I believe, for the majority, ganking is perfectly acceptable and fun way to play the game.
However, its far too easy and the billions of ISK earned by ganking is rather unbalanced.
Is there any plans to make this part of the game come more inline with other mechanics such as jump fatigue since for me, this is type of game play should have similar consequences?
thanks
There is, it is called your security status.
Someone ganks to much in sec space, not at war with them your sec status will tank.
Which means they have to raise it in some way… usually clone tags. Which means they pay a pretty penny to get back up, or do some actual PVE work.
Seeing as their is actually little profit in just random ganks in high sec it is strictly a grief tactic. And their is no such thing as a gank in null… as it is just null space.
In short.
HTFU
Why.?
Gankers dont care about sec status. Most of them are alts made for the sole purpose of ganking. They have no need to raise their status.
Gankers don’t need to do that at all. For one, CODE can hide completely unattackable in NPC stations and only undock when the gank target has been prepared by the bumpers; and secondly, other gankers like the Pan-Russian group that sometimes hits high sec can repair their security status easily by ratting in their null sec homes.
In order to bring ganking closer to the general Risk vs. Reward mantra one step would be to deny any criminal or pirate docking in NPC stations. Force them to use citadels, which are attackable by players. This way, victims of a gank have at least 1 semi-workable attack vector against the gankers by finding their alt corps’ structures and nuke them with a war dec. Positive side effect: this would give war decs a little boost to usefulness.
But there are too many freeports, right?
player issue
dont make it easy and dont make it profitable
Probably. But that’s completely alright. Once enough of those Freeport providers in certain systems have gotten their structures attacked and destroyed, they might learn to shut out certain people from their structures. Or live with the consequences of providing a safe haven for criminals. I think this is a perfectly fine path of actions in EVE.
Personally, the punishment of jump fatigue applied to people jumping capitals or using JB’s, in the sense of players performing criminal activity, is more suitable.
I do not agree with jump fatigue for people seeking out content, I have a huge issue with gankers earning billions at the expense of someone who put in hours of game play. The Risk versus Reward mantra in this is so one sided it’s unbelievable CCP and the CSM continue to ignore it.
More like the stupidity and entitlement factors. Ganking is only profitable because there are plenty of morons flying loot pinatas around. It’s not CCPs job to fix stupidity.
Your reply is contradicting. Have you ever considered the game is condemned to players using expensive ships to haul required materials, the game demands completely throw out your nonconstructive reply.
I think most would agree, if the game wasn’t about balance then fair is fair, but it’s not. The players and more importantly CCP demand balance and whenever the line of balance seems too off center the hammer comes down and the players find a new mechanic to exploit.
Because of game demands, it’s not player stupidity.
i dont even know what this phrase means
are you saying you cant haul materials unless you use an expensive ship carry billions in loot
this isnt a single player game and there are different ways to deal with the issue
get an escort and dont carry everything in one ship
thats called putting all your eggs in one basket
why not use 10 cheaper ships to haul with a fleet
and dont make your hauling ships profitable to gank
even if one gets ganked you still have 90% of your stuff
I could write out a really, really long reply about it all but I think I’ll just cover a few basic points.
Ganking is not easy.
1: First, you have to learn the mechanics of it, the nuances of it, Concord response times, target EHP vs ganker DPS, etc.
2: Then you have to become competent at commanding a small navy of other players. Includes clear, precise, and constant communication. You have to lead them and they have to want to follow your commands too.
3: Small navy of other players have to become at least passingly familiar with the mechanics. Having a bunch of pilots at your command doesn’t mean much when they’re all inexperienced for the task at hand. Nothing beats hands-on experience. In lieu of that, we go back to point 2, lots of very clear communication and pilots have to be good at following orders.
4: Small navy of other pilots have to be prepared both for leveled skills, and ships to attack with. Never underestimate the complexity of making sure everyone has the equipment they need.
5: Small navy of other pilots have to be ready to deploy within a few minutes notice. Most people aren’t logged on 23/7, so even after all above points are covered, you need pilots on when you need them on.
6: Targets have to exist. If there’s nobody to hit, all effort is moot. Also, the larger the group of people you’re working with, with various attention spans at play, the more likely you’re going to lose people from inactivity.
7: Scouting - you have to find, identify, and confirm a target. Either the FC himself, or a good scout, needs to set up warp-ins, etc.
8: Profit.
People vastly underestimate how akin ganking is to herding cats. A few groups with good discipline and lots of experience and money manage to do it with some frequency, but that just makes it look easier than it really is. Protip: if it were as easy as people think it is, it’d be more widespread.
But as much as people like to focus on the talking points like poor innocent freighter pilots or miners, there’s a larger issue at play. With highsec being a place where everyone is fair game and most major market hubs are located, there’s a lot at stake in regards to cutting off enemy supply lines. Right now certain things completely circumvent war mechanics, like neutral haulers. But if you’re in an extended battle with another corporation, and they supply themselves via highsec hubs, you can be sure they’re getting supplies via neutral haulers. Which now presents the problem - how do you interdict their supply lines if they’re using neutral haulers?
