Solution for Ganking

[Darkfyre99]

That's cool. I'd want to see the loadout of the ganker though of course. Looking at those numbers, as long as i was close enough, even with resistances, your shields would go pop on the first volley from my fragship. After that...

If I’m doing my job right, you won’t get a second volley before I land.

The Cutter is a different beast though. Its speed can make it hard to keep up with for many ships and it can't be mass locked. Really is a dream of a trade ship. However, if flying into known danger, i'd prefer the Clipper for its speed and good SC handling as you stand a chance of beating interdictions in it. But then, you're losing a lot of cargo space.

The iClipoer is another good ship, but I’m quite enjoying my OG Python for PowerPlay 2.0. It’s the perfect all a rounder while having enough cargo for the types of missions I enjoy. Quality is turning out to be more important than quantity in my experience, at least as hauling is concerned, and being able to take advantage of any opportunities I find along the way.

 

[SteveWW57]

taunt the player via system chat with

Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!

Classic taunt.

 

[Morbad]

I tabbed out system chat pretty much the moment they added tabs. I only look at it if I want to be offended, or can't find the restrooms.

 

[Screemonster]

Create a module that changes the ship's signature to mimic an npc, giving the player a solid square instead of a hollow square on the radar.

a significant percentage of gank victims won't even fit shields, you think they're gonna fit this?

 

[Easy]

With the new updates, steamcharts indicate that there are several thousand players on concurrently. This does not include players that purchased their accounts directly from Frontier. I don't believe it is unreasonable to assume that there are tens of thousands of current players of Elite. Probably more.

Even if you had a block list hundreds of players long, it is very likely you would not be able to create your own friendlier non-pvp ish galaxy, and completely exclude gankers.

In the process you would be messing with instancing if you ever wanted to do AX combat, or participate in a coop instance where combat was a focus. I suggest this because gankers do not spend all of their time just ganking, they do participate in the other aspects of the social environment of the game.

IMHO Block is not an effective tool to engage in the social dimensions of this MMO and avoid unwanted pvp.

I have played for several years (since 2015), and used to be firmly in the camp of wanting PVP partition tools, like other MMOs. The devs simply do not want that.

IMHO it is healthier to accept that the game is what it is - and there is still enjoyment to be had.

There is still plenty of trash talk to enjoy in chat irrespective of the mode, so I suggest we all embrace the "MMO lite" experience Elite offers.

 

[Screemonster]

The closest you'll get to a ganker-free open experience, is a large private group. Or, as others have suggested, make judicious use of the block feature when you do meet one in Open.

The outer layer of the survival onion meme is "don't be there" for a reason.

For instance, right now if you don't want to be ganked, even flying in open, all you have to do is not be in Sol or v886 Centauri. Even deciat is relatively crickets right now according to the inara report - good time to get your engineering done I guess.

 

[Screemonster]

IMHO it is healthier to accept that the game is what it is - and there is still enjoyment to be had.

There's definitely something to be said about playing the game you have rather than complaining about the game you want.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

My CMDR's current T-9 setup looks something like this:

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

I usually slap some guns on it so I can kill NPCs, but the loadout depends on what i can spare.

It's a shorthaul trader/mission runner for BGS work, so i don't really care that the jump range is crap...I just want to keep a lucky shot to the FSD from triggering a malfunction right away. The SCO is a new addition to this setup that I use mostly to break out of gravity wells.

In general, if I'm hit with a CMDR tether, I'll make sure I have my escape jump selected (always have a route plotted), then I'll submit and go silent as I boost away from my jump target, flip to face my attacker (so I can more effectively engage any munitions with the PDTs), then try to boost laterally past them while dumping a sink or two (they'll try to target as they get within resolve range, ideally they waste a fraction of a second trageting a sink). By this time the FSD short cooldown should be about up and i'll start charging my FSD the straighten out to jump, popping the ECM if I still see munitions on sensors. Of course, that's just the general idea...I can adapt to an evolving scenario on the fly. Anyway, unless my attackers are really on the ball, I'm able to jump.

