Non-consensual PVP is good. Ganking would be richer and more interesting if expanded and balanced.
INTERDICTION:
Being tackled in a PVE fit ship feels awful. With some changes, we could make it feel far less bad, without altering the game too much. These would have far-reaching impacts on the game, enough to warrant their own post, but they impact ganking so I included them here.
CHANGES:
Scrambling and disruption should increase align time. Said increase in aline time should scale with range. At 0 km the increase in align time should be 1300%. At 25 km the increase in a line time should be 300%.
Disruptors should have a 50km range. At 50km, the increase in align time is 30%.
Scrams should have a 30kmm range. At 30km, align time increases 20%.
Effects would stack. Two disruptors at 0km would increase align time by 2600%. Two disruptors at 50km would increase it by 60%.
Additionally, victims have a 1.5% chance of making a “critical” alignment calculation which automatically propels them into hyperspace.
(additional interdiction tool introduced in later section)
EFFECTS:
When you get tackled in an economic or pve ship, in the back of your mind, you can still hope to escape. That hope alone makes getting tackled in an economic ship feel much less bad.
More ganking victims would escape vs. current mechanics. But the increase in range would allow gankers to catch more potential victims too. Hunters in null and low in particular would catch people they currently wouldn’t.
Additionally, I think that more people will be willing to engage in PvP more often if there is a greater chance that they can escape if they are about to lose. Some of these fights would end without a kill. But more fights would happen. I have personally engaged hunters in my PVP domi simply because i had an MJW.
The traditional catalyst ganking fleets won’t be altered much by these, beyond losing 1.5% of their prey. They warp in at 0, and all fit points.
Concord response:
I think the way that Concord and FacPo currently operates in response to piracy could be a hell of a lot more fun and interactive.
The main problem I see is that Concord ends ganks/attacks too fast. I think there is a lot of opportunity for fun interactions between gankers and victims that concord currently denies. (next section details new tools that victims can use to defend themselves for longer, to balance out this increased concord response time).
CHANGES:
Reduce concord response times by 60%.
Reduce concord response strength by 60%
Stagger concord ship arrival by ship size. Concord frigs arrive first, then cruisers, then larger ships.
Concord response ships pull from a set pool of ships.
Concord brings some logi ships to try to save victims
EFFECTS:
SCENARIO: A Care Bear is munching rocks in proc. A pirate with a five catalyst fleet targets him him. The gank begins. The proc is fitted properly with tank modules. X seconds into the fight, two Concord frigs land on grid. The pirate now has a gameplay decision to make: Target and kill the frigs, in order to preserve his catalysts as long as possible, or keep fire focused on the victim. X seconds into the fight the first Concord cruisers show up: one DPS and one logistics ship. Again the gameplay decision: Target logi or keep fire on proc? From the victims standpoint, he is approaching the halfway point of being aligned to escape, and the logistics ship means that he might get there. It’s a bad spot but all hope is not yet lost.
Expanding on this, let’s further imagine that our pirate friend has two more pirate friends with 14 more catalysts lurking in the system. They warp in on the fight and manage to defeat the Concord friggs and cruisers. The increase in criminals triggers addition all concord ships to deploy to the fight. Three BCs land on grid… The proc slips away, but the pirates are thinking bigger now. They kill the Concorde battle cruisers and manag to warp a few catalysts a way to safety just yet more Concorde forces show up.
Why would they bother attacking Concorde over an actual player? Because it will take 24 hours for those Concord frigs to respawn, 2 days for the cruisers to respawn, and 3 days for the battle cruisers to respawn. Until then, Concorde responses in that system will be even weaker. That opens up further opportunities for the pirates to apply their trade with less interference from the law. And, should they manage to kill all concord forces in a system, they will effectively own the system for a few days, until the empire that owns the system deploys a massive fleet to take it back.
Alternatively, the gankers could simply ignore concord and focus on the gank, just like they do with current mechanics.
Victim Defense:
To balance the above section, let’s introduce new tools to make it possible for victims to survive until concord arrives to POTENTIALLY save them.
