This month’s Blog Banter comes from Drackarn of Sand, Cider and Spaceships. He has foolishly chosen to poke the hornet’s nest that is the non-consensual PvP debate. Whilst you read his question, I’ll be finding a safe place to hide.
“A quick view of the Eve Online forums can always find someone complaining about being suicide ganked, whining about some scam they fell for or other such tears. With the Goons’ Ice Interdiction claiming a vast amount of mining ships, there were calls for an “opt out of PvP” option.
Should this happen? Should people be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve Online. Should CONCORD prevent crime rather than just handing out justice after the event? Or do the hi-sec population already have too much protection from the scum and villainy that inhabits the game?”
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“But what if I am not ready to ‘make the kill’?”
“The world does not wait for you to be ready. It does not care if you think your skills are up to par. Combat will sometimes be far away and something happening to someone else but other times it will be right at your doorstep with you in its sights.” She put her feet up on the desk and leaned back. “There is no way to be ‘safe’ just ways of being safer. That is what I am supposed to do, train you to be safer or to make things so unsafe for the other guy that they think twice about starting anything.”
“I am a tech, not a soldier.” He muttered from where he sat at his own station. His shoulders were slumped and he looked at her sideways, never straight on.
“Right now what you are is a target. Everything about you screams ‘easy kill’.” she snorted, looking directly at him. You don’t have to be on the hunt all the time but you sure as hell don’t want to be wearing a bullseye, either.”
“I don’t want to fight.”
“Then you were born in the wrong universe. This is New Eden and even if you want to quietly exist in a peaceful little cocoon there are folks out there that will object to it and try to prove something over your corpse. I am not saying you have to be a raging lunatic with guns blazing, shooting your way across the stars. Just be competent and confident so when you do meet someone who objects to your being peaceful one of three things will happen.”
He looked up. “What three things?”
She ticked them off on her fingers. “One, you die. End of story. Of course it isn’t end of story for a capsuleer or someone set for rebirth, but for normal folks that is it. We don’t want that to happen, do we?”
“n n n no” He shook his head and shuddered, seeming to shrink into his chair a bit more.
“Two, you make them dead before they get you. You become one of them.”
“But I DON’T WANT TO BECOME ONE OF THEM! CAN’T I OPT OUT?” He screamed, emotions getting the better of him.
“No, but there is three. Three, you become and look good enough that you are not the easy target, not the slowest or lame of the herd. You convince them that there is easier hunting somewhere else. You do not wear the bling because that makes you look worth the risk. You walk confidently because you know how to fight or how to run faster than they can chase. And you make peace with yourself and the universe as a whole that sometimes it will not be fair and you might get beat but that is just how it is. You don’t opt out, you don’t hide your head in the sand. You play your own game and work around how things really are. THAT is what I am here to train you to do.” She paused. “But for that I also have to train you to be a bit of number one, the hunter.”
He stood up and faced her. “You don’t like this, do you?”
“What I don’t like is when you go in I am going to be somewhere far off wondering if I trained you well enough. I have no idea how you put up with that sort of stress.”
He smiled and straightened up a little. ‘You mean I might have something to teach you?”
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Lessons.
No, you cannot opt out.
Sometimes you cannot fight back and win, either. They show up with a huge blob, what are you going to do, be called a coward for playing docking games or an idiot for stepping out to melt?
Don’t be a target.
Carebear are allowed to play the game they want as long as they keep in mind that others do not want to follow the same path. Ganking happens, live with it. Plan for it.
and for gods sake, stop crying. sometimes they shoot at you to hear you cry . . . .moar tears.
I have died in bubbles, in wormholes space, from my own stupidity and from the malice of others.
I still play. I still have fun. I get pissed off, now and again, but I try to learn and get better. Maybe this game is not for eveybody but I think that a lot of lessons can be learned here.In Mario, who plays hardcore? If you die you have to quit forever? Those damn turtles . . . can I turn them off?
