Thursday, September 10, 2015

The Stacmon Patrol

GankerLookout.com is a website that provides valuable information regarding active gankers. 



"This is probably the best site for keeping track of gankers."
           -BeBopAReBop RhubarbPie 

Created by Anti-Ganker Pulttl, it provides a list of recent ganks and active gankers. During another patrol with my Griffin pilot in Highsec, I wanted to take another look at the data provided by the site. 



One of the results was showing that a Retriever was down in Stacmon system after a ganker named Gervasius the Handsome attacked it. I decided to pay a visit to that system to enlighten and disrupt the ganker's operation with my ECM Griffin. 



18 jumps were made when I was finally 1 jump away from Stacmon. Just before jumping, I quickly recapitulated what I was planning to achieve. Firstly, by using D-Scan, I had to find miners with a high chance of being attacked by the ganker (Hulks, Covetors, Retrievers, Mackinaws.) Secondly, I had to guess and predict which one will be attacked and thirdly (and most importantly), I had to be there with my Griffin before the ganker arrives. Motivated by these thoughts and my goal, I jumped to Stacmon.






The first thing I saw was a scandalous example of robot-aspirancy. In Local chat, the ganker was busy answering the residents of Stacmon with the same repetitive statements like a programmed robot. It was as if a computer had taken control of his words and the algorithm was resulting in random phrase formulations about the same thing over and over again.



While local chat was being bombarded with robotic statements, I found a Retriever at an asteroid belt and quickly warped to it.





I positioned my cloaky Griffin within the optimal range of my jammers and then I waited patiently. About 30 minutes passed.
"A counter-ganking sits around for an indefinite period of time hoping that gankers will eventually come and be foiled by him. He has to be paying attention continuously, for his ward could probably be killed in the time it takes him to go to the bathroom." 
          -Voyager Arran



All of a sudden, a Proteus affiliated with the ganker landed at the belt. She directly started approaching the Retriever. 




First, Kaely bumped the miner for a while.



A few minutes later, she was already right on top of the Retriever. This meant one thing to me: a warp-in was about to be provided to the ganker.



At that moment, I was literally spamming the "Scan" button of Directional scanner, waiting for the Catalyst. I also became more and more convinced that this Retriever pilot was probably AFK. I don't like AFK miners. "Then why do you protect them?" one might ask. Well because I enjoy doing Anti-Ganking and creating content for both myself and the gankers (and even the miners!)


Yes! Here we go. A few seconds later, Gervasius the Handsome's Catalyst appeared on D-Scan. 





The ganker landed, became criminal by initiating the gank on the Retriever and got jammed immediately and heavily by three magnetometric jammers of my Griffin which was now enlightening the ganker with its strong projection of ionized particles designed to disrupt the Catalyst's targeting system. Of course, the camera crew on board my Griffin recorded my ECM ambush.









The gank was prevented, fun was had, 'Good Fight's were expressed, content was generated. What followed was a mostly enjoyable conversation about Highsec.




As I always do, I injected some relevant humor to local chat. 



Meanwhile, the first reactions from the Proteus pilot were hasty expressions with prejudice and delusion. Her reaction was almost the same as an AFK miner's reaction to a gank. ("real fight", "what you do isn't real PvP", "this is unfair", "honor") Both Ganking and Anti-Ganking are particular, unique types of real, emergent Highsec PvP. It's a joke whenever someone denies that fact. I didn't even answer Kaely right away.



Like I said earlier in this post, I don't like people who haul and mine AFK, simply because it's just not normal. If you play a game, you should be actively engaging with it. I'm sure most of the genuine Anti-gankers agree with that. If I protect a miner, it's because I enjoy doing it, not because I "really" want to protect and reward his lazy AFKness. But of course, there are also miners who stay at keyboard and play the game, and those ones earn my respect.



I have distant memories from the mining fleet which I was a member of on July 2013. Judging from their silence in Fleet chat and the way their ships looked, I could easily distinguish an AFK miner from a non-AFK miner, and I used to ram into the AFK ones with my afterburner-fit Skiff just for the hell of it. It was hilarious.




After ruining the gank, I also kept my fellow miners and other Anti-Gankers updated about the successful engagement by informing them on the Gank intel channel.


One of them responded by saying that my look was similar to the ganker's look. Sharing similar looks with a brain-washed gank-bot isn't a compliment in my book, which is why I should probably update my character's look soon.


Alright thanks.


And then Meyer Wolfsheim broke in by declaring that the ganker is my twin. Holy **** guys. Okay, I will update my portrait. Happy?  

After these statements from Darth and Meyer, I ended up having a quick look at both portraits, just to see what they were talking about.

                                       




Holy crap. I think they're right. The resemblance is strong and scary. This isn't good.  *laughs*

[ 2015.09.08 19:09:58 ] Kaely Tanniss > you awake now  Marco Sasen ?

Meanwhile, Kaely was busy delivering additional bumps to the miner who really seemed to be AFK. To be honest, I don't mind when an AFK miner gets bumped. They deserve it.



And then came the classic "CONCORD KM whoring" argument.




At this point I didn't express myself clearly enough, I also don't know why Kaely was talking about known details like the ganker's security status and my timing of engagement (which had a small effect on my gameplay, that gank was going to be ruined anyway). Regardless, I hereby want to bring additional clarifications regarding the "CONCORD KM whoring" accusations. 

