Ships & Modules

I get the same eHP on an Occator, without fitting a DCU II, without the need for Power Core II but with cargo rigs and 7 Cargo Expander IIs, which is basically a non-PvP fit and maxed for cargo space.

If you actually meant what you say, then you would not be arguing against bringing mining ships in line with the rest of the industrials, but you would demand to nerf transport ships and other ships to make them more gankable.

Nice post! Good to see that someone actually took the time to work through the m3 analysis. There you have it folks. I built a similar setup in EveHQ and got pretty much the same data. Mining yield was a bit lower w/o the 2nd MLU though; 4200 vs 4600 with 2. Still, if you live in a high risk area, you better come prepped. As far as tradeoffs, Petrus is 100% correct, with combat ships you either tank or gank; its like a sliderbar that moves between the two extremes.

Vexx

Another trick, fit an Orca in system with resistance and or shield boost gang links. Basically just treat hisec mining like you would nullsec, losec or 0.0 mining. Watch dscan, be aligned, don't go clean your house, take a shower while doing it and you are fine.

The agility is to encourage and make mining in places other than hisec belts feasible for those who are actually at their computer and paying attention. 10 seconds is not enough to get away from much of anything in lowsec/nullsec. A Hulk that's been caught doesn't have any more chance of surviving than a Viator or an Occator that was caught. The tank exists to keep it safe in hisec. The speed/agility/cloak/other such mobility features exist to facilitate travel and safety elsewhere. The Hulk is lacking in mobility, not tank.

Do you have any idea how the game mechanics work? NONE of the modules that Petrus suggested has any impact on the agility of the ship. NONE. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

What he said was that even with a fully tanked abba with 1600mm plates (that increase overall mass) can align faster than a mining boat. The issue with hulks is not their lock time, nor their align time (though a boost to that would be good as was explained before). The issue is that people expect the lowly hulk to tank like a damned titan. A few people have posted solid hulk fits that are not un-gankable but really expensive to gank. Yes, you lose a bit of mining yield, yes you won't have as much cargo. What you are asking for is a "perfect" fit which simply does not exist and should not exist.

You cannot have everything in one bag. The world does not work like that. Sorry.

Vexx

It seems that some people just don't want to understand a couple of points - both of which Petrus, Vexx and Arazel have touched upon:

1. You will NOT be gank proof. If a high-sec freighter isn't, then a Hulk certainly won't be. Ganking is all about using enough applied and alpha DPS with the cheapest ships possible to kill your target before CONCORD arrives and shuts you down (in High-Sec at least).


2. The Hulk does need to be updated (agility, pg, cpu, slot update? - see the F&I forum - there are several ideas bouncing around in there).

In my opinion, from what I have seen, people tend to want to min-max their Hulk fits -- all yield and no shield or all shield and no yield -- there doesn't seem to be this 'happy medium'.

This is a balancing act, yes, how much yield are you willing to give up to fit some tank? Combat ships give up some tank for gank and some gank for tank. You should be able to fit a modest T2 tank and still be able to handle 2 full cycles of your strip miner II's. In both cases it takes maxed, or near maxed skills to fit it properly.

If you want the Hulk truly revamped, you need to post your suggestions in the F&I forums - just look for and start bumping the right thread(s) - or create your own consolidated ideas thread.

I was not asking the Hulk to sacrifice its mining yield as severely as a 100k EHP Impel sacrifices carrying capacity. The 5k m3 Impel would be sacrificing 70-80% of its cargohold with a "hauling" fit. Tanking a Hulk to be reasonably tanky drops its yield by 6.7%. It is the same as sacrificing 1-2 cargohold expanders for a DCU and a plate on the Impel. It just makes sense.

