The devblog from CCP when security tags were introduced was pretty clear about the target audience for the tags. That was based on aims to:
- get people out in space, particularly in lowsec
- alternative method for reformed outlaws to get back to highsec
Tags weren’t aimed at gankers, but at lowsec pvpers, which was part of why they are only available in lowsec.
However, that motivation from CCP could obviously be used differently by gankers, but it isn’t. They don’t really care about security status as they can effectively work around the limitations.
For example, this morning I pulled the last 2000 kills by CODE. and averaged the security status of the gankers in each killmail.
The average came out as:
Total killmails analysed: 2000
Average security status: -9.60121049092139
The average ganker within CODE. is an outlaw (many of them are at -10), and they are the most active gankers in the game. When you look at the killmails manually, this is the kind of thing that is most common you’ll see:
A total of 12 attackers on that one killmail, all -10 security status.
When you do it automatically and run thousands of killmails through software, the same picture emerges. gankers don’t care about security status. They operate as outlaws regardless.
For miniluv it is a bit more difficult as they have people come and go to and from nullsec for gank fleets, however they aren’t using tags either. Ratting is much more prevalent for Goons than the use of tags are. It’s rare to even see a Goon in lowsec.
Yep and they generally are. I put an alt into Burn Jita as a ganker and previously spent a couple of months solo ganking with that alt so I could understand what’s involved. The public access of the killrights at the moment:
5 of the 9 killrights publicly available, the cheapest at 0 ISK (which would be the first activated if someone activates one). This is consistent with the experience from the previous ganking about 6 months ago.
If you go spend any time in Uedama, Niarja, Madirmilire, etc., and watch a gank fleet come on grid (undocking or arriving at target), you’ll pretty much see all of them with activatable killrights, even though they are already also outlaws.
This is true, but gankers gank, so they have a never ending supply of killrights that end up being set to public.
All pointless anyway, since being outlaw doesn’t worry them and they can be shot on sight by anyone good enough.