EVE's 'Orca' mining vessel facilitates suicide ganks against miners

Among the changes to EVE Online introduced with the Quantum Rise expansion is a new class of ship, the 'Orca' industrial command ship.The ship is intended to be a major asset to mining operations in New Eden, but it's a flexible ship -- and this writer has been waiting to see what clever uses players will have for it. It looks like that day has come... The Orca's substantial cargo capacity, a ship maintenance bay, and corp hangar have made it an ideal base of operations for criminals operating in highsec, with an aim to suicide gank T2 mining ships. In other words, use fully insurable Tech I ships to gank specialized, expensive, and largely uninsurable Tech II ships.

Suicide ganking is nothing new, but one of the major changes CCP Games put into place to dissuade players from committing highsec suicide ganks was to substantially increase the security status penalties players are hit with when committing aggressive acts in high security (Empire) space. But no matter how low one's security status drops, all players can move about in highsec in their ship's capsule. It's only when a criminal enters a ship in highsec space that CONCORD takes action. That is where the Orca comes in. Criminals can board new ships housed within the Orca at a safespot and then warp in on their victims en masse, in multiple waves of suicide ganks. When their suicide gank ships are blasted apart by CONCORD, they can fly in their pods back to the Orca and gear up for the next wave.

EVE Online player Thoren Gregson recently posted about "-10 sec pirates plundering in Empire" on the official game forums, which has sparked quite a bit of discussion. It took him a little while to figure out how it was being done, but eventually he scanned his aggressors down and watched from a covert ops ship while cloaked. What he saw was a rather devious use of a ship designed for miners being used against miners. In effect, these (as yet unnamed) pilots quite likely pioneered the Orca's use as a mobile base of operations for guerilla warfare, assuming this doesn't get nerfed by CCP Games.

So then, is this a situation where player ingenuity leads to finding new uses for a versatile ship -- or is it an exploit? CCP Games hasn't weighed in with a decision on this yet. So until then, you decide.