Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Kill one profession, create another?

Just a quickie.

During World War II, it was an occasional practice for snipers -- particularly German snipers -- to wound their first or second target rather than killing him outright.  The idea was to set his buddies scattering... only to be drawn back to the victim by his pleas for help since he's not dead.  Follow-on victims attempting to assist the wounded man were killed, but the wounded man would create more potential victims.  And if the sniper was in danger of being taken out, his last act before attempting escape would be to finish off the wounded man.

This came to mind as I was chatting with one of my alliance's most successful suicide-gankers, who says he's going to give up the profession once Retribution drops.  He's in the profession for the profit, and the profit is about to disappear (almost literally).  How suicide-ganking works today is that the ganker fires and destroys the target ship (or doesn't).  If the ship is destroyed a wreck is created.  The ganker's alt in a convenient hauler then loots the wreck, drawing a thief flag for the ganker's corp.  But of course since a corp member is in on the gank, the danger is zero.  Nobody's going to shoot the hauler.  The hauler tries to loot the ganker ship wreck for the same reason, then warps off.

But in Retribution, looting a wreck that isn't yours is about to become a Suspect-level offense.  Anyone can shoot at Suspects.  Which means that there's going to be an interesting kill-mail farm to be had in not only shooting suicide-gankers on gates, but shooting the haulers they use to try to loot their prizes as well.  Shooting Suspects is not an offense, except to the person being shot but if he's in a hauler, who cares?  Ergo, you're likely to see a lot of Sebo'ed Tornadoes sitting on gates ready to gank anyone who tries to loot suicide-gank wrecks.  And anyone who tries to loot those wrecks.  And anyone who tries to loot those.  And so on.  Repeat until all the wrecks are looted.

And even if you don't get them, someone else probably will because they're carrying around the Suspect flag...

We may therefore see the death of that profession, but the (temporary) birth of another.  It may be temporary because even Goons will stop suicide-ganking if they can't figure out how to make a profit at it.  Stabbed Deep Space Transports with heavy shield tanks to do the looting, perhaps?  We'll see.

Have fun sniping!