there is already a significant penalty, and ganking is more expensive than many realise.
When I ganked for AO…SRP covered the Catalysts but not the tags…and I was actually losing money.
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Incorrect. It’s actually because it’s completely unprofitable and pointless to do so. The standard ganking protocol spends very little time exposed in space, so they’re not “sitting ducks”. They’re in cheap disposable ships that they plan to lose anyway, so you’re not ‘gaining revenge’. The drops are virtually worthless, so there’s no reward.
There’s a small ‘moral point’ to be made for simply ‘annoying’ gankers by interfering with profitable ganks so they lose that shot at profit. Which is basically to show up the hypocrisy of the gankers since in reality, they’re just risk-averse, lazy farmers looking to gain the most profit for the least net risk and work. Just like the players they’re always bitching about…
Other than that, people don’t hunt gankers because it’s neither profitable nor practical to do so.
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Here’s the link…
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