Crime & Punishment

Can that countercat griffin fit a tractor beam and a salvager in it's highs and still be viable? If so it would serve a dual purpose ship IMO... not only can you c*ckblock the gank, but you can scoop the loot after the fact. Just sayin... I'm not a ganker, but I'm gank-curious. Plus whiskey has a way of makin me wanna see things explode. Tangenting, sorry.... I like the fit and the idea quite a bit, partly because I'm quite enjoying the "emergent gameplay" that's been evolving as a result of this ganking phenomena. As an added plus it gives a purpose to ships that all too often are not used in game due to them not being incredibly useful in fleet engagements. If this trend results in more people using electronic attack ships to good use I'd say it's a damned good thing, as they are sorely underused in other aspects of the game.

Hmmmm... Everything has a counter. Which brings up this:

[Blackbird, Countercat]
'Hypnos' Signal Distortion Amplifier I
'Hypnos' Signal Distortion Amplifier I
Gravimetric Backup Array I

'Hypnos' Ion Field ECM I
'Hypnos' Ion Field ECM I
'Hypnos' Ion Field ECM I
'Hypnos' Ion Field ECM I
ECCM - Gravimetric I
ECCM - Gravimetric I

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Medium Particle Dispersion Augmentor I

90 sensor strength vs Griffin with 5x jams at 8 strength each. Assuming the Griffin doesn't screw up and land outside of its optimal range of the BB orbiting at 100km. Spice up the ECCM with T2 (only need Electronic Warfare to 4), OH the rack when the **** hits the fan, and it's got almost 140 sensor strength while jamming with 9-11 strength vs Catalyst with 11-13 sensor strength.

Bottom line here, is that some people are adapting gameplay. They are at the keyboard, playing the game. Attempting to use actual countermeasures instead of whining to change gameplay. Im glad to see it. Adaptation and emergent gameplay right? Both sides should be happy.

I truly have no dog in this fight, as I don't mine or gank, but the OP's question is interesting. The answer seems to be don't try to destroy the Catalysts, just jam them out for 20 secs and let CONCORD do the rest. The Catalysts aren't alpha machines, they're DPS. So interrupting that DPS would be a big problem for them. Reaction time for CONCORD appears to be about 18 seconds assuming everything in the gankers' favor. Even a half-asleep miner alt on a second account, or a corporate noob, in a Blackbird with no sebo should be able to do better than that by more than half. Theoretically, that means the gankers need to bring twice the number of Catalysts "just to be sure" (and/or one or two suicide Griffins maybe). That complicates their logistics, and as I said before, realistically just means they'll choose another target rather than trying to counter the counter and hoping for a lucky jam or sleeping Blackbird pilot.

The real issue seems to lie in motivation. If ganking is perceived as a realistic threat, then having a Blackbird on scene is a realistic counter. The problem is that for miners, mining efficiency seems to be their holy grail. Any pilot (alt or corpmate) placed in a security role is one less pilot mining, which lowers their efficiency from its potential. If you're talking a corpmate into doing it, then the Blackbird pilot needs to be compensated for their time, which would be very boring, and would cut into their efficiency again all to prevent an event that might not be coming in the first place.

For a miner running multiple accounts and using expensive ships, using one of those accounts for a Blackbird seems like an obvious choice.

So in the end, it's the gankers who aren't doing their job properly. If they stepped it up a notch so that ganking was a realistic threat to the average miner, then min/max would require security to counter them. I guess, as it stands atm, it's better to take the risk of running a mining op without security in terms of min/max.

I was talking to a new player just the other day who -loves- mining, especially while AFK. He's only a couple months old, and only has one account, so the cost of a retriever is a big deal to him. He is aware of the possibility of getting ganked in high sec. However, he prefers to maximize his mining yield, loves to go AFK as much as possible, and doesn't bother to tank his ship at all, nor does he research ways to help increase his chance of surviving a gank. I'd call him foolish, but then again, he's been mining alone and carefree for weeks on end and no one has found him yet. Maybe he's made enough extra ISK by min/maxing to replace his retriever once/if he does get ganked. Maybe the fact that he can go AFK and do other stuff while mining increases the enjoyment he gets per hour, and he wouldn't be happy if he was forced to be at attention at all times watching mining lasers burn holes in rocks. *shrug*

I'm pretty sure that shield/armor maintenance drones cannot be assisted to anyone and thereby controlled by a "drone bunny" like DPS drones can.

I would hope so, a Retriever should be able to pay for itself in around 4 hours if you assume 6-8 million isk p/h. Getting ganked very much depends on where he mines, if he's in a quiet system with little traffic then he's unlikely to catch the attention of gankers and has already unknowingly taken steps to avoid them.

I was going to suggest the same thing.

The smartbombs will also take out any nasty rats that get in the way of your mining too.

People use cloaky positive sec status alts for warpins?

Odd.

I use a Procurer alt that doesn't have cloaking trained, and has a slightly negative sec status.

Even if you saw a big smarty battleship sitting right on top of the miners you were intending to gank? It just seems like landing a neutral right next to the whole blob of miners and BS is an obvious counter. Plus, the BS and everyone being protected by the BS would have to be in the same corp as "close enough to kill the cats" would be in range of any possible gank target.