How do these hi sec gankers keep it up?

New Citizens Q&A
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I’ve noticed for more than a week, my favorite dock is perma-camped. Always 3-10 players right outside this one particularly popular dock. Usually half of them have suspicious security. I got myself blown up once this week, while stupidly carrying 125M worth of cargo in an Epithal elsewhere in the same system. Dunno if it was the same group, but seems likely.

I get why they killed my ship and took my stuff, and I have no ill-will. But I don’t understand how that can be sustainable. Don’t you lose status with Concord so fast that you can only do it once in a while? Don’t you then have to go spend time fixing your standing before doing it again? And doesn’t that take a lot of time to fix?

What if I wanted to spend my days as a Gank Spoiler? Just sitting near the same area and blowing up any cans that pop up when they gank a hauler? Is there a way that could be sustainable or will I screw myself out of being able to visit that system? And if it is doable, like repeatedly, what is a good ship to do it in? If I understand correctly, the cans have 500 health. Does that mean I need a ship that can deal a 500+ health alpha spike?

A little confused by all the security consequences with high-sec ganking

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Now that Ganking is a prestigious privilege and not a right you can expect the capsuleers participating in highsec hunts to be of a different stock. Dunking for leisure and pleasure, Plex and repeat.

I noticed Veldspar is down 0.9% this morning.

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Since you can “buy back” security status with tags these days, the only consequeces are financial. So, if you do your math right, chose the right targets and price in the costs of the gank, you will always make good profits. And if you can make profits, you can do it repeatedly, over and over again and simply get rich with it. Thats why they do it.

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Because they have easy targets?

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Welcome to the forums.

I suggest you take in some tutorials on bookmarks and how to avoid gankers. It takes some study but I have managed to gather ores and gases without too much hassle. I assume you must be hauling planetary industry or ice mining maybe? Those are beyond my alpha experience, but since there is a random chance of your cargo dropping, suicide gankers will take a chance.

Once your ship makes it within the station’s protection you are home safe. Make bookmarks to warp to the station and not the station’s unprotected perimeter. Never use auto pathing and auto pilot. Read up on indirect navigation to stations, as the direct path is usually mined with warp bubble and smart bombers.

Nothing and nowhere is 100% safe. I won’t tell you to fly safe. Instead I will tell you to just have fun!

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Btw if your favourite undock happens to be in a newbie system one of these I think you can report those guys sitting at the undock. Otherwise nope.

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While Hek is a rookie system where killing characters less than 30 days old is prohibited, Gabriale is a 2009 character. I’m sure they’re fair game.

Using insta-dock and insta-undock bookmarks will help you safely get out and into a station and bypass the station gankers. Search for those terms if you want more info on them, or ask and I can explain it too if you want.

Next, the ships they’re using appear to be Tornados.

This means they can one-shot any ship with less than about 10k effective hitpoints. Your Epithal was missing many modules and had 4k effective hitpoints.

That’s a very easy kill.

My recommendation is to use more modules and fly a better Epithal fit, or to upgrade to a Squall. Saving a couple of million ISK by not using modules isn’t very efficient if it means you lose over a hundred million ISK of PI goods to an easily avoided gank, after all!

[Epithal, MWD cloak and EHP]

Inertial Stabilizers II
Inertial Stabilizers II
Damage Control II
Warp Core Stabilizer I

50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Medium Shield Extender II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II

Improved Cloaking Device II
[Empty High slot]

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

14k EHP, enough to survive the gank of a single Tornado when the hardeners are on, for less than 20 million ISK.

Or train the new Upwell hauler skill and get yourself a Squall:

[Squall, MWD cloak and EHP]

Warp Core Stabilizer I
Inertial Stabilizers II
Damage Control II

50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Large Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II

Improved Cloaking Device II
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

40k EHP, this one could tank 3 Tornados, possibly 4. It’s a big upgrade from the Epithal but this fit is also about twice as expensive. Still, 40 million ISK isn’t much compared to your cargo.

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Only when it comes to the SoE Arc, the undock I don’t think is covered.

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@Gerard_Amatin has a great answer that covers some of the ‘specifics’. However to cover some of the broader “How do they…?” issues from your OP:

Ganking, done right, is profitable over the long term. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or a breeze - just that it’s actually a low-risk, fairly reliable source of income that mostly depends on a ganker taking a thorough and consistent approach to the business of spotting, killing, and looting easy targets.

Since it’s profitable and somewhat reliable, that means there are ‘career’ gankers with multiple accounts, bots, third-party software set to notify them outside the game, etc. As well as corps with dozens or hundreds of members to cover various areas and time zones. So yes, they can perma-camp active areas.

Multiple ways to deal with the status/standings loss exist: buy it off with tags from the profits, earn it back with the various “Increase your standings” services and guides, just trash the char and start a new one, or simply ignore low standings because gankers can take advantage of game mechanics such that they aren’t generally exposed to much danger from police ships etc.

Deciding to be a gank spoiler (known as anti-ganking) can be done, but basically you end up doing as much or more work than the gankers, for virtually no profit, and costing the gankers nothing they weren’t already prepared to lose anyway. So really it’s just there for folks who like to give up their game time just to annoy gankers.

