Crime & Punishment

Yesterday was my first time someone tried to gank me, while I was mining.
I have a couple of questions.

The story:
I was happily mining in a brand new system (I just moved there), it was a 0.5 system with 12+ belts, most of the other miners were Russians, it was Saturday 18h/19h server time. The system had no ship kills in the last 48-72 hours.

The belts were starting to run dry, I was planning my next system to mine in the following day when I see a few mining barges jump in one after the other, and immediately leaving the belt, they see the belt is almost dry, and I see on local chat that a few miners even log off.

A minute later a thrasher jumps right into the belt next to me (he had bookmark), I immediately start to jump out, I wasn't aligned.
He turns safety off, targets me, and starts to shoot. He shoots my shields down, shoots half of my armor down, but luckily I managed to jump out. Concord arrived and shot him down.

I am not sure whether there were any other ships involved.

My killmail:
Thrasher,
5x 200mm light scout autocannon 1 with arch angel emp s
2x 200mm light scout autocannon 1 with arch angel emp s
2x Gyrostabilizer II

His ship was 7.5m worth

I was sitting in a retriever.

My questions:
01. How did he not manage to shoot me down? It was a 0.5 system.
02. He had a sec status of -0.1. When do you start to see the red/yellow pirate sign in local chat?
03. I've got a message saying something about a warp disabler or something, I didn't read it, I was in panic mode. What was that all about?
04. I returned to the belt and saw that his wreck was blue and empty. Shouldn't he have dropped something?
05. I didn't retrieve my drones when I was fleeing, and once I jumped back they weren't there, what happened to them?
Did he have a partner, who collected them?
06. How could I prevent an attack like that?
07. How could I prepare myself for an attack like that? What skills, modules etc would have been nice?
08. How would you equip a procurer or skiff if you know there are pirates/gankers out there and you still would like to go out mining?
09. Where can I find my offline killmail? I tried battleclinic, and searched for his name, my name and for the system in which this happened but couldn't find anything.
10. Was his ship good equipped? What could he have done better?
11. I've got killrights on him. I turned it on for everyone, and added a bounty of 1m on his head. Does this change anything in the overview tab, or local chat?
12. Concord stayed with me in the belt after the incident, do they respond quicker if they are so close?
- After the attack, hour later two other pirates/ganker came into the belt, but they had no bookmarks, I managed to warp out without a problem. They eventually ganked someone else, luring concord out of my belt, does this change the response time of concord?

Thanks for your answers.

Hi Mynutor,

You are doing the right thing trying to learn more about the game. It's rare to see that nowadays, most you get is complaints about griefing and what not. I espcially like how you were at the keyboard, responded intelligently, and beat the gankers. Well done!

01. How did he not manage to shoot me down? It was a 0.5 system.

You said you managed to warp out, and I don't see a warp scrambler on the fit you linked. Perhaps if he had gotten more shots on you, you would not have survived. I don't know your fit, but if you had some tanking modules, then that could be the reason. Maybe his skills weren't high enough, as he is using meta4 guns instead of t2. Maybe he didn't pre-spawn Concord. It also seems like you weren't afk, and managed to get out. That's really the biggest reason in my opinion.

02. He had a sec status of -0.1. When do you start to see the red/yellow pirate sign in local chat?

You see it if he has a criminal or suspect flag. In other words, if he shoots someone illegally or steals from their can/assists suspect etc. To my knowledge, local doesn't highlight people simply for having low sec status.

03. I've got a message saying something about a warp disabler or something, I didn't read it, I was in panic mode. What was that all about?

When someone tries to warp scramble you, there is a message on the screen for all nearby players alerting them that someone is attempting to warp scramble someone. In this case, he didn't have a warp scrambler, so the message you saw were the faction police scrambling your attacker.

04. I returned to the belt and saw that his wreck was blue and empty. Shouldn't he have dropped something?

Not necessarily, wrecks may or may not drop any of the modules or items in his cargo. It's also possible that he had a neutral scout alt scoop his loot.

05. I didn't retrieve my drones when I was fleeing, and once I jumped back they weren't there, what happened to them?
Did he have a partner, who collected them?

Yes, he probably had a partner or an alt account to pick up loot. Or, someone else in the belt or in the area could have opportunistically made away with anything left on the scene.

