Warfare & Tactics

Hey GM's
This is sort of a follow up to a post on the crime forum.

I got a question...is there any good reason why a 0.25 bil Hulk cannot fit shield a single large shield extender? By now ORE would have gone bankrupt due to the recalls. . This just makes no sense.

Also, the Orca. Why in God's name does it have such limited fitting options. I mean its a capital ship and costs nearly 800 million. Its a sitting duck, no tank to speak of. There is basically no way to fit it because it looks like they confused it with a cruiser when they designed it!?

How are high sec miners supposed to survive even a half ******** gankers if they arent even given the tools to do that? Its basically a lottery.

Please change those two ships and the Mackinaw so miners can have some fits that remotely resemble a defense. Thanks!

I agree. i hope who was designing the ships was doing coke

Can confirm that storing the barge in an orca is an excellent defense against ganking. I once wasted my poor catalyst on what I thought would be an easy retriever kill because I didn't realize they could store them even while being shot at. I won't be making that mistake again! ;D

1. The Orca is not a capital ship. Yes, yes... it may be under the "capital" category in the market window, but it actually does not require any capital skills to use and instead uses large (battleship-sized) rigs.

2. It can tank. A lot. It is basically a battleship with cargo capacity at the expense of weaponry.

For example:

[Orca, Mining Support]
Damage Control II
Reinforced Bulkheads II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Siege Warfare Link - Shield Harmonizing II
Mining Foreman Link - Laser Optimization II
Mining Foreman Link - Mining Laser Field Enhancement II

Large Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I

Hornet EC-300 x5
Hobgoblin II x5
Mining Drone I x5


With level 5 skills:
- Tank: 280,000+ effective hitpoints
- Damage per second: ~90 (enough to take care of high-sec asteroid belt NPCs) (~150 dps if using Hammerhead Medium drones)
- Cap life: Capacitor Stable at 60%


You can also use this:

[Orca, Travel-fit]

Damage Control II
Reactor Control Unit II

Prototype 100MN Microwarpdrive I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Large Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I

With level 5 skills:
- Tank: 220,000+ effective hitpoints
- Aligns in ~10 seconds (simply run the MWD for one cycle after initiating warp)


edit: And with help from friends, you can basically "instawarp" from gate to gate using either fit (by having said friends double web you as soon as you initiate warp).

Indeed, I did. Thanks for pointing that out.

so dont use cargo anything??? just use shield rigs and shield buffer and armor buffer? what is everyone saying here

i see what u did there.

I'd guess that quite a bit of advice on this subject come more from the gank(er) side rather than the gank(ee) side.

The view, and common advice, that a ship can't be all things is, in my mind, somewhat off. In order to make mining ships more resistant to ganking the general advice is to fit a tank. Fine then... But that really gimps the mining output relative to other 'PVE' professions - here's why.

I do a little of all things. Exploration, Lvl IVs, mining and trading. My exploration ship can survive very well in low sec and wormhole space by fitting a Cov-Ops cloak AND a reasonable tank. But it CAN still perform it's task perfectly. And if there is a combat site we can refit in space to push up the DPS a little.

My Golom tanks perfectly so never gets ganked. EVER... But it rips through high-sec Lvl IVs like a knife through butter. Never an issue there. By virtue of the ship itself it can resist being ganked AND do its job perfectly. There is no need to gimp the setup even remotely.

And when trading you barely have to leave the station and that's about as zero risk as you can get...

So, if we tank a mining setup we gimp the ships to a point where the ISK/hour (versus risk) immediately pushes into the 'why bother' territory. At best high sec mining isn't the greatest ISK generator even with good fits, skills and implants - at least in comparison to other.

On the other side there are precautions miners can take like mining in far off, very quiet, dead end systems rather than two jumps from a major trading hub full of traffic.

I'm feeling short and sweet atm.
Hulk = yield not tank. Get a skiff.
Orca can jump to 250k ehp easily in hull rigs and damage control or look into a double XL anc shield booster fit. Both will keep you alive through any casual gank attempt.