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0.0 space is pretty dead lately so it's hard for hold-up pirates to find any action, I guess. There's no perfect solution to the problem though.

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That is the crux of the issue Joshua my sweet. The "remove .4 gates" pirates are approaching this thing from the wrong direction.

Rather than arguing for increased ganking priviledges in Empire space they should be arguing for CCP to take measures to encourage more players to take the risk of travelling to 0.0 space.

Several things have led to this situation.

1. 0.0 has got extremely unattractive with Castor.

2. Mining is not doable without cheating gridexploits and/or massive fleets/hidden belts. Hence lone fly-miners have stopped going to 0.0.

3. Trading has been made massively less attractive with the Indy/burner changes and npc market prices and values. Hence lone traders have by and large stopped going to 0.0.

4. NPC farming is much much harder, and not really an option for lone pilots (unless they are super hard and super clever). For the rank and file of common-or-garden npc hunters its not worth the risk to engage the new super spawns. Hence these chaps have by and large stopped going to 0.0.

5. Combat has become more deadly and fair (a good thing) but since it makes it much easier to kill targets) lone travellers and explorers have by and large stopped going to 0.0.

6. Combinations of the above have made ships much more expensive and far more painful to lose. Since 0.0 is less attractive anyway, pretty much everyone has by and large stopped going into the 0.0 high risk zones.

7. The agent gold-rush. Tech2 means that we all want a seat at the table, and getting that seat means agent missions and research. This is a much higher priority than fooling about with the dangers of 0.0. This simply drives the prevailing wind of people away from 0.0.

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I hope this kind of drives the point home.

Pirates are hurting not because of the guns in .4, but because of game changes that have stopped 0.0 being attractive to large sections of the player base.

I cite myself as an example of this. I used to trade very expensive cargos every week through 0.0. Every one of them a potential free lunch for a pirate.

Since Castor my bestower sits abandoned in the cargo bay, and I wouldn't dream of taking it to 0.0.

Trade just isn't worth the risk any more in my assessment.

And (for the record) I like Castor ;)

But it has made me change my game play and focus. Skills I spent months perfecting are now mostly irrelevent (Nav, accel control, warp ops, high level indy, etc) but thats the breaks, things change and competitive players adapt.

Thats really why i have little sympathy for the pirates demanding increased advantage in Empire space.

My profession got nuked by Castor and I have adapted.

Why shouldn't the pirates need to adapt also?

Is piracy a special case that deserves dev support whereas trading is not?

Anyhow,

These arguments have spun around and around for a long time now. Crice is one of the more reasonable people to put the "remove .4 guns request" so deserved a reasoned response I think.

Love and peace

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