Many people question the sanity of the devs for allowing bump-tackle + pingpong ganking. They believe only an idiot wouldn't see that this is the end of freighters in highsec. With these tactics a duo of two players can massacre freighters at will and with little cost. I believe the devs aren't idiots and they are purposefully removing freighters from highsec. Why?
Hauling for profit between distant sell and Jita buy orders is the introductory trading activity. It isn't too profitable, thanks to freighters that can carry 50-100x more than a T1 industrial. While I didn't mind the low income back then, because everything was new and interesting, the low income probably turned off others. They went to belt mining and "leveling their Raven". Hauling between market orders is connecting the player to other players. You buy from others and sell to them.
I believe the freighter removal will make small scale hauling much more profitable and lucrative to new players who will be set on the path to become traders. Remember that the first days or weeks are the formative experience of a new player. He'll leave if he didn't like EVE or get stuck as an AFK miner or Raven leveller. But if he is offered a relatively easy way to cooperate with others, he'll take it and become a participant in New Eden instead of an isolated solo player.
PS: Goons lead their SMA slaves to hellcamp Mordus into 5ZXX-K. They shouldn't have.
Hauling for profit between distant sell and Jita buy orders is the introductory trading activity. It isn't too profitable, thanks to freighters that can carry 50-100x more than a T1 industrial. While I didn't mind the low income back then, because everything was new and interesting, the low income probably turned off others. They went to belt mining and "leveling their Raven". Hauling between market orders is connecting the player to other players. You buy from others and sell to them.
I believe the freighter removal will make small scale hauling much more profitable and lucrative to new players who will be set on the path to become traders. Remember that the first days or weeks are the formative experience of a new player. He'll leave if he didn't like EVE or get stuck as an AFK miner or Raven leveller. But if he is offered a relatively easy way to cooperate with others, he'll take it and become a participant in New Eden instead of an isolated solo player.
PS: Goons lead their SMA slaves to hellcamp Mordus into 5ZXX-K. They shouldn't have.
21 comments:
What freighters get you is the trade hubs.
However, those are serious resource hogs. Jita goes into entry lock mode pretty much every day. I expect that this string might not be able to be pushed much farther without what would be viewed as "extreme" like removing the retarded scam spam and optimizing Trade hubs so you gate directly to station. But that will be taken as a "PvP nerf."
At first, I thought they might replace freighters with an NPC freight company, that you just access from any atation. (24 hour delay, fee per jump, the freight just teleports after 24 hours.) But that would be seen an even bigger PvP nerf.
Of course, the Industrial haulers (Badger, Tayra, etc.) force you to either tank or expand the miniscule cargo hold. So you'll have huge numbers of paper transports... which are even more gankable, but carry minimal cargo value.
The only thing I can think of is they want to force more local trade hubs.
The whole thing is a storm in a tea cup with the usual suspects milking it for the tears.
A webbed freighter is almost unlikely to be caught ever. It is largely focused to auto-piloting. It is currently constrained to the Amarr / Jita pipe.
I would only wish that; webbing a friendly be converted over to some logistical mechanic. It is a concordokken waiting to happen. (especially after the axow/corp update - there in lies the common way to keep it alive). Pilots may need to toggle the duel setting on and off.
If CCP can add additional gate paths for FW then a secord or third pathway should be available to Amarr/Caldari hubs. A key offering of Eve is that pilots are offered alternatives for resolution. "you can fly what you like, it just has to go through this gate".
"But if he is offered a relatively easy way to cooperate with others, he'll take it and become a participant in New Eden instead of an isolated solo player."
Got a problem here. High sec is all about being an "isolated solo player" All the dynamics drive you in that direction.
For example, what if your noob hauler joins an "Industrial Corp" getting a percentage hauling ore/minerals to the hub (Jita or a local one.) He's a sitting duck while war decced, which will just increase from where it is now.
High sec drives you to solo play.
Removal of Freighters? Wha? You honestly know how hard it would become to move anything anywhere?!?!?
