Sigmatropic Shift
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Posted - 2008.05.04 00:49:00 -
[1]
The question that should be getting asked isn't "Is the risk vs. reward not good enough," because we know very well the answer. The question should be "Why is the risk so high," or in other words, "Why is it so easy for pirates to be effective in low-sec?"
The main reason for this is that it is virtually impossible for a mining barge or the equivalent to retreat from pirate attack. The current warp mechanics allow for pirates to be virtually on top of a target within the span of only a few seconds, and after that has happened there is no way for the target to retreat. This means that the complexity of defending against pirate attack is significantly higher than the complexity of attacking a miner, and that should be changed.
Sadly, I'm not entirely sure how one might go about this. A field that stops people from warping within one to two hundred km of the target could go a long way towards providing miners enough time to react, or for the pirates to be intercepted before they manage to kill the barges/transports. Increasing miner and transport tank could also help quite a bit.
Perhaps the best way to accomplish this would be to allow for some sort of UI modification to make anti-pirate activities easier. I think the addition of a 'distress signal' to all ships that could be warped to by anyone in the sector could go a long way towards this. If someone was under attack in a situation they knew they could not win in, using the signal would alert those who want to run anti-pirate operations as well as other pirates in the sector. The resulting combat would dramatically increase the risk for the pirates, seeing as anyone in the sector would know that there were targets in this area. Obviously, this ability could be used to set-up ambushes and the like, but at least those warping to the signal would be combat-ready.
In the end, the only way to move people to low-sec is to decrease the risk without eliminating pirates. I seriously doubt that my suggestion above would be effective as it is, but even then it still at least addresses the issue at hand in a way that makes things more interesting for all involved, as opposed to making sweeping economic changes. |