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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Anatomy of a suicide gank

For the heck of it I've been keeping an eye in Mya for the last two days. Sort of an "I'm bored let's go AFK in a cov-ops in Mya and make the pirates all paranoid". But seeing the amount of activity in local got me curious. So I went into observation mode.

Turns out these guys like to suicide gank with dessies. They get some cheap destroyers and even with -10 sec standing they have enough time to get the suicide gank done. This is because dessies can warp away to a belt before the police can get to them. Then of course they use a cloaked neutral alt to provide a warp in solution right on top of their target (made horribly easy by the fact that Hulks tend to stay put in a single location for long periods of time). I've even managed to identify the cloaky alt being used as the warp in coordinator.

So their operational pattern is clear: Get some cheap dessies set up for as much alpha as they can manage. Get them gathered in low sec. Use alt to get a warp in solution. "Warp to me at 20 from the Mya gate and you'll land on top of this Hulk". So the gank squad gathers, warps to the gate, jumps, warp to fleet member, target, attack. If the hulk should manage to be defended by some drones, they might actualy get a kill mail from one of the attackers and it'll show both police and concord on the mail. The Hulk loss mail will also be there showing all the dessies.

Rince, repeat.

All Hulk pilots that operate within a jump or two of low sec should be aware of this operational pattern.

20 comments:

Unknown said...

i'm curious what is the point of doing that? From hulk's wreck you can find few t2 modules and may be couple blue salvaged units. it will may be 10 mil but the cost of hulk is 160mil without fit. So they basically want to spoil game for miners?

I can understand people who ransom players in low sec but just stupid destroying defenseless ships? I can't understand it.

Yargok said...

Its for fun or profit!
-since you can insure the dessies you wont loose much by their death..

Unknown said...

You can only get Tech 2 salvage from T2 & Faction ships.So that might be a good reason as well. Also, a lot of macro miners use Hulks.

Unknown said...

I'm an ex-miner and an ex-suicide ganker. In fact i'm a veteran of the first hulkageddon. One of the reasons why I did it was of course for shits and giggles. carebear tears sustain us. I don't know why people mine anymore these days anyways. Minerals prices are shit. Trit sells for 2 isk/unit. It used to be like 4.7 before. I make more isk in an hour of lvl 4 missions than i can in an evening of mining now.

Unknown said...

Yes, 1 mission will provide more profit than a night of mining, for me at least. But I don't mine for profit, I do it because it relaxes me.

Unknown said...

it's worrying how little influence security rating has on the ability to travel in high-sec. They can go anywhere in highsec if they got an alt that can fly an orca. Travel to site in pod or shuttle, warp to orca, grab ship, warp to covops warpin.
IMO if you choose to be an outlaw you should not be able to do anything in high-sec besides pass through in a pod. Disabling warping for outlaws in anything but a pod could be interesting.

Stabs said...

"I don't know why people mine anymore these days anyways."

There are four reasons to mine that I can see.

1) You're manager of a sweatshop and you want a simple, easily overseen, task for all your peons to do.

2) You're semi-afk. I mine sometimes while reading or playing a game on a second computer.

3) You're multi-clienting. I saw calculations stating that at 6-8 clients mining matches level 4s and with more clients than that mining will pull ahead.

4) You just like it. Simple repetitive slow-paced gameplay. Kinda trancey.

Wombat Rampant said...

"...but just stupid destroying defenseless ships? I can't understand it."

JIHAD IS OUR WAY

Letrange said...

The bigger question is why are hulks mining in high sec - the best mining ship against the lowest value ore in fields made up of the smallest roids...

As for the pirates - they keep the hulk market moving so as a manufacturer I'm pretty neutral about it.

In the end it's just lazy griefers going against lazy miners. Lazy game play begets lazy game play. Personally I think it's bad game design on CCP's part but hey, I'm not a game designer.

DMadCat said...

Meh, remove insurance for suicides and you solve most of this particular problem. Granted dessies don't cost anything but anything bigger would get somewhat expensive.

Frankly, if you're mining in high sec, do it in an out of the way system. Get to know the other locals who mine (maybe tag em blue) and if a bunch of unknowns suddenly appear in local, warp to a station for a bit, maybe scout around to see what's up.

Sadly there are people who resent the fact that miners might find that slightly boring, repetitive task fun. Therefore (probably because they weren't hugged enough as children, or possibly still are children, or a little of both) they delight in ruining another player's experience. Without a tactical or (substantial) monetary reason for it, it's really just griefing.

Unknown said...

I quit EVE after three and a half years because of griefers and gankers. There's plenty of fun there if weren't for all the a-holes.

Nathan Weyer said...

@DMadCat

Forget insurance... remove killmails. Killmails are the reward for a kill that has no economic or strategic value. Remove that reward and many will get bored with it pretty quickly if they have no stats to optimize or show off.

Killmails to griefers are like ISK to carebare runners. Collected for its own sake.

Krissam said...

Meh, remove insurance for suicides and you solve most of this particular problem.

What's the problem?

Letrange said...

Actually the suicide gank method described should be profitable even while removing ship insurance. 50% module drop. 3 T2 strips are just about guaranteed to be in a hulk then there's the T2 salvage from the hulk wreck. Each of the suicide dessies costs like 1mil all in, so your costs are 6mil for a squadron of 6 dessies and the loot plus salvage could easily pass that.

DMadCat said...

True, but at the moment they get all that AND their six mil initial investment back. For some, less reward may eventually make the logistics too cumbersome to bother with.

I'm not against suiciding in general. It just feels like a lot of the ganking being done lately is twisting a game mechanic to an end that wasn't intended and, for me, it takes an immersive experience and cheapens it turning it into a metagame struggle that's just not worth the effort.

Unknown said...

Wow, this information is at least 1.5 years old when I was doing it up in The Forge region. It's still brand new to people?

It originally started as a way to get rid of macro miners, but lately, especially with the Hulkageddon competition, it's become about lulz.

Unknown said...

Well TBH MUGRE SMASH PUNEY HULK FOR FUN! MUGRE EAT CARE BEAR TEARS FOR DINNER YUMMMY!

red boss said...

Lol, we're famous!! :)
We do it for fun, the fame and the money. Bitches would be nice, but let's be realistic, this is an internet spaceships game, bitches are scarce :(.
Also, you got some things bout our operations wrong. If you would like it corrected, convo me in game.

Finally, we accept suigank requests for ISK. Tell us who you want ganked, and we will deliver you his corpse and hulk killmail :)

LOVE,
Red Boss (MUGRE SMASH's BFF <3)

Spectre said...

Name: Because it is fun. There really isn't much more to it and I wouldn't overthink or overanalyze the reasoning.

Reatu: So now we should start rebalancing the game under the assumption that everyone has an alt? No thanks. Being low security status is a huge logistics nightmare and traveling through highsec as a -5 player is a dangerous and inconsistent proposition. No need to twist the dagger any further.

DMad/Kris: I am confused as to why they have NOT done this yet. People have been begging for insurance to be refactored for a while now. It seems like a very reasonable and easy thing to fix yet CCP hasn't touched it. Maybe it's in the works but I wouldn't hold our breath. Personally I think they should just remove insurance altogether... it doesn't serve any real purpose or benefit and can be exploited in many ways.

Kyle Langdon said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLfef-8NRz0

http://hulkageddon2.griefwatch.net/index.php?p=details&kill=121

Yeah. Really unprofitable. Get a new argument will you?