EVE General Discussion

It is probably close to what happened, although kill mails have traditionally been awful at reporting the right numbers…

…but even then, those “right numbers” aren't telling the full story. Yes, the total damage the Mack took was probably in the 9k region, because that's how much damage a low-skilled Mack can take before it explodes. The question is how much damage output is required to deliver all that damage, and that's where the EHP comes in. The kill mail simply records how many HP the ship has lost during the fight — it does not record how much damage (counted in EHP) the attacker has thrown his way.

For a full-yield, semi-tanked Mack, you need to deliver some 20–25k damage (depending on ammo) to chip away the 10–11k hit points the ship has. It's the latter number that will be reported on the kill mail; it's the former number that determines whether you'll survive any given attack.

That's the way to go. Keep up the positive attitude.

Why someone would use a Mack in High-sec instead of a Retriever or Covetor I will never know.
The Mack isn't the best at ICE mining anymore.

No Real loss there.
Makes me wonder what the threshold is before people start mining Faction Ice for profit in Null though.

They did nothing to protect themselves.

I hear putting tanking mods on hulks were a very hard task back then.

EDIT: Don't mind me, just editing that quote - ISD Type40.

Fitting some tank would help them. Two Catalysts won't gank a tanked Mack.

That's why miners are dumb. They refuse to fit for anything but yield, even when CCP gave them added tools to be less gankable.

Okay, so what's the problem?

As much as i'm generally against ganking defenseless miners i have to agree those who don't fit for anything but yield are asking for it.

With some luck they'll just make the mistake once.

You base this statement on your exhaustive survey of 40 miners who were each ganked for being the ones in the belt who didn't fit tank?

from http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2012/10/as-usual-goonswarm-proves-us-wrong.html

I've gone on a couple of rants lately, bitching about the apparent intention by CCP to make highsec a safer place for carebears. Crimewatch, especially suspect flagging. Gangbang kill rights. Wardec costs. A lack of desire to balance highsec's risk versus reward.

And the mining barge and exhumer buff. Especially this.

Some of those, taken individually, are worthwhile and necessary changes. Taken as a whole, they spoke to an overhaul shift in philosophy. Perhaps that shift is not much of a shift at all. Take the miner buffs, for example.

The commonly held belief, since the buff, was that ganking these ships were now so unprofitable that they'd become effectively ungankable, even when the miners fit for mining yield only. I certainly took this notion at face value. As did many in the community.

It took Goonswarm to prove us wrong as they now embark on Gallente Ice Interdiction 2.0. Whereas highsec may be a bit safer, due to changes this past year, and mining ganking as a profitable solo profession is no more, there are still ways to turn a profit if you gank miners on a large enough scale.

I received a private tweet from Powers on the October 14th, hinting that I should check out the Oxygen Isotope market. I saw that something was going down. Volumes way up, and the price nearly doubled in a 24 hour period. But it didn't occur to me at all that they were ganking Mackinaws.

I've been poring over the Ministry of Love killboards. (Unfortunately, I won't be linking them, since I was asked not to make the URL public. I'll leave publicizing MiniLuv's killboards to Goonswarm or someone else.)

Since October 13, Goonswarm has destroyed 209 mining barges, exhumers, and industrial command ships (mainly Retrievers, Mackinaws, and Orcas.) Most Retriever kills require a single Catalyst. Mackinaw kills require two or three Catalysts (depending on whether the miner fits any tank whatsoever.) Orca kills are taking between nine and twelve Catalysts.

Two popular fits I'm seeing, one a Tech II fit, the other a cheaper Tech I fit.

This Tech II puppy costs approximately 7.5M ISK.

This fit runs about 2.7M ISK.

The average module drop off a Mackinaw is about 3M ISK, plus another 20M salvaging an armor plate (75% drop rate.) Considering it takes between 7M and 20M ISK worth of Catalysts to gank a Mackinaw, profiting on the gank alone is slim to none.

(Hey CCP, release some faction/deadspace mining lasers, harvesters and upgrades. Give the yield miners an opportunity to bling out their ships. Bring back miner ganking for profit to some small degree.)

Check out the Oxygen Isotope market. Look at the volumes the last five days. This is how you profit. Not through ganking, but through destabilizing the market, which the ganking encourages. It requires a massive effort though, one that Goonswarm is readily capable of. No 100-person alliance is going to be able to accomplish this.

The oxytope volumes do speak further of Goonswarm's motivations here. They aren't so high that Goonswarm is in total control of the market, oxytope stocks volumes, pre-interdiction not so high, that Goonswarm is looking at profits in the hundreds of billions. I think this is more of a trial run, to see if an Interdiction 2.0 is feasible. Consider 2.0 a beta test. Make some profit, cover the costs of the exercise, but it doesn't appear Goonswarm's gone all-in on this little endeavour. I think it's most of the *****-and-giggles, and to prove to themselves that if they want to do Ice Interdictions in the future, turn massive profits, the ability to do so is well within their reach. I'd expect to see more of this in 2013, on a grander scale.