Making ganking a campaign, not a spam action

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Time-Scaled Criminal Consequences for Ganking (Without Removing Ganking)

TL;DR

This is a design proposal that keeps high-sec ganking fully intact, but adds a time-scaled criminal exclusion layer on top of existing security-status mechanics. The goal is to increase cost, coordination, and commitment for repeated ganking without removing PvP, without safety mechanics, and without eliminating alts, tags, ISK, or PLEX workarounds.

Think of it like an inverse GTA-style wanted level: repeated or more severe criminal acts don’t remove PvP, but cause consequences to last longer on the offending character instead of being instantly reset.

Executive Summary

  • High-sec ganking is a necessary and intentional part of EVE’s sandbox.

  • The issue is not ganking itself, but how disposable criminal penalties currently are.

  • This proposal introduces a time-scaled criminal exclusion as an additional layer.

  • Existing systems (security status, tags, ISK, PLEX, alts) remain fully intact.

  • The result is lower-frequency, higher-commitment ganking.

  • No safety toggles, immunity systems, or PvP removal.

Problem Statement

High-sec ganking exists to enforce risk, destroy assets, and preserve EVE’s identity as a hostile sandbox. That role should remain unchanged.

The issue is that criminal consequences are currently optimized for repetition rather than commitment. Security-status penalties are shallow, tags allow rapid recovery, and the dominant strategy favors disposable ships and minimal downtime. Criminal acts become transactional rather than strategic.

This proposal does not attempt to make high-sec safer. It aims to make criminal behavior persistent instead of disposable.

Design Goals

  • Preserve high-sec danger and loss

  • Preserve ganking as a viable and effective tactic

  • Avoid safety creep or immunity mechanics

  • Increase decision cost instead of punishment

  • Keep all existing economic and account-based workarounds

  • Encourage planning and commitment over repetition

Proposed Mechanic: Time-Scaled Criminal Exclusion

This proposal adds a time-based criminal exclusion that applies only to CONCORDable offenses.

Core Mechanic

When a player commits a CONCORDable offense:

  • Normal security-status loss still applies

  • Security tags continue to function normally

  • A time-based criminal exclusion is applied to the offending character

During the exclusion:

  • The character is treated as having an effective security status below -5.0

  • CONCORD responds immediately in high-sec

  • The exclusion decays only with real time on that character

This exclusion applies only to the character, not accounts or corporations.

Scaling Factors

1. Victim Ship Class

Exclusion duration scales by ship class, not ISK value:

  • Frigates → minimal exclusion

  • Destroyers / Cruisers → moderate exclusion

  • Battleships / Industrials → extended exclusion

  • Capitals (where applicable) → severe exclusion

Ship class is deterministic, stable, and resistant to valuation exploits.

2. Victim CONCORD Standing

Victim CONCORD standing modifies exclusion duration:

  • High-standing lawful pilots impose longer exclusion

  • Low-standing or criminal-aligned pilots impose reduced exclusion

This:

  • Makes CONCORD standing meaningful again

  • Rewards lawful behavior without granting immunity

  • Preserves asymmetry and risk

Scope and Enforcement

  • Applies wherever CONCORD operates (existing rules unchanged)

  • Low-sec, null-sec, and wormholes remain unaffected

  • Wardecs are not affected

  • Rookie ships are exempt from time-based exclusion

  • Accidental flags outside rookie ships are treated normally

This proposal does not redefine space rules.

Abuse and Edge-Case Considerations

Alt Cycling

  • Allowed and expected

  • This proposal increases planning, coordination, and overhead rather than blocking alts

Security Tags

  • Fully preserved

  • Tags repair long-term security status

  • Increased demand likely raises market value and low-sec relevance

Logi / Assistance

  • Only the criminal actor receives exclusion

  • Additional inheritance rules are unnecessary and add complexity

New Players

  • Rookie ships exempt from time-based exclusion

  • Learning through consequence preserved elsewhere

Expected Outcomes

  • Lower-frequency, higher-commitment ganking

  • More persistent criminal identity

  • Increased relevance of security status

  • No removal of emergent PvP

Closing

This proposal is shared for community discussion and iteration. Numerical values, scaling, and tuning are intentionally left flexible.

