Reggie Stoneloader
Teikoku Trade Conglomerate
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Posted - 2008.05.06 19:02:00 -
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There's been a lot of discussion lately about the "can flipping" style of ore theft. I think that ore theft is a fine and noble part of the EvE experience, and it should be preserved, both to generate revenue for bold pilots and to introduce an element of risk/reward into high-sec mining. Can flipping, though, is crap. It removes all risk from the thief. The recent topics have revisited the "bomb in the can" trick, which comes up from time to time and is just a punishment for taking the ore. That's lame, too.
Can flagging solved the problem of ore theft. When someone takes your stuff, you and your corp (you are in a corp, right?) get to shoot at him. That turns it into a fight, and you can win that fight and take your ore back. But with can flipping, winning the fight doesn't count for anything, because even if you toast his ship, your ore is still in a yellow can, and their buddy in the hauler is on the way. You could flip it back with an alt, but that gets into the ping-pong gameplay that is the bane of so many other EvE activities.
My proposal is as follows: First, when a ship moves goods, it can only move as much as its cargo bay can hold, with a thirty-second timer between actions.* Second, when goods are moved from directly from a container to a jetcan in this fashion, the destination jetcan gets a flag that grants access to the rightful owner of the source container.
So, if I go out in a cruiser with a 300m3 cargo bay and move 500m3 of stuff from a stranger's jetcan into a jetcan of my own, then it'll take me two "moves", with a thirty-second cool-down period, akin to the timer for making a new jetcan. In the meantime, I get flagged as a target to the owner of the source can and his corp. Additionally, the can I created, then moved the stuff into, becomes jointly owned by me and the guy who made the source can, which means that if my corpmate takes stuff from the can, they get flagged to him, and if his corpmate takes stuff from the can, they get flagged to me. He can take from the can without being flagged, and I can take from the can without being flagged, even after my 15 minute flag for originally taking his stuff goes away.
Ore Theft Scenarios:
Scenario A: Thief comes in a hauler, grabs a load of your ore and makes a run for the station. You or your corpies have the chance to catch and kill him, he has a chance to get away with the goods. If shots are fired, he might come back with a bigger ship and escalate against the guys who took shots at him.
Scenario B: Thief comes in a combat ship. He spends ten minutes shovelling ore from can to can, blinking red and refreshing his countdown every thirty seconds. You can glide over there in your barge and shovel it back, faster than he can and without getting a flag, until he gives up and goes away, or your corp can put a gank squad together and come bust him up.
Scenario C: Thief comes in an Ibis or Shuttle, tries to move the ore, cries, goes away.
The point I'm trying to make is that ore theft should be done in a hauler, and that hauler should be criminally flagged to the rightful owner of the can. Can flipping is silly. It's an exploitation of the can flagging system, and the flag system can be modified to close the loophole.
*An exception to this would have to be made for moving stuff around POS structures or carrier hangars. It would be silly to have to take an Iteron to the tower to shuffle isotopes and strontium around.
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