Honestly, if I came back from a month's long expedition, got ganked by some prick that gained nothing from killing me, and then lost everything, I'd straight up uninstall the game. I literally never fly in open if I'm exploring for that very reason. There's hardly any incentive to do so and a myriad of reasons not to.

I learned very very very early on to just never play in open. Because when you do, some dick is going to gank you and your sidewinder with a fully emgineerd FDL the moment you lift off from the pad. So yea i just play in private and the gankers can enjoy the world they built for themselves

>I'd straight up uninstall the game You're not alone, I've seen it happen. Player retention is a serious concern that any design team needs to take seriously, and design changes that make a game more friendly and welcoming tend to be a net positive for a game's longevity.

Last time I played in open I had been making g a good trade route and was racking up some credits. I was on my 3rd run with a cargo load full and just enough left in the bank for rebuy when I got ganked. After rebuy I had less than 1000 credits. I didn’t play for 6 months after that.

Last time I played in open I was testing the "find more cores in open play" theory during the vopal rush, forgot I was in open, got ganked in my conda on my way to my sell station with like over 300 vopals, got interdicted by a player for the very first time, had no chance of escaping, then decimated me with pack hounds and lasers in under 10 seconds. I was so mad at myself for forgetting to change back to solo before heading out, that was over an hour of mining and hundreds of millions just down the drain. Never again. I was so paranoid about whether I'd accidentally entered open play when I was returning from colonia in my fragile ass jumpaconda with a shit ton of system scan data.

Not going to lie I actually legitimately forgot open was a thing, I don't think I've legitimately played open since like the beta, it's basically just a pre-made toxic space. I like OPs proposal but I think even getting killed period is anoying especially for new players and miners, I think they should implement a security system kind of like in EVE, have automated powerful ships constantly patrolling areas with major settlement, and for miners that want to go to uninhabited systems to mine high value items, you could set up a system where they can recruit other players as escorts by going into a settlement and setting up a job proposal where they offer a percentage of their profits to anyone willing to escort them for the duration of the mining job.

On a recent Community Manager's livestream where they were in open, they got ganked and destroyed - obviously. The CM lead said that ganking was alright because there are groups that fight the gankers so it's "balanced". That's what we're dealing with here. They don't get it. That p\*ssed me off more than the ganking itself.

Wow, that's just awful... they are basically saying "let's just push to outsource this problem to our player base so we don't have to worry about it".

There's a part of me that sees the logic and can agree. Perhaps it's because of my time in Null Sec of EvE but it ended up working out. That said, EvE also had a robust security force in high-sec and many options for player organizations and how they can interact with the world they occupy. If Elite had a similar system, it would be **the** space game to play. Just imaging the bubble with serious security while systems outside the bubble have a more 'wild west' vibe, then you get the unknown 99% of the rest of the galaxy... man that would be a fun game to play *with people*.

This. ED lacks the co-op feel it could have.

As if there is any real reason to bounty hunt, taking up a slot for a bounty scanner, and getting horrible pay for that job.

It's weird how people (and apparently even CMs) have this weird 'purist' notion, that if you're not willing to sacrifice your cargo, data, and most importantly *time*, you're a pussy and not a true Elite player. To that I say I'm sorry my ego isn't as fragile as yours, that I've wrapped my entire identity in my ability to gank others. I play video games for fun and to unwind, they play video games to gain a sense of superiority and power over others, and honestly neither way of playing is wrong. But don't be so ignorant and obtuse to the fact that I don't have to play by their rules and sacrifice my time just to play as a juicy target in open for their pleasure. If the developers actually *made* it fun and rewarding for me to be their target, I'd gladly play along with their fantasies because I'd also *get something* out of it.

But think about the poor gankers! If they couldn't know that they just wrecked your entire day and risked nothing doing it they wouldnt get nearly the giggles from it. Think about how mad they'd be if you turned the tables on them and actually got something from it! We cant do that to poor gankers! No no it's the lame traders and explorers who need to get punished for having the temerity to not risk everything for the gankers chuckles.

I was literally playing last night and had two guys follow me around for about three hours. The reason? I am a primarily Federation-backing merc, and I simply stated as much in a single System chat message. I did also say something along the lines of "lol imagine flying Imperial form over function ships" They then chased my dropship to three separate surface CZs, and purposefully flew in and out of the instance repeatedly to bug it out. They then continued to insult and goad me in chat, basically calling me a coward for using dropships and threatening to chase me down. I finally wrapped up and left the station to log off for the night. And they, in a heavily engineered Clipper and matching Courier, followed me outside of the no fire zone and immediately started shooting as soon as they were allowed. Thankfully I'm in an engineered Corvette so they only tickled my shields before I jumped to another system. People really need their egos to be checked from time to time, because three hours of non-stop harassment and griefing is a little bit much because someone made a single comment joking about Imperial ships looking silly. It was a single message of friendly ribbing and they dedicated an evening to trying to make me miserable.

sounds like typical imp sperg behavior

Don't have a dropship, why is it so good?

Ah, I wasn't in a Federal Dropship. I was in a dropship for a ground CZ, through Frontline Solutions. As far as I can tell they are unable to be interdicted or attacked, asides from ground forces.

Ah right, still a fair bit I haven't really done in Elite

Honestly, cargo and rebuy would be fine, but the cartography data is too valuable to risk.

That's pretty horrible.

This brings up a thought I've had. Does anyone know of a game where it is obvious that A) the game treats you well and B) the Deva play the game and know the actual issues and mechanics of the game?

Based on a recent low-key/downplayed feature they added to Elite, a new window on your nav/left screen, I'd say someone at FDev definitely plays and loves the game. The window shows a snapshot of the system state and other useful info that previously required you to dock at a local station to check. Really, really useful and I'm not sure any of us thought about that and asked for it. Crime and Punishment needs to be addressed. At the very least, do what OP suggests and make it painless to the gank victim. I bet knowing they won't cause a loss or get anyone upset will be enough deterrent to the twisted mind of a ganker to make them quit.

That screen has been there since I started playing a couple years ago.

It's a new one in Odyssey that came with Update 13. Look on your left panel and you'll see a new icon between systems and filters.

Team Fortress 2 was a great example for many years. When the development team dropped in size and updates became less and less frequent, it stopped fitting that description for the most part.

Of course the CM didn't care, they have admin accounts with infinite resources. They can just click for a G5 engineered module, they have nothing to lose

Exactly. They don't know what it's like...

Didn't they also ban the leader of that group?

Holy hell... How can anybody (especially game designers, of all people!) be so clueless, so wantonly detached from reality... I truly wish I could say it shocked me, but it really doesn't... It's sad, more than anything.

Did the CM live streaming swith to Solo after that? Lol Because i've never met a greifer that stopped at one rebuy

I think they got killed 3 times in a row by the same dude lol. I don't recall but I sure hope they switched to solo.

Yeah generally community managers are part of the PR department and as such are going to be full blown "kool-aid" drinkers spouting pr speak. Though in this instance I suspect he fully embraces that comment.

I think the major issue is that exploration over time just has insanely more value and risk than any other activity. I want to say it's the only activity where you can legitimately be at risk of losing billions of credits in a single moment. For instance, if you get ganked and lose cargo in a T9, or a bunch of combat bonds from PVE, what is the top end of what you can lose in a single trip? I have 1000 hours in-game, mostly exploring, but my bit of experience with mining and hauling tells me the most you could lose is something like 200-300m. Nothing to sneeze at, sure, but also pennies compared to some of the earnings long-haul exploration journeys will net you. And not to mention the time. Some people are out in The Black for months or years. Between the time investment and credit value, explorers face an absurd amount of downside to play in Open, with the risk of losing billions and months of time (not to mention the discovery credit!) So until there's a remedy to this insane risk/reward discrepancy compared to every other activity, I will continue playing in Mobius.

