Am I a bully???

A shoutout to Judu Hekki for a comment on one of my other posts for the idea behind this post.  Essentially Judu and his corp killed a Prospect in their hole that they managed to catch mining and subsequently the ganked pilot accused him and his corp of being bullies.  The gankee linked Ganking is Bullying as a kind of rational for that accusation.  Judu was wondering on my take on this, as what I do would fall under the category of  'bullying' according to the gankee in question.  So am I a bully that just kills poor, defenceless ships?

First of all, Ganking in Bullying defines ganking and bullying as essentially the same thing:
Bullying:
Repeated aggressive activity by one person or group of people against another specific person or group or class of people over a period of time, 
With the intention of causing them physical, mental, and/or emotional harm, and
Involving a real or perceived imbalance of power between aggressor and aggressed, in favor of the former.

Ganking:
Repeated aggressive activity by one person or group of people (e.g. gankers) against a specific person or group or class of people (e.g. miners) over a period of time, 
With the intention of causing harm (e.g. loss of in-game assets), and
Involving a real or perceived imbalance of power between aggressor and aggressed, in favor of the former.

And further clarifies that Ganking in their view is not an acceptable form of PvP:
Ganking is PvP in the sense that all active spaceships are valid hostile targets to each other, but it is not PvP in the sense of consensual combat between two willing players. It is the latter sense that is morally relevant to the concept of bullying.

So, it appears that the author over at Ganking is Bullying has an issue with pilots shooting at pilots that don't really want to be shot at.  Furthermore, where there is a real or perceived imbalance of power in favour of the aggressor, this constitutes bullying.  Ok, for a practical example let's take a look at Rooks and Kings engaging in the despicable bullying of a Brave fleet at 2m 15sec in the video below.

That Brave fleet certainly didn't consent to being pipe bombed, and Rooks and Kings had a definite power advantage in the form of a cloaked cyno HIC and smartbombing battleships that wiped the Brave fleet in no time flat.  Totally unacceptable form of PvP that, must be bullying, seems pretty clear cut.

But no, the video is a promotional video (and one of the best made by CCP so far I must say) released by CCP to advertise the game - fleet combat is a cornerstone of how CCP markets the game to the wider public, and to not call that an acceptable form of PvP is a bit of a stretch.  I also take particular issue with the use of 'consensual combat' as a delineation between what is considered to be an 'acceptable' form of PvP.  A definition such as this defines every PvP encounter I've had thus far on this blog as 'unacceptable' because I am usually cloaked and my targets that don't know that I'm there.  I can choose what I engage and usually the engagement proceeds on my terms and therefore there is a real power imbalance in my favour.  But that is just utilising the strengths of the ship I'm flying - covert ops cloak, nil sensor recalibration and high DPS vs larger targets.  Should I not utilise my strengths?  Maybe I should convo the next Noctis I get on grid with and ask permission to engage them, I wonder what response I'll get?

I'm willing to bet that the rationale for Ganking is Bullying is driven by Highsec miner ganking.  But here's the thing -  the moment you undock your ship is the moment you become fair game to each and every other player out there.  A lot people operate on the false assumption that Highsec should be 100% safe.  That's just simply not true, anyone can and should be able to attack anyone at any time, it's just that in highsec Concord will come and kill the aggressor after a set amount of time dependent on the security status of the system.  This mechanic allows for suicide ganking and the associated danger that brings to Highsec - all working as intended.  But CODE is bad, suicide ganking defenceless mining ships, something should be done to stop/limit/counter gankers etc.

And this highlights the issue I have with most opinions that ganking is bad - the lack of responsibility they assume for the victim.  'My yield fit Retriever got ganked by CODE.  Bad CODE.!!!'  Maybe if you actually put a shred of tank on your mining barge and weren't AFK you would have noticed the warp in ship they moved within 2000m of you, and maybe if you had pinged dscan few times you would have seen the Catalyst inbound and been able to warp out in time.  "You killed my Prospect at an Ore site in wormhole space - you shouldn't have done that and you're a bully because you did".  Ah, I'm sorry, missed that dev blog where wormhole space was now a no fire zone.  Perhaps if you had properly scouted out the system you might have realised that the people living there were online and decided that it may not be the best idea to engage in one of the most dangerous activities you can do in wormhole space.  "Havlac is a bully because he ganked my poor defenseless Mammoth in his stealth bomber".

I'd like to take a moment to relate the story of my latest kill that I believe ties nicely into this discussion.  I had found a likely C1 to stalk out as the locals appeared to be relatively active in my time zone, but things were quiet so I went for a bit of a wander down the chain.  I happened upon a C3 and dscan showed some promise with wrecks on scan, but also combat probes.

