Managing Kill Rights

Those of us in the AG Community who partake in special operations will sometimes get kill rights against us.  For example, gankers typically use a large fast ship like a Machariel to bump their victims to keep them from escaping before a gank.  One special op some of us undertake is to gank these ganker operated Machariels.  It is a big financial loss for the ganker and potentially lets a victim escape.  However, it also results in the special ops team getting a kill right against them.  This blog post focuses on thinking about how to manage these kill rights. 

Kill Right Removal By Ally

The easiest way to get rid of a ganker kill right against you is to have a friend remove it. Of course, you can only do this for kill rights made available to the public, but that is often what happens with kill rights.  Get a cheap ship, go somewhere private with your friend, and have your friend obtain the kill right and destroy your cheap ship.  Kill right removed.

There may be a price for the kill right.  So you might want to give your friend the ISK for buying the kill right up front.  If the price is cheap, it's no big deal.  But if the price is high, you may want to deal with the kill right in some other way because otherwise it costs you money, and worse, that money goes to the ganker.

Kill Right Removal By Neutral

If you have a public kill right that is of price high enough you don't want to pay it, you can optionally try to get a neutral party to destroy a cheap ship to remove it.  Money still goes to the ganker, which is bad, but at least that money isn't coming from you or an ally.  Get a somewhat cheap ship -- you'll probably have to pick something more significant than a rookie ship, maybe like a cruiser -- and go hang out at the trade hubs.  Chances are, someone will buy the kill right and kill you.  You'll probably lose your pod too if you aren't super fast, so make sure you are in a clone with few or no implants.

Kill Right Avoidance By Alt

Use an alt to perform your Anti-Gank ganking activities.  Then your main never has a kill right for this.  I like this approach, but it does take time to train up an alt, and it means some of your elite AG activity won't be associated with your main.  Still, it's a good approach.  Now you can do your non-AG activities on your main without worrying about kill rights.

Kill Right Avoidance By Time

Kill rights, as far as I understand them, are gone in 30 days.  Wait 30 days offline, or only fly cheap ships for 30 days, and you minimize your risk.  Not a great approach, but I thought I would list it, as it is an option.

Kill Right Avoidance By Tactics

Last but not least, you can just try not to get into a situation where someone will buy and activate your kill right.  With a kill right on you, act like you are in low or null security space.  Use insta-docks and insta-undocks, avoid busy areas, try not to be seen by others.  Use special ops cloak or the cloak+MWD trick when traveling through gates with a lot of activity. 

Other Ideas?

Feel free to share your thoughts or ideas on this.  But most importantly, think about how to manage kill rights against you.

Fly safe!

Burner Mission Review (Mostly Negative)

Before I begin this review, let me me reiterate that I am not a long term veteran of Eve (though I'm not brand new either).  I have been playing Eve for about 5 months now, and have about 10 million skill points.  Could another hundred million skill points or so have made a difference?  I have to think maybe so, because I don't otherwise see why anyone would find a burner mission entertaining.  It was literally the least fun I've had in Eve since I began playing.  I would have ended the evening feeling more satisfied if I had just spent it mining Veldspar.

A word of warning before you read on.  This post is a total rant.  So take it with a grain of salt.  This post is about a bad experience with a burner mission, but there may be other burner missions out there that I might actually like.  That said, let me continue with my rant.

The burner mission I tried was named Anomic Team, and it was located in Sibe.  It consisted of 3 enemy frigates, 2 of which were supposedly logi for the 3rd, not that they were needed.  I spent most of my evening setting up for this mission, and made 2 attempts at it.  I never got a single shot off at any enemy.  Both times, they were able to destroy or nearly destroy my frigate before I could lock a target and begin firing.  It was that fast.  Probably no more than 10 seconds per attempt, if that.

Let me go over what some of the problems were.

I can only guess that the only valid approach to this mission is long range kiting.  I just don't see how any frigate can engage the opponents of the mission unless the opponents simply can't fire upon you.

I first attempted to use a tracking disruptor, but the opponents also had missiles (something the mission description didn't mention), so I'm not sure if it would have helped much.  On the first attempt I had 2 warp core stabs equipped (the burners use scrams) just so I could test the waters and run for a refit if I didn't like how things were going.  Of course, stabs mean I had very short targeting range.  The opponents were initially about 40km away.  I activated my ASB as soon as I started taking fire, but the time I was in targeting range I was already almost dead.  I warped away with maybe 10% structure left.

The second attempt I knew I probably needed to keep some distance.  I swapped out the stabs for something more combat oriented.  I warped in, but to my displeasure, I found the opponents were sitting right on top of the warp in location.  I immediately tried to gain some distance but was webbed and scrammed within a couple of seconds, and my ship was destroyed a few seconds after that.

Now, I'm not opposed to having to retry a difficult mission a few times to get it right.  But this mission appeared to be intentionally set up to where trying again wasn't reasonably feasible.  It was located a long 7 jumps from the mission hub and set in a system where no merchant activity takes place.  Even trying to buy something simple like a microwarp drive required traveling 4 jumps.  The one station in the system didn't even have repair ability.  I literally spent the whole night on just 2 attempts of the mission.  Hours of set up and refit for a combined action time of about 20 seconds. 

I've heard the new burner missions are receiving good reviews, but I just don't understand why.  Here are the ways I could see the missions having value:

1. Was it fun?  No, it wasn't.  If I wanted to get my ass kicked, there are other much quicker ways of doing it.
2. Did I profit from it?  No.
3. Did I learn from it?  Not really.  The battle was so quick, how much could I learn?  I think I learned that the right approach for the mission is to stay the hell away from the opponent and fire from a distance.  If that is wrong, then I didn't learn anything.  If that is right, then it's no different than the best strategy for every other mission in the game; stay the hell away and fire from a distance.
4. Can it hone my combat ability?  This is where the mission really fails.  If this mission had been set in a place where it would be easy to refit and retry multiple times, it could have been useful.  But it appeared to be set up the exact opposite such that setting up for another go would require a huge time penalty.

Some people really like the burner missions. So who knows, you might too. So I don't really want to make any recommendations for anyone. But if you ask my opinion about trying a burner mission, my opinion is that it might be a lot more fun and profitable to just spend your night mining.

Anti-Gank: Madirmilire/Niarja, 11/1/2014

A particular group within RvB decided they wanted to host an event for freighter ganking in and around Madirmilire.  A post about it can be found on their forum:

http://rvbeve.com/forums/index.php/topic/8593-ganked-140-freighters-must-die/

The Anti-Gank (AG) High-Sec Militia responded.  I am happy to report that multiple freighters were saved.  I was personally there to repair and see a Rhea, one of the more expensive freighters, survive a gank and get away clean.  I also heard good reports from others throughout the day.

I was only there for a few freighters due to some RL interruptions and due to being off on a special operation.  A few of us in the High-Sec Militia teamed up to remove Apex Aubaris' bumper Machariel from operation.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/42149167/

I have a side job within the AG community I refer to as AG Special Ops.  My participation in the Machariel kill was in service to the mission of AG Special Ops -- to undertake higher risk anti-gank operations to test new tactics, increase the effectiveness overall of AG activities, and further boost the morale of the AG community.  While the others involved were not members of this particular group, they certainly had a similar spirit.

Well done AG community, and thanks to all of you who made an effort to help and made this day a success for AG.

This wasn't the typical CODE. orchestrated gank night.  It was triggered by one or more members of RvB.  I hope our activities helped to send a message to the RvB organization that freighter ganking is not an honorable activity, will not be tolerated by the Eve community at large, and is not something the RvB organization wants to be associated with or condone.