Ganking makes Eve a better place

First, I love seeing the teary eyed posts of those bent on quitting because they were ganked. Every time you do that, you feed the need. I gank a lot these days and tears are the best part.

I have been playing more than a decade and I still get ganked from time to time. Every time it happens, I realize once again that I was stupid. Gankers remind us that everything has limits and to learn those limits. Subtleties of what you can do and can’t do are things people must learn. A 0.6 system isn’t a 1.0 system for a reason. Eve doesn’t guarantee safety. It guarantees that you have to learn to survive. Rage quitters are just that; quitters.

Every time I am ganked, it’s for one of the following reasons. They are easy to learn. Learn them well.

  1. Never carry 200 Mil + worth of loot in a T1 hauler, or for that matter, a frigate. If you do, you can minimize your chances of death by tanking up rather than being fitted with cargo expanders. If you are awesome with the align-cloak-uncloak-warp trick, you can evade a LOT of people trying to gank you.

  2. Never EVER run a freighter through areas notorious for freighter killing (such as Uedama), and never carry more than a couple bil worth of stuff in it. You may survive for a while, but eventually you WILL die and the loss will set you back further than all the gains you made previously.

  3. Don’t assume deep space transports are safe. Keep your loads to less than 1 Bil. Keep a micro warp drive fitted. Also put a cloak on and learn the align-cloak-uncloak-warp trick. Don’t assume DSP’s are safe in low-sec, as focused points can hold anyone down.

  4. If someone scans you at one gate and you notice it, ask yourself if you can survive an attack at the next gate.

  5. If you see a Tornado sitting at a gate you just jumped through, assume the worst. Yes, there are many other ganking ships that can solo-kill a hauler in high-sec.

  6. If you’re using an active tank, don’t forget to use it once you jump through a gate. If in doubt about the ships sitting there waiting for you, activate your active modules. Don’t just die easy. Passive tanks are better if you’re hauling.

  7. If you’re in a Blingy ship (perhaps an awesome mission running ship), assume you are a great target. A blingy drunk Tengu pilot going through a gate to get to his mission is a great target that doesn’t really take a lot to kill for the huge return. Scout ahead. Use your active tank if you see a welcoming party. Assume you are juicy and delicious. Blingy faction Battleships running missions in high-sec are regularly killed by gankers.


For those that think I’m selfish and only care about my own pleasure, I say YOU play for nearly 20 years and see how salty you get by then, if you last that long. Of course, I play for the pleasure. PVP is a one sided proposition 98% of the time because most don’t want an even “good” fight. Most want to jump you with 5 ships to your 1 and call it PvP. The difference with ganking, is that you make a ton of isk and you can do it effectively solo with 2 or 3 accounts, and it’s fairly predictable on the outcome. Ganking well takes a lot of preparation and thought, has many challenges, requires a lot of patience, demands that you are brutally ruthless towards innocent children, and you lose your ships every time. It is not for everyone, but I believe it is essential to eve. CCP actively encourages ganking by providing Security Tags, limiting Police response times and allowing gankers to draw Police off gates. Ganking is destruction, which ultimately fuels the eve economy.

Finally, if you get ganked, learn from it. Don’t quit. Don’t blame Eve. There’s not been a single time I was ganked (and there were many) where I wasn’t the one being ignorant.

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Micro warp drive, you mean? You die to the Tornados long before your MJD has spooled up and you cannot Cloak-MJD.

You should discourage the use of active tanks as long as active tank means active repair modules, which they do in the ganking meta. They cannot deal with the volley damage of Tornados or high DPS ship like Catas or Taloses. Buffer tank is always better when it comes to ganking.

That’s futile. Since you cannot go around Uedama to go to literally 90% of the rest of high sec with a freighter, there is no other choice unless you want to spend hours trying to find a direct HS-HS wormhole.

… and don’t assume that you are no target just because you only carry a few million of cargo in your freighter. Gankers don’t care:

Especially nowadays with mineral scarcity, freighter prices have ballooned and turned them into worthwhile targets even if completely empty.

