EVE General Discussion

You know, now that you mention it...

Hmm, the isk per hour, time to do some calculations

First off, there's no difference between the risk taken by a solo miner and the risk taken by a locust using the same ship/fit, so don't suggest that somehow multiboxing makes a player safer. If anything it's the opposite - because they've got so many accounts open they necessarily have to pay less attention to each one, making them slower to react to things like bumpers or gankers. It's also not "risk free" - just because you can't gank a skiff doesn't mean skiffs never get ganked, as numerous people have pointed out already.

Second, what exactly is wrong with that situation? I mean sure, I bet that the 10 solo miners aren't happy that they're getting less ice, but so what? There are only two claims to ownership of ice in hisec - either by force of arms ("This is my ice because I can and will remove anyone else who tries to take it") or by consumption ("This is my ice because I've mined it"). Complaining ("This is my ice because I don't like how you're mining it") doesn't really do much.

To put it another way, let's say that instead of one player with 20 miners turning up, one corp of 20 individual miners turns up (plus boosts and haulage, of course). Is your scenario in any way different? The belt has still gone from 10 to 30 miners, one group is still taking the majority of the belt and making a ton of isk and they're still doing it at the expense of the solo miners. The solo miners would be just as upset and angry about the whole situation and just as unwilling to stop it.

It is risk free. They will have to be very unlucky to ever lose a skiff. If such a day comes that they actually do lose a skiff, it's peanuts for them to replace it with all the isk they are earning from their skiff swarm.

This isn't about corps mining hi-sec belts with 20 people, If they exist, i've never seen one. But I see plenty of obvious isboxed fleets being controlled by a single player.

One person ganking skiffs all over EVE with his 20 accounts is not reality. One person using 10 or 20 accounts to mine large amounts of isk in complete safety is reality, and happens everywhere in hi-sec.

So you're pissed that people prefer to use their 20 accounts to mine instead of to gank...

Even in null, actually this thing occurs.

A friend I know who uses 20 miners quite strongly prefers to mine ore due to the "scaleability". Due to the way ore works in nullsec sov systems with ihubs (ie: basically a set anomaly that respawns endlessly). However, smaller scale miners like me do ice.


Oh yeah, any highsec miners, if you like the idea of endless ore to mine, even a fairly cheap system in our rental program, the Greater Western Co-Prosperity sphere can get you this. Though with better sec does come better ores, it's certainly also cheap to hop into a system and get started, even on a smaller scale. You also get to use Rorqural boosts, which let me tell you are pretty great!

Actually it would require stupidity, since you would be spending one billion a gank to take out a 200 mill ship. You lose out 5 times more than the skiff pilot. It's like self ganking, pure stupidity.

It's called an investment - you sacrifice your ISK to destroy their "fun" and gain market dominance. There's plenty of bored players around to make sure that a ship that can be ganked at cost is a ship not worth using - which is what we see happening with the Mack/Hulk. So, I restate my proposition, buff Mack/Hulk/Retriever/Covetor tank to remove Skiff/Procurer dominance.

As for your locust problem - by the time mining barges have become so fragile that you can deal with your friendly neighborhood multi boxer, various ... interest groups... would have already annihilated high sec mining in general. Especially since even the proposition of using a bumping ship seems to be to much of an effort.

Having a smaller ore hold than the mack isn't really a tradeoff. For people with orca support, or hauling, which I would estimate is at least 50% or probably more like 75% or more of all mining ships in the belts, it's not a trade off at all. For those with no hauler, who dock every full load, the drop in efficiency from having to dock more often equates to just 10% less ice mined in practice than a mackinkaw, I know because I've tested it. That's why the skiff is so heavily used now, it's better in every way than the mackinkaw. Gone are the days when people would get a mack with its massive ore hold and sit afk in the ice field. Competition is fierce enough they won't get much ice if they don't pay attention.

This is why the belts are made up off 90% skiffs and procurers. It's the best mining ship all round. It's fast, it's stupid strong, it has masses of cpu and grid and so is very easy to fit, the ore hold while not the largest, is sufficiently big enough. It's only real downside is less yield than a max yield hulk, but who the hell would use a max yield hulk in hi-sec? Max yield hulks may have the best yield, but you have to be on the ball else you will be ganked.

First off, people were multibox mining ice before the Odyssey changes took place. Hell, I had 8 miners myself over a year before Odyssey, plus the boosts and hauler, and I'm sure that my fleet wasn't the largest in the static icebelt I mined at the time. Ice is a lot more valuable now, which is a draw, but the lack of practically infinite volume belts makes it less available and more annoying to mine, which makes it less attractive. So it sort of balances out, except that solo miners don't have to deal with ice prices being depressed by locust fleets flooding the market any more, so now they can get a cut of the profits.

Second, you really think this was unintended, or at least unforseen? ISBoxer has been allowed for a lot longer than the Odyssey ice changes came about - I have no idea when it first came up and was declared OK by CCP, but people have been using it for a long time to run lots of EVE accounts, in particular running them for mining. Then there've always been a few oddballs like me who do the same thing without the software. We're not a new thing, is what I'm trying to get across here. It's pretty unlikely that CCP didn't consider how we'd react to any changes to mining - if I were them I'd certainly give some thought to how a large chunk of my players would respond.



As I've said before, all you're saying is that there is no downside to not using the ship intended for mining solo when you're not mining solo. This isn't the revelation you seem to think it is.



Considering that the difference will depend heavily on distance from ice anomaly to station, there's no way you can say "It's always exactly 10%", but even if it was then that's a noticeable difference. All else being equal, I'd switch ships for 10% more yield. The problem is that all else isn't equal, of course.



Yes, it's all due to the competition from skiffs, absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with all the gankers who pick off Hulks and Mackinaws and who target AFK players in particular. Why on earth would they have any influence on people's ship choices when mining?



The Mackinaw suffers from the exact same problem as the hulk - in terms of the number of Catalysts needed to get a kill, there's basically no difference in Hulk or Mack tank (you can just barely push either of them to survive 2 T1-fit catas, but 2 high-skill T2 fit ships will kill them). That's the reason that even players who would benefit from the ore hold still choose Skiffs, because if you don't you're painting a giant target on yourself. It's not specifically that Skiffs are arbitrarily "too hard" to gank - as if there's some sort of limit that gankers look at and turn away from, and the Skiff is on the wrong side of that limit. It's that Skiffs are harder to kill than Mackinaws or Hulks and gankers want easy kills. Why put in the effort to get 5+ players when you can gank a Mack with 2? As long as the Skiff is tougher than the Mack that trend will continue - why put in the effort to get 4 players, or even 3 players, when you can still gank a Mack with 2?

When you get down to it, the reason why the belts are full of Skiffs is because you've driven the Hulks and Macks extinct.