High Sec Sucks

The announcement of the new FLEX structures at EVE Vegas (why don't they call it EVEgas?) was good news for me as I intended to add the structures to my structure manufacturing lines. But the actual release date for Onslaught raced up on me faster than I expected and it was Monday morning when I realized that this was the week.

I had done no pre-purchasing of parts, no pre-building of components, nothing. Crap.

Well, better late than never. I planned out my purchases, set the buy orders for minerals, and headed to Jita for the more esoteric planetary parts. On the way back I manually piloted gate to gate always on the lookup for problems... but after I passed Udema I got relaxed and I allowed myself to get distracted for 15 minutes after warping to the Balle gate. I got back to my computer and my heart froze: a Macharial was yellow boxing me and had bumped me 76 km off the gate.

Oh Shit.

I knew I was already fucked but I closed the client anyway and logged in an alt that I zoomed over to Balle. I tried to bump the Mach away from bumping me but it was a lost cause. I watched sadly as another newbie ship suicide ran my freighter to keep the timer going.

The Mach pilot opened up a convo with me and asked for a billion ISK to let it go. "I already have a fleet of catalysts on the way, but you pay me and we'll just gank something in Udema." I said no figuring that paying it would only add to my total loss. There is no trust in EVE.

I made a counter offer. "Let me go and then I'll give you 1 bil."

"That's not how this works," he replied.

It was worth a shot.

Finally 15 minutes later (and 25 minutes after I logged out) the catalyst fleet arrived. The end loss was almost 9 billion ISK, of which 1 billion came out my pocket (for the ship), the rest hitting the bottom line of the corporation.

Later I picked myself back up, got back to Jita, got a new freighter, another load of parts, and even more carefully made my way back to base, ready to kill the client at the first sign of anyone looking at me sideways. I made it back without incident.

High sec sucks.

Thought Experiment: Allowing Capitals to Go To High Sec

Some capital ships can enter high sec, and some cannot. Freighters and Jump Freighters can, Rorquals cannot. Orcas, barely a capital really, can. Carriers and Dreadnoughts and Super Carriers and Titans cannot. Its not a technical reason for disallowing certain capitals, after all they are capable of transversing stargates in null sec and and low sec. Heck, some capitals are gransfathered in from back when capitals were allowed to be manufactured in high sec, the most famous being Chribba's Revelation in Amarr system (Note: these grandfathered caps may NOT be used in any offensive capacity be decree of CCP). Its purely a game design decision at this point.

The Veldnaught in Amarr

However, its worth asking the question if the game has changed enough to remove the restrictions.

Pros

Here's why I think it could be a good reason to allow combat capitals and Rorquals to have access to high sec once more.

1) New Content for High Sec - All those high sec players who refuse to go to low sec or null sec can now explore what having these super large ships is like. It will also give high sec wars another level to escalate to, and new targets for suicide gankers to stalk.

2) More opportunities for new missions / exploration content - With high sec capitals available, the developers can explore new high level missions and exploration sites that are designed around capital gameplay.

3) Interesting logistic questions for low sec / null sec organizations - Allowing capitals to jump into high sec and travel through it could pose some interesting choices for groups. Do they spend the fuel and jump or travel through relatively safe high sec? Then it opens up the question if war declarations to prevent your opponents from using high sec in this manner is useful.

4) Stabilize capital markets - With capitals able to go into high sec, the market would flourish there in relatively safety and prices would stabilize and standardize. 

Cons

1) What do you do about capital manufacturing? - If you allow manufacture of all capitals in high sec, it will destroy the low sec manufacturing industry (including myself) and probably hurt null sec manufacturers. If you don't allow it, why not? It seems just as arbitrary as not allowing capitals into high sec and excludes content from high sec, etc.

2) Escalation of high sec war declarations to capital blobs - I mean, you already have the problem of high skill point and rich players dominating combat in high sec, but allowing capitals would only exacerbate the issue ten fold.

3) Destroys logistical hard choices - Just like allowing jump freighters into high sec massively simplifies a lot of logistical issues, allowing all capitals into high sec could simplify fleet movement for groups.

4) Diminishes regional markets for capitals - Less of a concern but still worth thinking about, maybe we want volatile isolated markets with wildly different prices. Stabilization might be bad for the small time producers (like myself).

* * * * *

Outstanding Questions

1) What do you do about cynos? I mean, if you allow all capitals to jump into high sec, do we still want the cyno prohibition? Or is it outdated?

2) Would the Rorqual make the Orca obsolete for serious mining operations? Do we care?

3) What would 50 titans doomsdaying the momument in Jita look like?

Your thoughts?

Say What?!

Um, come again?

EDIT UPDATE: Hearing it is just a troll now. If its not a troll, I'll have more to say later. If it is, consider me well trolled.