Other than that good advice. Ganking doesn’t make EVE a better place, but a more frustrating place to navigate though. But if you learn to deal with it, you can at least avoid the most glaring threats and even draw some amusement out of the plight.

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I do appreciate the gankers. Not my thing but it has taught me a thing of two about fittings and what ships to use.

The only part of ganking, more the grieving side of ganking, is bumping, that I think may need a change. A useful tool for sure but the scale of ship size should have more of an effect on how far the bumped ship travels. No ship not even a battleship should be able to bumped an Orca very far. A marauder with bastion mod active should be very hard to move, things like that.

no. and bumping isn’t just relegated to gankers… no change needed.

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Ganking does make EVE a better place. Without the threat of ganking hisec would be so boring like WoW with everyone strutting around in their flashy armor.

You would be ganked less if you know what you were doing however, like fitting a MWD instead of a MJD.

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I understand it is a highly used tactic in general for pvp. Also one of the most ridiculous looking things in Eve, what in many aspects has a realistic feel. At the very least a hard bump with a smaller ship should result in critical hull and armor damage, with the second bump resulting in destruction if not repaired first.

That would obviously change Eve to drastically if ramming could cause damage to both ships. So make it about size and weight.

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Nice anecdote about point 1 and 5:

I don’t often haul in high sec, but I have had multiple situations that I was targeted by a single Tornado in my T1 hauler with value worth 60M in cargo. Not sure if my EHP was too high to volley (was full tank) or if my value wasn’t worth it, but I didn’t get shot.

If gankers didn’t exist, I could just as easily have transported much more, AFK and in a ship made for fast aligning and fast warping instead of high EHP.

I’m glad EVE is a game where you can optimise survival versus speed. Without gankers, optimisation would be very boring.

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EVE’s space atmosphere is more like submarines under water.

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Yes I have heard that before, what’s your point?

Regardless, if you ram a jet ski into a submarine what do you think would happen? If that is indeed how Eve space works then smashing into a larger object should have consequences, or at the very least have less of a movement or bump impact when doing so to a large object.

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if you like the tears more than the game itself go look for help. you have a problem.

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As soon as I read the opening paragraph, why should anyone care to read further, tells me everything I need to know, selfish, “I love” the one way check valve thinking that never cares about anyone else but their own pleasures.

One thing is abundantly clear in every post like yours, no one else matters, only your pleasure.

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No collision mechanics in game.

I get what your saying, but I think you are blowing it out of purporting just a bit. Not uncommon for internet goers to make a bold statement or talk some smack to begin a thread or post. Don’t mean the rest of it is pointless, unlike your post.

Thanks captain obvious. I’m clearly aware that we just bounce off each other like a room full of birthday balloons. Cheesy.

So are you suggesting they implement collision mechanics… so that every ship that undocks from jita or just accidentally bumping into a fleetmate, gets damaged?

Understanding for OP’s post, exception for my post, rrrright.

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Ganking is a fine form of entertainment. Not my cup of tea, but it serves a purpose.
I agree that bumping needs a look at. A bullet (frigate) won’t change alignment of a tanker (any bs or higher ship).
The so called tears you enjoy so much aren’t tears, in almost every case. It takes very little skill to suicide gank in highsec. Just round up a couple friends and agree that you can afford to lose your isk for the gank. Their rage comes in from there being no real way to stop the gank, and concord is useless.
I argue that since concord is completely useless, you may as well take them out. I’d be down for a capsuleer vs all npc war. Wipe 'em out.
I imagine you take enjoyment out of clubbing seals too. Getting off on new players losing probably everything they have is why eve will never have the numbers of pretty much any mmo on the market.
Someone mentions wow as a comparison of fun, yet wow can lose players by the millions and still retain 50 times the number of players eve has, or will ever have.

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For most people in highsec, rounding up friends takes more skill than they can muster.

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I haven’t tried bumping one but that should be hard to move.

Concord is not useless, players just figured out how it works thats all. Gankers(thoose that do it for profit) look at risk vs reward, but a hauler can do the same and keep his cargo below the “worth it” isk level or get friends with logi/webs. You arent supposed to fly a defensless freighter full of valuables solo and expect to arrive to destination in 100% safety, that would be a different game…