Ships & Modules

Alright miners, I'm not going to be nice about this. I refuse to sugar-coat what needs to be said. Some of you have NO idea what you're doing. Some time ago I wrote a post on tanking the hulk that bothered to dig into the numbers. I got a lot of positive responses from that, and I like to think that some people became more competent Eve players because of it. Having observed the continuing trend of bad fitting, I thought I'd follow that same approach and help those who would learn. Fair warning: I expect this to be a wall of text.

So the new exhumers came out, and you got ganked again. "But I had a tank!" you say. After looking at dozens of ganked exhumer fits recently, it seems a lot of miners simply don't get it. They've got active shield reps on their highsec miners. There's a fundamental ignorance of how ganks work, the concept of alpha damage, and ship fitting in general.

First, a short explanation of anti-gank tanking. The ganker is relying on their ability to deal massive amounts of damage in a very short time. This is contrary to the DPS-minded missioner and miner. They tend to think "if I can tank XXX dps I'll be fine." They don't understand that no amount of active tank will hold up to the alpha damage being applied.

I'll explain it this way: at MOST, a gank lasts 30 seconds before Concord puts an end to it. A completely untanked Mackinaw has over 14,000 effective hit points (for the totally clueless, EHP factors in damage resistance). That means that the ganker has to apply over 480 DPS just to destroy that untanked mackinaw. Your exhumer doesn't have powergrid to support an active tank that can significantly raise that number. When racing the clock, EHP will always win out.

Now, about your ship.

DO NOT USE THE HULK. yes, I know it gets more yield. Yes, it makes you sad that you can't get that extra 10-15% ore. But the Hulk is the equivalent of the tier 3 battlecruisers: a glass cannon that gives up most of its defense in order to dish out more damage...or in this case, yield. It's not suitable for highsec mining. CCP has plainly stated that it is intended for fleet operations where it can be defended, and you CANNOT proactively defend in highsec.

You want the Mackinaw. If you're saying "But Mr. Clown, that's an ice miner! I want to mine rocks!" then you didn't read the patch notes, you ignored the dev blogs, and you have no idea what changes were made to the Mackinaw. Please slap yourself. You need slapping and I can't do it. Shame on you for not paying enough attention to spend 15 minutes finding out what changed while your launcher downloads a patch. Eve rewards those who pay attention.

So, without further ado, let's talk Mackinaw defense. As I said, the basic Mack has over 14k EHP. This is against purely thermal damage, to which it is most vulnerable (take note, gankers.) Let's raise that. All fitting considerations assume level 5 skills and the use of T2 strip miners.

First off, always use Damage Control II. That module alone pushes you up to 20.8k EHP against thermal, and 21.3k against uniform damage. I'll be using uniform damage from here on so that the numbers better reflect changes to resistances. At this point, our EHP looks like this:

shield: 7.88k
Armor: 5.01k
Hull: 8.44k

The low actual hitpoints for armor means that no amount of resists can impact the numbers enough to be worthwhile.

I looked briefly at adding Reinforced Bulkheads II in the low slots. Filling both slots adds 4.8k EHP. That's a small enough number that I'd consider it optional for maximum tank, but not required. We might even have room for mining laser upgrades when we're done. Either way, both MLUs and Bulkheads have the same fitting requirements.

So, we're down to shields. They're clearly going to be our primary tank; four medium slots with nothing else worth putting into them.

We have 83.9 CPU to play with here. That's a rather small number when each T2 hardener requires 44, and even amplifiers need 30. I've reluctantly dropped one of the MLUs and replaced ith with a Co-Processor II, freeing up 40 CPU and adding 33.8 more. That gives us 170 CPU free.

The low powergrid (only 16.75 available with the lows and highs populated) prevents even medium shield extenders from being fitted without additional modules to support them. So, our goal here is to pile on the best resists we can with four slots. The current resist profile is:

EM: 34.4
Th: 47.5
Kn: 60.6
Ex: 67.2

Without walking through every iteration, here's what I found: with perfect skills, three hardeners will run cap stable at 32.8%. For lower skills, we need to lighten the load on the capacitor and drop one of those hardeners in favor of an amplifier.

There are two soft spots here: the typical EM hole, and the Mack's natural weakness to thermal damage. In addition to the prerequisite dual invulns, I've added an EM Ward Field II (amplifier can be used for cap issues) and a Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II.

