How to stop Freighter Ganking the right way!

You probably read this article (as well as another article entitled "Should Freighter Ganking be Nerfed") a few days ago, I'd like to offer one critique and a couple techniques for how to reduce your hi-sec ganking risk. None of these are foolproof but they are techniques that you can / should try in your attempt to get your ships home to their destination. Let me say, some of these are a little "wonky" in terms of game mechanics and one of my gripes with CCP is that the counters for certain strategies are sometimes buried in an esoteric understanding of multiple game mechanics.

Various Strategies for minimizing ganking risk:

1) Transparency when you're traveling with cheap stuff. Obscurity when traveling with expensive stuff: Double wrapped secure containers can't be scanned for content. You want to make the potential gankers have EASY decisions when you're not worth ganking and HARD decisions when you are worth ganking. So don't double wrap your containers if you're just carrying a truck load of Tritanium or T1 ships around. On the other hand, make the stuff as hard to scan as possible when you're carrying a freighter load of implants (although, I'd question why you're not using an insta-warping interceptor for such an expensive transfer). Granted, if everyone did this, it would actually make the ganker's decisions fairly easy (gank the guy with the double wrapped, let everyone else go) but I doubt there will ever come a time when everyone will do this relatively simple step (sad little carebears ;)

2) Bait ships: Industrial ships can be ganked fairly easily. I'm seriously considering sending a T1 tanked Iteron back and forth through Uedama just to see what might happen. Buy some secure containers, tank it with some shield extenders and put overdrives and nano's in the low slots. Double wrap the stuff with names like "implants", "tech", "officer mods" etc and see if you can get someone to pop your ship. You lose about $4mil in isk. They lose a couple $100mil in isk. It'd be nice if hi-sec carebears could finally inflict some tears of their own.

For the next three, it's important to understand how the ganking occurs. The gank squad does not bring overwhelming firepower because if they did, every ship that engaged would die horribly to Concord thus driving up costs. The hypothetical "perfect" gank is where your last ship with it's last shot pops the freighter mere moments before getting blasted by Concord. Now in practice, there's a desire to have a little bit of leeway and they probably have a couple extra DPS ships that they can "add in" to the gank should they get close but fail to pop the freighter. But the broad point to keep in mind is that they don't just have infinite DPS to do infinite damage with.

3) Remote Repping: Having a ship follow behind and rep you can completely throw off the math of the potential gankers. A logistics ship can single handedly rep a freighter outside of most profitable gank ranges. Sure, if they've got an extra 20 people, they notice the logistic ship, AND the freighter is sufficiently valuabel, they might still win. But that's a lot of "ifs".

4) Fleet Boosters: A wingman in a T3 booster cruiser or command ship can likewise throw the math way off. Reduced signature size isn't worth it because you are gonna get hit for max damage by whatever they've got. But the tanking skills (both shield and armor) can significantly throw off their math. This is a nice one because they're unlikely to see it coming. T3 cruisers run through hi-sec all the time. No one knows their shapes by heart and even if they did, they wouldn't necessarily think you're with the freighter.

5) Instawebbing: This is one that requires an understanding of the system bordering on the insane. For a ship to warp, there are two necessary components. It's velocity must be 75% of its max and it must be in the direction (with some tolerance for "close enough") of the target. By packing 2-3 webbers on a ship and instawebbing a freighter, you can actually make their warp QUICKER because they'll more quickly hit that magic 75%. Do it right, and you can very nearly instawarp after de-cloaking and getting the lock. This may mean that they don't have their full-time on target or it may mean they don't even get a chance to START ganking you.

So there are numerous ways to reduce your risk in hi-sec. People just need to do them and sites like this need to spread them. The gankers will find a new way to pop the freighters, and the freighters will respond.

One Gripe: Now I get to my one gripe about current ganking. I don't like bumping. There was a time when bumping was needed as it was the only way to tackle a Titan and thus the only way to actually kill a Titan. Now, however, bumping serves no legitimate game play purpose other than to make ganking of non-afk freighters possible (afk freighters can fairly easily be taken out in the 12.5km before they hit the gate). But that's not the reason to eliminate it. The reason to eliminate it is that it's a purely grief mechanic. It's the very definition of a grief mechanic. It has absolutely ZERO repercussions for the bumper and there's virtually NOTHING that the bumpee can do about it. What are your options if you're getting bumped by someone? Your short term options are limited to shooting him. That solution stinks. To stop a bumper, I have to incur the wrath of Concord, I'll probably fail to kill him before Concord kills me, and, even if I kill the bumper, I am likely to lose a heckuvalot more in isk than the bumper does.

On the other hand, your long-term options are very nearly as bad. The bumper is probably in an NPC corp but even if he's not, war-deccing to kill a single player is expensive, slow and easily avoided by the target just dropping out of the corp. I suppose I could also try to use the ridiculously bad bounty system in place but that's badly exploitable by the target (this MIGHT get better with the upcoming changes but somehow I doubt it).

I would think gankers of all people would understand the concept that actions with no repercussions are bad and that no one should be safe in hi-sec. Flying a factory issue stabber and ramming things is something that you could probably do from now until the servers shut down without ever getting popped.

So bumping is something that needs to be looked at. But let me say, I think it should be replaced not removed. There's still something needed for slowing down hi-sec freighters. It just should be something that results in a Concord response. A hi-sec, small interdiction sphere perhaps? Hi-Sec freighter ganking is fine (and I'd argue healthy). Fly smart.