I couldn't locate an anomaly that the wrecks were located at so I assumed that the site had despawned. While looking around a Legion decloaked not far from the wormhole I was sitting at and dropped combats.

Ok, looks like I was spotted coming into the system.  Thats alright, I'll fully reconnoiter the hole and do some research on the locals.  It turns out it's only a 4 man corp and there are 2 of them currently online.  While I'm doing this the Legion logs off.  I'm beginning to suspect that the online player has eyes on the wormhole I came through, so I'll try going back through the wormhole and jumping back through when I'm not polarised to see if I can't catch something.  The moment I jump out the legion logs back in.  Right, if they want to play silly buggers with me I'll hang around and see if I can't catch them with their pants down.  I jump back into the hole and logoff at a safe for the night.

Next morning I scan the hole out when the locals aren't online.  I get stuck into my play time later that afternoon and poke a C5 frigate hole where I find a Prospect at a gas site.  While I'm trying to get in position to try for the Prospect, a notification chimes - the pilot I suspect was sitting on the hole last night has logged in.  I get a point on the Prospect but he warps off, probably stabbed but I may not have managed range properly.  Oh well, back to the C3.  I warp to the local tower in time to see a Buzzard swapped for a Mammoth.

A quick check of Zkillboard shows this pilot has previously been killed in losec in an untanked Mammoth.  I think I know where she is going, as the single static for this hole is a U210 losec connection.  But then Kottavai throws me a curve ball when she warps off to nothing I have a bookmark for.  Maybe bouncing from a safe to the hole?  I warp to the U210 at 20km and start pinging dscan.  Nothing, nothing - Mammoth.  Reduce to 10AU, she's still coming, 5AU still there, 1AU, she'll be here shortly.  The industrial lands 10km from the hole.  I was going wait for her on the return trip back to the tower but as she's at least 5km from the wormhole activation range this will do. It's a rush job with the screenshot, but I think it looks pretty dramatic.

The Mammoth pops after one volley.  I'm such a bully for killing such a poor defenceless ship, right?

Well no.  As you can see from the fit above, there isn't a single defensive mod or rig on the ship.  It's maxed out for cargo capacity.  I had a quick play with Pyfa and came up with a reasonable setup that would have evaded me due to fitted stabs, has 11K EHP and still has a 13,300m2 cargo capacity.

The Mammoth I killed wasn't defenceless, the pilot flying it made the choice to make it defenceless. Everything from the ship type, fittings and the decision where she flew the ship ultimately contributed to it being killed.  If she had the above setup or something similar, it wouldn't have been ganked.

Not to let the cat out of the bag, but if you reasonably tank your Noctis (ala Judu's 22700 EHP Noctis ) and put out 5 Warrior 1's (yes, a Noctis has a 25 m2 drone bay, which will fit 5 Warrior Is.  I had to look that up because I have never seen a Noctis launch drones), you will kill me in my stealth bomber before I kill you.  If you fit half a rack of autocannons to a salvaging destroyer instead of 8 salvagers and I don't know, maybe fit some kind of tank to your ship, you will kill me before I kill you - that's the funny thing about Destroyers, they're designed to kill frigates.  Prospects need to be locked before they cloak (pay attention and no one will be able to catch you), Ventures need 4 points of warp disruption to be reliably caught and both ORE frigates can sport a couple of drones that can cause a stealth bomber problems plus a reasonable tank vs torpedos.  Explorers can and often do fit stabs & most of the typical exploration frigates can sport drones.  But I'm a bully because I kill players who don't do any of the above.  Yeah, right.

Part of the appeal to me about Eve is that it is a harsh, cruel world.  It doesn't hold your hand and doesn't holds back any punches.  I have once (a long time ago) lost literally everything I owned in game down to my last ISK to a gate camp.  Did I hold a grudge against the campers? Did I whinge about how it wasn't fair?  No, I got pissed off at myself for doing something as stupid as flying a T1 industrial down a pipe to a dead end system without scouting it out first.  My loss, my responsibility.

I play Eve in the style I current do because it's fun.  I enjoy stalking through the winding ways of wormhole space, finding players, targets, watching, thinking, anticipating, acting.  I try to kill other players because it is a challenge, trying to anticipate what the other guy is doing and getting into a position to execute a gank.  Decloaking is exciting, never really knowing if something nasty is going to decloak next to you.  Do I feel bad after a kill?  Rarely - this is a game after all.  I do remember a particular instance where I killed the same explorer in the same relic site half an hour apart.  I convoed him and had a chat about what happened and pointed him in the direction of my old stomping grounds back when I started exploring (a little quieter than the FW system we were in), as well as reimbursing him the cost of his Cheetah.  That's probably the only time I felt bad making a kill.  But overall I have never felt remorse for shooting a ship, because at the end of the day PvP is what Eve is all about - the moment you undock your ship you consent to the risk of non consensual PvP.  What you do and the choices you make determines whether you will survive.

