First of all. I do not like extortion in the form of warring then demanding a payment.
I believe that's a very unfair kind of gameplay cause the victim has no chance to avoid it if the corp's poor.
This kind of extortion is volunterely. The corp can avoid attacks, but it may still be worth for the corp to pay up for safety to do business. Usually they'll be able to mine quite easily without having to worry about pirates anymore. The reason being that pirates who control certain sectors of space usually dont like other pirates intruding on their turf.
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So you frequent some systems and you think your corp is mean?
Why not make an extra buck without actually shooting stuff!
Either you can find an undefended POS and shoot at it with a couple of battleships. Mail the CEO of the corp owning the tower and ask for a ransom.
Or you can ask for a weekly "safety"-tax. Which basicly means a corp or invidual wont risk getting chased around in belts anymore.
A good price to ask for is 1mill per member of a corp or 5mill isk per invidual on a weekly basis.
Each corp should set at least +3 standing to your corp and you should return the standing for the duration of the contract.
Manage to find a couple of corporations that will pay up, your corp will get in quite a lot of isk without having to do much work except keeping the belts clear from other pirates and miner operations disturbing you and your customers.
The downsides may be that you wont be able to ransom that megathron or apoc. The hauler which moves toward a gate isnt open pray anymore and so on. But if you do this kind of business, then you should NEVER break the contract.
Of course, if they attack you they are open season again. *smirk*
3 Comments
Yes...
I have seen this happening more and more in empire space. Alot of merc corps are war decing miner operations which don't have any money to pay up, let alone hire another merc corp to defend them.
It is quite sad, as one merc corp war dec'ed a 38 member corp and took the corp down to 7 members in 2 weeks. They had no cash to pay them, or to hire anyone to defend. A few of these people quit eve all togeathor. :(
Part of the reason why I became a pirate is because of an extortion toward the mining corp I was in. The corp fell apart (reformed as another corp) and I was invited to become a pirate by one of the piratecorps in the area. Ill tell the whole story one day :) it involves the pirates Ifni, Nilkarus, the mercenaries from Gentlemen Scoundrels and many more!
So extortion CAN work in eve... I was wondering back when I was planning on making my own la Cosa Nostra-esque operations in Alparena. But never actually figured out what would work and how it would be reasonable. Thanks for writing this article...