Proposal: Make it impossible to kill ships at gates unless they hang about there. I.e long lock times when near gates. Ships invincible to smart bombs near gates
This change is to encourage roaming. Dying to a smart bomb or instalocking gatecamp is a frustrating experience to the roaming pilot in low sec as they need to reship and potentially travel many jumps to get back into the frey, while it provides only fleeting giggles/killmails to the perpertrators.
Eliminating these low value kills should logically result in more high value kills out in belts/ plexes/ missions etc where players outwit each other or themselves to secure the explosion.
As it stands the defense against gatecamps is essentially “you should have used a scout” - in essences saying you should either have friends or partake in extremely tedious and artificial mechanics using alts or safespots to do something as natural as move around to seek content.
Eliminating gate travel lotteries (especially for ships bigger than frigates) should result in a lot more people roaming out and about in low sec in much more varied ships.
(smartbombing pods should probably continue tho - while we have implants…they need to be forcibly removable - though my preference would be to destroy them on ship destruction itself)
There are only a few types of ships that are susceptible to smart bombs killing them. If you are in one and concerned about smart bombs, then don’t warp gate to gate.
It’s a simple solution and works.
The game doesn’t need to be changed when there are already perfectly usable mechanics available.
In relation to gate camps, there are only a few gates that are regularly camped. They are also easy to avoid in most cases (some not so easy, but those systems - like Pynekastoh - aren’t often camped).
Thats not even something you see in highsec. Gates are a huge portion of interactions between ships. That’s a major reason they were put in.
Yes, get friends. Solo play inherently lacks the benefits of group-efforts. There are numerous gameplay scenarios that where overwhelming force is brought to bear against a weaker target. Hotdrops, pipebombs, regular bombs, etc. this is in now way unique to the mentioned scenario either. It’s a natural part of how the sandbox works.
In null sec we have territory wars. Gate camping to control territory makes good sense to me
Gate camping to bag dozens of risk free kills against solo pilots is also a fun drinking activity. I get that. But that doesn’t mean the game wouldn’t be better if we got rid of it in low sec.
Instalocking gate camps make people think twice about putting in implants. That for me is the primary benefit of gate camps in low sec. But if the side effect is discouraging potential roaming solo pvp-ers and pve-ers then maybe its time to look at ending them in low sec.
Do people smart bomb gates in lowsec? Wouldn’t that just set off the gate guns? I would be against removing it in principle, as it allows groups to set up very amusing traps for any pursuing force hunting them down. The R&K pipebombing video comes to mind.