EVE New Citizens Q&A

hull tanking on a miner ship is useless, dont do it. its eating up not just the rigs, but the low slots as well. then you have your med slots to do nothing with. a miner ship has no need for pvp mods in the meds. im sure, there is no hulltanked procu wich can outtank and/or outmine my procu. and i have t1 strip miner, and meta 1 mining upgrade on it :P and serioisly, use a tanked procurer. and you can mine in 0.6. as i said, a tanked procu easily tank 3-4 ganker cats even with low tanking skills. sadly my fit is core slills heavy, so you might be cant be cap stab with 3 invul fields runnung. but fit only 2, and a med ancill shield booster or something. im not alligning when i mine, i do it semi afl in a system where code guys are sometimes do ganking. i do smacktalk with them sometimes. hell, i did asking for a duel more than once, and i mocking them a lot =D and still, i lost 0 miner ships... they even didnt dared to engage my venture xD soo.. in my opinion, if you can tank 4 gankers, you will be fine. and a procu easily can do it. i think ecm drones are useless, because one ganker cant kill a procu, and you can jam only one ganker if youre lucky. hobs are on the other hand can kill a ganker in 20-30 secs. thats - 400 incoming dps in every half minutes. if i count that, a ganker got me to 85% shields in hek wich is 0.5, before he got concorded, thats about 10% of my tank. so, 10 cats in 0.5 might be can kill me if im just sitting. if i kill only one, im ending up in 15-20% hull at the end. this is why i told you, if you got ganked, attack them imediately. ofc dont forget about the limited engagement timer wich is 2 mins. so, when you and the concord whiped them out, dock up for that 2 mins. kill them all =D

Bring friends.

You don't see many prey animals, like sheep, goats, various birds, etc, standing alone. They run with a herd, because vs 1 predator, the % survival rate of the group increases. You might get hit, you might not. Miners need to start doing that, if only because with 10 barges x5 attack drones is 50 drones to make any person scared to attack it.

Other than that, tanking modules like you'd tank any frigate or cruiser for pvp.

Well I finally got the Retriever today! I tanked it up according to the T1 layout ffrom Eve Uni. My FIRST trip out in it I had been mining for about 20 minutes (man this thing can bring in the ore with 2 strip miners on it) when I noticed a crusier popped up on my Dscan, which was set for 2 AU. Then he popped in my overview.....THEN he locked on to me! I hit my "Pod Saver" tab, clicked on first thing I found and warped out. Wow that got the ole heart a pumping.

Ganking with a cruiser would be overkill, its the desys you have to look out for.

While true, it's certainly possible to make it an economically undesirable ship to gank. Miners have to balance tank and yield, just as combat orientated players have to balance tank and gank, or haulers tank and volume.

Agreed; accepting ship losses as a cost of mining is certainly viable, a Retriever should pay for itself in a few hours.

So much this.

On a side note, most gankers will be happy to give ship fitting advice, even the ones that RP as evangelical mining reformers and demand a permit.

I agree that anyone who wants information and seeks to educate themselves, should get a helpful response. However, I have found that providing TOO much help stunts growth and makes people reliant on others instead of thinking for themselves.

So to the OP I say this. EVE has lots of tools that can be used to protect yourself. The saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", holds well.

Websites like http://evemaps.dotlan.net/ holds a lot of information. You can see system information such as services, npc kills, player kills, pod deaths, etc.

Use that combined with ingame tools to provide yourself with useful intel. A ganker added to your watchlist, provides you with the knowledge when they are online. On that player's info you can write notes of the areas they frequent, so you can further protect yourself. So you now know when a ganker is online and where he/she is likely to frequent.

There is a lot more you can do with said tools but even the best of intel is useless against the unknown. A known ganker is much less dangerous then a unknown ganker. So vigilance is always the key. Learn your area, who's usually in there, why are they there, etc.

That's right, SOCIALIZE. It is an online game after all. Once you get to know the local populace any unknown person, should be regarded as a potential threat until otherwise proven. How do you prove that? By SOCIALIZING!

Last bits of advice:

Forget the survey scanner, you can devote that mid slot to more tank. - in the case of a Retriever with 1 mid slot, it doesn't really matter but should you move into an exhumer keep this in mind. Create an overview tab for mining purposes

Buffer Tank > Local Rep. Seriously it's not worth trying to out rep a gank locally(with your ship's repair modules), because the cost of repping vs the cost of dps is highly skewed towards dps.(i.e it's cheaper to buy a 17 million gank catalyst to do 700 dps then it is to spead to spend probably a billion to repair against that 1 gankalyst. All they have to do is bring 2 of them, so they spend 34 million vs your billion. The math is not in your favor.) - Again doesn't matter in the case of a Retriever but should you move into an exhumer keep this in mind.

Use tools like eft/pyfa to help make your fit. Knowing how much damage a gank fit catalyst/thrasher can do in each level of security status will help you plan your defense. - Again doesn't matter in the case of a Retriever but should you move into an exhumer keep this in mind.

Higgs boson anchor rig(or whatever it's called) is useful if you want to mine aligned. Just align towards a gate/station and then set your speed to 75%. So the second you hit warp, you are out of there. That said, DO NOT WAIT FOR YOUR DRONES(if you have any) to come back. Losing your multi-million isk ship to save maybe a million isk worth of drones is.....unwise.

TL:DR - Prevention tank is best tank and the cheapest too.

Too late, and that's not really the right attitude IMO, there is no shortage of ignorance and foolishness so anyone who goes out of their way to educate themselves deserves to get good information. There will always be people to kill that didn't educate themselves.

Good point, it is a careful balance.

that physically hurts to read