The moment I hit the destination system, I manually kill the thrusters or FSD in the module pane to force a drop from SC to ensure my CMDR cannot be followed. Then I asess the situation. If I still have missions/cargo that I need this ship for, I'll see if I have any allies in the area who can screen my next approach (usually by attacking my attacker just before I renenter the system). Otherwise I weight how much the cargo is worth (in influence) and how likely I am to make it to my destination before either trying again or abandoning the area to run missions at my B-site.

My CMDR's Corvette trader is just his standard combat loadout with all the biggest optionals swapped out for cargo racks. For medium ships I usually use a Krait MkII, which I run shieldless, with relatively skimpy protection, as it's speed is it's main defense.



Shield generators are big and ships without a lot of base shielding need a bunch of boosters.

HRPs stop at class 5. The larger ships don't have to sacrifice that much cargo to get quite a large pool of hull integrity. And if you don't have a shield generator, you get to put the more fun countermeasures in all your utility slots.



It takes a string of failures to lose a ship, but only one success in that chain of events to escape. I'm assuming, for this discussion, that one has been hit with that interdiction tether and decided to submit instead of risk that long cooldown on the outcome of the tunnel game (which I am personally no match for an experienced ganker in).



Even a T-9 that is moving right is much harder to kill than a T-9 that is moving wrong, or not at all.

Anything more nimble than a T-9, evasion really starts to matter.

A couple of examples...

Spoiler

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKuVyKaodj0

First interdiction in that video had one ship with FSD disruptors, second had two. Clearly the PDT was shooting them down, but a PDT is not a purely passive defense; making sure it's pointed at incoming munitions (and knowing where those munitions are going to be coming from) is critical to it's effectiveness. In this particular scenario, I was aided by the fact that DG had their FSD disruptors distributed suboptimally (the Cutter is a bad platform for dumbfires, unless the target is running away in a straightish line, which I am not going to do in a slower ship), and hindered by my custom galaxy map settings making it impossible for me to load the systems I could jump to faster than the DG wing could (meaning I had to evade them way more than I hoped I would need to...that video is just a segment of this encounter).

Spoiler

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hckjcsQ1SDM

That second video isn't a ganker, just a CODE pirate not adverse to a challenge. My CMDR was never at risk, but I still think it's a good example of the benefits of manuver (in this case to protect my cargo), even in a large vessel.

The ship I was using the first video obviously has shields...it was the multi-purpose vessel I used to accompany DW2 before I diverted to Colonia. Same ship is in the second video, but I pulled all the shielding in favor of more cargo and countermeasures as ran missions. That's when I ran into Harry Potter and Deathdingo, who must have decided chasing me around Colonia was more entertaining than taking shots at the increasingly slim explorer pickings.



If we're talking about ships with relatively weak base shielding and relatively few utility slots (which includes most of the Lakon ships), the PDT is much more of a trade-off. Shields are a much less situational defense, so if one is going to use them on these ships, going all in on them may be the best bet.

Regarding SBs on low shield ships, i don't see the point. The % boost on a small value is an even smaller value. Resistances from engineering help, but another 20% or whatever protection against damage isn't going to matter much either.

SBs are best for boosting already good shielding. Guardian Shield Boosters are nice because they provide a flat bonus, in some cases it can be even bigger than the base shield, but that's taking a slot that could be used for cargo.

Your T9 build is interesting, although id never fly shieldless myself. Even a small shield can protect from bumps.

That armour though! Yeah, that would take quite a few rounds from my frag ship to destroy. Your thrusters are wide open to being destroyed in seconds though, and without thrusters, you aren't jumping anywhere.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

With the new updates, steamcharts indicate that there are several thousand players on concurrently. This does not include players that purchased their accounts directly from Frontier. I don't believe it is unreasonable to assume that there are tens of thousands of current players of Elite. Probably more.

Even if you had a block list hundreds of players long, it is very likely you would not be able to create your own friendlier non-pvp ish galaxy, and completely exclude gankers.

In the process you would be messing with instancing if you ever wanted to do AX combat, or participate in a coop instance where combat was a focus. I suggest this because gankers do not spend all of their time just ganking, they do participate in the other aspects of the social environment of the game.

