Also I would love to answer my own question, but everything hinges on remote assistance still being a possibility. Without escalation there is so little window for content, and that content is only accessible to the person who wants to PvP by themselves, that I really can’t go any further. For the rest of us that want to play with our friends we’re left with shitty structure bashing and bland suicide ganking. And before you say low-sec/null-sec the current climate in both areas of space are unsuitable to those of us that do not enjoy cap warfare.
So, what you believed was that your opponent would attempt to destroy you with alpha, probably from a Tornado or two. But, if you had encountered something else, your “tank” may have been insufficient, and maybe even detrimental to your survival since you could have put more useful mods in those slots. You knew the enemy you were most likely to face. Without knowing that, you’d have no way of knowing what an effective tank even looked like. That’s my point. After all, a Prowler’s cloak is it’s most effective tanking mod.
I don’t doubt there are idiots on kill boards. Unfortunately, we can’t measure the ratio of idiots who died to idiots who lived or smart people who died to smart people who lived, so we can’t really say which behavior was the “best” choice. Also, I’m not saying don’t tank your hauler. I’m saying that if you’re flying within a system from one station to another or if you are flying through empty null sec with a 5 man combat team escorting you or if you’re hauling a bulky, low value item and will have to make 5 times as many trips in a “tanked” hauler as an untanked one, these all MIGHT be circumstances in which “tanking” your ship would actually be the “wrong” play.
I’m not sure we actually disagree on this point, to be honest.
^ this is what you’re doing. What are you doing?
I have said from the beginning that there are absolutely in-game ways to counter various strategies and tactics. Forming a 30,000 character alliance that can respond en masse to any threat no matter how insignificant is one way to counter just about anything.
Only choosing to do things that meet an acceptable likelihood of success is not an in-game strategy and the reason it is not is that if I choose to mine in system X, then that is the winning condition. If I choose another system because the likelihood of mining successfully in system X is too low, that’s not mining in system X. It is NOT mining in system X. That’s avoidance. That is a meta-strategy. It is inaccessible to the player playing the game and a game cannot be based on strategies that do not exist within its domain.
In other words: EVE is a guessing game that punishes you for wrong answers.
All wrong, I haul all the time in a DST with cargo expanders a tank in the mids and I do the MWD cloak trick at every gate. I’ve hauled multiple billions through the most dangerous camps in low lec this way.
It’s not a guessing game, it’s a “study and plan” game. Sure you can throw caution to the wind and just “try” something. Or can consider the optimum strategy that the opponent could employ against you and simply prepare for, and thus counter, that strategy.
So have I. What is your point?
You have to have information in front of you to study. In order to possess real-time information, you have to acquire it by variouis means. Usually going there in real-time. And, uh oh! You don’t know what you’re going to find when you get there! But you can take a guess.
If you already know everything, why are you having such a hard time convincing the rest of us on these forums?
First of all you conveniently left out the part where I said “consider the optimum strategy that the opponent could employ against you” because you do not have to “see what’s there” to do this. Furthermore, if you cannot figure out what that strategy would be (because you lack the game knowledge required… which you do) you could simply look the system up on zkill, see who’s there, and plan for the specific strategy they employ.
Either way, the problem isn’t the game, the problem is your unrealistic expectation that it should cater so heavily to your wants.
Quote it then. Cause you haven’t.
Nope.
This is actually evasion, even adaptation, and it is not inaccessible to the player either. Why do you think it is?
Like almost any game…
Oh, THAT strategy! Why am I such a fool? Why do I not consider this “best” strategy that my opponent(s) will definitely deploy in a perfectly predictable, linear sequence of events? They may not know who I am and I may not know who they are, but I should know that they will probably do x because it is always optimal to do x.
I mean, I may not know how many ships they will have or where I will encounter them or their disposition or which ships they’ll have or how each ship will be fitted or the exact geospatial configuration of our ships or the exact capabilities of each player’s skill level, implants, boosters, fleet boosts interacting with his ship’s native characteristics . . . but I should totally do y to counter “it”. Right?
In a paradigm this uncertainty and in a paradigm where engagement is a choice and disengagement is probably NOT a choice, do you choose to engage?
And what are my wants? What is it that you think I want?
I don’t have to quote it. If you could read, you’d have seen that I iterated an in-game strategy right underneath the passage you quoted.
Well, if you say it’s evasion, then it must be evasion because it’s not like you have a history (in this thread, even) of equivocating about such things.
I’m not currently mining in Jita right now therefore I am definitely evading everyone there. ← do you see how stupid that sounds? That’s exactly how stupid YOU sound. Are you just trying to frustrate the discussion?
This isn’t water polo. In water polo, you can’t summon 100 other teams to beat your opponent. You can’t poison the water or use 10 balls and 50 goals. You can’t play the game in the open ocean during a hurricane. At some point, my friend, you really should look inside and wonder why you are responding. Is it because you WANT to be right or because you truly believe what you are saying?
Most games involve a limited amount of uncertainty and a window in which the player may adapt to a bad decision. In your experience, is EVE like most other games?