Oh, right, ganking. For however much scorn ganking might get by the community at large, it also represents the only counter to a lot of things people do. You can’t nerf ganking without utterly breaking the game. In the same regard, you also can’t nerf wardecs, the nature of highsec, or anything like that without completely breaking many other parts of the game.
Remember that many larger entities in the game can operate with near impunity inside their own spaces. Whether it be powerful nullsec groups, or particularly vicious lowsec groups, or exceptionally organized highsec groups. What little chance people have to inflict a meaningful loss with some ambush asymmetrical warfare, comes from suicide ganking. You can’t nerf ganking without dramatically empowering already powerful groups. Sure, they can use such tactics too, but their time and energy is better spent in more efficient combat methods.
Just wanted to contribute:
1: First, you have to learn the mechanics of it, the nuances of it, Concord response times, target EHP vs ganker DPS, etc.
Not such a big deal since this info is already available and this information is shared openly.
2: Then you have to become competent at commanding a small navy of other players. Includes clear, precise, and constant communication. You have to lead them and they have to want to follow your commands too.
Pretty sure that’s just normal fleet etiquette.
3: Small navy of other players have to become at least passingly familiar with the mechanics. Having a bunch of pilots at your command doesn’t mean much when they’re all inexperienced for the task at hand. Nothing beats hands-on experience. In lieu of that, we go back to point 2, lots of very clear communication and pilots have to be good at following orders.
I think reply to point 1 can also be stated in response to this point.
4: Small navy of other pilots have to be prepared both for leveled skills, and ships to attack with. Never underestimate the complexity of making sure everyone has the equipment they need.
LOL - probably hauled using the same ships you are blowing up. And Skills and ships… you mean the ships now available to alpha clones?
5: Small navy of other pilots have to be ready to deploy within a few minutes notice. Most people aren’t logged on 23/7, so even after all above points are covered, you need pilots on when you need them on.
I think what you mean here is → pilots logged off and ready in the ganking zones.
6: Targets have to exist. If there’s nobody to hit, all effort is moot. Also, the larger the group of people you’re working with, with various attention spans at play, the more likely you’re going to lose people from inactivity.
That’s just common to any game.
7: Scouting - you have to find, identify, and confirm a target. Either the FC himself, or a good scout, needs to set up warp-ins, etc.
You mean sit in a cyno system close to a hub, or sit in a pipe…
You paint the picture that ganking takes as much effort or time as other forms of game play in eve and it’s just not the case at all.
The only thing i agree with is the point about cutting off enemy lines.
However in the vast majority of cases ganking isn’t performed by groups cutting off enemy lines to the so called “powerful blocks” but is in fact being performed by the so called “powerful blocks”.
Is it just me or when CCP focused on power projection and created jump fatigue, did the player base react by heading to high sec to take advantage of a mechanic that is relatively in favor of the attacker?
He means that if you have billions to haul, then you have to be hauling billions.
And no, sometimes the resource is the time and hauling through HS “with 10 ships with a fleet” would cost too much to make hauling profitable. Which in turn means the activity that requires hauling would not become profitable. which in turn would mean, only people who can afford to not be annoyed by gankers would do those activities.
you replied to the wrong person but all his points are legit and come down to the issue of balance
why should a single dumb player have the power to subvert the efforts of multiple experienced and organised players
you can counter the organised and experienced gankers by being in an organised and experienced group yourself
its a simple management issue
if you can afford to become a target of gankers but cant afford to protect yourself from gankers then you need to downscale your operations
until such a time as you can afford to do what youre trying to do
This is the type of toxic reply that warrants people putting their head in their hands and looking up to the sky and say shouting “why?”.
Why bother trying to paint a picture that people don’t already do the exact things you talk about and still get caught? And where as other aspects of the game mean there is something that can be done to try to survive if you’re in a freighter or a JF, nothing, NOTHING, can be done.
Don’t be so ignorant now and stop playing the “people are dumb” card.
It only is when you read words into it that clearly aren’t there.
The game doesn’t demand you haul billions in loot using a Iteron 5 or untanked freighter with no escort. That’s entirely a player choice, nothing the game forces on the player.
It is entirely your choice to do neither of these, but then you’ll also have to deal with the consequences of your own actions.
That’s called risk vs. reward and it’s working as intended.
Just a point… When hauling, make sure you aren’t profitable to kill. Thus basically means that when using a Freighter, don’t haul more than about a billion isk in cargo.
If you have to haul more than that, split the load. Dock up say a jump or 2 before Uedama. Split your load into smaller batches. Haul each load a jump past Sivala. Dock up, go get the next batch and repeat. It may take a lite longer, but you will be safer.
Here’s another idea… EVE is big. Find a better home where you can get to Jita without going through Nijara(sp?) Or Sivala. It’s not that hard and if all you want are mission agents or facilities, you can find this.