Ships & Modules

I have been noticing an appalling trend in which highsec miners can afford to fly these behemoths, yet no matter how outraged they get over suicide ganks, they never fit the ships to resist ganks. I hope this post can inform you all a bit better on how to fit best to maximize your defensive potential, as well as explain why I pick the fits I do. If you know someone who has trouble with this, or you see yet another forum post about "nerf suicide gankers", please send them a link to this thread.

Let's get right into this. The fits:
Hulk
Most importantly, fit a damage control module. This jumps your effective hit points up from about 9K to around 13-14K (depending on the meta level of the damage control).
Next, fit a shield tank:

Basic Hardener Fit You can fit an EM and a Thermic hardener along with a kinetic and explosive resistance amplifier or rig to make a fairly even tank which will give you another 4500-5500 hit points. The key here is to use the biggest resistance modules on the biggest resistance holes.

Lazy Hardener Fit A lazier version of this fit is to use multiple invulnerability fields, and perhaps add an EM and possibly even Thermic hardener. With a 3-4 hardener setup you may run into CPU issues. You can fix that to some degree with the new CPU rig, but it won't give you much of a bonus.

CPU-saving Buffer Fit If you're less worried about tank, you can just fit a few resistance amplifiers. These also will not interfere with your mining because they do not drain capacitor. Just an EM and thermic amplifier will add close to 2000 hit points, and you'll still have more than enough CPU to fit a mining laser upgrade. You could throw an invulnerability field on top of that and boost your hit points by another 2500.

Specific Type Fit You can also defend against a specific type of attack, if you suspect it'll be used against you. Since catalysts are the cheapest and easiest way to gank hulks, you might fit a catalyst defense. Just put a thermic and kinetic hardener on, and perhaps also a thermic amplifier. This can improve your effective hit points against hybrid weapons by as much as 9000! That will also protect you from brutixes and nagas. If you play around with the fits, there are many other options as well.

Shield Booster Fit You might choose to fit a small shield booster. I will urge you not to fit a faction or deadspace shield booster because even though these are fairly cheap in comparison to your hulk, they dramatically increase the potential value of the gank. Many gankers do check your fit before deciding whether or not to attack you, and they can do this in a mining barge with a passive targeter. You'd have no idea they were on to you till it was too late. But if you do choose to smartly fit a tech 1 or tech 2 small shield booster, it can give you a pretty good boost to your active regen, 100-150 HP per second or more even, depending on your resistance fit.

Auxiliary Shield Booster The new auxiliary shield booster gives you a dramatically improved hit point regen, but at a much higher capacitor cost. If you are an observant miner like you should be, and you notice the gank before it starts, you can turn on the booster to get ready for it. This can be enough regen to remove one of your gankers almost entirely from the equation. You can have a small section of your ship's cargo dedicated to capacitor booster charges which will help power the booster. Just keep in mind that an observant ganker may choose to wait until your shield booster runs out of loaded capacitor booster charges and begins to reload. If you suspect that this is the case, do not turn your booster off. Let it eat your capacitor. Turn off your lasers if you have to. And align to warp. You should be able to get out before you run out of capacitor.

My trademark trick fit Here's a trick fit that will dramatically improve your HP against most types of attack. Fit an armor EM hardener/amplifier and a shield thermic, kinetic, and explosive hardeners or amplifiers. Or you can fit with EM and thermic on armor and with kinetic and explosive on shield. The first fit is weak to lasers and the second is weak to hybrids. Note that the hit points you see listed in your fitting screen are much lower than your actual effective values. This is because the fitting screen assumes that all damage coming in is of the lowest resistance. But this fit causes most attacks to stop short on the highest resistance. Compare the hit point values I got with a tech 2 amplifier fit on EFT:

