Internet spaceships is serious business.
My wormhole alt (quickly becoming my main) scanned a grav in our C2 last night after I’d had a bottle of wine. Somewhere in that window of when you spawn the site and when sleeper rats come to chase you away, I sort of fell asleep sitting up.
I woke up after what felt like a second to see that my Arkonor lasers weren’t running. Actually, they weren’t there. And neither was my Coveter. Woops.
I flew back to the POS in my pod and didn’t even bother going back for my loot and canned ore. At least I wasn’t podded.
Don’t wine and mine, people. Way too coma-inducing!
Some Russian douchebag in a maller hopped into Hof as I was paused at the gate. I figured I had a second to look at his bio since he was in a cruiser and gate guns would respond.
He engaged and I decided to burn away with my AB to see if the gates would pop him but he had me webbed and melted my shields in short order.
Looking at prior fits on his mallers, I learned a bit. I had no idea how much they could armor tank. Dual plates, trimarks…
I didn’t know much about them before but they seem pretty sweet… If you can stomach lasers, I mean.
Last night, I docked my Hurricane in Hek and decided to buy and fit a Wolf hull I’d picked up cheaply on a buy order in Klogori a while back.
I flew back thru lowsec with cargo full of T2 gear and ammo. Uneventful, aside from unlooted wrecks on every gate. I took advantage of that situation, picked up a couple of corpses, and made my way to Klogori.
The Wolf got an insanely easy Rifter kill and pod.
He actually aggressed me on a belt, and I toyed with him a bit to test a few aspects of the Wolf. It was mildly fun. I’m not sure why I popped the pod - I knew a toon that young had no implants. I did want to test the pod-lock time on the Wolf fit…
My sec dropped from -3.0 to -4.15. Meh.
I decided to roam over towards Egghelende as there is always some action to be found along that Hek to Jel corridor.
Long story short, before I could find any player action, I got jumped by a Sansha gate camp, webbed and pointed to death, and lost my new Wolf. Those NPCs were as fast as any Arazu + Rapier super sebo scouted camp I’ve ever seen, and I couldn’t make it back to the gate or align out before getting popped.
Hilarious and embarrassing all at once. At least the Sansha don’t post kill mails.
Through forums, podcasts, and local, I’ve heard a lot of ideas for fixing the current bounty system. I’ve also heard a lot of frustration and seen people throw up their hands and claim there is no fix.
I have a proposal and figured I would post it here before taking it to the forums.
The problems are:
If you place a bounty on another player, you pretty much have to follow that player around to see if the player was killed and the bounty paid. There is no notification or other visibility mechanism. This is a poor user experience and takes the drama out of placing bounties.
The system is easy to game at the moment. If I have a 20M ISK bounty, I can jump into an empty clone and have an alt kill me. The alt gets the 20M and I have a laugh.
My proposal is a little wacky, but as someone likely to have a bounty on my head soon, I think effective.
When I set a bounty on someone, it can be for any amount of isk up to 50M (or a similar number). When a bounty hunter kills the target, they get that amount. But they’re paid from the wallet of the target.
If the kill doesn’t happen in 30 days, the originator gets back some amount of ISK and the bounty is removed from the target - like kill rights.
With a successful podding, the original bounty is officially released to Concord as a fee. It also acts as collateral to pay the successful bounty hunter, in case the target doesn’t have enough ISK to pay. If that’s the case, the target will have a negative wallet until they pay it off. Ouch.
It fixes a few interesting exploits that would otherwise pop up.
A target can’t have an alt kill him without at best breaking even. There’s no motivation, except perhaps to clear the bounty on is head. That seems like an acceptable condition, though, as it’s inconvenient and funny.
A griefer can’t add a bounty to a random and kill them for profit, as the bounty creator and the target both pay.
That approach, plus keeping a log of bounties in the Character Info screen (to show history and self-kills) would make the bounty system fun and functional, if a bit controversial.
Now, obviously, a rich griefer could very well just toss a few billion in as a bounty, effectively bankrupting the target toon for life (most likely). That’s why I also propose a limit of 50M or some small multiple of that at any given time. Sort of a maximum bounty limit per target.
One modification to this could be to make the fee much less for anyone with active kill rights. That would also act in a way as transferable kill rights.
I would love feedback. You probably think I’m nuts, but I quite like the idea!
I had a fun experience a week or so ago during a high sec suicide session.
