Recently I was hauling back and forth through our wormhole chain to get loot moved out and fuel moved in. We had a reasonable hisec connection, and there wasn't much activity through the chain(yet). Not to put too fine a point on it, but I was moving about 6 billion ISK worth of loot out of our chain, and about 1 billion ISK worth of fuel and mods into our chain.
Eve being eve, and my luck being my luck, as soon as I started moving, a corp mate called out over comms that there was a Proteus and a legion actively camping in the chain towards hisec. No worries, I thought, I can slip that easily enough. I jumped into the first connection, nothing on the wormhole, D-scan clear. So I aligned to my next point, cloak + MWD, and execute the time-honored tradition of warping with impunity in the face of hard tackle against my hauling ship.
As I landed on the second wormhole, I saw my first obstacle: a Legion sitting on the hole at zero. I went ahead and jumped the wormhole with him. Even if they've got a trap on the other side, I've got tools for that. As I loaded grid on the other side of the wormhole, there sat my Legion friend, joined by a Proteus. No bubbles are on this hole, nor are there any bubbles on D-scan from my out signature, so I'm fine. Cloak + MWD comes into play once again, and I'm free to warp to the hisec connection. At this point, there's nothing they can really do to catch me on this wormhole.
I spent the next thirty minutes or so milling around hisec, offloading loot, picking up supplies, and getting ready to move back through the chain. I know they have a cloaky gang ready for me, and I have no reason to believe they haven't got a sabre moved in by now to back them up. But I have absolutely nothing to fear, thanks to the baffling nature of CCP's recent changes to interdiction nullification and warp core stabilization. So, loaded up with my resupply, I make my way back to the wormhole chain and start moving through.
Now, the gang hunting me are no slouches. They know that there's no point trying to trap me on the hisec hole; I'll just jump back out to hisec and wait for things to cool off. They're set up to catch me deep in the chain. Sure enough, I was greeted with my friend in the legion as soon as I landed on the second wormhole. No worries, I reminded myself, I've got the tools for this. I jumped the wormhole with him, and as I loaded grid I saw the Legion already decloaked, along with the Proteus from before and a fresh interdiction bubble. I should be out of options at this point. But I'm not. All I have to do is utilize my old friend, the cloak + MWD, and hit the interdiction nullification button, and I'm home free. And that's exactly what I did.
It dawned on me later, as I was sitting safely in my POS with a fresh resupply of fuel, that the last 30 minutes of Eve was completely farcical. I want to state here, now, for the record, that those players who were hunting me did everything right, and they still lost. Their sabre pilot made a snap decision to stay on the hole, in case I decided to re-approach and head back to hisec. The Legion pilot and the Proteus pilot had to stay on grid to go for a decloak play and to be able to apply tackle and DPS as soon as they(ideally) successfully decloaked me. Now, they weren't able to decloak my ship, but let's assume they did: because I'm in a DST with a warp core stabilizer fit, they need 5 points of tackle to keep me from warping. The bubble immunity is taken care of thanks to the interdiction nullifier, so I'm gravy unless they're able to bump me out of warp alignment. And thanks to the cloak + MWD trick, they have exactly 2 server ticks to hopefully get a lock on me if they don't get the decloak.
So I'm off the first grid, but I'm not out of trouble just yet. Let's assume the worst case scenario: I get off the first grid, but they have another Sabre set up with a bubble on the out hole. I get through the first bubble just fine, and I'm immune to a bubble on the out hole because I've initiated warp with the nullifier active. They can bubble me on the other side, catch me and I'm toast. Ignoring for a moment the absurdity of needing this much preparation and coordination to catch a single DST, none of that matters. Using the nullification modules(Interdiction Nullifier and Warp Core Stabilizer) does not give any sort of logoff timer. So even if they set up another trap on the out hole, I'm not warping straight to it. I'm warping to a safe, cloaking up, and waiting out my reactivation timers before I move again. And even if my safe is compromised, or I'm being rolled in, or any other scenario is going on. I've managed to escape the trap without a player timer so I can just activate a Border Filament, wait 15 minutes, activate a Proximity Filament, and I'm out of harm's way.
Let's take a quick moment to recap all the tools available to me as a hauler to keep myself safe during a hauling run:
- Interdiction Nullifier
- Warp Core Stabilizer
- Cloak + MWD trick
- Pochven Filaments
Any one of these tools is enough to raise the hackles of would-be pirates, but the individual tools have counterplay to them. Admittedly the Cloak + MWD trick is very difficult to counter compared to the other two, but it can be done. Having all 4 of these available is lunacy. The risk to hauling through New Eden in a DST is practically 0 at this point, and there's absolutely no way this can be healthy for the ecosystem of Eve Online.
I don't want to bring light to a problem without offering a solution, but I'm also not a game designer. With all that being said, There needs to exist some sort of consequence to some of these tools in order to stop the wholesale abuse of them.
Nullification Modules Should Give a Logoff Timer
This doesn't solve the core issues around the interdiction nullification/core stabilization, but it at least gets rid of the immediate jump to Pochven. There's also nothing that says you can't just, y'know, wait out your timer and then jump. Still, it's a start.
Address Cloak + MWD
It's a cry as old as Eve itself, but this mechanic is horrendously broken. The idea that I can just Cloak + MWD and make myself practically impossible to lock before achieving warp--especially during the existence of Interdiction Nullification, is a meta-defining loophole. There's literally zero reason for me as a hauler to focus on tanking my DST at all when I can just escape thanks to lack of foresight by CCP. At a bare minimum, players should be forced to choose between cloaking and being interdiction nullified. This can be fixed by reducing the high slots on a DST to one. It's not a great fix, but it's something.
Remove Built-In Warp Stabilization Bonuses to Subcapitals
I didn't think this needed to be written down, but if the goal of active warp core stabilization is to stop people from getting absurd amounts of warp core stability, maybe a subcapital shouldn't require 5 points of stabilization to tackle. 3 points should be just fine. I think that having a faction scrambler should be enough to hold a ship down; there's nothing more jaw-dropping than having your Republic Fleet Warp Scrambler cycling on a DST and then you lose lock because they just warp anyways.
Buff Surgical Warp Disrupt Probes' Warp Disruption Bonus
The Interdiction Nullification module gives 1 point of bubble immunity. This could easily be resolved by changing Surgical Warp Disrupt Probes to give 2 points of warp disruption. And it would give people a reason to actually use Surgical Warp Disrupt Probes.
Obviously, none of these fixes are the perfect solution to the issue presented. But I'm going to level with you; I'm not even that smart. If I can come up with this, certainly someone at CCP who gets paid to design game systems can figure out a way to bring some danger back to hauling and give pirates a reason to hunt again.
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