Get Your Tears Out of My Beer

YC114.01.19

So, I was sitting at some lounge last night in-station after taking care of things for SoE, and I hear some clowns at the bar bitching about things:

Blog Banter 32: Non-Consensual Combat Restrictions

"A quick view of the Eve Online forums can always find someone complaining about being suicide ganked, whining about some scam they fell for or other such tears. With the Goons' Ice Interdiction claiming a vast amount of mining ships, there were calls for an "opt out of PvP" option.

Should this happen? Should people be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve Online. Should CONCORD prevent crime rather than just handing out justice after the event? Or do the hi-sec population already have too much protection from the scum and villainy that inhabits the game?"

- Drackarn, Blog Banter 32

The thing that got my attention - obviously - was mention of the Ice Interdiction.  

(The fact that Polix lost at least one ship to it never entered my mind, really!)

(Well ok, once I was done laughing at the thought that Polix lost at least one ship to it, it never entered my mind.)

And this got me thinking about things.  Having spent time in the wormhole with Kiruss and the others, and now returning to K-Space: just how safe do I need my space?  Or rather, how safe do I expect others to keep it for me?

(Full disclosure of course, that Ice Interdiction certainly didn’t harm our wallets here at RECLT!)

But would I have rather that CONCORD prevented the interdiction from even being possible in the first place, and not just meting out justice after the fact?  In all honesty - NO.  

The universe ain’t safe.  

I mean hell, the only ship I lost in the hole was to friendly fire.  Get back to K-Space, do some favors for the folks in Astral, and next thing I know some capsuleers get the drop on us and I’m in my pod, lucky not to be breathing vacuum!

But you know what?  Without Nimes getting popped in the hole, or poor Bruge going up in flames in low-sec - what would be the purpose of RECLT even mining for ore in the first place?

Those whiners sitting at the bar were forgetting the most basic rule in New Eden:  if things don’t burn, there’s no reason to do anything else.

Until the powers-that-be behind CONCORD finally give up the monopoly on allowing capsuleers to produce consumable goods - and more importantly consume those consumable goods - the only thing we have to do is make stuff that serves only two purposes: blowing things up, or preventing things blowing up.

If all the capsuleers are allowed to build is hammers - then dammit, all we’re gonna see is nails!  And quite frankly, if you don’t want to look like a nail, stay in-station and the hell outta your ship!

If you petition CONCORD to turn those hammers to foam, making you all safe-cozy-and-coddled in high-sec...  well, let’s just hope you enjoy stockpiling ores, cause ain’t no-one gonna need them any more.

Sure, things will still burn in low, null, and the holes.  But think about where all of us new grads started out - here, in high-sec.  CONCORD may care for us here, and help us bear the weight of our new lives - making us carebears as it were - but without the ability to learn and experience the harshness of the wider universe in a safe-ish place, how would any of us be properly prepared if we do enter those other areas.

If I’m going to fall, I want there to be a net to soften the blow.  But I need to learn how to fall - and more importantly how not to fall - while that net is there.  Because if I never fall into the net, then I will never learn to stay out of the net.

And I need the net to hurt - because you know what, if the net doesn’t hurt then why would I stay out of it.  A nice cushiony hug with no pain at all teaches me nothing.  But a slap, followed by ice cream to take away some of the sting?  That’s something I can learn from, and the mean ol' pirate getting blasted by CONCORD after the fact will also learn.

Plus, ice cream!