Ship Cripple on Death

[Blodo]

There are some serious fallacies in the argument that "Sina manages to find escorts". First of all it's the worst example, considering that Sina spent some 4 years on and off this community, and the groups that he flies with are not "his groups", they are simply a bunch of people who are of similar skill and hang out in connecticut at most times. Now the problem with your argument is that while NO it is not that hard to find escorts if you get on peak times (though in the case of Varyag it is, you try and log on the Durango and find escorts at 3 to 4 am european time and even in Liberty you will be hard pressed, but this isn't the core of my argument). The main issue is finding escorts that count. Which pretty much makes the only effective group of escorts being... well the best players on the server which are mostly europeans. While a battleship with escorts is one thing, a cruiser with escorts is completely another and the escorts either need very specific tactics (which newbies have no idea about) or exquisite skill to kill enemy bombers as fast as is necessary so that the cruiser survives. In this case escorts aren't the be all and end all.

The other thing is that this will encourage massing of players, as you outlined. This massing will include piles of capital ships more often than not. I mean, what is the best way to not die while attacking? Go to enemy territory, camp their base and rape the ever living hell out of anything that undocks before they can actually get their group together. This will create a flood of cries, sanction reports, drama and hate as usual. The vaunted "fair play" of this server will go away in favour of "i'm not going to let you kill me, especially not in a fair fight". And it won't just be a problem with capitals. Everyone knows how groups like indians mass vhfs, and although they pretty much universally suck if faced against even a smaller group of people who know what they are doing, they can still get whole groups to just give up when they see the indians in their system every 4 hours all the time, every day. Now imagine them massing vhfs but instead of actually taking people head on just like that, they are encouraged to mass together with indies so that they can kill more of the enemy while having a screen to run away so they don't die and lose money.

And lets not forget grief killing. "I kill you so you lose money" is going to be so prevalent. More so even than "I kill you so I get blue message" that is nowadays.

So you must think about what you want: fair play or realism? The two do not go hand in hand and never will, especially not on this server.