With all the talk of suicide ganking and griefing in high sec on the forums these days, I was thinking of possible solutions that would raise the barrier to entry without removing it altogether or increasing the punishment.
My idea is to move attack battlecruisers to the tier 2 skill level. While this won’t drastically impact a large portion of the player-base, it will prevent people from creating infinite alpha accounts to use in ganking and griefing. I realize destroyers are also popularly used as they’re cheap and have much greater dps potential than a frigate, but using destroyers for ganking requires a much larger fleet than using ABC. This move would also make logical sense, as ABC have greater/specialized potential than a regular BC since they can use large weaponry. There would have to be a balance pass on ABC of course to make them in line with other tier 2 ships, and their cost would have to be increased as well which would increase the cost of suicide ganking.
So you propose to make changes that would affect users of ABCs, and industrialists and traders involved in their construction and dissemination, in all other areas of space just to make them less acessible to hisec gankers?
The target in the kill mail you posted was pretty much begging for it. Just look at that fit and loadout. Having said that, there’s a much simpler solution. Just deny Alphas access to attack BC hulls period without making them T2.
No, gankers will just use combat bcs instead, or some other high dps, cheap fit ship. Meanwhile you penalize ABC users with extortionate t2 costs and no changes to the ships themselves.
Some people use them for solo/small gang pvp, and this would price them out of usefulness (might as well buy a BS at that point).
While yes, it would make them less accessible to gankers as part of the point, I also stated that it would make logical sense due to the fact that ABC have special capabilities beyond a regular BC, which already makes them more in line with tier 2. In addition, BC are the only hull class with only one tier 2 variant (command ships), thus adding another tier 2 variant would add diversity to the game.
This is another possible solution, however it would seem odd to ‘ban’ one specific class of tier 1 ship when all others (minus capitals) are available.
Actually I stated in my post that they would (obviously) have to be balanced and revised for tier 2 status.
Almost no one uses alpha accounts to gank with, outside of special events like Burn Jita, because of the one-account login limitation they have. You need a scout, looter, and sometimes bumper, if you are going after the large freighters, and even for the small stuff if you are looking to recover any loot. Our friend there in the kill mail you linked is multi-boxing omegas as is practically every other ganker in the game who is flying ABCs.
Highsec ganking is not an issue - the MER shows only 0.1%-0.2% of the goods moved around highsec regions are destroyed, and that figure is destroyed to all causes, not just ganking. Highsec is incredibly safe in aggregate. Don’t waste your time trying to fix a non-problem.
Personally I wouldn’t mind, my question is: why weren’t they made as T2 to begin with? The Naga could even have the torpedo/cruise missile bonus that way, as it originally supposed to!
What are you implying? You don’t believe CCP Quant’s data in the devblog I linked? Or that 0.2% destruction of the goods transported is still too much for highsec?