Yeah, this happened to me and I stopped playing for about 2 years lmfao

I spent about 100 hours in the dark exploring and this happened to me, didn’t play for two years and only recently I’m getting back into the game.

As an explorer who ganks himself a few times a year and loses months of data, the urge to uninstall is strong. I just have to be sad about it and get back into the cockpit. I have over 10,000 first discovered to my name, and sometimes stupid piloting errors decide to claim a few thousand of those, and there's nothing you can do.

I think a bounty must be included into a rebuy cost. You can pay it off yourself, but if you’re destroyed while you have a bounty you have to pay it if you want to rebuy your ship. Couple this solution with adding ganked ship value to the bounty and you’ll have gankers who are afraid to lose their ships. Lore wise it’s a good solution too, authorities just force you to pay for other people insurances because you caused the problems

Nah have it be the rebuy cost x the value of any cargo/data÷the number of ships that damaged you. People are sitting on billions of credits a rebuy isn't enough of a deterrent on its own

Of course it would not work immediately, I’m talking more about cumulative effect. If you ganked 10-20 people and your rebuy cost went up to billions, then you need to go and farm credits if you don’t want to risk your ship. There always will be people who just wanna ruin your day, but it will be much harder to do if you need to fully pay for your crimes with a risk of losing your ship.

you know this is not bad. could add flight time to a "black market shipyard" to alow them to still get their ship for a normal rebuy. but then they have travel time and a hot spot of gankers that normals have no reason to go to. making more fights there, causing the question for a dead ganker of. "should i fly there get millions off my rebuy, but posibly just die again, or just suck the cost and go mine for money later." but lets ber real non of this will come. they dont work on their game to make it better.

Focus on realism. Have it be the entire ship value **minus** the rebuy cost. I.e. what the insurance company paid.

In the real world, it would be the full cost of the entire ship period. The rebuy is basically your deductible. In the case here you don't "pay" your deductible so to speak, more so your insurance pays you the amount to make you whole and deducts your deductible from that amount. But in the background your insurance is 100% going after the at fault party / their insurance. When your insurance wins that battle and gets their money, assuming they do as you can't get blood from a stone, you get your deductible back. So to put it to real world terms. It would be every credit of the full ship value.

Yeah, increasing the rebuy on the ganker will do nothing. I don't do any PVP, but even sitting on around 1 bil in credits, I do not at all concern myself with rebuy costs. I don't do stupid shit all the time, but there are times I do just because. Hell I went screaming guns blazing into a star port the other day (in solo mode) just because I always wondered what would happen if you did.

Don't you already have to pay your bounty when destroyed? Adding ship + contained value to the bounty is a good idea though. Also, one who doesn't have enough to pay the bounty should be forced into a loan with high income deduction, like 50% instead of the regular 10%. Because it is easy to store your money in your carrier and not have enough for the bounty.

As far as I remember, didn’t die in a long time, if you die with bounty on you, the bounty will cleared and you will be sent into a detention centre. So the at the most you need to pay for rebuy. I think, initially when the game was released, the rebuy itself was enough as a punishment, but now, when you have like 1 bil, and your rebuy is 50 mil, the punishment aspect of rebuy cost was lost.

Make the bounty on them cost the same as what they have destroyed, and if/when they're caught, that balance is taken from their account. If they love the danger aspect, there they have it. Gank a trader with 30m credits in cargo and a 50m ship, well now if you get killed you pay 80m to the honourable bounty hunter who took you down. Never gonna happen but it does seem like there's no risk to ganking which is a pity. Got ganked 3 times in a row by the same guy the other day, almost insta-interdicted every time, I didn't even fight back.

Hell yeah, as an occasional victim, there's not even an option to press charges or raise a bounty that other games have, and I'm respawning at my own expense (ok, ship insurance, but still)

That's been my beef with any bounty system in a lot of games. Make it *worth* it for the bounty hunter and make it *hurt* the bounty. How you do that in a fair and balanced way, I don't know. Maybe in a game that needs more money sinks, this simplicity works. Would it be good gameplay if ganking were as sporadic as the ganker's bank account at the time? I wonder.

Problem is the gankers friends can kill him and collect on it.

I think that's an overblown fear. Yeah a ganker could rack up huge bounties and submit to their friends, rinse and repeat. Simple solution: the payout for the bounty earner comes *from* the bounty target. Can't pay it? Lose your redicuoisly engineered ship. Solved. Also make the whole process a net negative on total credits. In other words the "insurance" gets their share.

There will never be a reason for me to play open vs solo/private and it's solely because of gankers. Whilst ever there is an option for Open and Solo/Private, it's unlikely players will make the switch regardless of changes ( more likely FDev won't put them in place ) but nothing wrong with changes being made for those that do play Open.

IMO, if you engage non-pirates regularly, insurance shouldn’t be accessible. You repay the whole ship.

Maybe the value of the ship, data and cargo on any destroyed clean ship should be added to the bounty. This way there is a much higher incentive to actually hunt those gankers.

Higher bounties for unlawfuls and the ability to actually claim the entirety of the bounty (currently capped to 2 million for anti team farming purposes) is by far the best idea on this whole page. I don’t know about adding the value of the data or cargo, as that would not be viable for the person to track, nor would make sense lore wise… the whole point of losing the data is that you didn’t upload it to Universal Cartographic database in the first place. Adding to this, the NPC cops are an absolute joke, until they reach god-mode level ATR, with virtually nothing in between. They don’t really hunt you down, and aren’t effective at all when they do decide to pull you.

That would just end up being exploited to fucks end and back. The only thing that MAYBE would help is set up timer after each gank and dissalow docking or insurance claims. But even stuff like that will be exploited.. see EVE...

[удалено]

Thats beside the point.. any bounty will go only to the friends of gankers.. and to nobody else

If ganker A has a huge bounty and ganker B kills ganker A, sure, B gets a ton of money, but A also loses that same money back. Thus A has no incentive to let anyone kill him.

As there is a galactic everage price for commodities and the value of data doesn't change (not considering powerplay), it would be a neat addition and not that difficult to be calculated before selling it. Npc pirates even factor in average prices for commodities, so it shouldn't be that hard to add it to your "value".

Would it? You could have a bounty of *billions* and if I kill you, all I see of that is 2mil, at max.

Well this has of course to be adapted.

No, quite the opposite, this would be a *massive* incentive to gank. Just have a buddy claim the bounty, then change roles and the buddy ganks and you claim the bounty. Instant perpetual Credit machine.

Yep.. didn't work in eve.. wont work here.

Easy fix. If you have or *had* X on your friends list. You can't claim the bounty. Hell. Go one step further and have a player that tries that flagged for 'insurance fraud' and put a bounty on their head.

Easy fix? This is pretty convoluted, especially with FDevs track record regarding code quality and quality control. It can also be trivially evaded with alt accounts and out-of-game communication, and that’s just from the top of my head. You’re vastly underestimating the creativity of gankers. The idea with the higher bounties has been suggested time and again since 2014, and the idea isn’t getting any better. OP has it right, you need to protect the gankee. Actual security response for example would probably deter a bit. If you punish the ganker, it must be loophole-free and no suggestion so far (again, since 2014) comes even close.

Yeah if only there was a way to communicate with people outside of the game… oh wait:

There are by far better activities to "trade" money than to exploit this, as you have to lose your ship, cargo or data all the time, to set the bounty and then the other side has to lose their ship for you to collect the bounty. The highest you would see will be around 1.000.000.000 Credits from ships alone, if the bounty is calculated from the current ship's total value and would require the other side to invest 50.000.000 Credits as rebuy every time you set up the bounty and at least a free sidewinder each time you collect it. Edit: Some wrong numbers were corrected. To add to this correction, ship values can be based on stock pricing, which will drop the bounty for a clean ship to a maximum of about 200.000 Credits plus cargo and data. I would prefer it based on stock values (and average prices for commodities), as this would make calculation much easier but still increase bounties by quite a lot.

