Science & Industry

The recent "CCP Fozzie kills Rorquals" or whatever topic raises a question: What should be the composition of a null-sec mining fleet which includes a Rorqual (or two or three or whatever)?

My last experience with a null-sec mining fleet was five or six years ago, and we didn't have a rorqual - and I was too inexperienced then to pay much attention to anything more than my immediate job, which was breaking rocks.

That said, I think they need dedicated combatant support. I also think pvp pilots would get bored in about 3.2 seconds if they were tasked to do that. Is there a solution? I don't know.

The "you only get the best boost" thing makes it interesting. My first thought was squadrons of ten barges/exhumers each including an orca, with a rorqual for the wing commander, but if the rorqual's boosts are so much better than the orca's, do you need orcas in the squad leader position? Maybe we need some siege warfare boosters in there somewhere.

If you have a full mining wing and a combatant wing, how do you organize the combatants? If you have a small fleet, say a mining squadron and a combatant squadron, how do you organize them? In all cases, what's your fleet doctrine and why?

Based on my experience in Providence in an area that sees a fair amount of hostile traffic:

Once you get sufficient miners in the belt you don't need any separate DPS to deal with NPC rats. In my experience anything past 4 Mackinaws with T2 medium drones does the job. NPC rats always seem to favor the same person, so once you see rats: deploy drones and assist (allows your drones to engage past the lock range of your exhumer). Alternatively you could watchlist your fellow miners and see who is taking damage.
The miner who gets the initial aggro may be forced to warp out or the NPCs may switch targets when he hits low shield. No need for Skiffs for tank or DPS, and if the (not yet official) barge changes go through the Mackinaw will have a significant yield advantage over the Skiff.

Although I started out with mining in Hulks with a jetcan and swapping one miner to a miasmos for ore hauling the convenience of squad warping Mackinaws to the POS and dumping ore made me switch. In a very low traffic area I might consider trying Hulks again.

A lot of the hostile traffic is hotdroppers with anywhere from 2 to 10+ ships waiting to drop, so the combat abilities of a Skiff are not good enough to risk staying in the belt and fighting it out.

There is a POS with a Rorqual and a compression array accessible to the alliance. You can also put up a corporate hangar so multiple people can store ore in different hangar divisions and only compress when they are done for the day (works better in a small corp than a mega corp). Not an issue if you have a corp mining event where all ore/profit is distributed by a mining foreman; in that case everyone can dump in the compressor.

Fleet setup: the Rorqual is in wing command and players with multiple accounts have a private squad they can squad warp to the POS and back. Players with a single account can join any squad and use "flag exempt from fleet warp" if they want to. A lot may change when the Rorqual changes go through. CCP is also planning a battle cruiser mining command ship, so putting one of those in the belt may be the least-risk solution, but it depends on the difference in boosts (if any).

Under current plans skiffs. The procurer is a poor mans/low skilled skiff and the other 4 either struggle to fit a tank or cant fit one at all and are vulnerable to not only any pvp ship but also the rats that spawn.

As it currently stands; Rorq in a POS, mixture of Hulks and Skiffs in the anom. Hulks are dumping into either an anchored Freight Can, or directly into the hold of a DST or Orca on grid. The transport pilot also puts an MTU down to pull in remote cans from the Skiffs that are further out. One or two Drone bunnys to deal with the annoying rats that try to out-range peoples targeting, Scouts out 2 to 3 systems away to spot incoming hostiles, and someone moving around the pocket with a list of Anom codes making sure a WH doesn't spawn.


After the Rorq changes: More or less the same, but with a Cyno Jammer in system and as many Rorquals as possible on grid. Hulks will probably be dumping directly into the Rorqs. Rorqs spider tank.