Back in the Saddle

My brand new clone awakes in Abudan, a jump out of Rens.  I warp over to the trade hub to grab a new Manticore and kit it out.  Now my funds are fairly limited at the moment so while it was tempting to look at polarised torpedo launchers I'm not going to put a launcher worth more than the ship itself let alone 3 of them on a ship I'm reasonably certain I will lose in the near future.  Having said that, I have previously put a faction scram on an Astero that was worth about 50 million ISK more than the ship and fittings combined and promptly lost that, but that's another story.

Anyways, here's the Manticore fit I'm currently running with:

Overheated 533 DPS with a volley of 4206 using Caldari Navy Scourge Torpedoes to take advantage of the Manticore's natural 15% bonus to kinetic damage.  I won't go too much into the fit, suffice to say that most of my targets will be not be the most speediest of ships so I'm not too worried about reducing the impact of my targets speed vs the explosion speed of my torps.  I'm more looking to a) reduce my explosion radius on the torpedos themselves via skills and the Rigor Catalyst II rig and b) increasing the signature radius of my targets via a pair of target painters.  With both painters running we should be getting towards applying close to full damage against some cruiser hulls substantially increasing the potential engagement profile of my bomber.

I named my new bomber "Return" to you know, mark my return to New Eden.  I don't know what it is but jeez it felt good to be back in the saddle of a covert, sexy weapon of mass destruction.  I straight away headed out and found a wormhole a couple of jumps from Rens and began searching for prey.

If you see this happen, there will probably be torpedoes heading your way pretty soon.

A few wormholes down the chain  I found a Retriever at an ore anomaly.  I was dumbstruck, I have never, ever seen someone mining in a wormhole.  But I am not one to complain, so I slow boated my way carefully down past all the asteroids and into position to launch an attack.  I aligned out to a safe just in case this was some kind of elaborate bait, took a deep breathe and decloaked, targeted, torps, painter, painter, point, overload everything.  I pinged dscan a couple of times but I didn't see any response from the local tower, but just as the Retriever entered armour he warped back to his tower.  I knew from checking the Retriever pilots kill board that he had previously lost a Retriever that had a warp stabiliser fit, so I wasn't 100% surprised.  I convoed him and asked as much, to which he replied he didn't have any stabs on that ship which confused me a bit as he was still within my overheated point range.  I'm guessing that I accidentally turned off my point when I tried to overheat it - sigh.

Onwards I go, until I find a new wormhole with a couple of pilots online but sitting nice and comfy within their POS shield.  Oddly enough there is an Epithal on scan but not here at the tower.  Quick working of my Dscan confirms that the PI hauler is not at one of the systems POCOs and it doesn't appear to be at a POS - it's out in space somewhere.  Working Dscan a bit further I'm able to narrow the Epithal's position down to within 3 AU of one of the inner planets at an angle upwards from the horizontal plane.  Now given I have a core probe launcher currently equipped I'm not going to be able to scan the ship down unless I get myself refit with the spare expanded probe launcher I have in my cargo bay.  I warp out to the outer planet which is thankfully out of Dscan range of the occupied tower and drop my mobile depot that I keep on hand for just such occasions.  Once the depot is active I swap the extended probe launcher with the core probe launcher - I pretty much have to offline everything to get the extended probe launcher to fit due to the CPU requirements.  I launch a set of combat probes and throw them out of the system to avoid them being seen before warping back to the inner planet to set up my combat probe scan.

Once I'm back at the inner planet I position the combat probes with a 1AU scan range around where I think the Epithal is and take a deep breath before hitting scan.  The combat probes flash into action, repositioning themselves as instructed and begin scanning the area.  I ping dscan the whole time the probes are doing their thing before quickly recovering them after they produce a 100% warpin on the Epithal - the probes were on dscan for about 4 seconds.  I'm feeling pretty happy with myself about this, until I see a Proteus on dscan over at the occupied tower.  Looks like they were paying attention over there.  I quickly warp back to my depot, refit to my normal fit and scoop the depot before warping directly to the Epithal.  There it is, 20km away, un piloted.  Dscan doesn't show that Proteus anymore, which could be a problem but if I get it set up right I should be ok even if that Proteus is lurking nearby.  I get myself a little bit closer, align to a safe, decloak, torps, painter, pa.... POP!!!  The Epithal pops after a single volley, so I  warp off to the safe.

Ok ok, it was against an unpiloted ship, but I was really happy in the way I was able to adapt to the situation and then get combat probes onto a target with such a short timeframe that the probes were visible to any potential threats.  I'm going to take it and call it a win.

To celebrate I've decided to deck my Manticore in one of CCP's new SKINs: