For a short while on most days I log in to EVE Online to complete daily challenges and/or receive daily rewards from the login campaign. Usually that is the end of it because right now I don’t particularly want to play EVE Online but I believe someday I will and will appreciate the 10-15 minutes I spend each day obtaining the rewards on offer. Last Saturday however, as part of completing one of the daily challenges, I found a wormhole which connects the region of EVE I operate from to just 3 jumps away from Jita. This is a relatively rare and interesting opportunity to visit Jita (the main trade hub for EVE Online) and sell salvage and other miscellanies loot that I collected either when completing missions or combat sites. Ordinarily to do this I would need to make a more than 60 jump round trip rather than the 5 or 6 this wormhole gave me.
I loaded up my cargo ship (hauler), an Iteron Mark V with the salvage and loot which had some value and set off to jump through the wormhole and make my way to Jita. One jump away from Jita however I was targeted and destroyed by a player in Perimeter, a high security system with a 1.0 (the highest) security rating. Our corporations were not at war and I had done nothing to make myself a suspect (something which allows others to attack without penalty). The players ship, a Tornado, was therefore destroyed by CONCORD (sort of like the police of EVE Online). Now here’s the rub. I estimate that this players losses cost around 22-25 million ISK (Interstellar Kredits), the main currency of EVE Online. My losses on the other hand were around 250 – 260 million ISK, much of which was completely destroyed. However the player was able to collect what was left from the wreckage (maybe around half) which clearly far outweigh their losses. The player knew destroying me will very likely cover their losses because at some point a second player (or perhaps the same player with a second account) would have scanned my cargo hold without my knowledge by using a passive targeting module. It’s piracy 101 and on this occasion it worked out well for them. For some reason the kill isn’t on zKillboard yet, but here is a screenshot of the kill report.
While I am disappointed I lost this amount of assets, I did learn a few lessons. I now know that even if my pilot has some relatively good skills and even if I invest in relatively good defense modules, a tech 1 hauler such as the Iteron Mark V can be 1 shot and destroyed by 1 player well within the 6 or so seconds a pirate has in high security space before CONCORD shows up. Another lesson is that on reflection I didn’t actually need to use a weak and slow cargo ship, I could have used a battleship which has a significantly smaller cargo hold but on this occasion was probably enough and if it wasn’t I could have done it in 2 trips with added relative safety. Finally I should have trusted my instinct. On the way I noticed the wreck of another cargo ship but decided to risk it anyway. I should have stopped and either turned back or docked up to re evaluate what I was doing.
I should add that this method of piracy is completely legit and it is a sound way of playing the game. I hold no ill will towards the player for choosing to play the game in this way. If anything they add content by reaffirming that nothing is off limits in EVE and if you undock your ship you could potentially lose it. It’s a reminder of the first lesson an EVE Online player should learn. If you can’t afford to lose your ship and/or the cargo or if losing it will truly upset you, don’t undock with it. Having said that, personally, I don’t think I could do what this player does. It’s not that they’re doing anything wrong, but for me the thought that I might upset someone who for some reason hasn’t learnt the first lesson of EVE kind of turns my stomach. I think I would be the worst pirate ever and would more than likely say sorry to my victims and give them back everything I took from them. Which isn’t the point at all.
EDIT: After speaking with other members of the EVE Online community over the weekend, and after further deliberations. It turns out that I am wrong about the losses this pirate incurred. It’s actually closer to 85-90 million ISK lost. Which means this person only gained a very small amount of profit and maybe took a small loss when you take into account taxes. It was a bit of gamble that the right loot wasn’t destroyed as well. Not a very smart pirate.
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