As for shooting the dropped cans, unless the dropping player somehow abandons the cans quickly, you’ll get suspect flags for shooting or looting the containers anyway. Which just means the gankers get to kill you for free. Plus, career gankers will have often have bot alts set up with loot scripts that loot things faster than you can blink anyway.

Not trying to discourage you from anything you enjoy doing, but in the long run, gankers are set up to exploit certain common situations and mistakes other players make, usually in fairly high-traffic areas. That’s what makes it profitable for them. Learn those areas, situations, and mistakes, and how to avoid them. Then you can mostly ignore the gankers and get on with your game.

They like to pretend they’re apex predator pirate bandits, but they’re really just bottom-feeding scavengers. And CCP’s philosophy about the game is that such scavenging is part of the EVE-verse and isn’t going to change any time soon.

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Is this some kind of insider talk? I don’t understand anything you are saying.

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Thank you for the detailed reply to the questions I asked. I’ve recently returned after many years away and feel like a clueless noob.

I watched a video recently about how to spoil a ganker’s day. It said shooting their cans will cost you your ship as Concord will come kill you, but it sounded like it was possible to make their ganking unprofitable. I figure if perma-camping my favorite station isn’t profitable, perhaps they will move on. But from what you’re saying, I get the impression that it might not be worthwhile to try to shoot their cans in an effort to get them to go elsewhere.

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Precisely. Ganking is a business transaction - you scan the ship and cargo, estimate its’ value, figure out how much it will cost in disposable gank-ships (Catalyst, Tornado etc.) to destroy it before Concord arrives.

If the value of the expected drops exceeds the value of the ships lost in the gank, then you gank. If the gank losses cost more than the ship drop, you don’t gank. Except sometimes you do anyway, because you make enough ISK from ganking and other operations that you can afford some extra/unprofitable ganks just for kicks.

With anti-ganking, the math is fuzzier, and in general you don’t get paid for your efforts in drops. Plus, because ganking is profitable and has been for literally decades, gankers simply have the practice and tools to streamline their end of the business more than the anti-ganking end.

Last, even if you do drive them away, they’ll just pick another location for a while and come back later. So the economics and persistence factor favor gankers and lean against anti-ganking. Even gamer psychology favors ganking since most of them convince themselves they’re real hardcore bada5ses and they get reasonably frequent positive reinforcement. For anti-gankers, the “reward” is that… nothing happened. And then if you keep at it, nothing will happen, again!

Ganking/looting is a viable career. Anti-ganking is a protest reaction.

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They really should have some ingame notification of what a new player system is.

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So does shooting their cans destroy their booty and profits and can it be done?

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Yes, shooting the wreck before they loot it destroys their profits. I also don’t see why it cannot be done.

What I do not know is whether shooting the wreck made by a criminal is legal. Maybe you get a suspect timer, maybe even a criminal timer, I don’t know. Maybe someone else does know.

Or you could give it a try in a cheap ship, turn safeties to yellow and shoot the wreck of a gank. If you’re not allowed to do so it’s a criminal act that requires red safeties and results in losing standings and losing your ship to CONCORD. Whether that’s worth it to annoy gankers that’s up to you.

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Most wrecks will be yellow to you. Shooting a yellow container/wreck will give you a “Suspect” timer, which means anyone can attack you without interference from Concord. So it can be done, but any gankers nearby will likely just get a free kill on you.

Gankers also typically use loot scripts or other preparations to grab loot very quickly. So you’d need very fast targeting/shooting to beat that. You could also just try to grab the loot faster than they do and GTFO - same Suspect timer either way. Either can work but are unlikely to - gankers just have more practice and better setups for fast looting.

As for how easy/quick containers can be destroyed, I found this old reference from 2016 but not sure if it is currently accurate or not:

To see a bit more of how gankers operate, you might check some videos from players like MacGybo:

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Basic translation; Gankers who kill in high security ( 1.0 - 0.5 ) systems, do it to annoy and for PvP creds ( dunking a basketball term for scoring points ) than anything else. The veldspar stock quote, I believe, was added to reflect the population new miners who farm it. New players start out mining those low end ores and don’t just jump through wormholes on day one gas mining aka “huffing gas”.

Some players believe the only good miner is a dead miner. This is why Eve appears to have a high turnover of new players. They will either become frustrated and leave the game or they will find a place to call home and stay. I play this very casual and spend more time on other games. It isn’t a fast reflex game, which is good for the senior citizens, what many gamers still call boomers. Although the vast majority of boomers are plant food now. I am the caboose of the boomer train.

Have fun!

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Yep, as a part of that caboose of baby boomers. Which is one of the many reasons I play. Though that turnover in players is something that CCP is trying to address. From what I do understand. There has not been a viable solution proposed that I am aware of to date.

And as a miner myself. I have learned that anything that lands on grid and is not anyone that I recognize. I am gone just that fast.

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Well, there seems to be a legit contingent here. I am a, well I guess I just have to call myself, a “caboose boomer” as well! I raise a shot glass in our honor and shout “Up the Caboose Boomers!”

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Correct.

Without newbro gankers competing with newbro miners the dynamic is changing, people like to write it off but if everyone’s products make it to market it reduces said products value.

Less ships destroyed means less ships to sell, less fittings and less ammo being purchased etc etc.

Isk is depreciating, and most sellers are digging there heels in at 6 million per Plex at least from my observation of the Amarr market.

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