sorry man, please don’t be unreasonable. This “Drifter Battleships in HS” is the utmost ridiculous nonsense anyone could possibly come up with. And it can happen to the most careful pilots by simply warping to a spot where someone else has lured a Drifter BS to. These things are literally unbeatable and untankable for anything you would reasonably fly in HS.
I am the last person who wants EVE to be a hellokitty fluffypuff land, but this stuff is just bullcrap
Thank you, Syzygium. Honestly, this is exactly the kind of perspective I hoped someone would voice – experienced, rational, and grounded in reality.
I’m totally fine with EVE being harsh and unforgiving. But unkillable PvE threats at highsec undocks – without proper tools to counter or even avoid them – just feels like design that punishes players for simply showing up.
Much respect for calling it as it is.
You lost your ship outside your lvl 4 agent mission station, that means it’s a station you user on the regular and THAT means that, especially if you fly fancy ships, you take about 3 minutes to create yourself an undocking bookmark (and a docking one as well).
So if you undock and go “uhh what are these npc, they look weird and scary. I don’t know what they are or do”. The the sensible thing is to either redock and figure out what they are and how scary they are, to then conclude it’s a bad idea to fight them, OR you use your undocking BM and moonwalk out of that situation, and system.
The worst option is “go attack them or go into Bastion where you can’t dock or get out”.
Well, I am a pretty experienced player, used to all types of environment, from HS to Low, Null, WH and Pochven. I did from the smallest HS anomalies any PvE content the game has to offer, up to T6 Abyssals in two-digit billion ISK ships.
I know how to deal with those Drifters in WH Space, how to avoid them or even how to set up a fleet to engage and kill them. They clearly don’t belong in HS (or even LS and NS), at least not in random locations. Even a very good and reasonably well flying HS pilot has literally zero chance to survive such an encounter and thats a ridiculously bad game design.
Thats entirely not the point. It was pure coincidence that this Drifter BS was at this station, could also just be present at one of the gates. And then you jump in and get tackled and killed long before you can warp off in a Golem, Bastion or No Bastion, Bookmarks or no Bookmarks. What do you expect from people? Taking any HS gate with a scout only? Thats ridiculous.
They are complete BS, that is their point. Some fights are to be avoided.
Thing is that they introduced complete BS NPC because they realised that after nerfing HS pvp options over the years (not just ganking) it all got a bit too stale and easy. I’m not a fan of them but some goober going “this death is unavoidable” is simply wrong.
Lol. For sure not. They simply didn’t think about that at all. You are completely delusional if you believe for a second that they intentionally brought these Battleships to HS “because it’s too safe there”.
Reply to Syzygium:
Thank you for taking the time to explain it so clearly — your experience and perspective carry real weight. It’s reassuring (and frustrating) to know that even highly experienced pilots agree that these Drifter battleships simply don’t belong in Highsec, especially not in random NPC station undock zones.
Like you, I enjoy challenging PvE, and I’ve fought plenty of Lancers in Highsec with a properly fit Golem — but those were balanced encounters. This latest mechanic feels like an unavoidable punishment, not a challenge. If they want to include capital-level threats, they should at least provide us with capital-level tools to fight them — or move the content to LS/NS/WH where it belongs.
Appreciate your voice in this discussion. o7
High sec is supposed to be easy
What could be another reason?
Reply to Aisha Katalen:
I understand your points, and I fully agree that poor decision-making should never be rewarded in EVE — but this wasn’t about that. I didn’t engage them, I didn’t go AFK, and I wasn’t unaware of the usual Highsec threats. I was in Bastion mode for just a moment, observing — and within seconds, I was deleted by a mechanic that offers no warning, no possibility of survival, and no real counterplay for subcaps.
The idea that players should “just know” these Drifters persist across sessions, remember old aggro, and randomly show up in front of NPC stations is asking a bit too much — even veteran players get caught off-guard. When the only viable way to reset aggro is losing a ship, that’s not a PvE challenge — that’s a trap.
I’m not asking for handholding, just fairness. Give us a way to meaningfully counter these threats, or place them in areas where players expect to be overwhelmed.
They are bad at game design and typically sloppy when implementing things? Stubborn to even acknowledge they made a mistake and then lazy to fix it? Sounds just like… CCP in the last decade?
That’s not how Bastion works and that’s not what happened. You lost your ship while hugging your station and that means you either went “lol lets do this” or you didn’t think anything at all and weren’t paying attention.
If you undock and you see npc like that outside your station and you don’t know what they do or are the LAST thing you should do is “lets go in bastion and see what happens”. You’re on your undock, all you have to do is redock.
Imagine assuming NPCs in high sec wont insta kill golems
Not just the last decade but that is generally for stuff that is easily ignored. This is a whole setup with extra game mechanics, it’s done on purpose with a vision in mind. Not saying it’s a good vision, but something like this isn’t accidental.
o/
You’ve put your thread in General Discussion; but, if you’re trying to attract the attention of the CSM, you’d do better to flag your post and ask for it to be moved to this section:
As an aside, in my opinion, there is no “fair” in EVE. I suspect it was a design principle from the start.
You stayed around AND locked them.
They are rats. Rats don’t GAF about security status.
Zero sympathy. Should have undocked and chosen a direction. Impossible to die that way. I’ve NEVER not been able to get away from drifters doing this. They’re basically a test to see who is paying attention.
That’s what happened. Curiosity cost you a Shiny Ship.. 
Other players run automatically if they encountered the Drifters. Knowing about Lore’s are important.
And the funny thing is that according the sources if he undocked in a frigate and sacrificed it probably the marauder would have been left alone afterwards. 
Bastion Mode was probably the decision that lost you your ship.
Aside from the immobility of it, you granted yourself a hard timer, preventing docking and jumping even if you could have moved, and it was probably that status that green lit the drifters to drop you.
I have cruised past drifters many times, and my curiosity was only ever satisfied in throwaway ships, by design.
And it’s better if fitted with blingy mods. 