Ecliptic Rift

It wasn't me!

Despite what Egonics and their ilk will tell us, copying music isn’t piracy. Doing violence against somebody’s ship to gain something from their cargo or passengers, though, definitely qualifies. And pilots can make a bit of ISK engaging in piracy, even in “high security space”.

So while CONCORD provides consequences., pilots have to provide their own safety. They can do so generally through tactical awareness, battlefield intelligence, and good flying. For example, let’s say a mining barge, such as a Retriever, sits calmly in a belt in 0.5 security space, mutilating rocks for commercial gain. Perhaps the local non-pod craft pirates (NPC rats) might harass them a little, but they keep a few combat drones deployed just to deal with the pesky little frigates. (That NPC pilot provides a great example of somebody with poor tactical awareness.) The Retriever doesn’t have much in the way of defensive equipment because the pilot doesn’t intend to get into any fights.

Now, a podder ship warps into the belt, maybe in a combat cruiser like a Rupture, and burns toward their ship. It could have arrived just to take out the rats and get the CONCORD bounty, but that assumption doesn’t actually protect the barge very much. Suddenly, the cruiser bumps the barge off of a possible alignment to a celestial, locks it, and opens fire.

CONCORD takes a few seconds to warp to the belt. During that time, the Rupture can get off four or five rounds from each of four autocannons, maybe a few heavy assault missile salvos, all enhanced by target painters. The Retriever will have exploded before CONCORD arrives, and the destruction of that pirate ship won’t console the victim very much. The pirate warps away from both wrecks in his pod.

Then it gets worse: another ship warps in and loots the wrecks. Oddly enough, those wrecks don’t belong to the victim pilot, but to the pirate. Now the victim, who might have swapped to a combat ship like a Rifter, or maybe a friend of said victim, open fire on this third ship out of frustration. Bad idea, because CONCORD enforces the law without favoritism or empathy. The victim of the first engagement has now broken the law and they will warp in before methodically scramming, jamming, and blamming. And the third ship gets away with the loot, for which the market will generally pay a decent amount if that Retriever had nice equipment on it. The Rupture pilot, who would have insured the ship that CONCORD destroyed, also probably used cheap “meta level 0″ equipment and not lost very much ISK. In fact, it could well be that the equipment from the Retriever easily pays the remainder of the replacement of the pirate’s ship.

Not that this happened in Nakugard tonight with any of my associates. Or Hek. (Or Uttindar, but that incident can get left out of this discussion…) No, I just think that pilots should understand how all this works.

Image credit Dyanna

Related posts:

1. Piracy of one sort or another
2. The Essence of Piracy
3. Notes from 111.02.14-15