Ever do that? Enable ‘god-mode’ on a game? Takes all the fun out of it. If you enjoy that sort of thing then maybe, just maybe, Eve is not the right game for you. Because here it is all about adaptation. If the game develops a God-mode ship or I win button the rest of the population and the CCP work hard to remove it or find a counter.
I’m a carebear but I do not want to opt out. I want the right to shoot back, to maybe take a few of them with me.
Fly it like you won it
m
A Missioneer in Eve 
I tried a different game recenty and immediatly missed my eve corp. What makes eve corps significant is the possibility of griefing. My guys won’t gank me or others. I know that because when a noob start shooting we know quickly. My guys might not fight well but they will fight with me or at least stay out of the way instead of making things worse. In another game corps are random and don’t mean a thing.
You have NO idea how tempted I was to make this post all about you. Just finished listening to your interview in podgoo, well done.
Your work is very connected to what the little tech is going to be going through
M
I really like the way you put it Mike: “Fly it like you won it”. I agree to most of it: adapt, avoid, don’t be an easy target.
Unfortunately sometimes there is no room to adapt. There is no way to counter ice interdiction like the one Goons did. There is no counter. The only ships that are able to mine the Ice are paper-thin. You can’t fit them to have more than 18k EHP, you can’t really do anything when a blob warps on top of you and kills your ship with their first volley. Having a battleship escort won’t help you (barges will be long dead before BSs can lock the offenders), having alts in Logistics won’t help you (because the first volley kills you in between rep cycles) and you can’t choose a different ship to mine ice because there is none.
I win button is not a solution here, but changes to Ice mining would.
I agree that sometimes there is no easy answer other than “don’t be a target” Blobs, gankers fleets, in the face of overwhelming force the best idea is avoid. There are other belts, rocks instead of ice.
Not an I win but at least not an automatic ‘I lose
M
There are counters. They have eyes, so get some of your own. Make mine fields of GTCs to make covert ops hard to use for warp-ins. Setup two safe spots just off grid in opposite directions. Align to outbound bookmarks and mine at full warp speed. Reverse direction before reaching Max miner range. Reduce ship speed by creative fitting, allowing longer runs before turning around. Fit to make probing difficult, and watch for combat probes…. You can even setup counter ganks.
You are only as easy a target as you let yourself become.
To expand upon eyes…. you know exactly how many people are in local. If the system has only one station, how many of them are in that station? That info takes only one man or an alt to check frequently. You know the common ganking ship classes. Set a person who is awake to watching a matrix of combat probes. Alternately setup on combat probe at Max range and count signatures within filter parameters by adjusting size of the results box, or measuring the results box slider against the edge of another box. If the combat probe gets more unique signatures suddenly, more things are in space.
How do I fit my hulk to mine while alighned and up to speed to warp? Fly in pairs and double web each other while setting your current speed to 80% of your current maximum.
If wormholes can stay alive in hulks…. there is no reason its harder to stay alive in Highsec. Adapt and overcome, or don’t and succumb.
I have a post on my griefergeddon site about how to get 40k ehp from a hulk written by agony unleashed. I do think hulks need more powergid.. with a coresponding increase to power grid usage of t2 lazers and / or mlu so u still have no tank 2 be max miner. Some say hulks mine ice faster due to speed buff anyway. Or give up and use cheep covetors to mine ice like I use to mine in worm hole. No counter. Feh.
What is the average ehp of a pseudo tanked hulk? I almost think that ccp did this on purpose, making a player choose between safety or efficiency. Choices drive this game.
M
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One of your better write ups. I agree completely. There are people who bad things happen to, and there are people who let bad things happen to them. Sometimes you have to cross a road. You can either learn to look both ways, or pretend everything is okay and get hit. Do not LET bad things happen that you have the power to prevent.
I’m not big on PvP in general. I appreciate it a lot more in Eve and the reason is simple: Half the PvP fight in Eve happens outside of combat. Everything Bley points out is, in essence, part of PvP. You’re gathering intelligence, planning for trouble, and sometimes you win the fight simply by avoiding it entirely.
And when the planning, intelligence, and scouting fail you? Well, PvP happened. You lost that match, now get back to it.
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