The Impel, Mastodon, Itty V, etc are designed to take fire. They need to be able to survive pirate suicide ganks that are looking for delicious loots. When carrying stuff in a Mastodon that has 50k EHP, you run a calculation:

"It would take 4-5 Tornados to tear me a new one, so they would do so if there is a strong chance of me dropping them enough delicious loot to make profit off of shooting me. 4 Tornados cost about 300-350 mil to fit up, so to cover their losses and for profit I'd need to drop 400+ mil in loot, which means I cannot carry any more than about 800 mil worth of stuff in my Mastodon before I draw attention of suigankers."

The "T2 ships should be tanky" argument holds no water. T2 ships are designed to be good at one or two things, but to be really good at them. "T2 ships designed to take fire should be tanky" is more like it. The Vagabond is actually not designed to take fire -- it's designed to be fast, and do tons of damage from far away. To achieve those ends, though, it has to fit a bit of tank in the event that it does take a little fire. Edit: a max tank Broadsword has 206k EHP, and is a far more common sight than a max tank Vagabond. You sure you don't want to swap your argument to using a Broadsword for emphasis on just how tanky you want your Hulk to be?

If the Mastodon had the tank of a Hulk, it would be utterly useless at its primary purpose: hauling large amounts of expensive stuff, while requiring real effort and a big risk from the gankers wanting to get their hands on said stuff. It is tanky because that's its purpose. The same applies to the Itty V, and it's why a Mastodon/Impel is better -- because you can haul more stuff before you become a target.

The Hulk does not need its tank to protect its cargo. It doesn't drop loot of real value, and people don't gank Hulks for the awesome valuable mineral drop. The Hulk needs its tank as an auxiliary to its main purpose: making money... same as the Vagabond needs its own tank as a supporting auxiliary to doing damage. The Hulk's tank exists to a) keep it alive if rats spawn in the asteroid belt and b) discourage people from fly-by ganking it for fun. People seem to have (a) down well enough, but they have trouble with (b).

There are always going to be "for fun" ganks. You need to deal with that (HTFU, etc etc). I shoot cyno frigates and newbie ratters in lowsec all the time. It's not because they give me good fights, or because they drop good loot; it's because it's easy and there's explosions and because if I get really lucky someone may start crying about how unfair life is. You know what I won't shoot, though? A heavily tanked cyno ship. A ratter who may kill me. Anyone in hisec that I'm not certain of killing. I won't shoot those just as a passing-by thing: I would get friends, make a plan, and be ready for all contingencies.

For most gankers, that is too much effort. They want to shoot untanked maximum-yield Hulks that they will easily kill with a minimum investment of effort. "ISK risked/lost" is a form of effort. Fitting the tank that I suggested forces gankers to apply some effort to killing you: either bringing friends (and losing everyone's sec status, supplying ships, and wasting a bunch of time), or throwing more ISK at it (which is not sustainable).

Just as a Vagabond has to drop from 425mm autocannons to 220mm ones in order to be able to fit some modicum of tank, reducing the main effectiveness of its primary purpose (shooting things), but making it more suitable for its general use, the Hulk has to sacrifice a little of its primary purpose (mining and making money) to make it viable for its general use. With a minor tank, the Hulk is already far too inconvenient to gank "for lols", but stays vulnerable to someone who genuinely wills you harm. A 22k, 30k, 50k, or 100k EHP tank won't dissuade people at "meta"-war with you (no official war, but wanting to kill you) from killing you. It just gives them more of a challenge, which can be perceived as more fun.

Does the Hulk need to be more agile/faster? Definitely. Does it need more PG/CPU to be able to fit a tank dissuasive to "fun" ganking? Perhaps, though I'm not qualified to answer that. Does it need a blanket buff to EHP? No.

Do Hulk pilots need to get over themselves and learn that Eve is a game of sliding zero-sum scales, and there is no success without some cost or sacrifice? Yes.

Ed: Mining ships other than the Hulk definitely need a looking-at as well. I mean... wtf Skiff?