3-shield, 1-armor, DCII:
Lasers - 15,780
Hybrids - 19,589
EMP - 16,169
Phased Plasma - 18,669
Fusion - 22,289
Depleted Uranium - 20,252
Titanium Sabot - 21,171
Tech II Projectiles - 21,866
EM damage - 22,416
Thermal damage - 18,371
Kinetic damage - 20,788
Explosive damage - 21,235
2-shield, armor thermic hardener, armor EM/thermic rig I, DCII:
Lasers - 18,657
Hybrids - 17,436
EMP - 16,138
Phased Plasma - 17,614
Fusion - 21,145
Depleted Uranium - 17,435
Titanium Sabot - 20,878
Tech II Projectiles - 21,047
EM damage - 18,475
Thermal damage - 19,139
Kinetic damage - 20,788
Explosive damage - 21,235
I had to modify the second fit a bit for the hulk because it has poor armor thermic resistance, and it may be lower on some values simply because of the poor armor hit points.

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So there you have lots of cool fitting options for your hulk. One thing that's probably bugging you is that these fits leave little or no room for mining laser upgrades. This is true, and you have to decide what is more important to you--fitting the upgrades or surviving a gank.
Fitting your Mackinaw's tank is similar to the Hulk except that CPU is more limited. Orca tank is all about that damage control, it can literally double your Orca's effective hit points.

I wish I could add more but I'm out of characters.

The standard hulk tank fit reaches around 30k EHP... so yea, your fits are no good.


[Hulk, test]
Damage Control II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II

Medium Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Upgraded Thermic Dissipation Amplifier I

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

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

I should have added a fit involving a medium shield extender. Forgot that one. It's a good fit, though it doesn't leave much room for anything else. Still, if EHP is the most important thing, then the shield extender is worth it. But keep in mind, a covetor can be fit with a single mining laser upgrade, and won't draw much attention from gankers. What you don't want is a hulk fit that mines at the same speed as that covetor, because then you're trying to defend the expensive thing when you could just fly something far cheaper and save yourself the hassle. Even well-tanked hulks get ganked sometimes--when someone wants you dead, there's not always much you can do about it.


Another excellent point. It does require some getting used to, but if you make a bookmark at the right spot, you can maintain your ship at 75% velocity toward a warp point and gradually coast toward and over the asteroid as you fill your cargohold. Works best if you are warping off every time you fill your cargo.

-edit-
I also forgot to mention defense field extender rigs. They're pretty self-explanatory though, but a great way to boost your EHP further on a hulk.

They also used multiple gankers in high-dps ships. Goonswarm has no trouble mobilizing many personnel to gank, and Hulkageddon attracts pilots to group up and help each other gank. But most of the time, in most places, gankers come in ones and twos. If you learn to avoid Jita, Hulkageddon, and Goonswarm, you're much safer. Also try mining in 0.7 security space, because that's where you get decent ore with decent CONCORD response time.

As I said, it's hard to kill a properly fit Orca, unless you have that much firepower to begin with. Then, you are screwed no matter what you fly.

Also, for any pilots with Orca's, please align them to a safe spot as you mine, then when you spot 20 ships coming into your system, you can't say unfair. It takes a butt load of alpha to kill your Orca and you should know the signs well in advance.

Sorry, but we already know you will use two Catalysts and that Hulk will be easily destroyed even with T1 guns.

Right off the top of my head I can tell you it'll be a lot. An orca can fit 3 large shield transfers or two and a mining cycle reducing booster--I don't know how well it can handle the capacitor required to run those, but I bet it could do alright. You could also just fit medium shield transfers to save capacitor.

I've used large shield transfers on a dominix, and it repairs much faster than a small shield booster. Three of them would probably give the hulk over 1000 dps tank for as long as you could sustain them.

And also much less likely to be ganked than an untanked orca, thanks!

(1) Get a "friend" - give him a nickname like "Twit II"
(2) Give your friend stupid teenager personality and a free civilian gattling laz0r
(3) From (2), your friend will come into the belt or grav and fire on you
(4) He will be killed by CONCORD
(5) CONCORD will stick around whilst you mine

That is all.

the best way to defend it was to have docked it a cpl months ago and sold it for 300m

rebuy it at the end of summer before it goes past 300m again... if you really really have to, otherwise just quit mining and move on to bigger n better