So, we have a finalized fit, with two flexible slots. If you have the skills, you can hit 37.3k EHP against its weakest damage type (now kinetic). That would survive three tornado volleys.Bulkheads are still an option, but I don't consider the 2k EHP they yield to be significant.

[Mackinaw, Mackinaw fit]

Damage Control II
Co-Processor II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II
EM Ward Field / Amplifier II

Modulated Strip Miner II
Modulated Strip Miner II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Now, there might be better fits out there, but this wasn't about giving you "the best fit". This was about teaching a miner a new way of thinking about how they fit their ship.

An alternate Mack build to consider

[Mackinaw, Solo Miner]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Internal Force Field Array I

Medium Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Survey Scanner II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

EFT Omni ehp 39,874 so roughly 200 more than Floppie's build, however it has miniscule lower resists concerning therm/kin/exp that don't really matter, but its em resist is lower by 12.9% when compared to floppie's, which will give it lower ehp against EM ammo users. Overall still a good tank but you do gain a Survey scanner.
Just throwing it out there.

Taking into account the really small amount of ISK you need to put into a Mack to make it gankable only for 4+ Cataysts, I think that it is not profittable at all.

Let's add up:

-2 x Invulnerability field II > 3 million ISK for both.
-2 x T2 hardeners > 3 million ISK for both.
-All 4 proposed lowslots > less than 4 million ISK together.
-Strip miners > less than 12 million ISK for both.

Those prices were rounded up quite a bit, and are from Jita.

So, if EVERY SINGLE MOD dropped out of the kill, you would end up with 20-ish millions, and you would have lost 4 x Catalysts with T2 everything.

Essentially, CCP completely killed the profitability of ganking non faction fit (LOL) Mackinaws in high sec, and whoever does it, will not be able to break even no matter how lucky with drops.

Now, of course, there might be organizations and groups that kill Macks for fun despite being a non-profittable activity, but oh well.

Well, they did go on record that ganking a T2-fitted ship was never intended to be profitable.

As for faction-fit Mackinaws: Basically the only faction gear that has any purpose for mack tanking would be the hardeners and amplifiers. The ones that will actually have any impact on your tank cost AT LEAST 20 million. So piling on 2-3 faction mods worth 50+ million isk just makes you a magnet for a gank...and will only require one more destroyer to negate your addtional tank.

Never ever put faction gear on an exhumer. It's not effective, it won't save your ship, it will most likely get you ganked. The only possible reason for fitting such a thing is to troll gankers somehow.

[Mackinaw, tank]

Damage Control II
Co-Processor II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Medium Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Modulated Strip Miner II
Modulated Strip Miner II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I

50k EHP w/ 5% shield capacity implant and T2 shield harmonizing link in Orca.
It's only cap stable with one invul on. Or use Harvester Capacitor Efficiency link.

Or... Replace that overclocking rig (no need for it) with T2 CDFE -> 57k EHP
EHP with T1 CDFEs: 54k

How effective is orbiting a jet can?

It doesn't appear to have any appreciable effect on the tracking of blasters on a Catalyst, but given that the small blasters have a severely short optimal range (2.5km for heavy neutrons IIs, 1.7 for meta4s) and that CPU gets a bit tight for an AB, being on the "wrong" side of the orbit can put a dent in applied DPS.

Anyone have experience/wisdom in that regard?

49k.



True.

57k with T1 rigs.
60,9k with T2 rigs.

[Mackinaw, tank]

Damage Control II
Co-Processor II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Medium Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
EM Ward Field II

Modulated Strip Miner II
Modulated Strip Miner II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

But at this point I would switch to Skiff.

Don't use a jetcan. Anchor a secure can instead. They can flip your jetcan and put you flying in a straight line when them behind you.

It really depends on where you're mining whether that would be sufficient. Also, how determined they are. A single catalyst can apply somewhere around 15,000 damage before concord arrives. Depending on your skills, that build could still be vulnerable to a pair of catalysts.


What's the S stand for?

If someone goes GCC and you're the target, you're already screwed. If you aren't the target, you've got at least 15 minutes before they can engage again.Plenty of time to wrap up your mining cycles, finish your coffee, and take a bathroom break.

Sometimes it's just about the tears... Profitability has nothing to do with it.

On a side note, I was watching a Hound and 4 Catalysts yesterday PK miners in a .5 system. The Hound would pick the target, the Catalysts would warp in and kill the target, the hound would loot and salvage… It appears that they found a way to be profitable.