Crimewatch, Remote Repair and Small Gangs

Looking at the new crime watch proposals, something caught my eye. It is currently proposed that the act of remote repairing a target will create chain inheritance of aggression timers, preventing the logistics ship from docking in stations or jumping through stargates.

There are immense implications to consider for small gang warfare, but the long and the short of it is that any force utilizing remote repair tactics which finds itself over-escalated, be it from jumping into a much larger enemy force, being at the wrong end of a log-on trap, being hot-dropped by capitals and black ops or bridged on by Titans, will be hard pressed to de-escalate without losing every single logistics ship brought onto the field.

In the current state of game balance, it is simply not possible for a logistics ship to rely on a local tank; by design, they are meant to rely on their fellow logistics ships for tanking. However, inherited aggression timers will remove any ability for logistics ships to perform their function without constantly renewing their aggression timers. As a member of a small pirate organization, it is very, very common for me and my corpmates to find ourselves jumped upon by a numerically and tactically superior force once an engagement has begun; being able to accomplish anything with that small gang is completely dependent on the ability of a logistics gang to disengage. This change to mechanics will turn any escalation by one side into a turkey shoot against the smaller group of players.

The currently proposed Crimewatch mechanics would devastate the ability for smaller organizations to engage in PVP while adding further incentives for blobbing. Forcing logistics pilots to be the most committed of all the pilots in a fleet is not a good change for the game. While station games are terrible, removing the ability of small gangs to skirmish with larger fleets would be far worse.