Yesterday I'm flying around minding my own business when I see a desktop pop-up notification from zKill telling me I just lost a Caracal. Thing is I'm flying a Comet. So I dock up and take a look and sure enough there is a loss mail, a solo loss mail, for me in a Caracal. A 38 point solo loss in a Wormhole. Thing is, Rixx hasn't been inside of a Wormhole recently. So this is strange.
Ok, let's back up. Earlier yesterday one of my alts was in a Wormhole. This alt is my positive sec status character that I keep around mostly to do tasks for me that require having a positive sec status. Like traveling through HS to a WH entrance and helping to defend our wormhole from attackers. Which is what he was doing yesterday. Our Alliance's Astrahaus was under attack and we were defending it. Rixx himself was safely back in low security space. We fought as well as we could under the circumstances and got some solid kills, but in the end we simply ran out of options and lost the Astra. Nothing wrong with any of this and it happens.
The folks in Lucifer's Hammer tried to clear out the assets from the structure beforehand. But this Astra has been up and running for a very, very long time. Maybe eight years or so? I don't know exactly, but it has been there a long time. Because of that there is a tremendous amount of stuff being held in personal hangers. And all that stuff dropped when the structure exploded. Again, nothing unusual here. The fact that this stuff turned into 7 pages of ship losses on the Alliance killboard - specifically one Caracal on MY killboard - is where the problem lies.
Again, I have nothing against people blowing up structures and getting a nice fat Loot Pinata for it. To the victor go the spoils. My question is this - should a Caracal that has been sitting in Rixx's hanger for three years or more count as a solo loss when someone decides to eject it and shoot it three years later?
I think we can all agree this is rather dumb.
It's a bad mechanic. I didn't lose a fight. I never faced this person in space. They are welcome to steal it, load it up on a ship and take it, sell it on the open market, give it away for free, mock it openly on the forums, or explode it. Fine. But it shouldn't count against me. I didn't lose a Caracal yesterday. A Caracal I didn't know I had was exploded without me present.
This put me in a truly foul mood. Not only the loss of the structure and the seven pages of red suddenly showing up on our Alliance killboard - but the idea that you can be dinged for something as obviously flawed as this. Obviously a horrible, broken mechanic.
And yes, I know this isn't news. I know this isn't new. It just hit home for me yesterday.
When loot drops from a ship that has been killed it becomes loot. If I shoot that loot the person who owned the ship doesn't get a loss mail for the wreck. That would be dumb. When loot drops from a structure it should become loot. End of story. That loot should no longer be connected to the previous owners, except as loot. Like any other loot in the game. Same rules.
End of story.
"Stop The Drop" or "Scoop The Poop!" I'm still thinking about a catchy title for the campaign to get this fixed. I guess I'll have to write letters, annoy Devs, hand out stickers, and cause a fuss around the community to drum up support for this effort. Or, you know, we could just get it taken care of.
Right?