While most of you know Jita is the largest central trading hub in New Eden, you may not know or even understand what goes on outside the station. This is the playground of the pilot looking for the quick easy kill, the pilot looking to gank targets for ISK and the playground of the “suspect baiter.” Assuming you have just undocked from Jita 4-4 there is a high possibility you will see a player on your overview that has a complete yellow background and a flashing yellow skull icon, this pilot is a “suspect.”
For those of you who haven’t played Eve since the suspect changes in the Retribution expansion of December 2012 I will briefly explain how they work:
Before the changes in Retribution, someone who wanted to start a fight legally in empire (high- and low-sec) would either have to be at war with the other person’s corporation or bait with a can jettisoned from their ship. One person would drop a can with an item inside and another pilot would then steal from it. At that point the person who stole from the can could be aggressed by the pilot that owned the can as well as by members of their corporation.
Now, we have a much less convoluted system in which someone that steals from a can will appear yellow to the entirety of Eve (if their overview settings are default) and can be engaged by everyone as they are now a “suspect.” The suspect timer has a 15 minute cool down even while docked and after this expires the pilot is no longer considered legally engageable. You do not lose sec status by becoming a suspect and neither faction police nor Concord will respond, however, so this is infinitely repeatable. Pilots need to beware of cans and wrecks on empire station undocks, stargates, asteroid belts etc.; if they are yellow and you take an item, even a single unit of ammo, from them, you will become a suspect and whoever wants to can then engage you at will, wherever you pilot your ship. However, once someone shoots at a suspect the suspect can then shoot back without Concord interference. This is the key to “suspect baiting.”
This resulted in a phenomenon you will now see at most trade hubs in-game – many “suspect” capsuleers at station undocks. These people are “suspect baiters” using the suspect flag mechanic previously explained to let people shoot them while having logistics on standby to repair them. However this does make the logistics pilots suspect as well, so there is some inherent risk involved. Naive capsuleers sensing an easy kill engage the flashy yellow suspect, who then returns fire. The suspect’s logi ships keep him repped up while the pilot that initially engaged him dies in a ball of flame and tears, leaving behind a wreck with potentially juicy loot for the baiter to scoop. Without a fleet engaging the suspect it is unlikely that he would actually die as once he is in danger he will have multiple logistics undock (usually the more sturdy T2 variety, like Guardians or Basilisks) and start repairing the suspect, or the suspect will de-agress and wait out the 60 second aggression timer so that they can redock.
Every once in a while though an event occurs when a baiter gets careless and begins to ignore their surroundings. Sometimes other pilots may decide ‘enough is enough’ and form a fleet to kill the suspect baiter.
What happened on the 28th of August though saw a Break-A-Wish Foundation fleet kill Mr Antisocial’s Megathron Navy Issue for a staggering amount of ISK lost.
What makes this kill stand out is that the pilot used officer modules (Magnetic Field Stabilizers) which are, usually, used on more expensive and larger ships, such as Titans, or ships used by rich incursion or mission runner pilots.
However Mr Antisocial decided to tempt fate when he used them, knowing all pilots in Eve could theoretically shoot him. Maybe he thought he would be safe as he had logistics on stand-by or thought he would be able to sit out his aggression timer and redock if things got dicey. Unfortunately for him this was not the case and he lost his very expensive Megathron Navy Issue.
To add more insult to injury Mr Antisocial’s capsule was also killed but not before some of his implants had been pulled out to try and lower the cost on the loss mail.
This is not the first time Mr Antisocial has suspect baited in Jita, having lost a dual tank Rattlesnake as well.
While this may not be the last time Mr Antisocial suspect baits outside Jita 4-4, it is highly likely he will think twice before using officer modules in the future.
After speaking with Mr Antisocial (who was actually social and spoke about what happened) it indeed does appear to have been a case of “bait for the baiter.”
Having tried to get a Raven aggressed for around 30 minutes to no avail, Mr Antisocial decided to ship down to a Megathron Navy Issue instead of a Vindicator and in his haste to undock had fitted Cormack’s magstabs to it.
In response to the loss all he had to say afterwards was “Raven was in 50% structure when i died”.
At least his priorities seem to be in order regarding what matters more, a loss or a kill.
