EVE: Punching Thieves

So I was poking around a few belts in a 0.5 sec system in EVE last night, killing off NPC pirates (rats), and salvaging and looting as I went. And this guy showed up, fairly legitimately salvaging wrecks that other people had left lying around, and then going after my wrecks. Now, him salvaging my wrecks is annoying, but allowed - salvage, it's felt, is not loot. It was when he started lifting my loot as well that I got annoyed.

There's an automatic aggression flag that goes on when you steal loot from someone else (or anything at all from a can they've jettisoned). So having checked with some more knowledgeable players that Concord would not come and beat on me, I locked my sights on him as a warning. He popped another wreck. He was flying what looked like a Vexor, a good cruiser-class drone ship. However, I'm aware that the T2 Ishtar-class looks very much the same, so I took a good look at the information before going any further. But no, he was definitely there, in a T1 cruiser, popping wrecks under the nose of a Myrmidon battlecruiser. I was starting to suspect a trap, but on the other hand, he was still taking my stuff.

So I sent my drones in on him, and opened fire with four assorted railguns and autocannons. He sent up a few drones to attack me, and I kept pounding. By the time he decided that he'd had enough, I had melted off his shields and half his armour, and he had done a very small amount of damage to my shields. He warped off, and as far as I could see from local, left the system. No reprisals, no convos, nothing.

I'm a bit mystified by it. I mean, there are automatic warnings and things when you swipe someone else's loot, and you'd have to be pretty dim to think that anyone would let you away with stealing loot like that. It looked very much like provocative behaviour - and yet, no followup. If I'd had a warp scrambler of any sort fitted - and I'm starting to consider it, for my ratting loadout - he would have been toast. Maybe he just thought I couldn't shoot him in Empire space?

Posted by Drew Shiel at December 10, 2007 12:22 PM

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Not knowing EVE - is it at all possible it was a bot?

Posted by: davew at December 10, 2007 1:39 PM

Bots in EVE usually stick to safe pursuits like mining; the whole getting blown out of space repeatedly thing would cramp the style of a loot-thieving script. Can't say for sure, of course...

Posted by: Drew Shiel at December 10, 2007 4:10 PM

It's a relatively common low-level pirating practice, flipping cans. At the worst you get the loot and maybe told off in local, and at best you get a small-scale fight in supposedly save Empire space.

A lot of the time people who are mining/ratting aren't fitted for PVP whereas the would-be pirate is more than ready for it.

Posted by: Tink at December 10, 2007 4:46 PM

Swipe enough loot and the warning goes away. The players was probably bored or completely ignorant. Did you warn him yourself? A Vexor isn't a huge loss if it's insured, and most Myrmidon ratting builds don't have warp scramblers. Risky, but EVE is all about risk. :)

Posted by: Krones at December 10, 2007 6:10 PM

It's possible that he'd been stealing loot for a while and turned off the warning. Or that he simply thought that since you're ratting, you wouldn't want to fight him.

You should definitely fit a warp scrambler if you have the space. If you blow a loot thief instead of just scare them away with a few shots, they're less likely to try and steal loot from you again.

Posted by: Godlesswanderer at January 11, 2008 5:16 PM

so, its a bot??

Posted by: diablo 2 cd keys at March 11, 2008 7:09 AM