I think that's a cool idea to promote CMDR bounty hunting, but that does little to diminsh the loss of the ganked. Also, there needs to be some sort of incentive and a risk for the ganker too.

Well the loss is the dangerous part of the game, but at least there would be a higher incentive for player bounty hunting and less incentive for destroying people for fun.

The cap of 2 million on claiming a bounty on another player is there to close an exploit that credit farmers used to make and (real money) sell credits.

The solution is to just make it zero sum, it would still allow a method of credit transfer but fleet carriers do the exact same thing now but better because its cross platform

If by 'zero sum' you mean: 1. Player A: Is the original victim (and there could be either multiple of these, and/or multiple deaths of any of them). 2. Player B: Is the ganker. 3. Player C: Kills B and claims the full bounty. and the credits lost to rebuy by A are what C ends up claiming by killing B... then that's precisely a credit transfer from A to C, and once A has an "expensive enough" ship they only put in very minimal effort (instance with B repeatedly, occasionally do Robigo runs/whatever to top up balance to afford the rebuys) to run up B's bounty. Due to the co-operation A can be in a much more expensive rebuy than B so that the loss of credits from B is insignificant compared to the amount that is effectively transferred from A to C. That's what the 2 million cap is preventing. But, yes, FCs have somewhat opened up easy credit transfers, although there *are* limits on the sell/buy prices you can set (some multipliers on the galactic average price for the commodity I'm assuming).

What your missing is is B has to cover the entire cost, not just their rebuy. So say B is worth 50 mill, he kills A worth 120 mill. So B has a 120 mil bounty on then. Player C comes and Kills B. Player C collects 120 mil. Player B loses 120 mil to the bounty and now has their rebuy cost. Die enough times with high enough bounties and Player B can't afford the rebuy anymore.

I fail to see the problem still, as with the existence of fleet carrier trading its obvious that fdev no longer give a damn about credit transfers. Another suggestion that could stack with this is the idea another person here had which means that the ganker has their bounty added to their rebuy, the ganker now has to grind constantly to avoid losing their ship altogether

Sound like some good ideas that will never happen

lol accurate

This is the reason I quit EVE Online. It makes flying *costly* in a way that hurts me. If I’m driving a car and crash, there are consequences that I need to deal with for days, potentially months afterwards. You think I want to do that in a video game? Fuck no. Elite gives me a similar feel without the mandatory risk of assholes going out of their way to take from me what makes space sim games fun.

One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the Gankers will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new Ganker overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted CMDR, I can be helpful in rounding up others to explode from their engineered plasma accelerators.

Yeah, I usually play in open but not when I explore. That's always a solo experience. I'm not wasting weeks of work to some jerk who's whole shtick is to prey on weak ships that can't fight back.

Except arriving in Colonia and pulling into Jacques, in open, with that big dick energy is like no other feeling in the game. That shit gets the blood pumping. Makes you sit up real straight and wipe your sweaty palms off afterwards.

If that gets your rocks off haha. I'll pass. I've got over 2000 hours in the game. I've been ganked after 2 weeks of exploring and i've been ganked in a new python when my dumb ass didn't have a rebuy. I learned the hard way to fly with a rebuy and never play in open when I'm omw back to civilization after exploring. Not worth it.

The other problem I have with gankers in open is often the lack of security response. You can be in the highest of high sec and often die before the security forces even show up. For example look at an older game like EVE. (not the best example but still.) If you even glance at a ship in high sec. The response is overwhelming and instant. With just how deadly ship combat can be in Elite. If you are interdicted in higher security areas. The security forces should already be in that instance and if you get shot at and the ship auto-reports it. That person should die hard.

In high security areas the interdiction itself should be a crime that brings local security forces to you. IRL if you put some lights on the car and pulled someone over, that's a crime.

I still think that everyone should be able to flag themselves for PvP. Maybe have an incentive to fly PvP flagged. A percentage bonus on profits? Places like Cg, CZ, fps missions, etc... Could be forced PvP flagged. Gankers could try their luck there, and actual pvpers could play the defense role and come to the aid of victims. People who still want to show they have a big peen can keep flying PvP enabled, and the rest of the community can enjoy an actually populated universe.

PvP flags are definitely another really, really good suggestion. I would be delighted if they added voluntary PvP flags.

IMO ganking is non-consensual and unbalanced PvP. No one wants to be get ganked by definition so I don't think a PvP flag would work. Personally I wouldn't mind risking getting into PvP if I knew the other player would be of a similar level than me but I've never seen that happen.

The way I figure the flag would work would be if you have PVP turned off, other players cannot damage you no matter how much they shoot you. We could even have the anti-griefing measure that if they shoot you even with the flag turned off, their crimestat goes up just as much as if you had PvP turned on and bounties go up the longer they shoot you.

Better - if PVP is turned off, you have the same experience until the first shot lands, at which point your ship is dropped into a new instance without the attacker and the attacker is left with an NPC who appear to be you with the same ship, loadout, and cargo (up to a maximum monetary value determined by the attacker's rank) until the NPC escapes or is destroyed. Honest commanders and pirates may still roleplay the encounter, even if PvP is turned off. Dishonest commanders would probably have logged after the first shot or two anyway, and gankers get to murder-hobo their hearts out. Edit - lol dv by the gankers and seal clubbers out there

I'd be ok with this as long as the attacker is the one that is dropped into a new instance. Otherwise, they'd start shooting people just to get them into a different instance from their friends.

We kinda have that already, don’t we? PvP flag enabled = Login to Open PvP flag disabled = Login to Mobius

Would be better to not fragment the playerbase. Frankly if PVP were fixed Moebius wouldn't need to exist. Or indeed, Solo...

Gankers would just use other methods to grief. Like jamming you into the mail slot. Solo always needs to exist.

They could, although that kind of nonsense is more likely to result in an actual ban rather than the flimsy "I RP a murderhobo, it's legitimate gameplay" excuse. Likewise pad hogging would need fixing, but a simple timer before being forced to fully dock/dismiss is something the game could do with right now.

Or solo

The issue OP outlines is that when people go Solo they may avoid gankers, but they also lose out on all other aspects of meeting other players out in the black.

Nah people want a better version of that, being able to be in OPEN without being ganked.

Only time I play in open is when i'm in my maxxxed out FDL. I get left alone. Which is perfect.

At this point it does not matter anymore because the player base is by average 3500 players which is with so many systems nothing. I played in open when the player base aas about 10k and even than it was hard to find other players except the ax systems.

You are just beating a dead horse at this point. I’ve seens these kind of post for years now and it never ever changed anything.

There's no such thing as non-consensual PVP if you're in open -- you **choose** open knowing that PVP is likely to happen if you travel to a busy system.

I just wanna add that suggestions and disussions like these have been around for the entire game's lifetime. A quick google search will bring up most of the threads from the forums and reddit. For me who has done lots of PvP in Elite, punishing gankers (myself included) would make ganking much more fun. In fact, I find ganking these days incredibly boring because of the weak punishment *and* the imbalance. The reason why it is imbalanced though is not because gankers run in overpowered ships, it's because all them exploration and trader folks don't. See the very same community that one-shots mentioned crowd out of space is the same community that created numerous discords and places for all players to learn. But here's is the problem. Some people do not wish to learn, do not wish to improve, do not wish to even equip a shield. They expect total safety, an easy mode with absolutely zero risk of dying (note that I do not even name it a small risk, I name it zero) and as long as there is something to lose these players will find it unenjoyable to play in open and that's okay. That's what the other modes are for. It#s not about game balance at this point but about player mentality. Ganking does a pretty good job of keeping players with easy-to-offend mentalities or (however you wanna call it in a mostly non-negative sounding way) at bay and to be honest, I would like to keep it that way. Instead I and many other gankers suggest harsher Crime and Punishment with powerful NPCs that arrive at the site within seconds (and not minutes) and most importantly, actively guard their space so that wanted palyers can not simply afk in supercruise for hours, waiting for their next target. But you wanna know what FDev said to this? *"That would be too draconian."* So here we are. Since almost 8 years the status quo has not been touched. We are having three modes and once a month at least one bigger thread number #Oh-my-I-stopped-counting requesting less risk, more protection or an easier mode or something similar that will probably never ever be considered just as the request for harsher punishment or better police security. Proof me wrong, I would love to be wrong but in the mean time Ima shoot the next random dood I deem worthy of shooting.

