You are welcome to find my latest ship loss and subsequent podding (a drake, within the last hour as of this posting). For those who won't bother (and I recommend you don't, as it isn't particularly interesting or worth it), I'll recount it here.

The story is quite standard, unremarkable, and boring. I was doing the standard ratting of anomalies in nullsec, using a drake. Had local chat pulled up, of course. Was working down the final battleship when a couple of hostiles appeared in local chat. I noticed it instantly, but was also close to getting the kill on the final rat battleship. Decided to risk finishing off the rat, as it was only going to be another 10 seconds or so before it was dead. Hostile then appeared in anomaly, at what I considered to be fairly far away (more than 20km). I instantly clicked "warp out" to the nearest station (already had the tab pulled up), and the hostile began burning towards me as fast as he could. I almost made it out - in fact the ship was already "warping" and the bar was over the 75% needed to go into warp. Alas, he closed the distance really fast and managed to hit me with a warp disruptor, dropping me out of warp. He had a couple of buddies who then warped in, and long story short, I was dead.

Again, not particularly interesting or remarkable at all, and completely "standard." So I will continue on to the "lead-in" to my question.

I already know the third rule of Eve Online well: you do not fly a ship you can't afford to lose (the first two rules being "you do not talk about Eve Online," and "you do not talk about Eve Online"). Well I can assure you, the drake was quite affordable for me to lose. It was insured with the best contract available, and the payout pretty much covered the entire loss, give or take. There were no particularly expensive modules lost on it. I lost a couple of shield extender ii's, but I have a hanger full of them so no biggie. I lost 6 arbalest hams, but through ratting have a whole hanger full of those as well. In fact, this ship was so expendable to lose that I won't even replace it.

As far as implants go, you will notice that I lost cheap ones - like the tier 1 implants. I planned to lose these, which is why I bought them, and why I was using them. In fact, I have a hanger full of cheapo replacements for all of them. Now, I have expensive implants, but I won't use those until I am in a phase where my clone won't be at risk at all. Until then, when I get podded, I'll just plug in more el 'cheapo implants, which I already have a hanger full of.

The point is, I essentially lost nothing in this engagement: ship was totally expendable, implants were totally expendable, and my clone costs substantially less than a million ISK to replace. This leads me to my question below.

Why do these guys engage in this sort of activity? They are losing far more in time and energy than I'm losing in time, energy, or money. My clone spawned one jump away. It just took a couple of clicks to set up another clone, stick in more el 'cheapo implants, collect my insurance payment, and jump into another waiting ship. I only had 110,000 ISK bounty on me, which is a joke.

If you engage in this sort of activity, I'm curious. Pray tell. What's the payoff, or benefit to you, to expend the time and energy to do this? Do you generally run across people who break the third rule of Eve Online, and fly in ships that they can't afford to lose? Do you generally find people with huge bounties on their heads, and do these bounties give you a better return than doing something else like ratting anoms? These are honest questions, by the way.

No, these aren't tears. No, I don't want anything changed or nerfed in the game. Yes, please continue to play the game as you wish to play it. I'm just curious about an activity which seems to have no benefit or return on investment from my perspective. Since I wouldn't really engage in anything that doesn't have such a return, I'm curious why others do. I'm guessing there is something I'm missing, therefore I'd like to know what it is.