[Jester's Trek] How safe is too safe?
How safe is too safe?
There's a really fun scene in the movie Lord of War that's been on my mind lately when I've been thinking about high-sec ganking and whether high sec is "safe enough" or "too safe." In the scene, an illegal arms dealer (masterfully played by Nicholas Cage in one of the best roles of his life) has a cargo plane full of illegal arms bound for one of the many African conflicts of the 1980s and 1990s. The plane has been forced to land on a rough dirt highway in Africa and Cage's character has gotten rid of the illegal cargo through the simple expedient of giving it away free to the locals. Not wanting to get caught with the cargo, the two pilots run off. What happens to the plane itself? That's answered in the following scene:
Is high-sec safe? High-sec is about as safe as that African plain. And in my opinion, that's just about right.
Every week -- it used to be on Fridays but now it's on Mondays -- I entertain all of you with a kill of the week. If you've been reading the blog for any length of time, you know that these tend to run the gamut from hauler ganks to interesting PvP kills to expensive super-caps to goofy little one-offs.
And lots and lots of times, either the KOTW itself or one of the little honorable mentions that I throw in are high-sec ganks.
I'm not the only one that advertises such things, either. Just in the last couple of days, TMC has entertained me with a couple of really amusing examples, including an all-out undeclared war on high-priced mission ships in Sveipar. And of course, I've already discussed mining barge ganking.
Granted, suicide ganking in high-sec is down, most likely due to three factors:
- Mining barge tanks are tougher than they were.
- It's harder to profit from ganking thanks to loot-scooping making the scooper suspect-flagged.
- Kill rights gained from suicide ganking are transferrable, making the practice riskier for the gankers.
Source: How safe is too safe?