I started the same way as you did, moving stuff around HS for profit using T1 industrials. Freighters have made that 100x more profitable, and a hell of a lot less time consuming. Code, etc with their freighter ganking still has yet to create any real issue for us. We avoid Uedama and Niarja and run scouts with most freighters or we simply freight to LS and jump freighter around, We will loose a freighter sooner or later, but so far that hasn't happened.
"I believe the devs aren't idiots"
These are the people that introduced the Bowhead so Incursion runners could transport their many many billion isk battleships easily.
Then turned around and OKed freighter ganking knowing that there are large groups that hate PvE activities with a passion.
So DST is the answer no? by the way hated you version. much prefer nano's in the lows and shield tank still pretty good hp and far better performance.
Trade is not really cooperative since there isn't any player interaction. A trader could be fulfilling npc orders and there would not be a difference.
I don't think CCP wants freighters gone. If they really wanted them gone, they'd be gone.
I think CCP made freighters so sluggish because it was a natural way of giving them some sort of disadvantage that would keep industrial ships more viable for some tasks.
This was a mistake, because it made freighters pretty much OP for highsec hauling.
What i would do is make it so that it is only possible to use freighters in highsec for direct hauls between major trade hubs.
For example - forbid freighters from taking normal jump gates and instead introduce a special jump network that allows direct jumps between major trading hubs. Put some limitations on that network that would limit its use to freighter only - f/ex a minimal amount of mass to activate the gate, or an associated ISK cost.
I don't think it's going to be a newbies game, as groups like code will gank newbie industrials. Look at this gank for example, that's a T2 catalyst ganking an empty industrial. This is a T1 catalyst doing the same. Petty much the only ways to haul safely is either with a freight with an escort and a whole heap of good luck, in blockade runners, or in small fast ships like Tengus.
I'm sure red frog love all of this though. They get paid more because people use them more to haul, and when their freighter pilots get ganked it falls on the pilot, not the organisation to cough up the collateral.
I'm convinced though that ganking can be fought. By building a strong anti-ganker community and educating miners and haulers, we can strip gankers of their targets, and they'll have to start working on their strategy - perhaps by cutting out on less profitable ganks.
I f you haul big time with a freighter with multi million in it, is it too much to ask for one escort? A webbing T1 Logi could undo the damage a single catalyst is dealing to the freighter.
And a more decentralized market wouldn't hurt the game. The everything Jita is getting boring and with growing population unsustainable.
decentralized market: point of jita is liquidity, and even there it is not that great (unless you buy from sell orders haha) That the jita exist is actually a sign of somewhat healthy economy.
Time has a price, and "shoping around" blindly you waste it. There are always better deals than in Jita .. but you do need legwork*time_to_fill to get the volume.
Much bigger problem is people that are too stupid to understand that time costs money and you really need fat spread/big volume to justify collecting things outside main hubs. Even newbs would not haul for 100's kISK/hour.
Only reasonable change to way things as they are, is introducing more intricate industry, with specialized production types and volumes in range of T1 industrials, and spreads between stages that would provide decent isk/jump. Also a scheme for secure trading/contracts/futures between specialized producers would not hurt.
In general - think how RL transport is organized. Ships, rails, planes, roads. Difference.
EVE's economy is a dynamic system.
Freighters with huge cargo space ship huge amounts of "trade goods" around.
Every item that is bought on the Jita market has come from somewhere else.
So, removing freighters will have an impact on prices.
On the other hand, freighters need a serious balance, they were intended as bulky, strong ships with a lot of tank, the tank, compared to the dps projection of a catalyst is a joke.
And with pingpong ganking/hyperdunking the costs for gankers lower even more.
Really, a tankfit freighter which costes about 1.3B isk should require at least 2B isk in gank ships to dunk it, therefore the risk won't be in undocking an empty freighter, but in undocking with >1B isk in the cargohold.
Which is why the bowhead is just CCP trolling pve players...
And, no, special "courier networks" like Harry Potter's floo network is anathema to eve.
I might like the idea of some wh chains, but with a wheffect that deals a lot of damage over time regardless of ships sig... So, only tanky ships could risk shooting freighters in these systems...
Doing the maths is something I would advice to CCP devs and players as well. The catalyst and nados are way too cheap and their dammage output is way too high.
