Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Fights vs ganks

I often see stories starting "we went looking for fights". This is a sure signal of the speaker is a delusional ganker. He went for ganks, but he wishes the social status of someone who wins in a good fight, instead of the not so high status of a griefer.

Why? Because you don't seek real fights. You provoke them by going after something the other fighter wants. If you SBU a system or reinforce a structure, the owner will show up to defend it. If you declare ownership of a territory and patrol it regularly, challengers know where to find you.

The difference between the real fight and the gank is not the one-sidedness of the result. Most real fights end up with a clear victor. B-R and Asakai had very gank-like results, yet they were fights. Both parties wanted to gain or keep something and only one of them could, the other was slain. Fighters of both sides willingly go to war. They likely don't want every particular engagement forced on them. They might wish the other just give up and walk away. But they are ready to fight for something they want to keep. While the individual battle is non-consensual, the war itself is consensual, so the enemy should prepare for traps and set his own ones.

A gank target doesn't want to fight at all. If you'd provoke a fight, he'd just let you have the resource. A typical highsec miner corp won't undock during a wardec, forfeiting all possible assets and interests in space. A ganker doesn't want any resource and they don't want the gank targets to give up and go away. If all highsec miners would just give up mining, the gankers would be unhappy. Gankers want the victims to mine and die again and again for their amusement. Similarly wormhole gankers don't evict the ganked group, nor they want them to give up wormhole life and go back to highsec. They want the victims to recover and provide yet another gank. When someone "seeks a fight", he is actually looking for some guy to be ganked. He doesn't care who the victim is. Usually he wants to dominate a person and make him cry.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against gankers. I did gank. I have a problem with gankers trying to disguise themselves as fighters, just because they ganked outside of highsec. If you want to be a fighter, you have to give the option to the target to just surrender the whole war. If he doesn't run and you still win, you won a fight, even if the particular fight was a well-set trap. MoA pilots catching Goon ratters are fighters, since the Goonie could save himself by quiting GSF and ratting in N3PL space. On the other hand a pirate flying around randomly, ending up in Deklein and killing the same Goonie is just a ganker. Similarly, Goons claiming ownership on Caldari Ice or Jita was a fight, despite the individual miner or hauer cried gank. He could easily avoid being ganked by giving up on Caldari Ice or going to Jita during the time of the event.

The New Order who demands all miners to buy permits and stay active are fighters (assuming they don't kill permit holders who are responding on local). I wonder what they would do if everyone in highsec would play at the keyboard, but until then, they are fighting for an idea and give their targets the option to just give up AFK play and 10M ISK. The bizarre thing in that the New Order who look cliche miner gankers are more honorable fighters than those who drop on random carriers or camp lowsec gates and kill everyone they could, but run without a fight if a larger fleet comes.


PS: there is a "power of 2" promotion running on EVE, until the end of August. For 3 PLEXes, you get a new account for 6 months, saving 3 PLEX-es. PLEX price is relatively low now, so if you plan to scale up, or just get some passive income training supercap pilots, you should do now.

PS2: large fight and defeat to the Evil.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

MoA pilots catching Goon ratters are fighters, since the Goonie could save himself by quiting GSF and ratting in N3PL space.
That is totally against what you just said in the rest of the article. Why is MoA fighting when they go after someone unwilling to fight. That's a gank. If a larger fleet came, MoA would run away.

It's really simple to be honest. If you are killing someone and they have no chance of actually being able to defend themselves (and you know this before engaging), it's a gank. If you run the risk of them fighting back with a chance of actually winning, it's a fight.

Anonymous said...

To gank doesn't make one a griefer. The label you get is ganker.

Babar said...

Does this mean that when goons go on a roam, anywhere or at any time and for whatever reason, they are by definition fighters since whoever they end up ganking could have avoided it by being blue to them?

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: everyone is unwilling to fight if he can lose. Therefore there would be no fights at all. The Goonie is willing to be a Goonie knowing that there are anti-Goon groups.

@Next anon: if you attack someone without wanting anything from him except to die, you are a griefer by definition.

@Babar: can anyone become blue to GSF? Including random lowsec corps? I don't think so. This would be true if there would be a "be blue for X ISK" ransom/renting system, but there is none.

Babar said...

You just wrote in your post that any goon could join N3 or PL instead, so why couldn't anyone else join CFC by that same assumption? It's likely a lot easier to get into a CFC corp, any will do really.

And couldn't anyone rent in PBLRD and be free of goon ganks?

Anonymous said...

everyone is unwilling to fight if he can lose. Therefore there would be no fights at all. The Goonie is willing to be a Goonie knowing that there are anti-Goon groups.
That's not true at all. Loads of people are willing to fight when there's a chance they might lose.