"people say you are 'concord whoring', because you are tagging onto km's but not actually preventing the gank target from being destroyed. 
-Beatrix Dacella

Most people agree that whoring on CONCORD killmails is a derogatory/negative term defining a situation where a player just shoots a criminal a bit before CONCORD's arrival without preventing the gank. This is the most accepted definition of this term. As you can see, it isn't what happened in Stacmon that day.

"I'm not sure what this real damage crap is about, or why people say "you're concord whoring" the point is to make the gank harder, for real km you join r v b or fw." 
-Ozzie Udan

We're not summoning CONCORD so that we can appear on their killmails. I often feel like CONCORD is the one who whores on my gank preventions. (I often don't even need them to stop a Catalyst). There is a blatant difference between useless CONCORD KM whoring and a successful gank prevention. These two things cannot be put into the same basket. Like Kaely said, the ganker in Stacmon wasn't an outlaw yet (he was above -5), so I could only engage him once he turned criminal, but that doesn't change my point. As I said many times before, I personally find it pointless and stupid to engage a ganker if you can't prevent the gank. I find it especially toxic when some AG-wannabe posts a Catalyst killmail where he did %1 damage on it while the ganker successfully killed the miner at that moment. Just like all the genuine Anti-gankers, I don't like these things.


"People often say 'miner lived' after posting ECM kills, or they're posted by people who I know wouldn't do so if the miner wasn't saved, in which case it's a victory. But I have seen people post kills where they got like 3% damage on a ganker using drones and clearly didn't really make a contribution - I certainly don't agree with celebrating those kills (I might sometimes say 'gj' to be polite!)"
         -Jennifer en Marland 


We engage them the moment they go criminal (or during the pre-gank period in case they're outlaws), long before CONCORD arrival, and use the in-game methods to ruin the ganks. That is pretty much how counter-ganking should be done, and yes, it requires lots of dedication and patience.


"Any defense has to be purely reactionary, but also able to respond effectively within a window of ~15 seconds. To put it succinctly, that sucks."
       -Voyager Arran





Meyer Wolfsheim this time joined the Local chat by posting a link to a purely ISK-related link. There's nothing wrong if a player enjoys mining & building things. However, if it's only for ISK, and not for fun, then it's quite unfortunate.

[ 2015.09.08 19:39:19 ] (None) Marco Sasen is inviting you to a conversation.

Blimey, soon after leaving Stacmon, I received a convo request from the Retriever pilot that I saved. "Heh, he's finally back to his keyboard" I thought as I accepted the convo.



The miner was thankful. This is quite refreshing because most of the miners that I've saved in the past were so AFK that they couldn't realize what was going on. In some cases, I even had to explain to the miner why his shields were half damaged when he returned to keyboard and how I had saved him. Marco kindly expressed his appreciation and asked if he can do anything in return. Most of the time, a simple "Thank you" like this can be enough, for it's an excellent reward. 




Anti-ganking is also about informing and guiding miners about vigilance and ship choice. Since I'm passionate about the Skiff family (and Skiffology in general), I advised him to check out the Procurer first.




Apparently, the Proteus pilot Kaely was also in convo with him and she was pretending to be "anti-gank". Interesting.



They say "never judge a book by the look of its cover." The reason behind Marco's silence during the entire period at the belt was now clear. When I had started to believe that he was just another lazy AFK miner, he was actually experiencing issues with his computer. That is understandable. As a user of EVE's Mac "client", I do know what it's like to see the game frozen. I have experienced game crashes and other client issues in the middle of fleet fights and I fully understand how annoying it can be.


The cause of his computer's lock up was probably a technical issue that occurred when he returned to EVE window from Reddit. This once again brings us to the point I made above: if you're playing a game, you should be actively engaging with it. Do not let out-of-game things like Reddit distract you and endanger your safety in space. You can always dock up for doing those things more effectively.




Then I shared my personal opinion about ganking with Marco. Miners, gankers, anti-gankers, war deccers etc. are all keeping Highsec alive and entertaining. They bring content, fun stories and activity to EVE in general. I wish more people would realize this.

"If nothing happens in EVE, then EVE becomes boring." 
-Tora Bushido



Considering how easy it is to avoid a gank, I reminded him once again of the fact that spatial awareness is the most important type of tank. Marco was learning fast, he saw the arrival of a battleship in his asteroid belt and became suspicious about it, which is a good thing. At that moment, I was thinking that maybe Kaely was now using a battleship to provide warp-in to the ganker? That wouldn't be surprising, especially after seeing Weaselior using an Orca as a warp-in for his ganks back in 2013.





Confirmed.




One thing that amazes me about EVE is that a single, small action can lead to a larger, emergent and entertaining set of situations. The Stacmon Patrol was one of them. That day, my simple decision to check GankerLookout.com led to this excellent example of player-generated content. I enjoyed every second of it. 

Good fight, ganker. Hope to see you again...

5 comments:

  1. This is the saddest little blog.

    Can't you at least make some kind of effort to be funny or interesting like James 315 does?

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    Replies
    1. It's quite interesting actually. Glad I found it.

      Delete
  2. Not bad. You seem to be extraordinarily literate for an anti-ganker. I look forward to the inevitable day when you embrace the Code and join us in the cleansing of highsec.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. As a non native English speaker, writing this blog in my spare time has been an amazing exercise for improving my writing skills.

      I don't think I will be joining the Code guys any time soon. At this time, I already split my gameplay between piracy and anti-ganking, and I really enjoy making Highsec a more interesting place by creating counter-ganking content.

      Delete
  3. Agents Snigie and Zopiclone live next door in Aidart, careful, that's their territory and they're a pretty effective team! Just an FYI

    ReplyDelete