The problem is that you have ignored one important factor, people started doing this because the initial capital costs became so much lower and easier. Most of the people I saw doing this just used the Catalysts and their guns with no desire to pickup their loot. It became so cheap and easy that the numbers of people doing this exploded.
This is just more conjecture on your part. Were you a ganker in 2010? How would you know that they didn’t pick up their loot? You were too busy losing mining barges in a null-sec rental hovel.
Destiny thinks that the removal of the -25% ROF had no effect, it was all due to insurance being removed from criminal acts.
Destiny things that the ability to use a cheap easy to procure hull instead of a more expensive one which required more front up costs and effort did not increase ganking.
Destiny does not think that people did this for fun because they could do it easily.
Destiny is fixated on a comparison between BS and Catalysts ignoring the fact that people could now just jump into cheap Catalysts and go for it.
Dracvlad, please regale us with some stories about how training for a battleship was a massive barrier to entry for the bored null-seccers who came to empire space to gank post-Crucible.
Eve is full of bitter vets who have come back, because eve won’t let you leave.
It’s not actually awesome to be on a 2006 character with 30 million SP or whatever because every single person you meet assumes you have 150 mil and know what you are doing - only reason not to skill extract and doomheim is Ego.
Oh yes, it’s so easy to maneuver a paper-thin destroyer to attack a target at an optimal range of 500 meters compared to just sitting on top of a gate and casually blapping someone with mega pulse lasers.
One time Shin ra and I had to convince Stavros that he wasn’t about to die, he’d been drinking Guinness and blackcurrant the night before.
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I think there is a lot of IDK what about the costs of battleships back then. If you built your own and were clever about sourcing minerals, then you could get it as much as 5 mill in the positive for the hull iirc. Mods get picked up along with any loot and if the loot fairy is kind you would be in the positive.
An Armageddon cost about 50 million ISK. You got about 60-70 back after insurance. Add a few million for guns and damage mods.
The whole argument that this amount of money was a barrier to entry to ganking (keep in mind you only had to pay this once and then it rolled over) for null-sec players is such an asinine grasp at straws that I can’t even.
I keep having to tap the sign at these people, the sign being what’s written on the 4-4 monument.
The first battleship in eve was owned by a ganker, and a high sec ganker at that. I personally am not fond of being ganked which is why I go out of my way to avoid it by not doing silly things like going “I’m a miner!! Why can’t I use my Orca in a 0.5!” on main when in threads about ganking on these forums.
The undeniable fact is that ganking shaped this game right from Beta, Bad Karma and M0o forced CCP to do all kinds of stuff with gate guns, station guns, faction police and concord which made the game what it is today.
and on a selfish level I want to see other miners get ganked, I pay for my own mining stuff via the steady profits on mining mods/ships/drones and now the patch is coming I’m switching back to battleships, knowing that the glory days of newbies training BS 1 without any of the supporting skills are a coming back.