IMHO Block is not an effective tool to engage in the social dimensions of this MMO and avoid unwanted pvp.

I have played for several years (since 2015), and used to be firmly in the camp of wanting PVP partition tools, like other MMOs. The devs simply do not want that.

IMHO it is healthier to accept that the game is what it is - and there is still enjoyment to be had.

There is still plenty of trash talk to enjoy in chat irrespective of the mode, so I suggest we all embrace the "MMO lite" experience Elite offers.

You really wouldn't need a massive block list.

The number of gankers who you're likely to meet is pretty low, but they can be annoying. The problem with gankers is they provide a bigger response than they should and make the issue seem bigger than it really is.

I suspect if everyone was in open, most people wouldn't accumulate a block list of more than a dozen people.

As for messing with instancing, not really an issue. Just means you're unlikely to instance with people you don't want to instance with. Not a problem.

 

[Darkfyre99]

With the new updates, steamcharts indicate that there are several thousand players on concurrently. This does not include players that purchased their accounts directly from Frontier. I don't believe it is unreasonable to assume that there are tens of thousands of current players of Elite. Probably more.

Even if you had a block list hundreds of players long, it is very likely you would not be able to create your own friendlier non-pvp ish galaxy, and completely exclude gankers.

It isn’t really necessary to block out all gankers, just the ones you’re likely to instance with. The way this game’s works (or a loose definition of “works”) the typical player isn’t likely to instance with 99% of the player base unless there’s active cooperation by both parties. That includes gankers as well. And in a busy system, their presense will be further diluted by multiple instances. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an organic instance with more than five players.

In the process you would be messing with instancing if you ever wanted to do AX combat, or participate in a coop instance where combat was a focus. I suggest this because gankers do not spend all of their time just ganking, they do participate in the other aspects of the social environment of the game.

IMHO Block is not an effective tool to engage in the social dimensions of this MMO and avoid unwanted pvp.

If someone’s ingame behavior is bad enough to warrant a block, why would I care about interacting with them again?

<<< Has yet to encounter such an individual.

I have played for several years (since 2015), and used to be firmly in the camp of wanting PVP partition tools, like other MMOs. The devs simply do not want that.

IMHO it is healthier to accept that the game is what it is - and there is still enjoyment to be had.

There is still plenty of trash talk to enjoy in chat irrespective of the mode, so I suggest we all embrace the "MMO lite" experience Elite offers.

Agreed.

 

[Morbad]

Regarding SBs on low shield ships, i don't see the point. The % boost on a small value is an even smaller value.

An HD booster is almost +74%. Having a few is about the only way to get something with mediocre base shielding to a usable amount, then you need another one or two for resists.

Guardian Shield Boosters are nice because they provide a flat bonus, in some cases it can be even bigger than the base shield, but that's taking a slot that could be used for cargo.

The boost from Guardian Boosters isn't amplified by conventional shield boosters and unless one is planning on repeated enemy contact, HRPs are generally more up front protection.

Your thrusters are wide open to being destroyed in seconds though, and without thrusters, you aren't jumping anywhere.

You have to be in a position where they can be shot, and I'm going to try to face the most dangerous opponent until I need to straighten out to jump. Even something like an FDL can't just sit directly behind a ship, even one as slow as the T-9, that doesn't want them there. You also need to be at point blank range for enough pellets from frags to land on the thrusters to do meaningful damage to them (they're still protected by hull resistances and are treated as internals for the purpose of MRP resistance). It really takes someone with emissive and more suitable weapons to reliably knock out the thrusters on something like this.

Most gankers are going for the FSD, which tends to be easier to hit and more fragile on most vessels, or failing that, just trying to pump as much damage into the ship as possible, without fussing to much over placement.

Chopping through 5k hull with ~45% resistances is faster than trying to frag the thrusters.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

An HD booster is almost +74%. Having a few is about the only way to get something with mediocre base shielding to a usable amount, then you need another one or two for resists.

Still little on an already little shield.

The boost from Guardian Boosters isn't amplified by conventional shield boosters and unless one is planning on repeated enemy contact, HRPs are generally more up front protection.

I am aware, i was talking about the relative benefits of one or the other in comparison.

