While musing on the number of ganks that occur, Poetic lamented the lack of hard data:
Sure, I’m pulling the gank number out of my ass, but since CCP is never going to give us any numbers, some educated guesswork is required. Considering gankers love to advertise their handiwork, if the number was higher, we’d be seeing a lot more links to killmails, chat logs, and youtube videos.
I don’t believe in waiting for CCP to give us numbers, and decided to scrape EVE-Kill for numbers instead. I picked January, since it was just finishing, and EVE-Kill divide everything up by month.
My approach was pretty straightforward:
First take every hisec kill which features CONCORD, or gate guns, and designate that the potential death of a suicide ganker.
Second, look at every kill by one of those potential suicide gankers, and designate each that occurred within a minute of the gankers death as a piece of ganking.
Third, scrape the kill report for each gank for further data.
Limitations? Well, the big one is that if no player damaged the suicide ganker, it’s very unlikely a lossmail will be posted. Thus, the gank goes unrecorded. I think that’s a pretty crippling flaw if we’re talking about analyzing every gank – but it means we ought to be seeing over-reporting of things like baiting new players, and killing of AFK miners (who will, after all, use drone set active).
So that gave me, for the month of January, a total of 1753 kills that were probably suicide ganks.
Let’s see what they can tell us…
570 of those kills were capsules. We can mostly dismiss those as being part of other ganks, but looking at the value: 159 were totally empty, but 20 were worth over a billion, and a further 150 were worth over 100 million. Pods were almost always destroyed by a single destroyer (no great surprise – you need an instalocker), with the exception of a few taken out by smartbombing battleships. Total value of destroyed pods: 76 billion. I’m disregarding pods for the rest of the analysis, because they are generally both a crap shoot, and an afterthought.
Now, how about ganking random ships for their cargo?
I see 22 covops frigates killed, mostly in Aufay, plus a few in Niarja. The average loss was just over 100m, and the average drop was about 50m. I reckon 8 were being used as couriers, and another 7 or so had fittings worth the investment.
I see 4 Assault Frigates, one Electronic Attack Ship, eleven Interceptors, destroyed, about half look to have been used as couriers.
9 shuttles and 12 noobships destroyed. 5 and 3 used being used as couriers. 8 of the 35 other frigates were probably ganked couriers as well (again, all this stuff is either in Aufay, or around trade hubs). Three of the four Christmas frigates were probably killed for novelty value, but the fourth was fitted as a courier.
A total of 70 industrials show up, with the ganks really starting to kick in at about 80-90m total value. A total of 14 billion was dropped from t1 industrials. Locations are familiar: Aufay, Niarja, trade hubs.
How about Blockade Runners? Are people buying lottery tickets or not? A total of 28 destroyed, split between Aufay, Niarja and Jita. The average payout: A mere 31m. Looks like they might not be worth the trouble. (All the ones in Jita seem to be the work of the same chap, in a Tornado each time. I’m pretty sure he made a substantial loss).
I only have 4 Freighters destroyed, and the odd thing is that three of them were empty. One profitable gank of an Orca, though – looks like it only cost them 9 Thoraxes to kill it, so 0.8 billion in cargo wasn’t safe.
Destroyers. I have 22 destroyed, of which two were couriers (one carrying a PLEX (which dropped)). Many of the rest look like they might be mixed up in either New Order crossfire (what else to do while waiting for CONCORD to show up?) or possibly counter-ganking.
How about mission ships? I see 5 shiny fit Raven Navy Issues and a Rattlesnake killed, for an average haul of 600m each – in mission areas. Also 5 Tengus, in the usual Osmon, Aufay, Niarja pipes, with relatively poor drops, at around 300m each. Finally, 2 Golems, dropping 350m each.
3 Recon Ships, A Command Ship, a dozen cheap fit Battlecruisers round out the list. Not much to say about them. Ten more Battleships damaged each other with smartbombs. We’ll consider them gankers, not victims.
So, I make that about 130 ships killed for their cargo, plus 20-30 killed for the value of their fittings. Out of 1200 kills. Although… I’m sure I’m forgetting something…
Oh. Mining ships.
Yeah, there were a couple. 58 Covetors, 142 Hulks, 312 Mackinaws, 386 Retrievers, 3 Orcas (plus that one used for transport mentioned above), 14 Ventures. Total of 915.
Total destruction, 121 billion. Total drops, 9 billion. 7 of them had crazily shiny fits (5.5b value, 1.2b drops) – the rest just add up.
The perpetrators, with the notable exception of a couple of groups of smartbombing battleships, were mostly destroyers, with the predictable huge bias towards Catalysts, and the remainder being almost exclusively Thrashers.
Interestingly, there is quite a wide variety of systems covered, despite a high-profile focus on just a few of them:
- 36 Piekura
- 31 Chelien
- 30 Nakugard
- 30 Deninard
- 27 Faurent
- 25 Oppold
- 25 Misneden
- 23 Balle
- 22 Hek
- 20 Pulin
- 19 Tolle
- 16 Otela
- 16 Carirgnottin
- 15 Ikami
- 14 Teonusude
- 13 Reisen
- 13 Gamis
- 13 Brapelille
- 12 Nonni
- 12 Eitu
- …
The choice of sec status is perhaps unsurprising:
- 545 – 0.5
- 198 – 0.6
- 154 – 0.7
- 3 – 0.8
And it’s interesting to note that of the affected pilots, only 30 were caught twice, and just one three times. Repeated harassment of a single player seems not to be happening.
In terms of target corps, there is only one player corporation that features heavily, and that is the result of a single instance of battleship smartbombing, not a campaign of destroyer ganks.
Oh, and for those wondering, the New Order show up in name in 180 of the 915 miner ganks covered. Currin Trading in 38 and Botslayer Goblin in 27.
Food for thought, I hope.