CHANGES:
Introducing the ORE damage mitigation drug. It is a consumable item that costs somewhere between 5 and 10 million isk (medium). When consumed it boosts a ship’s resistances to 85% for 7 seconds. It can be consumed straight from the cargo hold. This creates a meaningful gameplay decision for the victim once they are tackled. Do you start burning these suckers back to back in order to hold out and get rescued by Concord no matter the price? Do you try to strategically time using these so that you use as few as possible while enabling Concorde to save you (assuming Concord is even coming)? There will be a small, medium and large version. Large ships can use the small version but will receive only a fraction of the benefit and larger versions will cost much more. Small ships can’t use large versions.
Introducing the ORE evasive maneuvers capsule. It’s another consumable item taken from the cargo hold that teleports your ship 25 km in a random direction. Again these are expensive. Creating a bit of distance will give you a bit of respite from those neutron blasters and allow you to up your alignment speed by placing you farther away from the screams and disruptors. But will it be enough? Will those catalysts catch up to you? Maybe those suckers will spread out a bit in order to anticipate your next micro jump. Only ships smaller than freighters or orcas will be small enough to actually utilize this device.
larger ships like freighters and orcas will have access to the brand new ORE hyper mirror device. When consumed this device turns a ship’s Shields, armor OR hull into a metaphysical substance capable of reflecting incoming damage back at attackers. The effect lasts for 10 seconds but it has after effects which then reduce a ship’s resistances of the affected area by 50% for 8 seconds. So if you use a “shield” hyper mirror your shield becomes the mirror but then your shield receives the subsequent Nerf. Complacent pirates might lose an entire fleet to their own blasters. Competent ones will hold fire and then smash their target once the effect has worn off. There is a cool down between using like types of this component - use one of the shield mirrors and you have to wait 40 seconds between using another shield mirror. It’s also extremely expensive costing over 90 million isk per unit.
EFFECTS:
It takes longer for concord to save victims. Now victims have ways of staying alive until that happens. Ganks are less “oh i died in two seconds” and more of a back-and-forth game of cat and mouse, where either side might come out ahead.
I didn’t bother trying to think of cool names for these components, the lore doesn’t interest me.
Sec Status:
In my original post I didn’t realize that the faction police were a thing. After reading about them, I think they are too restrictive.
The problem I see here is that there is no good way for people to counter-hunt gankers, because most gankers keep their fleets docked until the moment comes to strike their prey. PVP between gankers and anti-gankers could be a rich area of gameplay. I think it is currently restricted by FacPo and security status mechanics.
CHANGES:
Reduce FacPo response time drastically, but scale it by size of criminal fleet. A single criminal catalyst would be attacked by FacPo after 10 minutes on-grid. A fleet of 50 criminals would be attacked by FacPo after 2.5 minutes on-grid.
Warping to another point in a given system would reset the FacPo clock.
If a criminal docs at a player station you own, your own security status takes a hit.
Criminals can bribe officials at NPC stations in order to dock. A catalyst docking bribe should be approx 500.000 isk. A typhoon would be 4,000,000. Once docked, the ship can stay there for 12 hours, at which point the bribe would automatically be paid again. Similar bribes can allow criminals to dock at player stations without the owner of the station taking a security status hit.
Criminals can bribe FacPo officials to ignore them for periods of time. Two hours of time would cost the same as docking.
If a player with a high sec status attacks one with a low sec status, the sec hit to the attacker should be proportionately much smaller. Basically, empires frown upon vigilantism… but ignore it somewhat.
These changes apply to high-sec only.
EFFECTS:
Ganking fleets are now financially incentivized to keep their attack fleets in space while in high-sec, where anti-gankers can actually fight them.
Ganking fleets could be staged in low-sec systems cheaply and easily, until the time comes to venture into high sec to gank.
Docking at player-stations is technically still possible, but much harder to manage in the long run. I’m not sure if sec status affects a player’s ability to anchor a station currently. If not, then it should. Low sec-status players should have to pay daily bribes to keep their station in empire space, bribes that scale with how low your sec status is.
Evasive Piracy
I think it would be great fun if there was an option to steal from players without concord involvement, without taking a sec status hit, and even without destroying your victim’s ship.
