While I have no doubt that if CODE catches me, they will kill me, none of them have gone to any extended effort to do so.
I have had encounters with two agents. The first made a run to bump me off an asteroid, and when I asked him if he was going to bump me he said ‘love bump’ and let me be after that.
The second was Guybertini, who warped a catalyst near me, and I responded by warping out. He left the system soon after. I sent him a mail with a Gummi Bear theme song linked and he sent me one back thanking me for being a good sport.
Certainly, they are dangerous, but not vindictive, relentless, or without mercy in my experience. If you treat them poorly, if you give them a reason to pay attention to you, then they will, but then again, that would be your fault.
If you lose a ship, you lose a ship. Whether it’s to CODE or someone else. It happens. It needs to happen or we would have a very poor industrial sector. Adversity, and overcoming it, builds character, and it reflects poorly on someone to beseech of another to solve a problem they could solve on their own with what is already available.
I am all for opposing the gankers, but I’ve yet to find a group that does so responsibly. That is, one free of the bitter hatred of an in game enemy that spills over into real life insults. One where I am free to acknowledge the enemy’s strengths without being labeled a spy or worse.
All players should be afforded a minimum amount of respect until they prove themselves to be undeserving of it. The destruction of simulated assets is not a crime in the real world sense, and does not represent an action that frees players from the obligation to display that minimum of respect. Do so, and gankers are much less likely to try to make a personal example of you.