06. How could I prevent an attack like that?

You can't prevent an attack, but what you can do is make it much less likely to succeed. First, don't mine in 0.5. That's like a gankers playground. Always be aware of your EHP, and how many people it will take to kill you in a given situation. In 0.5 with 8000 EHP, it takes 1 highly skilled catalyst to kill you. In 0.8 with 50,000 EHP, it will take about 10.

The most immediate things you can do are improve your EHP by fitting Damage Control, Medium Core Defense Field Extenders, and tank against Kinetic and Thermal damage types. Fly a Procurer/Skiff for ridiculous amounts of free EHP. And finally, stick to 0.7 and above.

07. How could I prepare myself for an attack like that? What skills, modules etc would have been nice?

The modules are listed above. What you can do is keep an eye on local, be aware of your surroundings and get a feel for the people there. If local suddenly spikes, then that's a red flag. If a ship parks itself really close to you, 9 times out of 10 that is a warp in for a ganker/gankfleet.

08. How would you equip a procurer or skiff if you know there are pirates/gankers out there and you still would like to go out mining?

A skiff with Damage Control Unit, Shield Extending Rigs and mid modules, and Thermal and Kinetic hardeners would be too much trouble for the average ganker to attack. If they have that kind of dps, they'd much rather hit anti-tanked Orcas.

09. Where can I find my offline killmail? I tried battleclinic, and searched for his name, my name and for the system in which this happened but couldn't find anything.

You would need to add your API to battleclinic or eve-kill for your kills to go there.

10. Was his ship good equipped? What could he have done better?

He could have used t2 guns, dps rigs and a warp scrambler. Other than that it's not a bad fit, but obviously doesn't get the job done every time. Seeing as he is -0.1, he's probably new to this.

11. I've got killrights on him. I turned it on for everyone, and added a bounty of 1m on his head. Does this change anything in the overview tab, or local chat?

The bounty doesn't change local, but it can change the overview tab for people who have it set up to highlight people with bounties. Bounties are everywhere now, so it's not an effective warning.

Public killrights also show up on the overview for people who have it set up that way. I don't think they appear in local.

12. Concord stayed with me in the belt after the incident, do they respond quicker if they are so close?
- After the attack, hour later two other pirates/ganker came into the belt, but they had no bookmarks, I managed to warp out without a problem. They eventually ganked someone else, luring concord out of my belt, does this change the response time of concord?

Yes, if Concord is present on grid, and within 150km of you, they will instantly shut down any attacker. However, Concord operates in "squads," so if there is one squad in belt, but two gankers show up, only one will be stopped immediately by Concord, the other one will get more time as Concord either spawns or warps from wherever they are in the system.

Your best bet: Learn to use the directional scanner.

Set it to 5AU (~750 million KM). If you ever, ever, EVER see three or more destroyers on it, warp away immediately. Do not pass go, do not wait out mining cycles, GO.

If you follow that, only the most insidiously cunning gankers will get you. And this skill will serve you VERY well in the future if you go to lowsec, nullsec or wormhole space.


As a part time ganker myself, I prefer to cull the weakest from the mining herd - those without tanking modules, those that are AFK or close to it, and the like.

Yeah a PVP overview is what you want. You don't want asteroids in it, or wrecks.

This will serve you very well elsewhere.

Nice work !
Keep up the spirit!

Don't mine where there's Russians. It's a well known stereotype that all russians are botters and easy ganks.

He was using auto's instead of artillery. pretty fail. Also he was using a minmatar ship. Should have used a catalyst.

And 90% of the miners will still ignore advice on how not to get ganked, because it's given by gankers. It's held true for every hulkageddon thread that I've seen, and in every other thread about how miner ganking is griefing.

The fact that my advice around D-scan comes from a person that dabbles in miner ganking doesn't change the fact that when I'm ganking, I can't catch someone that follows it. It's good advice.

I have nothing against miners that actually play EVE, it's the AFK ones and/or the ones that are totally oblivious to potential interactions with other players that I will pop whenever the chance comes up.

Oh yes there is. A belt full of miners all stacked in one place.

Can you say smartbomb?

There's a Youtube video of someone smartbombing 7 or 8 Exhumers and pods in highsec. Hate to see their sec status afterward, but damn that's a lot of damage for one battleship loss.

Smartbomb

I know that video, pretty epic.

Out of curiosity (I prefer ganking freighters every now and then) and since you seem to be knowledgeable on the topic, how often do you see stuff like that? People litterally sitting on top of each other?