Ok, to start with, I hate you CCP. I had to write this up in word and copy paste it in after your stupid forums ate my last 2 posts. You know… I don’t have this problem in any other forums I frequent – maybe you should get a competent website designer to look at this for you? Other than that, I am cutting out quoting to make space for the character limit.

An impel with no mods on it has 25k EHP. A hulk with no mods on it has 9k EHP. An impel that maxes out its EHP can get up to 100k with simple t2. A hulk that maxes out its EHP gets at most around 29k EHP. A mastodon has 18k EHP. Without sacrificing ANY of its utility it can get 50k EHP.

Now what do all of these ships provide over their t2 variants? Mostly – tank. A covetor can’t really be tanked. An itty 5 can technically be tanked, but it loses its primary utility, which is cargo capability. The mastodon can get a better tank than an itty 5 without losing any cargo capability. Now, a hulk can mine 15% more than a covetor can with exhumers lvl 5, which is an ok reason to upgrade. But as time is showing, a more important reason to upgrade is the tank – or it would be if the hulk could get a reasonable tank.
I would comment more on the “t2 ships should be tanky” point, but there are character limits, and apparently, number of quotes allowed in post limits. I’ll leave it to my arguments about industrials to make my point.

So we have the mastodon, which couldn’t function with a lower tank, and the hulk which is apparently supposed to function with the lower tank. Tanking rats isn’t the issue, its tanking drive-by’s by players that’s the issue. Now, at no point should it ever become impossible to gank a ship, but it also shouldn’t necessarily be something where a single person can go out and torment lots of other people for giggles. There should actually be a point to the ganking, and at the moment hulks are such easy meat that giggles is the only point in ganking them – its not like they ever really drop anything valuable. On the other hand, there are sometimes points other than giggles to ganking mastadons – see the “shiny drops” calculation you posted above.

I shoot cyno frigs and newbie ratters as well – again, easy explosions. However, I would like to point out that last sentace that I quoted above – you won’t shoot anyone in highsec you aren’t certain of killing. For nearly everyone, a hulk is a pretty certain kill, and easily killed as a passing-by thing. So why shouldn’t you have to get friends and make a plan to kill hulks like you do nearly everything else in highsec? And that isn’t even counting hulks out in lowsec/nullsec – if there were enough EHP that there was a chance of a horde of hulks popping the tackler and gtfo before his friends arrive, there might actually BE hordes of hulks in low/null.

Hulk: more agile/faster – definitely, 17s is a bit excessive
More CPU/PG: definitely, as it is currently too gimped in fittings to be able to effectively do its mission – mining in a potentially hostile environment
Blanket buff to EHP: probably not, except in the more PG/CPU allows you to actually fit tank mods.
Do gankers need to get over themselves and learn that maybe they need to do a tiny bit of planning to be able to kill hulks: absolutely
Do mining ships other than the hulk need to be looked at as well: oh dear god yes.

Do I need to join another smartbomb fleet and go kill hulks – yeah… my sec is back at 5.0 again… and working with a group to kill a bunch of hulks is great fun. And if random solo ganks were harder, then group ganks would become easier after the hulk pilots let their guard down.

-Arazel

The Hulk, as others have mentioned in numerous threads, is a highly specialized ship. With the right fit, it can tank 0.0 rat spawns while mining at an awesome rate. It can have a great sustained tank. That is what it is designed to do.

What the OP, and others, are asking for it to do is something that relatively few ships can do - survive the alpha strike of someone determined to kill it. I have been in fleet fights where my buffer-fit Maelstrom instantly popped when hit by the opposing fleet. Does that mean that my Maelstrom needs more tank? No. In Eve, if someone wants to kill you, then they will. If they cannot do it alone, they will bring more friends.

The key to success in high sec is fitting your ship so that it costs the enemy as much as possible to kill you - or accepting the risk that at some points in time you will simply get popped.

