Monday, May 7, 2012

Unintended Consequences

Once upon a time, traders plied the spacelanes, hauling goods across the expanse of space to net a profit.

In the olden days, these traders had to utilize freighters or industrials to haul their goods across dozens of systems. Then, the empires developed the Jump Freighter.

A massive vessel with over 300,000m3 of storage, the Jump Freighter is able to both navigate standard stargates and jump to a cynosural beacon. And in that instant, losec died.

This is not a clarion call for the end of the Jump Freighter, because it has a purpose, in fact much of nullsec in EVE would not exist as it does, without the Jump Freighter. This is a thought, about the rule of unintended consequences. I believe the idea was to improve logistics to deep nullsec. After all, even on a good day, it's fairly difficult to get to Stain, or the deep drone regions. And that is with a Jump Freighter.

But the unintended side effect of the jump freighter may have been the death knell for true losec piracy. After all, it's not profitable to hunt the spacelanes between regions when there are no industrials (or freighters) traveling them. And so, as I found in a trip out to Solitude this weekend, the once-busy losec routes are, sadly, desolate and barren. But the station systems on common jump routes are filled with cyno alts, awaiting their moment to undock in a frigate, pop the cyno, and sit for 10 minutes, waiting to either dock (or if they are lucky, get shot).

And so piracy in New Eden is but a ghostly shell of its former self.


3 comments:

  1. "A massive vessel capable not only of holding millions of m3 of goods, the Jump Freighter is able to both navigate standard stargates and jump to a cynosural beacon. "

    Actually, jump freighters hold in the 350K m3 of good, about one third what a regular freighter holds.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fixed it. I guess poetic license can go a bit far. However, the point is still accurate. 350m3 of goods is 10x greater than a fully fit Itty V.

      Delete
  2. I agree you used to get fleets of bs escorting freighters into lowsec, now you have cynos to shoot :(

    Slim picking for us lowsec scrubs, unless ofc you join 1 of the larger lowsec alliances/corps, gone are the big kills for small gangs, and I find that sad

    ReplyDelete