It is my understanding that only certain rats can be made neutral/friendly to you. These include diamond rats, trigs, and edencom. Other rats, including Sansha, will always be hostile, no matter your standing.
@Mike_Azariah @Brisc_Rubal
I am, however, open to the idea of people being able to get neutral/blue status with sansha rats though, as it would help incentivize HS PvP within sites. War deckers/suspect baiters/killright guys don’t like messing around in sites because they will melt in seconds if they pick up agro, and even gankers still have the arduous task of trying to extract loot from a site with rats in it. Of course, it can be done. But, as it stands right now, the danger of the rats basically protect incursion runners from HS PvP.
Let me put it this way. Under normal circumstances in HS, players joining the fleet mid site must ask for permission to take the gate (new wave spawns like to agro ships that are isolated from the group. This, in turn, can cause the rats to fly out of optimal of the fleet, as they go chasing the guy that just landed on grid and is out of position). However, when gankers are present in HS, late fleetmembers are instructed to immediately take the gate upon landing, because PvP’ers are extremely unlikely to follow them (note that LS incursion communities also instruct late joiners to immediately take gates). In other words, the sites are so good at discouraging PvP within them that communities literally adjust their risk management strategies in order to take advantage of this reality.
Now, I’m sure the average incursioner won’t be too thrilled about a random increase to their risk, but I currently think that things are too safe for incursioners (Note that I am a former Logi Commander with WTM, a VG multiboxer, a ganker multiboxer, and have dabbled in other forms of HS PvP, so I am invested in, and value both predator and prey play styles). Moreover, if given the choice between reduced payouts/ reduced content availability, or increased risk from HS PvP, I would chose the latter.
I don’t know why CCP reduced the number of HS foci (I’ve heard conflicting stories), but if it was to help balance unsustainable economic activity, I would have rather them spiced things up by encouraging PvP, than reduce my content availability (note that there is a 12-36 hour respawn time between foci, and that TDF will rage pop foci that spawn in HS islands. This means that in the 1 focus environment, there are multiple days a month where incursioners have no incursion to run.).
And, of course, if CCP ever feels compelled to address the incursion isk faucet again, I’d rather go this route than see payouts nerfed, or content availability further reduced.