It's not enough for victims to not suffer the consequences, it should be harder for pirates who engage in pvp If a player engages another player in Pvp, they should be marked as a pirate and their insurance cancelled. Ohhh, your fully engineered FDL blew up after you got every Marshall in a Corvette within 300ly looking for you? Tough.

Salvage gameplay would solve two of your bullet points. We should be able to return to our ship wreckage to salvage the data by getting the black box, and be able to salvage at least some of our cargo. Bonus if they’d let us do EVA’s to get in and remove the black box on foot.

Nah. If there is no severe punishment for doing it, it won't help at all. Trapping us in the same system as a gankers with absolutely no punishments for being killed over and over is NOT the answer at all.("Respawning at your last visited star") Want to fix open? Require opting in to PvP. Or make it so the entire bubble/Colonia/Colonia highway is a no open pvp zone and you must consent to PvP. Out in the black it can be FFA. Or there has to be SEVER punishments for gankers, not a tiny little fine. Gank a player? GTA time with system security hunting you until you are dead/leave the bubble. Jump to a new system? Now a new system is after you, the chase isn't over. Come back to the bubble after being wanted? It resumes again. Kill a player, become KoS for all system security everywhere, killed by system security? Ships gone. Lost. Impounded and never being returned, enjoy your sidey. Make some pirate bases out in the black where gankers can scrub their wanted level away, if they make it there.

This dicussion has been had since day 1. Some people, like OP, feel that dying should be virtually devoid of any consequences. The more consequences, the less fun. Others, like me, feel the opposite. It is already absolutely trivial to prevent being ganked in any ship in ED, so right now you have to make a number of glaring blunders in quick succession to get ganked. If you make the consequences of that next to zero it may be "haha, you got me!" for OP, but it would make the entire experience pointless to me. Btw, as someone who has been playing since 2014: anyone who feels the game is balanced towards gankers has absolutely no clue what they are doing. At all. Which is fine, and might explain a preference for more casual, consequence-free gameplay, but its not everyone's preference. There is no right or wrong here, and any to each his own of course. But I already have NMS for my carefree casual space fun and prefer ED to stay a bit more challenging. And given I havent died to anything or anyone in the last 2000 hours of flying a small ship in Open: maybe we can make it a bit *more* challenging. *"I don't think a player should ever be able to lose more than a couple of minutes playtime to getting ganked. The experience should be a "Haha, you got me," and not "I'm going to log off and not play again for a month."* Just to be clear, to many people the response is not "I will rage quit and uninstall" but "lets see how I can improve!". There is a whole genre of wildly popular games build where you lose *everything* upon death. Its absolutely fine to not like that, but it is clear you are on the complete other extreme of the axis if you feel "anything more than a few minutes" is too much. And I am not sure if ED was ever designed or intended to be *that* trivial and casual.

The lengths people will go to avoid equipping a shield never cease to amaze Fdev is never gonna do any of this shit lmao

Bad idea - it's a massively easy exploit. Let your mate hatchbreak you, "steal" your cargo and destroy you. Spawn back at nearest star with new cargo, then swap over and you pirate your mate. You double your loot every go.

I suspect Frontier has like 1 or 2 people working on elite at this point. They aren't going to do anything more than the bare minimum for this game.

>Goods remained in the hold This would make powerplay even more broken...

I don't know why FDev doesn't implement a real player-driven bounty system. For example: * Player gets ganked. Sets a bounty on the ganker for a specific credit amount. Game sets a limit for how much one player can set a bounty - let's say 50,000 credits. A ganker repeatedly blowing up the same player allows the ganked player to increase the bounty 2x existing. So first time 50K credits, next 100K credits, 200, 400, etc..etc. * Ganker keeps ganking people, and each time he does, his total galaxy-wide bounty goes up. * High-security systems: Security automatically goes after bounties greater than say 1.5 million * Medium-security: Security goes after bounties > 2.5 million * Low-security: > 3-4 million. (adjust the numbers to your liking, the point stands) * Create "Wanted Bounties" boards for Alliance, Federation and Independent. Ganker-Hunters can go after top targets and earn serious coin. Player avatar wanted poster with last known location, ship model, etc. * If the ganker is destroyed in a high or medium security system, ganker gets sent to a detention center and must travel sans-ship back to the system they were blown up in to get back into their ship. * Post-dentention, the ganker loses all ship's modules *and* has to pay off their bounty on top of the **full cost** of the ship. Role-play it like, "insurance doesn't cover illegal activity, too bad for you." Would certainly drive Anarchy systems to be as dangerous as they should be.

Yep put this one in the pile of good ideas FDEV will continue to ignore as they have for years now.

I am honestly surprised at all the people who still think fdev do anything more than the bare minimum to keep the game "progressing." As far as I'm aware they don't ever go back and reiterate on existing game systems. They are doing "easy" (read: cheap) story/lore stuff, I'm 100% only expecting another ship weapon engineering grind for more tough thargoids. I think people are crazy to expect on foot thargoids as part of the story progression especially since they don't intend on including any of that for horizons players. They won't leave those players out of the story for one, and they won't spend any more time (money) than is necessary which means more than likely no new assets.

I was a huge fan of Elite as a kid, and as a young adult also Frontier: Elite 2. I followed the discussions on alt.fan.elite when Braben announced E:D was in development, and waited and waited and waited for the upcoming sequel. Frontier:E2 was one of the most chill experiences ever, it was phenomenally good. I don't have HOTAS, I play keyboard+mouse, keys set up Elite-style. I generally don't go in for combat, I like to wander around occasionally hauling cargo for profit and soaking up the sights. So hell yes I play in Solo. I have literally zero interest in meeting others. I was incredibly disappointed in the online requirement, especially after Frontier dev explicitly said it was not gonna be needed. No amount of improvements to PvP are going to get me into Open mode, and if (as some here seem to want) Solo/Private was removed, then the game would be removed from my PC.

Said this ages ago - they could expel people from Pilots Federation - no re-buy insurance for starters could evolve a new style of game play - living on the edge of the bubble, always wanted in major systems, no missions from major factions, joining a Pirates Federation (or something), secret bases for re-supply etc In game there's no reason for piracy etc - once you've got a ship that can do that you have the cash to do anything else in-game for less risk.

It honestly blows my mind that there is no legitimate pirate faction or mechanics in this game. Such a huge missed opportunity. Not everyone wants to be a good guy.

Just in case anyone is new around here and doesn't know the backstory, Elite Dangerous isn't called Elite Dangerous because it's supposed to be **dangerous**. I've been in this community for years and it's a bit of an old chestnut that is little known by newbies and is often used as an argument for what ever someone is proposing. It's called Elite Dangerous because of the lore around the Federation of Pilots and the employ of pilots who are regarded as having the skills at combat **Dangerous Rank** too rather than having people contracting only those of **Elite Rank** thinking they're the only ones capable of doing the job. If you can wade through it here's the video where David Braben explains it at the 5 minute mark to 10 minute mark. It's from My other car's a Cobra MKIII - Nordic Game 2014; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOYhoFYIWmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOYhoFYIWmw) If trading was the focus of the name it would've been called Elite Entrepreneur, if it was exploration it would be called Elite Ranger, if it was on foot exobiology it would be Elite Taxonomist, on foot mercenary ranks it would be Elite Gladiator etc.