The goal is not to “fix” ganking, but to adjust incentive structure in a way that preserves EVE’s sandbox while discouraging low-effort repetition.

Author’s Note

This proposal intentionally avoids moral framing. Ganking remains valid. Loss remains real. Player agency remains intact.

1 Like
2

I haven’t lost a ship to a highsec gank in 18 years. The only issue with ganking that needs to be resolved after 20 years of nerfs to ganking is the people crying about a non-issue.

Stop asking for cheat codes so you can play Dark Souls. Play like you have a brain, fit for tank, don’t AFK in space, and don’t fly expensive sh!t through choke point systems while gankers are active.

What reddit pit are all you crawling out of to whine about ganking all of a sudden?

3

and another ■■■■■■■ AI slop

4 Likes
4

I don’t even read them anymore. If the basic premise is wrong, nothing that follows is worth wasting my time.

5

Just to clarify one point, because “fit correctly” keeps coming up: at a certain scale of coordination, fitting stops being a meaningful variable. When 30+ pilots commit to a high-sec gank window, the outcome is effectively predetermined regardless of reasonable defensive choices.

That’s not a complaint, and it’s not an argument for safety. Coordinated ganks should work, and loss should remain the result.

What this proposal is addressing is something slightly different: the incentive structure around repeatability. When large, organized groups can execute identical ganks back-to-back with minimal persistence of consequence, the gameplay shifts from deliberate target selection to volume throughput.

The idea here isn’t to stop organized ganking or protect inattentive pilots. It’s to introduce consequence persistence that nudges high-sec ganking toward more deliberate, campaign-style decisions rather than rapid, low-downtime repetition — while keeping all existing mechanics, workarounds, and counterplay intact.

If someone believes the current frequency and pacing of mass ganking is already ideal, that’s a valid position if your into spam. This proposal is simply exploring whether time-based consequence persistence would produce better gameplay dynamics at the margins.

6

thanks for reading my “slop”

7

If you didn’t read the proposal, that’s fine. For those who benefit from the current high-frequency ganking model, it already works efficiently, so there’s little reason to engage with alternative incentive structures.

8

That’s a long post to say “I lost my Orca to gankers”.

Too bad you didn’t put in the effort to write it, so I don’t feel compelled to read it.

9

I’ll clarify, because that’s not the premise of the post.

The proposal isn’t about an individual loss or whether a gank “worked.” Coordinated ganks against Orcas should succeed, and loss should remain the outcome.

What prompted the post wasn’t a single event, but observing a pattern: multiple Orcas being ganked by the same group within a short time window. At that scale, fitting, attentiveness, and individual decision-making stop being meaningful variables once a group commits sufficient numbers.

That’s where the design question comes in. Not “should ganking exist,” but whether the current incentive structure overly favors rapid, repeatable throughput over deliberate commitment. The loss was a data point, not the argument.

Thank you for feeling compelled enough to put in the effort and for figuring out why I post with my alt instead of my main.

10

I see a similar pattern, but draw a different conclusion.

Isn’t it strange that there are so very few groups that are capable of killing Orcas in high sec that it’s often the same groups?

HS ganking has been made harder, harder and harder over the years.

And what you suggest is “not to remove it, just make it a bit harder”, which, like every nerf to ganking pushes the Orca kills further and further into the same hands of people who are still dedicated enough to do Orca kills.

What such ‘nerf gank’ suggestions are doing is making sure that the only people who still can kill an Orca in HS are these damn same groups again. Nobody else is capable of jumping through all the hoops.

I’m no ganker, nor do I play in HS much to get ganked so I’m more of a neutral observer. Well, I do like the idea that anyone can get killed anywhere, even in HS space, so not completely neutral but I have no skin in the ganking game.

And as observer I observe that the problem you see will only be strengthened by your own ‘nerf gank’ suggestion.

Because do you know what happens if someone with 30 alts is put on a ‘longer cooldown’ before they can gank again?

They make another set of 30 alts and ignore the cooldown if they have to.

Such a dedicated ganker probably would. Others wouldn’t.

