Oh please. This is just nonsense.
Let’s take a mackinaw as an example. There are no belt rats (with the exception of diamond rats) that are a threat to a mackinaw in high sec. And diamond rats are easily avoided. You look at the agency…… see a pirate stronghold… and mine somewhere else.
So by default the only threat to a mackinaw mining in high sec is gankers.
So if gankers are replaced by NPC rats they need to actually be capable of getting a kill on the mackinaw. So we are looking at a different scale of rat entirely. One that can actually threaten the ship. A small group of diamond rats is a good example.
The problem is then that the mackinaw is mining in the same system as a newbie in his venture. That newbie who you are supposedly trying to protect with this change is now exposed to end game content because otherwise larger ships are effectively immune to destruction.
Same goes for haulers. NPC gate camps need to be able to take out a freighter because we are replacing destruction not getting rid of it. So new players in a badger have to contend with freighter killers.
And what’s worse is that this takes away many of the tools for avoiding danger.
-as things stand gankers are only active in a handful of systems. Most of highsec has zero problem. A change to NPC rats applies everywhere. So instead of new players being inconvenienced around trade hubs they are inconvenienced everywhere. Chosing a quiet system is now pointless.
-NPC rats don’t appear on local. There is no warning. They spawn and the warp in. For players that are accustomed to monitoring local and dscan this is just cr*p.
But then the flip side to that is they are AI. So their behaviour will be predictable. It will only take a few weeks and then the NPC problem will be solved. Whether it’s how long you can mine before they show up, what fit allows you be immune to their scram (the only ever have 2 points in a 0.8 system). Everything about them will be known and documented making them easy to avoid.
Just look at missions. Search the mission and you will find no. rats, damage types, which ones point and web, which ones are triggers etc etc. this will be the same. It reduces eve to an easily solvable problem.
Established players will learn the mechanics and be able to avoid losing ships. But guess who won’t know the mechanics…… newbies. Again those players who you care so deeply about are the only ones going to be losing ships to this.
So all that destruction you want to replace likely won’t happen (apart from those newbie ventures and haulers). People will just dock up until someone clears them. So our destruction problem becomes worse and ontop of that every high sec miner and hauler has an additional inconvenience that unlike gankers……… is actually unavoidable.
Gankers are unpredictable. They show up sometimes on a whim. They may ignore you…. They may gank you just coz they are bored and no targets have come through. They make mistakes.
They make space more dynamic, more lived in and more alive. This complete regression of the game being justified on a “think of the new players” platform when the change will make it worse for new players on so many levels is just absurd.