Learning how to gank was a great way to learn how to avoid it.
It’s not as easy as most people think. It’s sitting at a station trying to target literally everything, on the off chance someone’s bad enough at the game to not have an instant undock bookmark, or sitting at a gate scanning absolutely everything. Then they have to be bad enough at the game to make their ship worth ganking. Then they needed to have completely ignored that yellow scanning effect. Then you have to get the alts logged in for the gank, easier if they’re all your alts, and get Concord staged away from where you’re going to gank. Then you have to hope they’re not in the intel channels of the anti-gankers, where they see you’re there and dock up 2 systems away and log off.
Ganking is the end result of someone making multiple mistakes.
Once I was playing PubG, roleplaying as a FSB commando, selected to participate in an elite battle royale TO THE DEATH. I paradropped into a small village, and soon found a small village of carebears who were farming for upgraded modules. The first one I found was in a kitchen with a frying pan, pretending to make an omelette or something, and I shot him down dead just for funs. After that, they just cried and cried, they said I was bullying “new players” and not even giving them a chance to find purples. I didn’t know what to say, so I shot the rest of them.
Why do you call it bad if people kill a hauler full of loot in high security space, but have no problems with it if you kill haulers full of loot in null sec space?
What makes it morally different?
If you think killing haulers is OK in null sec and that they should have taken basic precautions to stay alive, I agree with you. But I think that also applies to haulers in high security space. A kill is a kill, for me it’s morally the same if I’d catch a hauler in NS or in HS.
The rules of engagement in high sec are different. It is considered a criminal act to illegally attack a hauler there so you lose your ship to CONCORD if you do which makes the attack different in HS than in NS.
But that doesn’t make killing a hauler in HS a ‘bad thing to do’, it just means you’re role playing as a criminal the way CCP intended criminals to act.
Destroying a hauler in high security space is morally no worse than destroying one in null sec. The victim will feel bad either way.
So why do you have a problem with one while you yourself are doing the other?
Suicide ganking isn’t actually “low-risk” — it’s low-cost and highly optimized. There’s a big difference. Gankers lose their ships 100% of the time. They take security status hits every single time. They can’t escape CONCORD, they can’t survive the timer, and they can’t undo the loss. So mechanically, the risk is huge — the loss is guaranteed.
What makes ganking look “low-risk” is really this:
• Destroyers and attack BCs are extremely cheap
• Fits and tactics have been optimized for more than a decade
• High-sec behavior is predictable and easy to exploit
• Many players refuse to tank or pay attention
• Ganking scales with numbers while CONCORD doesn’t
The problem isn’t that ganking lacks consequences. The problem is that the cost-to-reward ratio is wildly efficient because Catalysts and Tornados are almost disposable. So if there’s ever a change to make, it wouldn’t be “add more risk.” CONCORD already guarantees their loss.
It would be:
Adjust ship prices, fittings, or resist profiles
Increase the cost of repeated criminal activity
Improve incentives for hauling safely
Or rebalance high-sec targets, not the gankers
Suicide ganking isn’t too low-risk. It’s too low-cost and too well-optimized. That’s the real issue.
The whole design of ganking is the result of years of bandaid fixing instead of completely overhauling the HS PvP mechanic into a “piracy career” option that would allow interesting and rewarding gameplay for good PvP players and not just for those who can do some basic math and bring 10 accounts online. Wasted opportunity.
Morality? This isn’t about “morals” or roleplay—it’s about game balance and mechanics. Nullsec: 1v1 solo PvP (like my kill you linked)—pilot skill, fit, intel, evasion all matter. Hauler had counterplay: scout, align fast, fight back, call blues. Risk for both of us.
This is much different than One pilot multiboxing 20-100+ disposable Catalyst alts (~7-10m ISK each, insured) to alpha a freighter before CONCORD fully responds. No skill, no counterplay beyond “don’t undock” or tank to 1M+ EHP (unhauls). 1 account = blob strength with 0 risk. That’s the “magic” scam killing highsec hauling or even mission running.
In Nullsec the hauler dies to real risk/reward PvP. In Highsec: griefing via alt spam hiding behind concord till they are ready to strike.
Agreed, I would like to point out that when people say risk, its the risk vs reward idea, I risk 100m and hope to get more than 100m. But the risk is possibly not getting 100m and losing isk. That is the core of eve. The spirit of it. Ganking with cheep disposable ship goes against the natural spirit and we all know it. Standings dont matter, they make enough on every gank to buy a reset.
The gankers are at a near 99.9% profit risk. Meaning they have concord to protect them while they are in space and positioning themselves and gathering and are completely safe in their 100m total ships getting ready to insta pop a ship that has 150k ehp worth 3.5bn.
Stop spreading that myth, it has been debunked like a hundred times now.
You have to scout for hostiles trying to blow you up like you have to in all other areas of the game. And if you don’t realize that ‘20-100+’ catalyst gankers are waiting in the next system, you are just dumb.
You are totally free to wait out a blockade, slip through while they are busy killing someone else, break through by bringing escorts or outsorce the haul to someone who can via contract. You can use wormholes, filaments, bait them into attacking the wrong ship and many things more.
That is how people are doing it who do their runs in HS for YEARS without being ganked. And it works absolutely fine.
You’re right about risk vs reward being core to EVE, but I think you’re oversimplifying how ganking actually works in practice.
Gankers aren’t “99.9% safe.” They’re safe right up until the moment they attack, sure — but that’s true for literally everyone in highsec. The moment they pull the trigger, they’ve already accepted a guaranteed ship loss, a criminal timer, security hits, and the fact that any mistake (late tackle, poor damage timing, target regen, someone else interfering, wrong fit, scouts getting spotted, etc.) means the gank fails and they lose their ships for nothing.
People only see the killmail, not the weeks of scanning, scouting, whiffed ganks, Concord mishaps, mistimed catalysts, or targets that warp before the tackle lands.
And the “cheap disposable ships” thing cuts both ways. If someone is flying 3.5b ISK with 150k EHP in highsec, they’re effectively choosing to be a loot pinata. EVE’s always been about adapting to the environment, not expecting the environment to adapt to you.
Highsec ganking isn’t breaking the spirit of EVE — it is the spirit of EVE: asymmetric PvP, player-driven conflict, and people exploiting every edge they can find. If someone wants less risk, they fly cheaper or smarter. If someone wants to eliminate ganking entirely, that’s not risk vs reward anymore — that’s just reward
So it’s ‘skillful gameplay’ if you catch and kill a hauler when you have all the time in the world, but it is ‘no skill no counterplay blob scam’ if someone manages to catch and kill a hauler within the little time people have before CONCORD arrives?
I see no difference except that the mechanical difference between null sec (no CONCORD response) and HS (guaranteed response that destroys your ship) requires a different strategy.
And just because people use a different strategy that adapts to the circumstances the version where you kill is ‘skillful’ while the version where you get killed is ‘no skill blobbing’?
