I think it is entirely correct that 1/2 is able to kill any mining ship fitted for yield only in 0.5-0.7 systems, is that too difficult to understand, but once they fit a tank it gets more difficult, fitting choices need to have relevance. That is the benchmark I have always worked too since I started posting about this in 2010.
I think that if gankers need to combine with other players then it is a good thing.
I am on record as stating that the current level of Mining Barges and Exhumers is about right, fit a tank they are hard to gank, fit for yield and you can gank.
The only issue is that the Proc and Skiff inertia nerfs are way too stupid and savage…
We are at the correct tank level now in terms of Mining Barges and Exhumers.
My more recent statements above are not so much directed at mining barges and Exhumers but at the ganking that goes on around gates as people move around. The massed accounts blowing up single account players willy nilly is something that CCP might start to move against now that they increased RL sub’s cost and plex has exploded in cost. The example of a Marauder was a very important one, there are players who like to mission, and part of their fun was using a nice ship, many had to give up on that.
I always looked at the option of a freighter pilot getting a report of a Macherial sitting on the gate with gankers logged on and active as a zero sum game, his only option was to dock and log…, avoidance, but in the end he avoided playing the game altogether. And I am talking about single account hisec hauler players. As I used to spend a lot of time guarding and AG’ing around Niarja so I got to know a fair few. I saw this whole subset of players be decimated by losses that they could not sustain, none of them now play. So when I talk about single account players they are the most obvious example of players let down by CCP. By the time they adjusted bumping it was way late in the day and most were gone for good, such a shame…
That seems like such a waste of time though. To be jumping back and forth in some cat and mouse game, only for the miner to simply dock up and stop playing the game he likes. Not that my idea changes a thing, but I think the real counterplay would make it more interesting.
For example, a mini panic that gives you 5 secs if you are paying attention.
It is a shame and why some changes need to come. Either how mechanics work, ganking all together and the story of it, tax, fines, something that limits how you sit there a f’k with a player and expect them to love the game play.
It hurts the whole game, and that is why I am so vocal. We need more people, the numbers are slowly going down, now it could be a natural progression of the game. And by no means saying ganking is the brick wall of all players quitting. But we do need to look how we bring players in, how we keep them here and at activities that are faking the funk and calling it gameplay when it is really a boarder line toxic behavior in some instances.
Can’t tell this group anything the plane is at max speed headed towards the ground and the stewardess is still trying to serve dinner and the pilot flips off the fasten seatbelt light like it is all good. Something special for sure.
Very few and they seem intermittent at the moment, I happen to think that is a very good thing. Perhaps in the near future I can have fun with my twin Paladins again.
Okay fair enough. I actually am not against that. They were too easy to kill indeed. The balance is about right right now I agree.
No. There are many other options presented to that pilot.
Avoid moving the stuff through that pipehole where gankers are. You can find high2high wh that avoids this pipehole and then he could be coming from route that gankers doesn’t controll.
Use courier contract. Either from the home to Jita. Or from Hatakani to Jita. Afterall, if hauling would be 100% safe then courier contracts wouldn’t be a thing. Blue Frog wouldn’t have a job.
Have a friend or alt with Machariel himself. And bump self when they land on him and start shooting. That is the “I win” button you are still looking for unable to find it.
Now if you talk about pre-bumping nerf, it is possible that gankers would not let him warp out anyway even if he has friendly bumper to avoid dying (which was really stupid and that nerf was deserved). But ever since, now it is pretty much uncounterable counterplay right there.
Btw, I was moving my base From Sivala closer to Jita, made 2 contracts, one had 650k m3 the other had 100k, I put that up before I went sleep, the next day I had my stuff in new base. I gave 10 mil reward for 3 jumps, but even when I was making 500k m3 contract with 1mil/jump it was accepted and carried on very fast. It seems there are many players who (wants to) do courier contracts and threat of gank is allowing them to exists.
Transfer the stuff into another freighter which passed the gankers’ scanning alt with empty cargo, ergo they won’t scan him again and gank him, and then proceed empty and get possibly ganked but with platinum insurance not so big deal. I mean, did you really thought that gankes are killing empty freighters on purpose all this time?
Dont bring it to Tranquility. Just make a new server, with new ruleset, so people can pick and choose what they like.
I guarantee you playernumbers would skyrocket, double, tripple its playernumbers just by the announcement allone.
The amount of players quit eve due to forced PvP suicide ganking and because they will never. ever. catch up to 20yo accounts and because the entire galaxy is allready claimed by 3-4 alliances boring, stale, set in stone, is staggering.
A new server is what EvE desperately needs. And it will come eventually.
Realistically. The only two things that will bring more players into EVE are:
Sub price going down.
Alpha clones able to fly more ships/having more skills (levels)
Nothing else will bring more players. Neither better base overview, better NPE, neither any of that crap that CCP added since 2017 like daily campaigns, daily rewards, rotating events on a 2 week basis, proving grounds each weekend. Free SP in form of AIR. Neither rewoking fw and neither removing ganking from the game.
Please be realistic. EVE is niché game and it is old. It never was super popular and never will be. At best EVE can manage to keep up current numbers, but I don’t believe that any gameplay changes will change this. Well except more nerfs. Nerfs do tend to drive players away no matter how much were they needed…
And chances of 11) or 2) happening? I see it as big zero.
Okay maybe 3) another world-wide lockdown due to monkey pox or space AIDS whatever.
