Crime & Punishment

Since you have specified that you are not trying to profit from this and are doing so primarily for tears, I will offer up some advice.

First of all, if you are doing this with multiple characters, do not use tech 2 guns, as the ship hull they are being placed on is worth about 1 of your 8 weapons. You can get almost as much DPS with decent meta guns and navy ammunition.

Next, we will discuss ammo. Some will make the mistake of loading up a full rack of ~1000 rounds of ammo. Do not do this. You only need about 15-30 rounds in each gun depending on your blasters ROF, and this will cost pennies even with faction ammo.

Once the rest of your mods/rigs (again, price to performance is based on how many people you have), you need to choose what you are ganking. You need to know approx. how much effective hitpoints the miners you are going after have. You can use a neutral alt or your main to passive target and scan the miners to find out what kind of tank/HP the targets have. Once you calculate how much damage you will need to kill them, compare it to what kind of damage you can do before CONCORDOKKEN.

CONCORD will respond anywhere between 5 seconds (1.0 space if everyone is behaving) to 20 seconds (.5 space if someone else has angred concord, ~15 seconds if nobody has spawned concord). As just stated, there are many variables that factor into CONCORD response times, but assume the worst.

If you are solo, stick to ganking Covetors and poorly tanked Retrievers. Retrievers are capable of fitting tanks that deal with a single ganker in .5 or .6, but not many do.

The more friends you bring, the juicier the target you can gank.

Just remember to watch your security status. Engaging a target generally causes a loss of .1 sec status and destroying them is generally another .2 loss. I would advise pod killing unless you intend to drop below 0.

Good luck m8,

Become Hero.

So if I were flying solo, would I need to use the T2 blasters?

And thanks for the link, Laurianne Leone , I'll be sure to read up.

Also, would using Magnetic Field Stabilizers, be a good idea? Or would that be just sure to break the bank (I'm doing this for tears, not for profit, but I don't want to bankrupt myself either)?

Wow, that's such an original idea !

Solo, with near perfect skills, here's what I fly:

Catalyst
8x Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S (13 rounds per gun)
3x Magnetic Stabilizer II
2x Sensor Booster II, Script - Scan Resolution (optionally remove both and replace with a meta 3 warp scrambler if you need one, this will require either a CPU implant or perfect fitting skills, warp scrams aren't that important however as miners align sloooooowly)

My on-paper DPS is just over 695 with this setup (Surgical Strike 5, Small Blaster Spec 4, all other damage/rate of fire skills at 5, overheated) and my pod lock time is about 600ms.

In 0.5, I can solo untanked Mackinaws and pop the pod too, or Hulks with one or fewer tank modules (if they fit the most sensible tank module, an active omni shield resist mod, then I probably can't get the pod).

My favorite hunting grounds are (all close to Dodixie): Balle, Ala, Ney, Stegette, Odotte. The last two form a highsec island but entry via Ala-Fasse-Stegette is safe at (almost) all times, and since the ice changes, there's sometimes some large fleets in those systems punching through grav sites or ice anomolies.

I'd have to skill up for that, never used sensor boosters before.

How bad is the sec drop from podding btw?

But yeah, I'll try my first pod after downtime, I might fail, but I'll try at least. XD

If you plan on ganking miners in placid, more precisely stacmon area. ill sponsor your first 100 catalyst hulls.

Good luck and happy hunting....I recommend becoming a New Order Knight and getting those free Gankcats.

Also, you shall be nourished by the tears of the ragebear....

Train Gellente Destroyers, Hybrid Turrets, Weapons Upgrades, and gunnery skills like Sharpshooter, Rapid Firing, and Surgical Strike. Also Rigging and Hybrid Weapons Rigging.

Doesn't take long to become very dangerous to your basic barge.


Not required. I wasted a lot of ISK on T2 blasters before realizing that with decent skills, Meta 4, or even Meta 3 are enough gun.
Faction ammo, abuot 15 rounds per blaster, and you're doing OK.


Mag Field Stabs are helpful - Very helpful. I dunno abuot high meta vs. T2 on those - I've got a stack of T2 that I'm using up, then I'll try the high-meta ones for a bit, see what happens.

I usually don't bother with a point when hunting barges - Very few are agile enough to escape, once you've picked a target. Hell, even VEntures are smoked easily enough, if they're asleep at the switch.
Instead, I go with a basic Passive Targetter and a Ship Scanner - Helpful for sizing up your prey when ganking solo.
IME, the average barge won't even try to get away until you pull the trigger, and even T2 drones won't kill you before you kill them. If they've got EW drones out, though, you may wish to consider a different target.



For your basic barge, that's massive overkill. To take your average Mack or a Hulk, though, you'll need this much - possibly more. Or invite a friend, and have a party.

Avoid skiffs, even untanked, unless you have a friend along.

Welp, I've gone and done it, ganked my first Retriever, didn't get the pod, CONCORD got me first. Extracting the tears. ^_^