Cause you didnt say it.
You’re not avoiding them either.
The only one frustrating the discussion is you with nonsense about untanked oil tankers.
If the reason you’re not in a system is because of the people occupying it, that’s evasion because you are still in the game.
If you want to be in a system with exactly zero other players, then yes you’re evading everyone. If you want to be in a system with no war targets you are evading war targets.
As long as what you’re doing is in the game, like checking killboards, watching local and travelling between systems, id still call that evading.
Quote me where i said eve is like water polo. And you say I’m frustrating the conversation.
I said almost any game punishes you for making bad decisions. Even water polo punishes you for making bad decisions, though the format is very different to eve.
Doesn’t change anything.
First, different games have different levels of uncertainty. I wouldn’t say most games have limited uncertainty, in fact predictability is more often an unattractive trait for a game.
Second, eve has various activities for players to take part in with different levels of uncertainty. Players can choose the activity that suits them as well as manage uncertainty using eve’s numerous tools. The ‘window’ you’re talking about is the moment you start the game. It is a PERSISTENT universe. So decisions you make on day one can have a lasting effect.
If players are still unhappy with the the level of uncertainty in eve, they can play noughts and crosses.
You seem to think you should be able to make poor decisions and then not pay the consequences. Consequences are what have made this game successful.
Also you seem to think you should be able to fly a shitfit, take every opportunity for engagement and then leave if that engagement is not favorable. That is not how that game works, nor is it how it should work.
Let’s say for instance that I want to PvP solo in low-sec. The best way to isolate a target is inside of a Novice plex because that cuts out the most types of ships as possible competitors. So I decide to fly a frigate. Given I do not want to throw a large amount of money down the drain I decide I want to fly a t1 frigate so I pick a tristan because of its versatility. I know that when I land inside of a plex I will land on the beacon meaning my opponent will be able to scram and web me so fitting a kite tristan would be insufficient therefore I decide my mids should be Scram Web Ab.
I also know that I want to be able to warp in on OTHERS as well and some of those people could be sitting outside of my scram range and long point me to lock me down so I need to be able to push them off. To account for that I fit rails and bring quicker drones (acolytes). I then do a little research with simulating the fit and find that using a damage control, saar, and dda give me the most bang for my buck in my low slots.
Now when I go out I still cannot engage everything, I have to have the game knowledge of what the slot arrangement is of all the other frigates, and what they are capable of, so that I know what engagements I should and shouldn’t take. If I see a slicer, I know he only has two mids, since I am setup to fight people attempting to kite me at long point range, and will actually have a substantially better tank because of the fitting and cap my afterburner affords me over his microwarpdrive, I can actually take that fight. If for whatever reason he’s close range that means he either has no point or I have range control in which case I can pull range and leave. To account for the fact that he may have friends I spam my dscan during the fight, if friends come, I slingshot out of his point range and leave before they can engage me (given he is indeed a kite fit).
Now lets say I see a comet in a Plex, I cannot beat a comet in a straight up fight and since the comet is gallente his tank will be good enough with a damage control that I cannot beat a comet who is kiting either, so I do not take that fight.
This is what I mean by research and preparation.
Let’s do it this way. Tell me an activity that you would like to participate in, and I’ll tell you the optimal way to approach said activity by taking into account the worst case scenario.
Fine. Let’s play:
I didn’t say I didni’t say it. I also didn’t say I said it in this thread or even on these forums. I didn’t say I said it on this character. I didn’t say I said it to you. I didn’t say I said it in response to this issue . . .
I am not intentionally avoiding them, but I am actively avoiding them if I am choosing to stay out of the system.
How does that frustrate the discussion? Are you suggesting there are tanked oil tankers? Are you suggesting the oil companies are “doing it wrong” by not tanking their tankers because there MIGHT be some enemy, somewhere, who intends to damage or sink their ship somehow?
Avoidance is predictive. Evasion is reactive.
If I predict an opponent’s behavior, I can avoid it. If my opponent behaves in some way and I react to that behavior, that is evasion. So, if you go to system x and there are people there you want to avoid, you react and evade. If you just say “I’m not going to system x because there might be people there I want to avoid.”, you predict and avoid.
You don’t evade running into a wall. You avoid doing so. You don’t avoid being hit by a car when you see it coming at you. You take evasive action. Or, you avoid being hit by a car by taking evasive action.
LOL, so cute. I am evading billions of people right now.
I am inferring here what you say to mean that EVE is like Water Polo, and here’s how. You say that EVE is like almost any game. Water Polo is a game. The likelihood is that Water Polo is also “like almost any game”, in which case you are saying that EVE is like Water Polo.
If this isn’t the case, then your assertion must be that Water Polo is NOT like almost any game, at least in the specific way that EVE IS like almost any game. But Water Polo is a fairly standard “game” with easily recognizable “game” characteristics. I can’t imagine why you would assert that Water Polo is not “like almost any game.” Thus, you are probably saying that EVE is like water polo.
Are we having fun yet?
