Oh noes I am discovered
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What Iâm saying is that the ârandomnessâ is a factor that people will take into account before the attack is launched, and chances are the success or failure will be determined in a matter of seconds before anything I would call interesting can happen. It does complicate the formula, but like a casino hall does, if you calculate your odds you can practically guarantee you will win more than you lose. The people who pull off these ganks seem to have the skill and cunning to account for a somewhat random CONCORD response time. If the randomness is long enough that it gives humans a chance to respond to a gank, then it might make things interesting that way, but in that case giving people flat out more time would achieve the same effect.
If you want ganking to be âinterestingâ then you have to re-introduce the human element somehow. Only the ganking humans are invested in the gank. Theyâre the ones actively scanning and searching for people who meet their risk/reward criteria and thatâs how theyâll know how many ships they want to bring to maximize their profit, even with another random component. The people dying donât want to have to do anything to avoid death and are unlikely to get involved in their defense at the planning stage of a run, but will accept any change to game mechanics that makes them do less, or burdens the opponents with doing more.
But like I said, when CONCORD times are more random, the optimal efficient gank strategy might not have a certain success, as the most certain gank strategy would not necessarily be the most efficient.
And for people who are being ganked, having a small chance of survival is much better than none while theyâre waiting for CONCORD to arrive.
I just donât think that gankers need to be incentivized to be interested (and this wouldnât really do anything on that front anyway), and that people who are being ganked are only interested in improving their survival odds but wonât be satisfied with less than 100%.
I agree that randomized CONCORD could improve survival rates somewhat if the people making the kill do their math badly, but this will not last. Gankers will learn and adapt. The targets will die having not changed their behavior at all, even if the cost of a guaranteed kill goes up. Having people in non-combat ships bite their nails an extra few seconds before they learn their fate isnât the kind of interesting Iâd be going for.
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No, it might actually last. People who do their math well may also choose not to go for a certain kill if they value efficiency.
If the majority of your kills dies with 10 catalysts, but if you want to be 99% certain of a kill you need to bring 20 catalysts, efficient gankers will probably not bring 20 catalysts unless the target is hauling way too much valuables.
That means players will pretty much always have a small chance of survival unless gankers really really want you dead and are willing to pay extra for it.
This is what randomised CONCORD response times adds to the game: a sliding scale where gankers can choose to sacrifice more ships to have a bigger chance of success instead of a binary kill threshold.
Who do you imagine is going to be pleased or more interested? I canât imagine âa small chance of survival unless gankers really really want you deadâ is going to please anyone on any side of this equation. Are gankers not interested enough in ganking that they need extra calculations to do? Are gankees going to stop complaining about their lost ships because they now evade death by sheer chance on rare occasions?
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I agree, this may not be interesting for people who gank, although nothing about the average ganking profit should go down if the randomisation is done well.
This may also not be interesting for people who want to be 100% safe while hauling, but those players are playing the wrong game.
This would however be great for the people who, years later, fondly remember that time they were ganked with a cargo worth billions and got away.
I am skeptical that there would be many of those, but I will give you a point for a plausible answer to what I thought an impossible set of conditions.
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so now then there would be 2 price points 10 and 20 cats. i would bring 20 cats to the ganks, but only fire with 10. if the target dies then i dock the other 10 ,if its not going down then the other 10 will fire. i always really really want you dead 
over time it will even out
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Would that still work with CONCORD already being on grid when the 2nd set of 10 fire?
as the first batch are firing you would get the feels if its going to be a success or failure, if the second lot start firing before the first lot are dead then its new concord spawns instead of the existing ones that they are dealing with. Of course depends on how many concord spawns are in system and may make pulling more of a pain if you aare working with variable numbers of concord (10 or 20) but that can be dealt with by a competent ganker.
Even if they fire after concord has finished off the first lot they would get 1 or 2 shots off which may well be enough to finish off a nearly dead ship.
but this is all hypothetical and if something like this is introduced it will take gankers a few hours on the test server to work out how to work round the change . this alll worked out likely before the change even goes live on the main server. And then we would be back to square one.
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I just figured that if I were going to ask someone how CONCORD works in that situation, you would be an expert. Thank you for answering the question.
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You want your ships to fire for the maximum amount of time.
If youâre waiting for CONCORD to arrive to see if you can make it in time with enough ships, it wonât be very cost efficient if half your ships start shooting late.
concord only spawns once you start shooting, you have time after the first lot of concord has spawned and is chewing up the first gankers to start shooting with the next lot and spawning new concord
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Hmm, good point.
I have no experience ganking, I assumed CONCORD would arrive after a certain amount of seconds after a criminal act is commited and then clear up the entire grid of criminals.
So youâre saying CONCORD arrives for each ship individually on individual timers? Then youâre right, my idea wouldnât work.
yep one spawn of concord for each ganker that goes criminal, and their timers relate to when you start shooting.
Faction police though come after a set time in space if sec status is low so would need to keep that high on the characters of the second 10 cat pilots
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Itâs probably best to get some experience, before you start making suggestions on how to change the game. Ya know?
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Ive ganked like, twice or maybe three times, that makes me like Teir 3 out of 5 right?
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You are in the top percentile.
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Nice one
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