There was no such option in Niarja and Uedama. High2High WH’s was something I used. I also used a WH relay point too, though the issue was that it was medium ships only and there was always a lot of risk on things left there.
The people who accepted that courier contract, could they sub-contract that courier contract if they found themselves in a pickle?
I will admit that as we are old AG players that in the past we had several fleet operations which had all that we needed to counter the ganks based on our experience. We had a bumper to bump the freighter out of optimal should we get to that point, we had webbers to get it into warp quicklly, we had ships to counter their initial tackle and we had Taloses to kill the bumper, we also had repping ships to hand. I am truly glad that you did not suggest that the bumper was there to counter their bumper because that is not doable. This is a group play, we have seven different players, and don’t forget that we did this to counter a single player using massed alts.
We use courier contracts a lot. What I do is make it so that the courier contract can be carried by people who don’t make themselves vulnerable doing it.
Doing max cargo Charon’s is so dumb…, because you were moving loaded collateral, but so many people accepted those scam contracts and were destroyed. Oh well, bad memories… of people who no longer play.
Done that too, thing is that it all involves alts and other people.
I used to move stuff for friends and I made them contract them to me and I moved in in chunks that I saw fit, rather then being stuck to M3 that made me vulnerable.
Still good post.
Yeah, I still cannot believe that they increased sub prices, I am taking a good hard cold look at my two accounts, I have another month but I think this may be it for me. I can’t justify it…
I think you really haven’t a clue. Every time I build and undock a new ship from Jita, the fact that my brand new ship may get ganked on undock adds to the excitement. On the way back to Oipo I also pass Aiko’s crew…often at Isanamo…and I have to go through 0.5 Litiura, where there are often random groups waiting to attack people.
So when I do arrive back at Oipo…with new ship or ammo supplies or whatever…there is a nice sense of ‘Phew ! I made it !’ Sometimes I travel all the way from Oipo to Amarr ( 70 jumps or so ) in a frigate or destroyer solely for the fun of avoiding being ganked. It’s a rush…tempting fate. I love it.
Rather than condemning the likes of Aiko, you should be praising them for adding that extra excitement and content to highsec…that would not otherwise be there.
Imagine how BORING it would be if there was zero risk. Every system from Jita to Oipo would effectively be a 1.0 system. I could travel all 70 jumps to Amarr in some ship with zero tank and zero weapons…as nobody could fire on me. Have you ANY idea how many people would leave Eve because that had now made it all utterly boring ?
Eve is 100% all about risk. It is a game for people who thrive on risk. It is not Telletubbie Farmville…and those who want it to be are playing the wrong game.
You are talking nonsense again. I very seldom ‘dock up’ even when there are gankers in the system. I do have the cursor hovering over the ‘dock’ icon just in case…and using d-scan I can be at the station a mere 0.1AU away before gankers can travel the 14.3AU that the scan highlights.
Once again, you totally ignore my ‘How to avoid being ganked’ that I posted.
And no, ‘avoiding un-necessary risk’ is simply not the same thing as ‘avoiding all risk’…when it comes to mining. You can never be 100% safe…but you’re a fool if your safety level is 10% when it could be 90%.
Okay, let me break it down for you. I personally fly marauders and faction battleships with bling on them in HS. However, I do several things in order to manage my risk, and have not lost a single one to a gank in spite of putting in thousands of hours of flight time in them.
First, I make smart blinging decisions. For example, I only use bling if it provides a good price to performance ratio, and make use of mutaplasmids to make cheaper faction alternatives whenever possible. Case in point, all my damage mods are comparable to faction in terms of damage output, but probably only cost about 1/4th of what a faction mod does (I use CPU as a dump stat for damage mods on battleships).
Second, I fit enough tank so that I am never a profitable gank target. Sure, I have a little bling on some of my ships, but I also overtank for the content I run. And that’s because that added tank isn’t for PvE survivability, but for deterrence against gankers. In fact, I have even gone so far as to encourage gankers to scan my ships in order to see for themselves whether or not I’m worth ganking.
Third, I will make a new threat assessment when circumstances change, and then make a decision to (1) keep flying as is, (2) refit for more tank at the expense of efficiency, or (3) to dock up and cease PvE activities for the night.
Fourth, I always use travel fits.
Fifth, I never AFK, maintain a high level of situational awareness, and make use of all intel sources at my disposal (i.e. eve gatecamp check, local, dscan, overview, and various chat channels. FYI, I contribute to and get intel from corps and communities that I am not currently a member of, and in some cases, have never been a member of. So yes, you can be a solo player and still share intel with others.).
Sixth, I say hello to anyone that I think might be scouting me. This is not only friendly, but signals to them that I am active and aware.
Seventh, I make use of heat, and pull range or up transversal when those options are available to me (obviously, I can’t heat if I don’t have any active tanking mods).
Eighth, I also do other stuff that you’ll probably assert is absurd to expect of other players. And, I agree in that I don’t think that people should have to do these things in order to effectively manage the risk of ganking (for example, using alts to scout). Fortunately, however, these things are not required to effectively manage the risk of ganking.
And, of course, there are plenty of other risk management strats that people can use (see the very first post in this thread). So, do not make the mistake of assuming that this post provides an all inclusive list of risk management strats for marauders, or anyone else for that matter.
In summation, you either don’t know what you’re talking about, or are intentionally trying to present a false dichotomy where players have no other choice but to fly loot pinatas or garbage ships and fits that no one wants to fly.