And I said EVE is a guessing game that punishes you for guessing wrong. But guessing wrong isn’t the same as making a bad decision. Even a very good, intelligent guess can be wrong.
A roll of the dice has 6x6 possible outcomes. That is a game of pure chance. I’d call a mere 36 potential outcomes “limited”, and that isn’t even the final, binary outcome, normally. That is a game in which you have no way to affect the potential outcome. In fact, affecting the outcome is disallowed. Compare that to EVE or another game of “skill” in which you are supposed to be able to control the outcome to some extent, depending on your own innate ability to play the game. If we could not affect the outcome in such games, we probably wouldn’t even play them. 90% of us would probably just get frustrated and quit. Oh, wait . . .
Right. I can play or not play. Thanks for making my point for me. gg
It’s only a poor decision if I have to pay the consequences and if those consequences are bad. And if those bad consequences outweigh the good. So, we have to answer the question of what is “bad” and what is “good” and how do we know which outweighs which in any given circumstance?
I think I should have just as much control over my ship as another player. Nay! More control over my ship than another player. Like, if another player tells my ship, “Hey! Don’t warp!” I think I should be able to tell my ship “Hey! Warp!” and it should do what I say not what the person who did not buy it, fit it, and will not incur it’s loss says. Just like, you know, if I tell my hand to do something I expect it to do that something even if someone else doesn’t want it to. Is that entitlement?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .
Let’s not.
And your Tristan would die to a Venture, and Ibis, and 2 Rifters and all your dscan spamming wouldn’t mean a thing and neither would your fitting.
EVE absolutely needs a space for sub-caps to battle, without either caps or high sec restrictions. (The occasional WH with mass restrictions does not count for this)
Yup, entitled. 
But also, if PvPing is indeed a profession, and I am indeed able to play the bad guy and be a pirate, then there also needs to be incentives for industrialists to move and/or operate in this space. That’s the part people fail to connect. You can’t just take PvP from High Sec and caps from Low Sec and everyone’s happy. You have to have REAL incentives for industrialists and mission runners to risk something.
It’s not like even I don’t enjoy a GOOD fight. I was all over low-sec back when the climate was more enjoyable for solo pilots and small gangs. Hell, even back when the mission baiting community was robust I can remember winning a 10 v ~30 fleet fight, in High-Sec, that started over having an E-Uni lvl 4 mission runner pointed, and I KNOW everyone had fun because local was LIT afterwards.
But like most PvPers I know, I do not want to fly only cheap ships and as such I have to make my money somewhere. I want to be a REAL pirate and pay for my ships with piracy. I know I will never log in another day when the time comes where I have to do what I would consider HORRIBLY boring PvE content (seriously, have you played POE?) in order to afford to do the only thing that interests me in this game. PvP and piracy.
But you know, I could sink real life money into this game but isn’t that the same pot-hole we keep stepping in? See, when you remove engaging ways for PvPers to make money, the only PvPers that remain are the whales that can sink enough cash into the assets required for the really fun stuff. When they can’t have fun for their isk they’ll either buy it, or leave.
Well just remove the criminal system all together then right? We can all live in a PvE wonderland. Null-sec can rat in their big blue doughnut and remove all PvP from High-Sec, everyone’s happy. You remove caps in Low-Sec but Null-Sec is still filthy rich so the climate in Low-Sec is still horrible. Even if you improve the climate in Low-sec and shake up null do you expect only PvPers to pay for their game time? How much more expensive does plex get when High-Sec players (the largest population) are no longer taking losses? Also, how long will PvPers realistically play if they have to pay for subs AND ships with real money? Not long I’ll tell you that, and what happens when they leave? Don’t the industrialists and PvEers want a player driven economy? You enjoy market PvP too right? It would kind of suck if this game was like WoW where currency becomes all but worthless because nobody loses anything. Oh yea, and don’t forget about those plex prices. How many people do we lose when paying for gametime with isk is reserved to only those that own the most valuable assets in Null-Sec? Do you see yet what I mean when I say “overall health of the game”?
High sec is the only place that piracy is accessible for a majority of the PvPers and I would bet the moves CCP would have to make for it to be otherwise would not be something that most High-Sec PvEers would appreciate. So where do we draw the line? Come April Suicide Ganking and structure bashing (if you can even call that PvP) are all that will be left of what used to be an emergent, player driven criminal system. Pvp is 1 step from being completely gone in High-Sec and we haven’t even started sorting out the climate in Low or Null much less considered how to balance the income once High-Sec PvEers are invulnerable.
Am I wrong when I say the suspect system is much more engaging than getting insta-blapped by 50 catalysts?
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Oh also, my fitting compared to theirs would matter greatly. If for instance one rifter was microwarpdrive fit and the other was afterburner fit I could potentially have range control on both of them. Given the Venture and Ibis are neither a threat I would actually take this fight since I am in a cheap ship and can afford to take a reasonable risk with the potential reward of winning a 1v4. 
What?
I knew you’d think that, but I didn’t think you’d say it. Thank you for your honest feedback.