And that works the other way. A miner could avoid being ganked by not being a miner. An afk hauler could avoid being ganked by not hauling. Hell, anyone could avoid being ganked by just not undocking, therefore there's no such thing as ganking.

This would be true if there would be a "be blue for X ISK" ransom/renting system
There is. Rent space from goons and you get set as blue. You could even rent a system then not use it, just sit in lowsec blue to goons.

Gevlon said...

@Babar and anonymous: that's actually a good idea: renting just go get CFC or N3 or PL off your back.

Not undocking at all is a bit extreme demand to avoid a gank. A ganker saying "you must no undock or I gank you" is obviously a griefer.

Anonymous said...

Not undocking at all is a bit extreme demand to avoid a gank. A ganker saying "you must no undock or I gank you" is obviously a griefer.
Leaving your entire alliance is extreme too. All I was pointing out is that there is always something you can do to avoid being killed, so if that's what makes it a fight, then there would be no such thing as a gank.

Anonymous said...

Someone going into a fight without trying to weigh up the odds in their favour is an idiot.

Why bring 2 friends to what could be a 10 pilot fight when you could bring 12?

That does not mean you can't still throw ships into a hopeless cause for the fun of it once in a while, but, to be the guy responsible for setting up the fleet for the battle and not bringing overwhelming odds is to be crap at organising your fleet.

"Oh, sir, the opposing army has 2000 troops, we shall therefore only take 2000 of our own so that it is a fair fight"

Gevlon said...

Making the enemy alliance players quit the alliance is the goal of the war, otherwise they just rebound.

Anonymous said...

"everyone is unwilling to fight if he can lose. Therefore there would be no fights at all."


Thats bullshit. Of course there are a lot of fights, where you don´t know the outcome.
How often entities murders their own fleet to get a fight. Even they know they get slaughtered. I know you post it next day here, see how goons got face-raped... But it is fun to take a fight. It is called FUN and SOCIAL. and SRP will cover the iskies.

Anonymous said...

"MoA pilots catching Goon ratters are fighters, since the Goonie could save himself by quiting GSF and ratting in N3PL space." By that logic then, miners can avoid getting ganked by choosing to do any other profession (station trading), and then that transforms all the gankers into fighters. You really haven't thought this argument logically through did you?

Gevlon said...

Someone has to mine or there will be no new ships built. A group that fights for the "idea" of miner-free EVE is like the country that punishes breathing: gankers who just use some stupid excuse.

On the other hand a Goon-free EVE is both possible and desired.

Babar said...

Weren't you a fighter rather thank ganker then, since people could have avoided your ganks by flying skiffs?

Anonymous said...

The exception to this is low sec solo and small gang pvp. Every day, people in small ships fight, kill and die. Often people don't even use warp scramblers - the other side want the fight, so they won't run.

I really think you should engage in some solo pvp and you'll see another side to the game.

Gevlon said...

@Babar: yes I was, but people wouldn't accept that anyway. So it's easier to just call me a ganker, despite I fought for a change and not for random tears.

Anonymous said...

The New Order has never been truly about its loud rhetoric. It has only ever been about control. Its allure is, to a great extent, based on the idea that if you are the one causing fear, then you are not the one receiving it.

By your own definition of "ganker", their victims are non consenting parties, as Mining "Permits" are essentially the same as piracy ransoms. The ability to choose whether or not to pay does not change a gank to something nobler than a gank, and the fact that the New Order usually honors its ransoms, makes them no different than other gankers who do the same.

Anonymous said...

"yes I was, but people wouldn't accept that anyway. So it's easier to just call me a ganker, despite I fought for a change and not for random tears.
Pretty much every ganker in the game makes up some reason for why they are doing what they do. By your reasoning, all they have to do is make up a reason and suddenly they become a fighter.

When will you understand that it's not about the bullcrap story people make up to do the kill, it's the simple chance that the other person has to actually fight back that determines a fight from a gank. It's like beating up a defenceless old lady in the street. You could make up any reason you want for it, but at the end of the day you are beating up a defenceless old lady so noone will respect that.

I get it though. You don;t like things that can't be easily packaged into a definition. So because the real border between a gank and a fight is so fuzzy, you have to come up with a way to define it. In addition, you pick a way which tries to show you and people like you in a good light, and people against you in a bad one.

Gevlon said...

The other person NEVER has the chance to fight back, unless you screwed up your intel. The individual fight is always one sided. The difference between fight and gank is that the fighter at least opted in the war, so should have been more vigilant, while the gank target was uprepared and unwilling to set a counter-trap.

Police often arrest "old ladies" who steal, yet no one considers the policemen a ganker, and agree that the "old lady" had it coming when she stole.