Any cata or nado used for ganking gets a 90% isk efficiency ration over time, although every cata and nado gets destroyed every time...
tears incoming:
this mechanic is broken...
and spreading hauls out from one freighter to multiple t1 haulers may make use of otherwise obsolete cynochars, but it won't make that activity more profitable.
As with any activity in EVE you only maximise your income by specialising in such an activity...
Anonymous said...
"If you haul big time with a freighter with multi million in it, is it too much to ask for one escort? A webbing T1 Logi could undo the damage a single catalyst is dealing to the freighter."
Hey! I have some freight to haul! You wanna come help? It'll take about an hour (half hour out, half hour back.) and I can pay you 4 million isk. You have nothing better to do, right?
What's that you say? What about the giant pile of isk I make? I only make 24 million isk total, and I have to risk the 1.4 billion isk ship and the 1 billion isk collateral. 4 million for your part sounds fair. Oh, and I haul a lot. I'll need you to be logged on all the time.
Hello? Hello? Where'd you go?
I think if you take the time to look at the average drop per freighter kill that has been occurring recently it might not be so much that CCP hates freighters as much as it loves CODE.
https://zkillboard.com/kills/freighters/
Just look at the amount of freighter gank on feb 1st alone.
"I believe the devs aren't idiots..."
I think that's exactly what's going on. Not "idiots" as in actual drooling morons that aren't capable of doing even simple math, rather otherwise intelligent people that are too focused on their own agenda to see the forest for the trees.
There are clearly 2 at-war factions within CCP. One group whats to expand carebearing in high sec, the other wants more PvP in high sec. Each group is doing things that are in complete diametric opposition to the other group. There is no synergy between the groups.
The carebearing group is adding cutesy fluff shit like "skins", the store where you can buy other stupid stuff, and PvE content like incursions. I'm going to call this group "The owners" who want to make more money and clearly see the way to do that is increase the game's mass market appeal.
The PvP group wants to increase the consequences of actions and create more PvP content. I'm going to call these people "The developers." These guys don't really care about profitablility... as far as they're concerned, they get paid anyway. They just want to return Eve to the halcyon days.
One of these groups will eventually have enough of the other and demonstrate the true meaning of "actions have consequences." At which point, Eve will go full carebear.
With prices for pro freighter hauling going up, hauling will be a returning profession for new players, very good incentive if you ask me.
Technically, the hardest it will be to move stuff around, the better it will be for smart/courageous/skilled pilot to move stuff around.
I seriously doubt CCP will remove freighters. Think of it this way: Freighters are easy to destroy and in destroying them much ISK value is removed from the game.
This position didn't occur to me. I had been reassured by CCP's stance, and figured it meant that despite the hype, the situation was actually balanced enough to still make a living as a freighter pilot. Back-door nerfing of freighters didn't occur to me.
Boo, now I'm back to being too scared to put the trainer-wheels on my first freighter.
You don't lose freighters normally
1# fit for full tank
2# manual move the ship
3# alt scout/ with dual webs to move you faster
4# don't move stuff value over 1B and move it openly (don't double wrap)
following thoes rules in HS and you should be fine.
if you want to move high cost stuff use an overtanked Orca and have a neutral alt shield logi next to you. with webs ... double wrapping the items makes you just a to high cost to attack..... putting a remote shield repper on the orca so you can counter rep your logi ship will help you get out.
honestly Courier missions is totaly worth it with the new tanked industry hauler to do afk ...
the thing that a new player should avoid is MINING since its not worth it early on ... it takes so many skills to be efficent since you need both mining skills, fitting skills, reprocessing skills, trading skills to sell the vedspar.
courier mission is however BOORING
My sugestion find a cool corp nullsec or lowsec and have fun inside the game once you got atleast basic scanning skills you could apply to a wh corp but if your survival is based on others scanning ability its not fun! not at all.
so no its not the end of Freighters.
There it is. Playing the game on its terms. You haven't lost a freighter because your vigilent and use scouts. Knowing on each run you could get ganked is part of the thrill. Planning ahead and defeating the gankers by not getting caught is playing the game correctly. Making a mistake and loosing your 9b isk freighter is also playing the game correctly.
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