Many gankers are min-maxers just like the rest of us - they figure out the potential value of the drop and determine their break-even point. They know half your modules will drop. They know exactly how many alpha-Tornados it will take to kill your ship. If the value of your potential drop is worth more than that number of Tornados, you are toast. These gankers are basically accountants. Their motivation is to make ISK. Because they are rational, they can be deterred by proper fitting and not being a ********.

For the most part, mission runners seem to have learned to adapt to this - I see fewer complaints about paper-thin, loot-pinata Tengus getting instapopped than I did several months ago. A DCU II goes a long way towards this - it doesn't make your ship invulnerable, but it does raise the cost of suicide-ganking you (if you turn the damn thing on). In addition, you can avoid the 2 billion ISK deadspace medium shield booster and other bling and remove a lot of the temptation to gank you.

I generally don't fit expensive deadspace stuff on my highsec ships - but do on my 0.0 ships - because I can calculate the risk in 0.0 and I know when someone who is likely to kill me is nearby. After living in 0.0 for a while, I literally get paranoid and freaked out in high sec (all those neutrals in local! This place is dangerous!). In 0.0, if the level of risk is too high in a given area, I move somewhere else, or fly ships I can afford to lose regularly or are hard to kill. And I always have back-up available via bat phone.

That's how you deal with the financially-motivated gankers. What about the others? Some gankers are in it "for the tears" or some other non-financial motive. During Hulkageddon, most gankers fall into this category. Like a real-life suicide bomber, these people are hard to stop. They are willing to give up everything they have, and even take a loss on it, to kill you.

When I was in Afghanistan, I could protect myself against the normal enemy by being alert, wearing my body armor, and having a plan to kill anyone who ****** with me (this works in Eve too, by the way). It was much harder to protect ourselves in a crowded market place surrounded by hundreds of civilians than it was when we were out patrolling the countryside (even though most of the time we got attacked it was in the countryside). If you saw someone out in the countryside, you could look for weapons and take cover when you needed to. You could shoot back if he shot at you or was about to shoot at you. On the other hand, if a suicide bomber in a crowded marketplace had wanted to kill us, he could have at any time. All the alertness, all the body armor, all the weapons, etc. were almost no good in that crowded marketplace. There was nothing we could do to deter someone willing to die to kill us. Just like high sec in Eve. Except we didn't have clone vats and the insurance payout is a lot worse. Real life needs a buff.

So, if you want to avoid suicide gankers, then you have to get out of the crowds of neutrals and operate in an area where you can spot the people who want to kill you instantly. Go mine in low sec or 0.0 - you are safer there than in high sec. And that is fine... Or, pay attention to your immediate surroundings, be passive aligned, and prepared to warp the **** out the instant someone gets close enough to kill you. Accept that Eve is a dangerous ******* place.

For some reason, many miners haven't grasped this simple concept. If CCP doubled or tripled the Hulk's EHP, a determined ganker would bring 2-3x more ships and achieve the same goal. If someone wants to kill you, they will succeed. This is one of the things that makes Eve great.

On a side note, I realized I've been playing this game for just over 5 years now. I remember how disappointed I was when I saw that the there was this thing called an "Invulnerability Field" that didn't actually make you invulnerable. You are never safe in Eve. Assume that everyone out there who isn't blue, green, or purple, wants to kill you (and even some of them want to kill you too). The best you can hope for is to make the cost higher. But most people who complain about the Hulk's lack of tank want invulnerability, not decreased risk. There is no invulnerability in Eve - and that is a good thing.

I am not saying a Hulk should be gank proof, not at all. I am merely stating that given its cost and training time required it should take an equivalent ship in terms of training to gank it solo. One only needs read the crime section and see most gankers do it for the 'lulz or tears', not the value of any potential gains. So CCP gives players an option to play as miners-industrialists while at the same time giving gankers the ability to gank with a laughably low cost-low training required ship. That is way too one sided. Miners should not be sheep grazing in a pasture awaiting gankbears to attack with their disposable toy destroyers. No matter how you fit your Hulk currently, its too vulnerable for a 310 million isk ship.