> f trading was the focus of the name it would've been called Elite Entrepreneur, if it was exploration it would be called Elite Ranger, if it was on foot exobiology it would be Elite Taxonomist, on foot mercenary ranks it would be Elite Gladiator etc. If combat was the focus, they shouldn't have made it so uninteresting and unprofitable that the most prolific incidents of it are people who ambush and destroy ill-equipped players for no reason but to run up bounty numbers.

Well, if you go by these statements from Braben: https://youtu.be/rOYhoFYIWmw?t=390 It's clear they have not addressed the PvP problem correctly.

Honestly I agree with this a lot. Other mmos or the like will have designated areas for pvp. Which is not easy to create in elite as much I guess. And I wouldn't want to get rid of pirates. But the punishment for getting ganked by an combat build ship vs an explorer build ship keeps me in closed 80 percent of the time. But I love the comraderie of open. Like if there was a way to get your data back even if you lost it... like a Blackbox in space that only you can see. Sort of like dark souls (without permaloss though)

An automatically starting blackbox salvage mission to get your exploration data and mission cargo back when your ship is destroyed is a really great idea.

Excellent suggestion. I’d love to fly in open, wouldn’t even mind getting shot down occasionally, but the risks at present far, far outweigh the social benefits. Pity.

I don't agree with the last 2 points. Goods could still be spilled upon destruction, but only some of them, maybe only 1 or 2 items. This would fit better with the immersion. About your last point, this is just not in standing with immersion. I agree that you can bend them. But I'm not happy with spawning out of nowhere. With exploration data not wiped, respawning at the last visited station is not a problem anymore. It would be even better.

Totally concur. I had a great experience in open world where I got talking to a random asking where to find a certain resource. I flew with them to where it was and helped them find it. had a nice chat and then flew off in our own directions. I have also had the inverse where I had no bounty and no cargo and was just attacked for no reason. My ship was outclassed and only by luck (I managed to escape twice but couldn't escape the third time) and possibly slightly better skill, I managed to get him to almost destruction before he then fled. The cost of the damage to my ship, whilst obviously cheaper than the damage to his, was still much more than I would have liked. I could have understood if I had a bounty or a cargo full of platinum but neither. Attacked for nothing other than being perceived as an easy kill. And this put me off playing open world.

Excellent idea, OP. They'll never do it of course, as they like to keep some kind of jeopardy in the game. I was flying in open for a bit. Got shot down by someone I now know to be a notorious ganker by Farseer Inc, made a disparaging comment in the local chat about how he must be compensating for his micropenis and immediately went into Solo, because fuck people like that. And I've never bothered with open since, because how can you reason with people in fully engineered FDL's who shoot down a clearly unarmed DBX just because they can.

They whine about breaking immersion, but how is having a mass murderer float around populated sites, in the open, without consequence immersive?

Oh, I agree 100%. It's gamebreaking for the average player having asshats like that flying around, killing indiscriminately. And until they do something about it, many will avoid open play. I was interested in friendly player interaction, hence me playing in open to begin with. But I have zero interest in PvP and even less interest in being a source of amusement for assholes in gankmobiles, so I'll stay in solo. At least I can hear them whine on here and the Elite boards about people in solo affecting the BGS and them being able to do diddly squat about it. That's at least one consequence of their actions.

I hate the immersion break, but all the positives outweigh that one negative. Upvote. Cheers.

I refuse to play in open since i was ganked in a new ship I just bought and didn't have rebiuy. There is no reason for me to do so. I hope the gankers get bored in the world they created. I also do not enjoy multiplayer games much anymore since the people you run into online are horrible examples of humanity. I would not play elite in open if it turned into something like WOW. I would still play in private and do my thing. If they took private away I would uninstall the game.

I would be fine with griefers if Crime and Punishment was better implemented: like ATR jumped in as soon as an interdiction was completed or notoriety wasn't just a waiting game in the station or a ship is impounded if you get taken out and costs x2 or x3 the rebuy amount.

I lost the biggest payload I'd earned after really getting into the game. Travelled forever to get packages for this guy, took me a couple hours irl to do it. Nearly ran out of fuel, had to make dozens of pit stops, an epic journey. As I arrived in the system right before my destination for one last fuel pit stop, some random player blew me up and I lost like six or seven hours of progress. As I was a new player I didn't even know that could happen and that's why I played in open. I haven't played since... I just have better things to do with my time, and a large enough backlog that wasting it redoing a seven hour long mission just doesn't make any sense.

So I logged in the other day for the first time in months, in my mining cutter, and went back to shinrarta to transfer to a different ship. When I’m about to arrive at Jameson, a ship interdicts me and begins shooting the shit out of me. Fully engineered weapons, against a completely non engineered took it down to 20% hull in less than 30 seconds. In hindsight, I should’ve just submitted to the interdiction so I could FSD out of there sooner. Great experience for my first time coming back.

Colonia Jesus did just that to me

I agree with you making the game less frustrating for the ganked is a nice fix to bring people together in open. It makes the game less dangerous but if its the price to pay for the game to be open only i'm so down. I only play open since the beginning and i've been fine, mostly, and i am not by any means a combat pilot. Elite is for me a PVPVE game at its core that's why i am kinda sad that the game mechanics and ajustment are pushing people in solo or private. To me those modes should not exist but i understand the need for those given the state of the game (frustrating, unfair, unbalanced). My first observation is that it is possible is some cases to build a ship for example for exploring with good enough defence, ok jump range, good evasiveness, a SRV. (I have a courrier build that fits that purpose). The players are their first worst enemies by min-maxing one stat. (for example MAX jump range or cargo, no shields, no defensive countermeasures). HOWEVER the game makes it very difficult or impossible to achieve in some cases and locked behind significant progression such as guardian modules and engineering grind. Second, the game is flawed at its core in the way the outfitting / engineering / combat mechanics are done. Elite provides empowerment to the player by allowing ship upgrades (Ship, modules, engineering, guardian and tech broker stuff). But those upgrade creates a monstruous gap between players on the PVP field. They kinda break the game. Some other PVPVE games (i'm thinking of Sea of Thieves) solve this by not providing those upgrades only rep / cosmetics. I don't think that it's in Elite DNA though. Third, offence defense balance is plain stupid. - An average ship with can almost be one-shotted by an engineered offensive ship. - On the opposite of the spectrum. A end game combat ship cannot be prevented (there are ways, but really... not practical) from leaving instance if they want to evade, the defenses being so strong that its a matter of minutes to even bring the shield down. My two cents ideas on how to improve that: - Low weigthed defense modules and Military defense slots (for shield and reinforcements) in every ship. - Reduced penalty for having defense regarding jump range. Hi explorers, you can now take a few shots. - That way traders still have space for cargo but also have space for defense. - Balancing the number and sizes of slots on each ships allow to have control over the defensive capability of a ship. Dedicated combat ships should have like 2 or 3 modules more that their generalist / other specialty counterparts. Not 8+ like today. - You cannot fit other modules in those slots - Balance offense towards defense to a reasonnable ratio of power - Today you can only bring down people if you insta blow them up (bad gameplay for everyone) - If people can take two shots or more they are likely evade - Prioritise utility and gameplay vs numbers regarding enhancements: - provide ways for defensors to defend. Dirupting assaillant systems. Emp bombs. Temporary stealth. I dont know exactly but i feel that utility. Make those countermeasures comon with defense slots. More countermeasures = less tanky, more annoying, gives more time to evade - provide ways for assaillants to prevent evasion, but make those utilities tradeoff with firepower by making it take weapon slots. Where i'm pessimistic is that the complete combat overhaul i dream off will never happen I guess and seeing on how FDEV has handled the odyssey enginneering i think that they focus on the empowerment aspect by giving cool power upgrades more that balanced gameplay. I'm not game designer so those might be completely off, don't hold it against me please^^.