And another few months from the nerf people yet again complain “why is it always the same people who gank” and ask for “more gank nerfs!” without realizing that any nerf to ganking besides full removal of ganking from the game is going to push ganks further and further into the hands of a handful of people stubborn enough to still do that gameplay.

Honestly, I think EVE is in need of some buffs to ganking so that more people can do it, not just a few players who have 30 accounts.

Your nerfs to ganking will cause exactly the thing you noticed: it always is the same few people who gank.

11

I don’t think that conclusion actually follows, and I completely disagree that this proposal simply reinforces concentration.

You’re arguing that dedicated groups will just create more alts to bypass any added persistence but that actually reinforces the point, not undermines it. If the response to consequence persistence is “they’ll need more characters,” then the effect is to spread ganking capacity across more players, rather than allowing the same small set of characters to execute rapid, repeated throughput.

That isn’t free. It increases coordination, account overhead, preparation, and cost. Whether that cost is time, ISK, or additional accounts is largely irrelevant cost and time are the only levers that have ever reduced spam behavior in games without removing the behavior entirely.

And yes, if increased demand for alts, tags, and preparation results from that, CCP benefits financially :money_mouth_face: . That’s not a downside in a subscription-based game.

Nothing in this proposal makes an Orca harder to kill. The gank still works exactly the same. The question is whether infinite low-friction repetition by the same actors should remain the optimal strategy.

Maintaining a system that rewards maximum throughput with minimal persistence isn’t the same thing as broadening participation it’s what drives industrialized ganking in the first place.

BTW, I strongly suggest you read the solution. Nothing screams “I’m the guy with 30 alts” more than claiming to be neutral while calling for buffs to ganking after only reading the headline. :laughing:

12

When 30+ pilots commit to the destruction of any single object in this game, that object will be destroyed, regardless of where it is.

The point of flying like you have a brain is to not be the person those 30+ pilots focus their attention on. Fitting correctly is for the rando that’s shooting people for lolz.

I find it humorous, really. So many say that ganking is too easy, yet do nothing to make themselves harder to gank. I’ll be blunt, y’all are the reason it’s so easy for me to slip by. I just wait til they’re busing ganking one of you and slip several billion isk past them while I laugh.

1 Like
13

This actually reinforces the point .

You’re describing a system where large groups focus attention, create predictable windows of activity, and optimize around repetition and timing. Individual fitting or piloting skill doesn’t meaningfully change outcomes at that scale it just determines who becomes the focus.

That’s exactly why the question isn’t “can you avoid being ganked,” but whether the game should continue to reward rapid, low-friction repetition spam by the same actors during those windows.

14

To get around restrictions that ‘counter spam’ a person who currently has 30 accounts to gank only has to make a second character on all of those accounts if the restrictions are too restrictive.

For someone who is ganking with 30 characters that’s not a very big change.

For other players however, those who coordinate 30 characters of 30 players together to pull of such a gank, it’s disastrous to force them to wait far longer before they can play again. Instead of coordinating and having a fun kill, they suddenly have to log off for who knows how much time before they are allowed to play again by the game. It’s no fun. They stop doing it.

Someone with 30 accounts gets around such a restriction. They log off their first set of alts, log in their second set of alts and continue ganking. And a third set, if you push the nerfs further.

What your suggestion does is, like every ‘just nerf ganking a little bit more’ suggestion, is to ensure that the only people who can still reliably gank after the change are always the same people, those who already are invested heavily into ganking.

Nerfing ganking just makes them invest more heavily into ganking, while pushing everyone else out of the activity.

If your goal is that the only people who ever gank are always the same few players, you’re on the right way.

Is that really something you want to do?

15

They never stop to think. All they know is they’re big mad over losing their internet spaceship in a game about losing internet spaceships. Sadly, they’ve been brought up to think that anything bad that happens to them is because of someone else, so they never bother to reflect on their own failures.

Did bad at an interview and didn’t get the job, every one of them for years? The interviewers were assholes.

Did something stupid and got arrested? The cops are out to get them.

Didn’t pay attention to the game they were playing and lost? The game and/or rules suck and needs to change.

This attitude was okay, when they were 4 and Mommy changed the rules to Candy Land so they wouldn’t throw a tantrum every time they went backwards.