I sat in my Tempest on a gate in Aufay for a bit with a partner in a cloaky transport ship aligned 300km off gate.
As often happens, I recognized another ganker team on the gate. I’d been seeing them around a bit and was sitting quietly, waiting for a target, figuring we wouldn’t both go for the same indy.
Suddenly, I saw a system alert. The other pair were attacking someone. For fun, I fired a round at the red ship just to get on a KM and annoy the ganker a little bit in good fun.
My hauler (a first time partner) decided to warp in and try to beat the other hauler to the loot. Fun!
Unfortunately, he didn’t make it. The other guy loaded up and was aligning out.
So I popped him. We ganked a ganker team. We flipped the loot (100% drop both times!) for over 400M isk, raided the wrecks for modules, and docked up.
The other pair of gankers (which I think is really a guy and an alt, but can’t be sure) started smacking right away, making threats, and trying to extort 200M as protection from future revenge.
Ganker tears!
The KMs: Pax Sex and Xel Sophos
In Season 3, Episode 10 of Lost in Eve the folks were discussing the new rule around boosters in Eve.
If I understand the new mechanics correctly, Concord is no longer going to scan and shoot if you have illegal boosters in your cargo. Instead, any player can scan your cargo and, if boosters are present, tag you as a criminal. This turns you red to everyone in system (for some period of time?) and they can engage.
Hallan Turrek mentioned that it’s now going to be far too easy to smuggle loads of boosters around from system to system because of Orcas and cloaky transport ships - which Concord can currently scan, but players with cargo scanners can not. He lamented the lack of balance in the new mechanics.
I think he’s missing the point.
The new mechanics aren’t really for fighting smugglers. They’re for fighting booster users.
If you have boosters in your cargo - for your own consumption - you can be cargo scanned and tagged as a criminal and suddenly you’re red. A whole new world of hunting has opened up, and this might prove to be useful for high sec PVP’ers, gankers and pirates alike.
At the same time, with Concord turning a blind eye, more individuals will be flying around with boosters ready to be consumed.
This should, in my opinion, make for lots of fun around high sec gates and stations while really exploding the whole booster economy.
If I’m misunderstanding the concept, I apologize, and would love to be corrected!
There are only two questions that are important from the Indy POV - am I violating copyright by republishing restricted content and am I using a trademark in a way that would confuse a reasonable consumer.
The eve API is served as XML over http. Any browser (or other http user agent) can already “talk” to the API and precedents exist clearing the makers of browsers of any claims as long as they are not republishing content (outside of http caching).
Any third party thin client is covered under these uses. The fact that the XML is shown formatted or that math is applied to some of the numbers is no different than CSS or js being used in Chrome.
As long as a thin client avoids bundling and redistributing the content and trademarks, the makers are covered by prior caselaw.
The question of API entitlement is not between a thin client maker and CCP but rather between the player and CCP.
If the player has the entitlement to request XML over http using authentication and CCP delivers that payload to that player, as long as the player doesn’t republish the content outside of fair use the player is covered.
CCP has no right to mandate how a customer chooses to read or modify that XML for personal and non public use.
Someone just needs to call them on this and the mobile or desktop market will be fine.
Sites are still culpable for republishing content when not acting as a non-transforming http proxy (and none of them do).
On Lost in Eve/Conversation, there was a discussion around Hulkageddon and its value to EvE.
Two themes emerged:
On point 1, my opinion is that it has a bit of an economic impact and that benefits some people and not others. That’s basic economics. Nothing dramatic. It’s not vital - EvE could live without it - nor is it terrible - EvE thrives despite it.
On point 2, I’m a bit torn. Some Hulkageddon participants are griefing in a meaningful sense. Surely some subset of attackers are cycling alts, for example.
I don’t personally consider suicide ganking tons of people griefing. It’s part of the accepted (and designed) gameplay and it reifies that anything can happen in EvE.
I suppose the fact that it’s planned outside of the sandbox - through websites and the like - it dips into a weird area of metagaming that may confuse matters somewhat because it isn’t isolated to the sandbox. Ultimately, I think it’s differentiating and, like freedom of expression, I’m glad people who so choose have the opportunity.
I do hope the banhammer strikes on anyone who cycles alts or does this outside of the development of their mains and permanent alts. Not because they can’t be punished, but because it’s not in the spirit of “owning” your actions in-game.
