Science & Industry

First off, forgive me if I'm being redundant here, but I did try to use the forum search and google results from the past year first and didn't see much of anything that was on topic.

Secondly, if this is TLDR for you, then I don't feel bad if/when you die to gankers, and I look forward to seeing your deaths on the killboards (or in my inbox, soon enough!).


That aside, I recently returned to Eve, having played the last 5 weeks after having NOT played much since 2009. I spend the vast majority of my time ingame running my own small mining ops in highsec. I'm currently foregoing training on my mining characters because I thought it sounded like fun to play both sides of the mining game, and my training time is going towards catalyst alts right now. I've posted here in S&I about how I really enjoy mining (I'm very rarely AFK, I'm active with my accounts as I play, I like knowing that the ore I'm mining up is the foundation of most everything in the game even if mining is looked down upon as a profession by many), and I've posted over in C&P about how I like suicide gankers (seeing the terrible fits and other bad decisions made by pilots they gank amuses me).

I thought it might be nice to share advice that I've received here or there and my thoughts on mining while trying to minimize the risk of getting suicide ganked myself.


In my opinion, a miner can avoid the vast majority of losses to suicide ganks by playing actively and smartly. By actively I mean no watching TV or silly cat videos on the web while mining, perhaps just perusing the forums or doing some reading on the web or ingame while mining. And my smartly, I mean mining in a "good" system, somewhere that doesn't have much traffic passing through, that isn't too close to highly-populated areas of highsec, that doesn't have other miners as local residents who will take great offense to you depleting the belts that they think are theirs.

I've been using the ingame galaxy map and the stats it provides, along with dotlan, to figure out a good spot to set up shop. When you're in a system without much traffic or many locals, it is much easier to notice when local suddenly has a few extra people in it so you can put yourself on high alert.

And on that note, another part of playing smartly is checking out some of the killboard websites and looking for killmails that involve catalysts. If you see concord getting killing blows on catalysts, consider adding the individual/corp/alliance involved as a bad standing contact so that you see red in local when a potential threat is nearby.


But even if you take these steps, you still might have someone notice you in system and take a ganking interest in you, or you still might have a disgruntled fellow miner report your location to some ganker folk to try to chase you out of "his" system, etc. You might be targetted by someone you don't have bad standings set for, or you might be caught slacking and not notice potential gankers in system until they are scouting you or warping in. This is where an good fit for your ships comes into play.

NO ship is totally gank proof. But sacrificing some mining yield and spending some time training stuff like mechanics and shield management makes your ship a "harder" target for gankers, which will probably reduce the number of times you will be ganked. After all, not every ganker/gank squad is willing or able to throw all of heaven and hell against you just to secure a kill. DCU IIs, kinetic anc thermal shield resist mods in your mid slots, shield or hull rigs, and skills to boost your effective HP all are important. Hulks can be fit to have up around 30,000 EHP against antimatter ammo (the kind that are recommended for gankers), meaning a single hulk would need to be targetted by something like 4 (or maybe even 5) EXCELLENT catalyst pilots in order to secure a kill in a .7 system (and no, concord won't have an extra-slow response time because they are already spawned elsewhere because you are paying attention to local and you haven't seen anyone getting a criminal flag to summon them offgrid!). Mine in a .9 and that hulk, usually considered an easy gank, would need to be hit by a fleet of 7-8 EXCELLENT catalyst pilots to be killed... and not every suicide ganker out there has the skills and mods to pump out 700+ DPS from a catalyst!

If you REALLY want to be "safe," fly a skiff. You lose a significant amount of yield compared to a hulk, but omfg they have a tank. 120-150k EHP is no problem in a skiff. Forget about being targetted by gankers; you just aren't worth the hassle, especially if you don't rile up gankers in local by smack talking about how tough your ship is and how you can mine in peace without a permit (remember they still can just bump you to stop you from mining, even if they can't realistically gank you).

If you don't have the skills or the money, don't worry. You can mine effectively in a barge instead of an exhumer. You can't fit the same kind of a tank, and you won't have the mass of skillpoints helping toughen up your ship, but when your mining ship only cost you 35 million isk (even if you didn't insure it... I don't really care for insurance personally unless it's the basic coverage and I'm intentionally flying in a more-risky-than-necessary area) and you STILL made the gankers use 4 catalysts to take you down? Oh well. You almost certainly mined for long enough in that ship before losing it to replace it, study what went wrong to get you killed, and take measures to avoid getting ganked again in the near future.



Man. I have more that I could add, but I'm running out of steam and my remaining characters for this post is getting low and I need to get another IPA, so I'll wrap it up for now. If you have any questions about anything I say in this post, google it ("eve online what is dscan?" or "eve online procurer tank fit" or "why are IPAs the most delicious beer?" or whatever) or post to ask.

As Department of Redundancy Department member, I stripped your post of redundant information.

Also, procurer works too. And works even better since it costs like half of a battlecruiser.
Also, nobody would cut his yield in pieces just to get more tank with Damage Control.
Also, mining in highsec outside of decent fleet while being on keyboard = fail because you could shoot stuff for better returns in isk plus some loot plus salvage.

Honestly, loosing once and only once a Mackinaw was enough for me to actually learn what a Higgs anchor is and how to use it, with this, using ecm drones, mining at full speed and with thermal + kinetic tank took me something like 1 hour to find on the internet and start to do.

After this, I still have been attacked by Code (twice) but haven't been rekt these time, because I knew what I was doing and how to react.

The problem IMO is that people are lazy to learn how to properly mine, be it solo or in fleet, it's not really about using barge, exhumer or using the smallest barge or not.

when I do mine its constantly moving between 2 warp points or on a large orbit, if you sit still, which the 1 time I was ganked in a barge in empire being at my computer and carrying on a convo in local, catalyst still dropped out of warp and bam with no time to respond.

the only way I understand the hate against miners is "duh hur look at my killboard, I leet pvper"

Maybe I am missing the point of that implant set, but hundreds of millions of isk just for a set of +2 attribute implants that give an extra few km range on my mining lasers seems like a big waste.