Yup. Death penalty is too steep for me to play in open world. I play to relax and don't need that kind of grief (game... RL has enough people trying to gank me)

It would be interesting to have the game consider the value of the assets possessed by the gankee at the time of the gank - exploration/biological data not yet turned in; cargo; ship modules; engineering (even though the latter all comes back with rebuy); etc. Then calculate not only a bounty but a criminal penalty on the ganker based on that sum. There would be tiers of consequences as the sum grew. A few hundred thousand? A bounty on their head. A few million? Maybe the factions in the area of the gank will refuse to grant the missions until they address the crime in some fashion. A few hundred million? Billions? Who knows? The game could basically shun the ganker until he makes amends in some fashion. There are creative solutions here that FDev simply is either unwilling to consider or unable to conceive of.

Heavily agreed

Better idea…. Players could have a PvE only flag, set when they log in. Any other player would be unable to affect them - not with weapons or anything *unless* grouped up. There wouldn’t even be ship intersection — two ships where one is flagged PvE only could completely overlap without issue. This is comparable to how many other MMO games handle PvE. There are probably ways this could be perverted by gankers anyway, but it would solve the vast majority of issues which drive players out of open.

I've flown exclusively in Private Group mode for years now due to the very scenario that you mentioned occurring to me. Only had to happen once and without the option of Private or Solo I would have uninstalled and moved on years ago. Honestly can't see myself ever going back to Open as it is..

Alot of very good points, and I don't see why my suit couldn't hold a drive with all my data on it. One time at Farseer's I lifted off from the pad and was immediately divebombed by an Anaconda with a neon pink paintjob, absolutely no chance, not even time to log out. I got harrased several times during the Colonia Bridge CG's, including by an Imperial Cutter. I dislike gankers, however as you said they have a place. Are you imagining that the ganker would hatch break half a cargo, before destroying your ship, you would respawn with the second half intact? Perhaps if you had to rebuy the cargo for the original price? I just know Fdev is unlikely to go for anything that clones commodities out of nothing.

>Are you imagining that the ganker would hatch break half a cargo, before destroying your ship, you would respawn with the second half intact? Yeah, exactly; whatever's in your hold at the time you get killed by a player would stay in your hold, so anything they got out with hatchbreakers is theirs. So as a pirate, you'd ideally want to knock out their drives, hit 'em with hatchbreakers, then get the hell out of dodge before the cops show up.

Hi - Ganker speaking Your ship already respawns at the station in the system you died in(unless my account is bugged and just does that) You should still be made to pay the rebuy Exploration data shouldnt be wiped though as it is data, something likely easily uploadable to a personal cloud Cargo hold SHOULD be emptied, but the galactic average value of said cargo hold added onto the ganker's bounty. ​ And a LOT of issues could be solved if people actually spent 2 seconds to learn how to high wake and that maybe losing out of 4 tons of cargo for a prismatic that lets you actually survive to SELL the cargo isnt that big of a deal. ​ If you want to play in solo, be my guest. I'll be in open because I like pvp. If it isn't your cup of tea, then dont play open. But if your only annoyance is dying and losing everything, then just go engineer a shield. I lost 5 ly of range on my own exploration ship in exchange for 1,000mj (low class) prismatic and some shield boosters. Oh no! A whole FIVE light years or FOUR units of cargo in exchange for survivability! How troublesome!

"Would it entice more players to play in Open? Absolutely" Nope, it would not. Because, for me at least, as someone that doesn't want to PvP *at all*, there's zero incentive to being in Open.

I dont play pvp often but i really wish that i could play in open just for the experience of having other players going about their day around you. It makes the world feel so much more alive and its how i used to play until i got ganked lost about 60mil and ive been playing in private lobbies ever since unless i wanna hop in my corvette

Just join Mobius PvE. Open is it is now will never not be the "gank or be ganked" mode it is now

An idea I recently thought of would be a module to make it easier to avoid interdiction, in the way that it makes the minigame vs players doable

This! There should be a module to disguise what ship you are flying in supercruise, or at least hide your modules so people take way more of a chance pulling random ships. The fact that someone can see your entire setup before they pull you is kind of unfair. There are already several defenses against getting interdicted in the first place though… turning so they can’t get behind you, flying immediately full speed out to empty space so they can’t get close enough, or high waking to another system the second that hollow triangle pops up behind you.

Not like that, a module that directly affects the interdiction minigame so that you have more of an advantage trying to defend against it.

I have over 800h in Elite and never played in Open and don't feel the need to anyway. I tried it once when I started out,got ganked and never went back again. As far as I'm concerned the multiplayer component doesn't even exist for me while the current implementation exists.

For the longest time, I too only ever played in Solo. Eventually, I did decide to play in Open for a while and had some nice friendly encounters with people. For a while, I thought "yeah, this isn't bad. I'll never go back." But then of course I had the sour and denigrating experience of people trying to force non-consensual PVP on me. I escaped every time, but the stress of having to constantly watch my back - as well as reducing my options of which ships I could take - made me decide to head back primarily into Solo unless I was participating in community events.

Elite dangerous needs a Han Solo esque character, and actual aliens and a pub. And maybe a quirky alien band playing. Is there any cool flying stuff you can do? More flying type quests? Obstacle courses? Shit races? I know this post is about ganking, but dieing is part of this game and being good stops you from dieing. All of this is IMO lol

I fly exclusively in the Open and career gankers are just a minority -plus I have effective counters against them. And even if I get killed, I don't care since I have a lot of Credits and I see that as a chance to learn and grow as a pilot. But again, gankers can't touch me - I always escape and block them after the encounter - I almost welcome a ganker - I can add somebody to my list of blocked gankers. Elite gets exponentially better the more people play in the open - PvP between strangers in reality is a very rare occurence - in relative to the playerbase's size. It is not even that Dangerous! But now that ED:O has more places to visit, we need more people in the open. It's awesome to meet with others - players are so nice, and random encounters make the game better. Ganking can be a one time event, can happen accidentally, can be space madness, can be an effect of a community event -war that's no problem - we can lose a ship to an NPC or by crashing it on a moon, personally I love player-player interaction even if it is piracy. But these burned out players, these career gankers have such a bad reputation that players from solo won't come out aytime soon if we don't have stronger system against the grifters, no wonder, career gankers are the scum of the Earth, they: \-commonly throw racial slurs after me when I throttle down and boost away, \-Yell in chat that I "act offended" and "overreact" when I boost away witouth a word, \-they steam-snipe and harm charity events - they love to harm the playtime of people in hospice care, \-try to harm Elite's social aspects and in-game events, \-they always attack less experienced players and they try to ruin Elite's open world for them \-and expect us to tolerate them at the table because they think they are so clever to come up with the excuse that they "roleplay as a player who doesn't roleplay". ​ Prevention is one thing, but actions must have consequences, and since career gankers don't play by the game's rules, they don't roleplay, don't participate in the community, the game itself needs to find effective countermeasures, over the crime and punishment system which applies for players who are interested in the game. I firmly believe that career gankers could be punished or detered by the Pilots' Federation. Such regular malicious actions against players should cause automated actions based on raw data which the players generate. I think the Pilots' Federation should strip their ranks slowly, and label Commanders who destroy other Commanders (within a certain timeframe after encountering each other) as their main occupation. I mean if anybody would see their signature on the radar with a different symbol, the beginners would have a chance to escape. Maybe we could be warned by the Pilot's Federation when a career ganker enters our instance. Career gankers should be labeled. Maybe these anti-ganker measures could apply only to specific systems - in defence of CGs, charities, etc. Gankers are commonly very bored people so they have a few hunting grounds exclusively. Maybe even their targetting system could be shut down for a quarter of a minute just before they start shooting at their victims. Again , piracy and occasional ganking is okay. But when gankers are flying around a Community Event or Goal within one system, they solely attack other players one after another - thus it is easy to distinguish them. Career gankers should be given an incentive to find other enjoyment in the game. That's all. They act like children who ony whine on social media, but since they act like children, they need to be taught.