CHANGES:
Introducing the Serapentis “quiet” maladaptive gel. It can be applied to existing weapons and modules When applied to a weapon it will decrease the overall DPS of that weapon by 50%… But in exchange firing that weapon on a capsuleer will not automatically be detected by Concorde. Instead there will be a probability of 2% per cycle that Concord will even notice that weapons are being fired in the system. In addition, Concord will have to work harder to pinpoint exactly where these quieter weapons are being used, so concord response time will increase by 75% as long as only quiet weapons are used.
Apply this gel to a warp disruptor and the disruptor will slow its targets allige time 50% less effectively… but there will only be a 15% chance per cycle time that Concord will notice that violence is happening.
Multiple quiet gels can be applied to the same weapon or module and the effects will stack proportionately. You could end up with a neutron blaster that only does 5% of the max damage but will be able to fire for very long periods and effectively never be noticed by Concord.
Introducing the guarista cargo hacking module. Each cycle time gives a 15% chance to force the victim to eject a random amount of a random cargo. Each cycle time also brings a 0.5% chance of forcing its victim to eject a random module. The can that is created from ejected cargo will not be accessible by the victim.
Introducing the angel cartel quiet mobile bubble device. It creates a bubble similar to the null-sec version, but this bubble only has a 4% chance of pulling a ship that passes through them out of warp drive. Ships that land in this bubble will still be able to warp, but with a 20% increase to aline time. These cost more than their null-sec version, around 35mil each. Each minute that it is operating in high-sec brings a 5% chance that Concord will notice it and once they do they will show up to destroy it within 4 minutes. This bubble device will show up on overviews, however, so anti-gankers will be able to warp directly too it as soon as its in operation.
EFFECTS:
Taken together these mechanics represents a whole new way of approaching piracy. Tackle your victim without Concorde noticing. Extract valuables from them without interference. And if you leave the scene before Concorde shows up then none of this activity will affect your security status. Gankers could actually take every bit of cargo and every module from a victim, without having to rely on the loot fairy to reward their efforts. Imagine the salt you’ll get as you slowly but surely relive that blingy pve marauder of all its purple mods.
From the victim’s side, being stripped of everything but your ship is preferable to losing everything. And the longer you stay alive, the better than chances are that you can call some friends to help you out, or survive until anti-gankers or even concord come to your rescue.
In short, these mechanics could be more profitable for gankers, less ruinous for victims, and be a focal point of pvp interactions that currently aren’t possible.
The new mobile bubble device gives gankers a way to tackle haulers without having to pull concord. I always though “pulling” concord was a silly mechanic. In addition, it could act as a focal point of conflict between gankers and anti-gankers.
One of the major benefits of this new quiet approach to high-sec piracy as I see it as that it will prolong piracy engagements. Now will be time for dialogue between pirates and victims in high-sec. Can you extore your victim, or would they rather die than send you isk?
Vigilantism
One more new mechanic to promote anti-ganker pvp opportunities.
Introducing the sisters of Eve distress beacon. This is a consumable item that when ejected from a cargo hold creates a warp signature that anybody in the system can warp directly to. So if you are a victim, but you have friends in the system or you reach out on local and find that there are some pirate hunters in the system, you can eject a distressed beacon that will show up on the overview that the good guys can warp to.
Uses of quiet weaponry should be a statistic that shows up on the star map, just like how many ships or pods are destroyed in a given system
In Conclusion
So how would these reimagined mechanics alter Eve?
I think that traditional ganking activity would be reduced, but not eliminated. Since the costs of traditional ganking would increase then profit motivated gankers would have to work harder and would probably engage in less ganking, and some might shift to evasive piracy.
Kill motivated gankers could simply ignore all of these changes. And that’s okay.
In my mind, piracy as an activity would probably increase in high sec.
I think these mechanics could also lead to more PVP content in general occurring in high sec.
I would love to see some powerful pirate groups throwing their weight around against Concord and some heroic ant-pirates rise up to try to stop them.
Would high SEC be a more dangerous place than it is now? Yes and no. The average player would probably face more piracy interactions overall, but the consequences of those interactions on average would probably be less catastrophic than they are now.
One last thing: please try to evaluate these changes in totality. If you pick out one of the mechanics above and place it into the game all by itself, it will definitely be unbalanced in some way. I have tried to think about all the above changes so that some changes are balanced out by other changes which are balanced out by other changes.