I find myself increasingly more fond of tears in my new found game play. Now I’m in no danger of adopting a Goon philosophy where if a pilot can be separated from their ISK/Ship then they were clearly too stupid to own it in the first place, but I’m certainly feeling less guilty when the smack starts.

Not that I’m without a heart. One of my first kills was a character I saw was only a couple of days old. I felt bad for destroying their ship and didn’t want that to jade their view of the game and quit, so we chatted, I told them to be more careful and packed them off with a new Cruiser, something they were a long way from being able to afford on their own.

Then again this week, after downing an Imicus pilot who’d worked hard to earn the ISK for their ship, I packed them off with a warning to not take the bait in future (can flipping is almost always a trap) and gave them 200,000ISK to replace their ship and fittings and still have a little left over.

That said, my guilt was nowhere to be seen last night when the pilot who lost a Retriever to me for opening fire on me, came back in an Abaddon and was promptly Concordokken.

Well ok, not true, I did feel bad at first, the entire loss was in the region of 170mil+ which is about half a PLEX, roughly $8 in real money terms. Now I’d never think to have steal $8 from this guy’s wallet and the realization of what that ship translated into in terms of cold hard cash made me feel bad, reminding me of a recent psychology book I’d read which explained, on the topic of office theft, that people find theft much easier when the item is one or more steps removed from actual cash.

Any sympathy I might have had or desire to send them ISK to offset the loss disappeared though when their corp mate started the tears in local

[01:56:34] CorpMate > you know, you are a real piece of work
[01:56:55] CorpMate > that guy spent months puring his heart into this game to get that battleship
[01:57:08] CorpMate > and you provoked this whole mess
[01:57:17] CorpMate > he has never had dealings with concord or pirates before
[01:57:43] CorpMate > and now he just lost a whole lot because of your selfishness

Just like that, my guilt evaporated. The pilot had made a number of mistakes and despite their claims none of them had anything to do with me.

So let us examine what went wrong and how we can use this example to show what not to do, if you want to protect yourself and your ships.

• Fly what you are prepared to lose
  The absolute golden rule of Eve is ‘Never fly what you can’t afford to replace’. The rule is true no matter how wronged you feel, or how strongly you think that right and justice is on your side. If you undock and field a ship, there is a strong possibility you might lose it. This is why I’m flying around in Rifters and Thrashers, losing a 1 mil ship doesn’t hurt the wallet too bad. That 170mil+ Abaddon however, is a painful loss to most pilots. He deliberately docked and brought out the big guns, spoiling for a fight. When you do that though, you absolutely have to accept the possibility, however small, that you might lose the fight. Out sizing your opponent is no indication of how the fight will go, so unless you are able to shrug off the loss the better option would have been to just dock and walk away.

• Never fly pissed
  We all lose ships. We all get pissed. The combination of the two is extremely dangerous. I’ve done it in the past and it almost always ends with me losing a second ship. Internet spaceships is not serious business. The moment you feel it is, you should log, read a book catch up with some TV on Hulu.com or maybe go take a walk and enjoy the outside world for a while. The absolute worst thing you can do is dock, grab another ship and start fitting your best or expensive equipment with the notion that ‘this time I will show them’. Flying pissed means you aren’t thinking straight, you’ll miss something, you’ll make a mistake and all you will end up showing them is another pretty fireball.

• Don’t take the bait
  In last night’s engagement there were three ships from the same corp, two retrievers and a bestower. I flipped their can and at this point, they’ve probably lost about 200,000ISK, not a huge amount. It could have ended there and I’d have moved on
  
  Bait #1
  The bestower then stole back the ore. Now the bestower is flagged to me and I’m free to engage and destroy it. Here we’re talking about maybe a 2,000,000ISK loss. Again, with their total loss at 2.2Million ISK, it could have ended here.

  Bait #2
  By taking their can I’m flagged to the entire corp, they are free to engage me, but when they do I am free to engage back. By attacking the hauler right in front of the two barges, I’m an attractive target. The hauler is defenseless and the barges have drones they can use to attack me and try to drive me off. But if they do so, they will also become a valid target. One of the Retrievers took the bait, and so I disable their warp drive and we’re pretty much certain to add it to the loss sheet. Now however, we’re getting expensive, a 5 Million ISK ship, with over 5 Million ISK in fittings.That’s a hefty 12.2 Million ISK loss and again it could have ended there, in fact a rational mind would look at how this has gone so far and called it a day long before we got to this point.

  Bait #3
  I made sure to hang around, get involved in a little in character boasting/smack in local while waiting out my timer. It worked because for whatever reason when I targeted the Abaddon, it opened fire sealing the ship’s fate. In total they’ve now thrown away over 180 Million ISK and had they not taken the bait, had they left me to my own means the absolute most I could have denied them, was 200,000ISK.

  That means, in total over 179,800,000ISK was lost by this corp entirely through their own actions in continuing to take the bait. That loss was entirely preventable and need not have happened.

• Heed the warnings
  The absolute worst mistake here is without doubt, ignoring the hi-sec warning when firing upon another vessel. ‘Do you wish to proceed with this dangerous action?‘. Again, not flying pissed, most pilots would see this message and be spamming the hell out of the ‘cancel’ button. Lose my ship? no way! Either our Abaddon pilot felt the risk was worth it, that the warning simply didn’t apply to them or had a bout of windows-itis and just clicked ‘OK’ without fully reading the warning. Even without knowledge of CONCORD, aggression or the consequences of firing on random vessels in hi-sec, a warning with the words ‘dangerous act’ and the description that your ship will be destroyed should be enough to deter any but the most suicidal of pilots.

So we can clearly see that what happened here was a series of regrettable decisions led to an escalation of events resulting in a far greater loss than needed to happen. That is entirely what vile can flippers like myself are counting on.

If you wish to frustrate us and defeat us your best bet is not to best us in combat, even if we lose our ship we’ve provoked you into combat which is a win for us. The absolute safest and easiest way to send us packing is to ignore us.

Leaving us with nothing to shoot to slowly mooch off to the next belt or system is far more upsetting to us than losing one of our disposable ships.

Keep it in mind the next time you see a flashy red stealing your can.

This article is reproduced with permission from:

Kate Yeats

Copyright and Source Acknowledgement to Kate Yeats at Adventures in acquisition

With our sincere thanks.

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