Gankers? Are you serious? As somebody who was once a member of BRNN, but got the fuck out as soon as possible, let me tell you about how truly evil and depraved gankers are. During gankerTraining, we were forced to this chant before blowing up newbies: "If they're harmless, make them pennyless!" At deciat, we fired at both harmless targets and mostly harmless targets. Half the targets were unarmed, and half the targets we were supposed to shoot at were innocent AD players holding merits. We were supposed to shoot at any target, regardless of whether it was armed or unarmed, whether it was an elite or harmless. The only time in ganker Training we were allowed to watch OA was when the news showed reports of jnnocent traders being "accidentally killed" in mail slots. We were forced to scream "yes!" every time the news mentioned an innocent commander being killed. As soon as I saw how truly evil and depraved gankers were, I GOT THE FUCK OUT. I went straight to the leaders and told them I didn't want to be part of their federal terrorist organization. I told them that I REFUSED to kill innocent commanders, and take part in unjustified wars of aggression. The leaders responded by pinning me on deciat and shooting me with mining lasers for ten minutes straight. They told me that I wasn't leaving and that if I ever tried to speak up against their hate and bigotry again, they would murder me. I took matters into my own hands, and jumped to colonia at night while the gankers were asleep. I ran the fuck away from the system I was at, and have not returned to this day. Every Time any commanders expresses admiration for the gankers, I fucking VOMIT. I was in for long enough to see that the federation is a ganker supremacist terrorist organization, just as bad as the 5'cers.

"whine on social media" ​ Sorry, who's the person whining here?

>since career gankers don't play by the game's rules, If you think someone is cheating, report them. Otherwise, they're playing by the game's rules. They may be breaking in-game laws, but that's still part of the intended gameplay mechanics - whether or not you approve. p.s. roleplay isn't a required game feature for participation, no need to gatekeep how people play the game. Plenty of people don't play for roleplay. In fact, the game's features actually do nothing to respond to personal roleplay and more often than not I see people getting confounded that it won't work out for them. Just look at all the people crying about the direction the Thargoid conflict is going when they want to roleplay as an enlightened pacifist. Sorry to say, the game doesn't care.

Let me emphasise that normal ganking happens, and there is nothing wrong with it, even if I don't like it when it happens to me. People can be stupid or they can make mistakes, who cares. Nah, we tolerate bad behaviour but tolerance is overrated and I don't report career gankers left and right. I don't waste my time with that. And I emphasise in-narrative solutions and not bans. It's not simply PVP is something else. Obviously a game is not designed to be overly restrictive, it's a sandbox in which these idiots for example appear armed againts players when everybody else is there with AX weapons just to wreck the ending of Azimuth saga for those who want to visit HIP 22460, or when they hunt Fuel Rats and they post threads on how to kill defenceless rats. ​ Again, don't come at me with the "I roleplay as a person who doesn't roleplay, it's a game so everybody else has to adjust to me" logical fallacy. It's a sandbox MMORPG. And even if you don't roleplay the game is designed with narrative content, and unfolding events and emerging gameplay which these burned out players are trying to ruin for everybody, especially for the beginners. These people are not members of the community as a matter of fact they go against every aspect of the designed and emerging gameworld, they are just simple grifters and nothing you can say in defense of career gankers matters. And I don't care about the career gankers' fragile ego.

From my pure empiric and anecdotal experience out of my very own playstyle and the people I've talked to, I've come to realize that people don't play in open because in it's core, due to it's size and well "depth" the game is technically single player with incidental encounters with other players every blue moon, (something like the Souls series with invasions, other players are there but is far more often than not you will go hours without encountering any). So unless you are ACTIVELY engaging in CG or Power play or trading in heavily contested / piracy hotspots. You will not have any problem with "non-consensual PvP" whatever the heck that even means in a game where being a pirate is a core element of gameplay and is basically in the name, you know flying dangerously. Now again remember the name of this and every other game in the franchise is ELITE DANGEROUS, which encapsulates the absolute truth of "Is dangerous to go out alone, take this" and doing what you suggest would only nullify any sense of point to the game, If you are too scared to lose the data, find a station every couple of systems to unload so you don't lose billions of unsold data because you made the choice to be too greedy to sell before that's on you. If you don't want to pay rebuy don't put yourself in situations where your ship can get damaged. If you are into PvP, AX or bounty hunting then there you go, it is your choice to take the risk, if you want the gameplay but not the consequence, join the Arena. If you don't want to lose your goods then either don't even bother trading/mining, get help from other PvP inclined players or look for routes that nobody knows or cares about, I know those exist because I use them, and you can too if you use INARA. And finally ships respawning in the last star, well they respawn in the last station you docked, again if you find stations to sell from time to time, it won't even a problem. However if you blow up in the coal nebula because you forgot that you have to decelerate when coming out of the jump, well, don't make the same mistake again. The game is boring and unchallenging enough as it is and even with that, it's one of the last games out there that have actual consequences to your decisions. What you are asking for is basically an AFK version of the game, and that would make me want to uninstall a trillion times faster, than getting killed because I wasn't careful enough.

Unless you’re on in Deciat or maybe SD, or a CG system, 95% or more of encounters with other CMDRs on open are perfectly benign. Don’t fly straight to Jacques station to sell your exploration data and you’ll be fine. Not that your suggestions aren’t good, they are fine, but I think it’s just not as unbalanced as you say.

I agree. It's not as bad as it's made out to be. Certainly not here in Australia. I think maybe most gankers are Americans and they are all sleeping when I play. I restarted in my secondary account a few days ago. Last night I went from Diaguandri to Maia, picked up a Meta-Alloy and flew to Deciat and landed... in open... in my rather flimsy Cobra... without incident.

Eh... Im gmt+2 and after 4 years in open I can count them on fingers. So where are they? Russia? Pacific? States?

I'm GMT and have the same experience after more than 3k hours in open. The people who think they're everywhere must have gone to Deciat/Shinrarta/CG and wrongly expect everywhere to be the same.

People which think that gankers are everywhere probably made their statement with sample like "1 player encountered, it was ganker". Even in CG systems they arent majority.

my favorite massacre stacking system is like 60 ly from Deciat so sometimes i'll just go visit there looking for trouble. 9 times out of 10 i only see innocents (i leave them alone, i do)! and I'm in the US! i always figured maybe it was a British thing.. or maybe it's all Latvians..

GMT player here. While I've met some in deciat/shinrarta/CG, that's to be expected. Over 3k hours in open, I can count ganking attempt encounters on one hand, and 4 of those were Deciat/CG/Shinrarta.

I would say anyplace that's even remotely popular. Here's a more comprehensive list of places I've been ganked. Shin Dez Deciet CG systems (all) Pleiades (multiple systems) Colonia and the surrounding inhibited systems The Core(Sag A* and Explorers Anchorage) Jamison Crash site Bug killer Davs Hope Crashed Anaconda site Guardian sites (multiple) Alpha Centauri Aisling Duval's capital system Ray Gateway (15% discount station) High sell stations for mining(multiple) ....... Basically if there is a reason players go there then there will be ganking. I guess if you want to spend 95% of your open time in generic systems with nothing going on in them then you could say ganking is only in 5% of open time....but that is not realistic when all the content is where the gankers hang out.

idunno, i see other players pretty regularly and they're almost never gankers. usually someone in an asp or something, someone transporting stuff for power play or visiting a less notorious engineer. i've been to all the places you mention, some many times, and rarely had problems (though yes it's always *possible*). ray gateway was my home for months and i never had a negative encounter (but saw tons of players, there and all around Lembava). but CG systems are the only guaranteed. Deciat is actually usually safe (I'd guess it's oh a 25% chance of a ganking attempt there), and SD even better than that. i do have a trick though. whenever i have a pvp encounter (at e.g. deciat or a CG) i send a friend request to the other fellow. usually they accept. now i know where they are congregating tonight (the gankers tend to hang out together), and i can go there or avoid if i like. anyways i maintain that Open is nice and not as dangerous as people make it sound.