You have to be in a position where they can be shot, and I'm going to try to face the most dangerous opponent until I need to straighten out to jump. Even something like an FDL can't just sit directly behind a ship, even one as slow as the T-9, that doesn't want them there. You also need to be at point blank range for enough pellets from frags to land on the thrusters to do meaningful damage to them (they're still protected by hull resistances and are treated as internals for the purpose of MRP resistance). It really takes someone with emissive and more suitable weapons to reliably knock out the thrusters on something like this.

Nah, if i was planning on going for thrusters it wouldn't be with a frag ship. You can't target jack with frags. If in the fragship its just hull or nothing. Just pointing out that if you're flying unshielded, then to someone with hitscan weapons or fast projectiles, those thrusters are relatively easy to hit. Be interesting to see if something like my all cannon 'conda would be able to take it out.

Also, a T9 keeping its thrusters out of sight of a ship like the FdL? LOL, pull the other one, its got bells on it.

Most gankers are going for the FSD, which tends to be easier to hit and more fragile on most vessels, or failing that, just trying to pump as much damage into the ship as possible, without fussing to much over placement.

I wouldn't know, i'm not a ganker. I'd go for thrusters. But if FSD is easier to hit, maybe the gankers are onto something. In that case, my canon 'conda might be the right ship for this sort of task.

Chopping through 5k hull with ~45% resistances is faster than trying to frag the thrusters.

With a fragship, definitely. Would take around 7-8 volleys i'd guess.

Which is why in that sort of situation, looking to gank unshielded but heavily engineered big ships, i wouldn't take a fragship.

 

[Don Alvarez]

Last time I got ganked I wished for only one thing: a two-click instant self destruct. 30s timer is not dignified, and I'd rather commit seppuku than give them the satisfaction.

 

[Darrack]

Last time I got ganked I wished for only one thing: a two-click instant self destruct. 30s timer is not dignified, and I'd rather commit seppuku than give them the satisfaction.

Id like the blast area increased and take them with me

O7

 

[Morbad]

Also, a T9 keeping its thrusters out of sight of a ship like the FdL? LOL, pull the other one, its got bells on it.

Enough to make targeting the thrusters a wash? Yes, and I'm being completely serious.

It's true that the T-9 has fairly exposed thrusters--though not any where near as exposed as the Chieftain or it's variants--and poor maneuverability. However, hitting it's thrusters reliably, when the target is actually flying evasively, is still not easy. It takes very good distance and boost control to keep up one's lateral movements up with almost any ship's peak rotation.

Drag munitions will help the attacker a lot, as the T-9 has a punishing ENG pip slope, but you could almost certainly just destroy the hull with a pure DPS build, or cause FSD malfunctions (keep in mind that thruster malfunctions don't interrupt FSD charging, the thrusters have to be destroyed/rebooted) with an emissive equipped sniper loadout, before something specialized in knocking out thrusters could reliably knock out it's thrusters.

My current T-9 has only been attacked a few times, but shortly after Engineering dropped my CMDR was frequently flying slow as molases hybrid Corvette setups with anemic shielding and B-rated armored thusters (a setup that saw a lot of PvP in 2.1 and related betas) where the extra thruster integrity was rarely useful...even before MRPs existed.

All of these setups have slightly worse pitch, yaw, and maximum speed, though (quite unavoidably) much better roll, than the T-9 setup I use currently. 2.1.x also predates the introduction of MRPs, and I wasn't using silent running:

Spoiler

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tI5prDuvZw

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ0Q-oZnXoY

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceDN-Uo8yo0

Loadouts and tactics have changed enormously since those days, and these are far from fully analogous setups or scenarios (relative to a T-9 trying to escape from a gank), but it should at least hint at how difficult it is for opponents to perfectly control their positioning even vs. very slow vessels.

Interesting factoid about the first video is that I distinctly recall being called a ganker later in system and local chat...for entering a CZ, selecting the side I had missions to support, and attacking about a dozen opposition CMDRs, by myself, with what was probably the slowest ship in the entire system. It was really quite strange; people were honestly offended that my CMDR refused to support the designated winner. There were so many CMDRs on the other side that most contacts on screen were hollow. I was making more in bonds blowing them up than they were making blowing up the trickle of respawning NPCs.

