Security Status for PewPew

No matter how cool an idea is, it is first faced with the hurdle of making sense. Often ideas are proposed and the first reaction of the listener is to rattle off a dozen exploits without even blinking. That does not stop an idea from being cool but it does make it very clear that cool ideas and good ideas and bad ideas can all share the same moment in reality without shattering space time.

Tags4Sec has excited my sector of space. The discussions are swirling in all directions but in general we are waiting. Waiting to see what the spawns will be like. That will truly tell us the viability of it before anything else does.

But, inside of the speculation a common question pops up, "shooting each other for sec gain". It is an oft requested problem and it did come up at fanfest. The issue is not that it is not a good idea. The issue is that it is a highly abusable idea.

Enter our friendly neighborhood ex-anti-pirate - now fully pirate, Altaen:

"If they could somehow tie the sec-gain to the value of the kill, similar to FW LP gains and normal bounty payouts it'd be totally doable. So long as they make the value of kills needed to go from -10 to zero significantly more expensive than the tag process, it'd be balanced."

In Faction Warfare, killing someone on the opposite side nets the person a loyalty point gain. This was abused terribly last year after the faction warfare buffs. However, it was nuked down to something reasonable  It means that this mechanics of decision making is already in the game. If it was applied to security status, would it provide a reasonable way for the gain to be made? The value of kill dictating the amount of reward bacon has already proven successful in areas such as Faction Warfare and Bounties.

Enter Sard Caid, resident solo PvPer who live streams and such things:

"I'd argue that sec gain should be equivalent for players from -5.0 to -10.0, and should be dependent on the value of the kill alone.  An outlaw's an outlaw, and I don't feel like there should be a difference killing a -5.0 sec status rifter jock versus a -10.0 sec status rifter jock.

Also, they don't have to make sec gain from outlaws huge - if you made it equivalent to a faction rat, it's like killing 2 normal spawns of that size at once.  Scale gain similar to that with an appropriate value of the kill and sec for outlaw kills is good to go."

I got all excited at these good ideas. They seemed good to me. I certainly couldn't come up with something like that.  I asked if they minded if I dragged it out of the forums and shared it and I was told okay.

Sard did raise another good point. It is a valid question.

"Why the fuck would people want security status for fighting outlaws?  As a generalist lowsec PvPer I wouldn't complain about the effect as it helps keep my sec status up, but from the viewpoint of an anti-pirate it's really not much of a reward."

Altaen was there to the rescue as Mr. I killed all things that were pirate and kinda pirate and had p's in their name:

"Well, from the (former) anti-pirate perspective, it is pretty annoying having your sec-status tank every week from killing non-outlaw pirates and having to spend hours ratting it up so you can get safely to and from market and help your alliance during wars, etc.

But from that same perspective, there are WAAAY more non-outlaw targets around than outlaw targets, so I imagine it wouldn't help much."

That was an interesting point. The idea has a greater cool and 'this makes sense' factor then a usability factor. But, when it comes to features, what matters the most? Many groups have a policy to only shoot reds (outlaw meaning -5 or lower sec) and those that first complete the aggressive action. They do not lose security status for this. However, if they also gained some security status it might not be a bad thing. Many, many people enter the game wanting to be the vigilantly good guy. They are often swiftly corrupted to the sweetness of the other side...s

The loss of security status is a major inhibitor to many people. It absolutely confuses me. Security status, in my part of the world is something that you lose and gain. It causes inconvenience (high sec restrictions) and it causes some annoyances (gateguns don't care that you are being attacked) but it is not an inhibitor. But I will write about the good and evil conceptual attitudes in another post. This one is just for this idea.

Also, I learned that Altaen kills everything.  Also, also, the best blog post is the one other people wrote!