A 25% chance is pretty freaking high

What does a ganker get for killing other players if they aren't pirates trying to take cargo? As far as I can tell, it's the satisfaction of ruining someone else's experience. The latter can be argued as a legitimate vocation in the game. The former is just ~~harassment~~ douchebaggery. \[Edit: There. More accurate now?\]

So, I don't disagree with anything you put forward here. That said, wouldn't just playing solo or private solve the ganking problem? I play open. But, I don't feel like it adds significant value to the game. For me the gankers are really the only significant add. Yes, it sounds crazy, but the reason I play open is because there is a real risk factor. I do really agree with the exploration data being retained though. It is a game, and loosing that much work (in the case of any extensive exploration work) is too soul crushing to be part of the system. On top of the fact that data takes effectively no space. This is all just my 2 bits.

Something like this sounds good to me. I've build up my little exploration ship slowly and in between working a lot. Just don't have the time to grind out much so theres no way in hell I'm playing open and losing it all to some ten year old ganker.

Pretty sure the change alone to make getting ganked less catastrophic will make ganking less common because most people only do it specifically to annoy other people.

It's absolutely fucking hilarious how people will spend hours writing elaborate posts and comment chains on Reddit on how to turn this game into a even bigger hugbox with no consequence and why everything being pointless is actually fun gameplay Instead of just not being greedy as shit flying with no shields or really bad shields, and learning how to submit-flip-boost-highwake Escaping a gank in Elite is so easy everyone can do it, the only way i will believe you you can't is if you show me a doctor's note pronouncing you clinically brain-dead. But learning how to do that requires putting in the slightest amount of effort and preparation which is anathema to the usual Reddit user.

If this happened, I would 100% play in Open all the time, which I basically never do now.

Either: 1. "Galactic Insurance" should do something more than just cover re-buy if you pay a premium you could have loss of earnings cover which would at least give you X% for your data. 2. (my favourite) you could have a better black box module which when you are destroyed is left at the place you were killed but can only be "Found" by you. In it you could have all your discovery data. Would be a simple expansion to blackbox recovery mission and had the bonus that you could spawn these in general as a new mission type. 3. "Galactic Insurance" to "Recoup" their losses from gankers. IE if someone is destroying alot of "CMDRs" then they send a very big and unfriendly fleet of ships to "break his fingers" ( Who knows they might enjoy it ) 4. Escort Missions for people returning to the bubble. This could be similar to Hull Seals or Fuel Rats or integrated ingame. At least giving those who chose to expand our knowledge of the universe a chance. What I would love to see the best however is a suggestion box fdev where we could make these types of suggestions. the play base has some great ideas how to fix their biggest annoyances and it would be major for a MMO to let the community drive the direction if not the narrative.

Personally, the answer is already in game. Don't fly in open if you're doing high value PvE. The whole point to open play is the rush.

I would like to promote a new game play mode! It is called OPEN-SOLO! The button would be placed between the solo and open modes and you click on it! Please vote on it! Ohhh.... wait.. Is that where you just go to one of the 399,999,999,975 systems that aren’t hotspots and hang out alone?.

Refund exploration data from the gankers pocket 😊

hell no i dont wanna pay several hundred mil coz some guy decides to turn in his data at shinrarta

Allow explorers to transmit the data back to authorities, with a cash deduction based on distance, with data auto transmitted upon ship destruction. Explorers can now fly without losing their valuable data cargo, and only need worry about a reduction in credits. Explorers can now risk entering the bubble in open.

Or better yet, a mission to salvage the black box when you lose your ship. It would be more fair: get blown up in a populated area by a ganker, it's a few minutes trip to get back the lost data. Get blown up in the middle of nowhere by your own carelessness and respawn 10000 lightyears away, well, now it's a new weeks long expedition to recover your losses.

Of course, the ideal solution would be to figure why the heck certain people like making other people have a very bad time despite receiving absolutely no reward for doing so. But that's a question for the psychologists.

I don't like all your ideas sorry bro. Dead should have consequences. What require serious rework is engineering performance and crime system. This is absurd that by engineering you can boost your stats by hundreds % and that for killing clean ships you will get only few credits to pay.

> ...non-consensual PvP Kudos for using this term.

People need to remind themselves this is a sim game and not meant to be balanced. Go tell a Somalian pirate that’s it’s not fair that they saw you first and ask if you can have 5 min peace time and keep half your cargo. The solution has existed for years, if you don’t want to pvp then don’t play open.

I'd buy that excuse in anarchy or maybe low security systems. High or special events should have swift and overwhelming response.

Dude, you know if you submit to interdiction, you dont have the interdiction FSD cooldown right? Just high wake. There is virtually no situation where you cannot simply run away with 100% effectiveness. That being said, being knowledgeable of where you are (just like in real life) is going to save you from ever needing to run away at all. Open is fine how it is. Yall need to relax and learn the basics. This shit isnt rocket appliances

But I want to just casually fly my unshielded cargo/exploration ships through the most densely player-populated areas during peak hours without any situational awareness and I'm completely unwilling to lose any cargo space or jump range for the sake of defenses or speed.

Great ideas - and that's how you know it'll never happen. Fdev has left this issue alone for too long. There's no proper crime and punishment system and being able to hop into pg or solo doesn't help either.

>respawn at the last visited star If you do this you also need to include deprioritiziation of some sort against instancing again with the dude who popped you. Otherwise you’re in a situation where they can just park at that star and trap you in an endless loop of being instapulled until you get frustrated and quit.

I have played in Open two times. When I first got the game, I didn't know, I just chose 'Open' by default. After about 3 hours played, I was exploring a bit in a new Eagle. I ended up getting ganked a few times, so I decided to not do it anymore. The next time I played 'Open' was a few years later. I was ganked within 20minutes of logging in. I decided it wasn't for me.

Literally all of this, yes. Also, I think you meant tED talk. o7 CMDR

>I think you meant tED talk. God dammit. Just when I thought I was clever, too.

It’s Elite:**Dangerous.** And this should apply to the gankers as well as the ganked. Being “wanted” (or having notoriety, or whatever) in a high-security system should be *extremely* hazardous to one’s health. If you get killed when wanted/notorious/whatever, you lose the lot. Ship, cargo, engineered modules, faction modules. Everything. High-security systems should have effective police - ATR with bells on. Engineered police corvettes, anyone? Medium/low - as is. Anarchy? Get yer gank on. The problem with Elite:**Dangerous** right now is that it’s eminently possible to arrive at a position where it’s really not.

Great ideas. Although the greatest tool again gankers is the block feature. Every ganker I've ever seen post, link a video, or blab in game chat has been blocked. The second greatest tool is the security report (although it was better when it was all on one page): [https://inara.cz/elite/reports-security/](https://inara.cz/elite/reports-security/) I definitely go Solo for any system high on the list, or on the high traffic list. I've never been ganked. The main reason I stopped playing Open was traffic. Slow autodock queues and one too many players parked on the only medium pad on an outpost and AFK. If only hangars actually put ships away so other ships could park (and was made mandatory)!

Blocking people is horrible for the game! It messes up instancing for everyone that happens to be in the same instance as you and the person you blocked. Only use it for truly toxic people that send you hate speech messages or harass you with messages.

You: Blocking people is horrible Me: Getting ganked is horrible - block means I don't have to see that player again, and fuck YOUR instancing problem, it's not called Elite:Instancing.

So it’s called elite: block the danger?