Anyway, if you want to test my assertion against my CMDR's T-9, I'd be happy to do so, once I get back to the bubble (which is probably a New Year's ETA).

Which is why in that sort of situation, looking to gank unshielded but heavily engineered big ships, i wouldn't take a fragship.

The frag boat is probably one of the best for the job and is a common gank setup because it's so good against larger targets. A Mamba, Krait, or Python (or PII) with one corrosive, one drag, and three (or four) screening shell double-shot frags (or pacifiers) will erase 5k hull faster (or anything else all the pellets can land on) than just about anything and makes module targeting moot, if the goal is to explode a ship.

 

[Ytterium]

Depends on what you mean by "paper ships". To make a decent cargo sized trade ship able to stand up to an alpha strike from a well kitted combat ship you'd probably need to put so much defences on it you'd have little room left for cargo.

can get a 6000 mega joule cutter that only sacrifices 64 tons. I don't think that's a bad tradeoff at all. Shield Boosters don't eat optional slots obviously.

My double shot frag Krait Mk2 puts out over 1300 DPS (note, Gimballed, if was fixed, would be higher). Sure, the alpha strike is over in that 1 second, but, but it can make a second strike a few seconds later after reload. All but the well kitted combat ships don't survive more than 2 volleys. Trade ships can go boom in just 1, even big elite ones.

My Gunship with OC frags does a bit more than that.

Chaff is a utility not an optional. Plus cutters are fast.

Or there's my all beam Corvette, and while the DPS isn't that high, it strips shields off even Elite NPCs in a few seconds. If thrusters targetted, then those can be taken in a few seconds as well.

Now, i'm not the best at combat, and yes, i'm only talking about the effect of my ships on NPCs, even if we are talking about Elite ones.

that's because NPCs don't have balanced resistances on shields and don't have engineering that makes sense. a well built trade ship's effective HP is astronomically more than even an elite NPC pirate/combat ship.

But let's be real here, against someone flying a murder boat, if you want a big heavy trader to fly, adding more defences isn't going to increases your chances very much, and its just going to gimp your cargo capacity to the point of it not being worth flying. In which case, might as well fly something like a Clipper, with a decent amount of cargo space, good ability to fight interdictions, and if interdicted, probably much faster boost than most combat ships. Properly built, it would still outpace a combat FdL by perhaps 100 m/s.

It is SO unbelievably easy to get away from any player in this game if your ship is built in a manner that is like 1-2 steps up from braindead. You don't need stupid engineering to escape or even to be good at the game particularly.

Problem is, especially with engineering, game just isn't balanced at all between combat and non-combat ships. Too easy to make non-combat ships go boom, while PvP combat between competent players just turns into a snooze fest.

Bad take but whatever

 

[Miscellaneous]

Id like the blast area increased and take them with me

O7

That's a cool idea too to have an enhanced self-destruct module

Instead of kill them back to jail it could spray raspberry jam in their ship radar they have to go to port to clean off

Then I guess they would just self destruct themself and get a free warrant lifted at jail. But the beauty is in the idea and imagine the jam running down

 

[Alaska Sædelære]

It's the dark side of Elite that this is condoned at all, but it's ingrained in its DNA I'm afraid. Changing it requires a change of heart at the highest level, or someone so inclined to buy a majority share in the company.

 

[Sophokles Logimo]

Maybe it would be a good Inara function to list all gankers, to inform interested people's block lists.

 

[Morbad]

Maybe it would be a good Inara function to list all gankers, to inform interested people's block lists.

Well, irrespective of your definition of 'good', you'd definitely need the maintainers of Inara to agree on a definition of 'ganker' first and to agree that it would be in their community's interest to single them out.

Inara is also a third-party site that doesn't list all CMDRs. You have to make an account to show up on it. There are certainly some gankers (by the prevailing definition) on it, but many of the names I threw at it came back with nothing.

Ganker or not, I certainly wouldn't want a log of my CMDR's actions or affiliations showing up on some public record.