A few weeks ago I happened to notice that I was about 17 or so pods away from hitting the 2,000 mark on exploded capsules. As I've stated in these pages many times, we find inspiration and goals wherever we can. To my credit I didn't change anything about how I deal with pod death during the following weeks. I have my own set of personal reasons why I either pod someone or not.
My rules are pretty simple. If you give me a good fight I won't pod you, I may yellow box your pod in order to encourage you to save it. The exception to that rule is the courtesy express, if you ask to be podded home afterwards I'm happy to assist. The ones that really get my goat are the pods that just sit there afterwards. If I'm not in a hurry I will try to tell the person in local to "get their pod out", sometimes I'll even give them the warning of a countdown in local. If they continue to not move, then they have no excuses left. Boom! All of which is extremely subject to change without notice - this is war after all. There are times when podding needs to happen quickly due to other circumstances and I make no apologies for those.
Goodness knows if I was a ruthless bastard I could probably have three times as many pods on my kill-board. But that has never been my style. I hate getting podded and try to avoid it at all costs. Except for our null sec adventures, then it is often a choice to get home faster. I even self-destruct my pod just to get home faster. Null Sec is certainly where I lose most of my own pods, either in a bubble or on purpose. In Low Sec I tend to average 2-3 pod losses a year, which isn't bad. It is certainly much, much better than the old days before the native Mac client came along. Back then getting podded after a fight was much more common because of the horrible server tick that our Macs were subject to. These days I just have to deal with the normal USTZ server tick delays.
From a statistical standpoint that is an average of 11 pods killed each month over 15 years, which doesn't sound very bloodthirsty. And an average of 1 pod lost per month over the same time frame. Which makes sense, since I've exploded 10x the number of pods that I've lost.
Removing a pod from the battlefield serves a purpose. But overall I'm not out in space looking to pod players. I try to be as equitable about it as I can be under the circumstances.
I am the Pirate Lord after all.