There is a problem with customs office gantries, specifically in highsec and their ability to block a planet from being used. The problem is there is mechanics that can be abused in order to make the gantries un-killable. Also keeping them as gantries forever, isn’t this some sort of violation of the terms of service or eula by blocking a mechanic with no way around?
I’d wardec the first corp, wait the time for the war to go live. and by that time the owner has already gone around and unanchored with the war character and re-anchored with another character in a new corp. its 5 seconds timer on both the anchor and unanchor timer. i have had this happen 3 times in a row. so “just wardec the next” is not a solution
I’ve had it where the gantries have been the only structure the corp has and once all the gantries have been flipped in the above mentioned method the war ends due to the corp not having anymore structures. they cycle the gantries through a couple more corps and once the 24hour cooldown finishes on the first corp, they have started the cycle again… costing the attackers 100mil per war declaration to kill a 90mil gantry that cant be killed anyway.
for those who say “just be on field ready with a new gantry of your own to drop” cannot have 15 of our own guys staring at different un-upgraded gantries for 24 hours waiting for that 5second window… this is not a solution
Possible solutions
Make gantries not be unanchorable just like the upgraded POCO.
Change the unanchoring time of a gantry from 5 seconds to like 2 days or something.
Make gantries degrade in space after 3 days or so of not being upgraded… or even a couple hours after dropping, as anyone intending it to actually be a poco would actually upgrade it.
*edit * 4. Make gantries suspect or criminal until upgraded into a poco
It will take CCP only a few years to fix this flaw like they only took a few years to fix the courier contract scam exploit with anchoring structures and access denied structures.
None of your solutions help the problem, however. You should be able to unanchor a gantry in all other circumstances. Longer unanchoring timers are just more frustrating in all other instances. CCP should just not allow war dec declaring if you don’t have a fully functional poco in space. A gantry is a useless chunk of metal that has no use whatsoever. Hence it should not allow someone to declare a war or assist in a war.
I don’t understand your reasoning behind thinking the solutions wont help… the problem is the planets are not accessible by planetary interaction… for everyone
can’t unanchor? attackers can shoot it to allow an upgraded poco to go in its place.
longer than 5second unanchoring?? this time would allow attackers time to actually shoot the gantry in order to place ab upgraded poco
gantry degrades if not upgraded?? would make it unviable financially for someone to keep dropping a gantry to block the planet
If the guy is that willing to put in the effort to do this, then you are just being outplayed.
There are more than 1000 highsec systems that provide alternative planets to control, but clearly he is making an effort to control this/these, for whatever reason.
His motivations shouldn’t be a reason to call this an exploit, especially as it’s possible he is specifically doing it as a form of pvp against your Corp.
“its just their way of PVP your corp, suck it up or RMT better than them”
Dont de-rail with obvious TOS breaking statements, they are strawman arguments
Constructive discussion around this would be more helpful:
If there is a method to prevent this, please enlighten me
i’ve got no problems being outplayed, that just means people need to “git gud” in order to overcome being outplayed and be better at playing.
however, in this instance, there isn’t a way forward or a way to be a better or more skilled pilot.
and your suggestion of “go live somewhere else” this is not helpful in order to establish a home… and even if we did move to somewhere else to to the planetary interaction. it could just as easily happen there anyway
Ill charitably assume that TOS is a new term to you → Terms of Service.
For clarity:
“Dont Derail with obvious [TERM OF SERVICE] breaking statements”
or to rephrase "dont derail with an obvious statement that would violate the EULA\TOS\Exploit against RMT, this is a strawman arguments
RMT is clearly an exploit, please dont derail this into a “OMG RMT”
Would prefer if you could make a productive commentary beyond ‘git gud’
Abusing a broken mechanic that could be simply modified (even at its core to minimise friction) to say a 5 or 10 min unanchor time from 5 seconds would address most of the issues.
This is similar to Seagulling where you exploited a mechanic and was uncontrollable, but was resolved, or pos bowling (Also a known exploit) that was abusing mechanics.
it doesn’t address the core issue that you can hold a gantry and be war eligible but can remove this and terminate the war with only 5 seconds.
You could address this by excluding gantry’s from CONCORD protection, effectively make them suspect until deployed into a POCO
this would self regulate the problem, and wouldn’t require any change to anchoring \ anchoring time
You claimed, by my logic, all exploits (which RMT is a specifically declared one), are pvp.
No that is wrong, whether it is also a TOS breaking statement or not (in fact, using any exploit is against the TOS, so RMT is no different in that respect to POS shield bowling, delaying CONCORD, etc.
I won’t be so charitable. You clearly don’t know what you are talking about, and instead of just sticking to the opinion given, had to go at the person instead; and now can’t handle the return volley.
All that aside, we are all entitled to have our own opinion on the subject. I assume clearly that your’s is different to mine; and that is totally fine. Mine is no worse however, so maybe instead of making idiotic statements (not that you are an idiot, but just that like we all do at times, you made an idiotic statement) to try to spin my post in some other way than intended, it might be worth actually understanding what exploits are, because nothing about unanchoring and then anchoring gantries is an exploit.
POS bowling was where a ship could be bumped out of a POS shield from the outside by repeatedly bumping into the POS shield with a titan or supercarrier, which caused the ships to move. When they moved enough, they could be targeted and killed.
I like a number of suggestions that have been put forward to solve this.
I will admit when you are on the side that has declared the war and this happens to you it is very frustrating but this is not where my larger issue is with this. My problem is the gantry was introduced as part of the set-up process of POCO’s. The Poco was introduced as part of what was a new form of content at the time being Planetary interactions.
With the player not completing this process, they are not allowing access to that content in that area. I would not have a problem with this if there was a counter which there is currently not. Hence the current Request.
it wasn’t a declared exploit but it was a mechanic that was similarly abused, and was subsequently fixed;
Now the fleet that did the most damage gets the credit and seagulls get nothing.
@Scipio, Thanks for your comments,
Exploits (beyond obvious RMT) don’t begin as exploits, I recall many of the listed items on that list when they were not exploits;
The old "fill a ship with 100 million bookmarks’ isnt on that list anymore either, and has been replaced with the new relevant ‘preventing flashpoints from spawning’, probably with a totally legitimate method prior to it being deemed to be an exploit.
That’s the discussion point - utilising a totally legal mechanic in a way that is unintended. It is out of step with the rest of war dec mechanic design and could be modified with minimal impact (either through a slight increase in time to unanchor) or other methods;
I would be interested in any suggestions you have that would maintain the intent that allows a player to still ‘hold’ the gantry’s to sell or control, but also allow a PVP option to contest this.
