Crime & Punishment

Even a well-fitted Skiff can be ganked, but a fleet capable of doing so is probably also capable of blowing up Orcas.

I'm actually OK with Skiffs being as durable as they are - if they had a lesser yield to compensate for it. The tradeoff of yield (compared to a Hulk) is too small to merit all those EHP.

Making highsec less safe for miners would actually hurt new miners much more than veteran multiboxers. New players by virtue of being new are much more vulnerable to ganks since they don't know how to watch out for, and tend to have bad tanks.

I've been in several indy corps over the years. old vets are never the ones that get killed, it's always the new ones that don't realize how vulnerable their shiny new retriever is, or why that cheap expendable frigate was poking around their mining belt.

Oh and ganks hit new miners way harder than veterans since new miners don't have the isk stockpile to absorb losses.

Additionally if highsec mining becomes more vulnerable then CCP needs to rebalance mining income since income level of highsec mining is so low compared the cost of barges and exhumers.

How would it be less safe for them? Allowing players to remove themselves as economically viable targets simply by flying a Skiff means that gankers focus all their attention on new players (and veteran players who are chasing more yield or a larger ore hold). Given new players don't fly Skiffs, I don't see how making Skiffs less attractive to fly is going to put new players at more risk. If anything, by making veterans viable targets again they would be more safe from attack.

But the real impact on new players is not the rare chance they might get ganked and lose a ship they can replace in a hour or two of mining. It is the economic problem they face competing with bot/bot-aspirant/multiboxing fleets who drive down the price of their efforts. If you allow 100% economic safety from ganking as a Skiff fleet has, it allows a rich veterans to scale up their efforts in parallel out-competing new players for gathering ore. If such a fleet was at least at some risk, the multiboxer would have to trade-off safety vs. attention vs. effort to run such an operation. As it is, there is no trade-off or downside to just running as many Skiffs as your patience and computer hardware will allow as there is no risk of interference from other players.

New players are griefed out of the game, or at least the mining profession, by such veterans who make it impossible for a new miner to make a competitive living. So they go do something else and highsec belts just end up full of silent, multi-boxing Skiff fleets and the game suffers for it.

Highsec mining, and mining in general pay so poorly because of the ease of multiboxing. The economic safety of Skiffs in highsec just exacerbates the problem, and makes it tougher to get into the game.

The solution is to make mining more active, or at least more involved so that multiboxing invulnerable exhumers is not the most efficient, or only, way to compete. Invulnerable mining boosts (than only veterans have) need to go, and perhaps the new Drilling Platforms will allow more choice of how to mine and allow miners that take more risk or invest more effort to out-compete the Skiff fleets.

CCP really needs to re-think the whole thing, including the safety/yield balance of Skiffs, if they want mining to be a profession new players can compete in, and that has more interesting gameplay than just fielding as many Skiffs as possible. You should be able to mine relatively safely in this game, but multiboxing Skiffs in absolute safety should not be a viable way to mine, let alone the most efficient and profitable. There should be reasons to take risks, spend effort, and to to invest in vulnerable infrastructure, so that actual gameplay takes place.

I'm not sure why you think I am whining. This whole thread is the result of the OP asking what he can do to disrupt a Skiff fleet and answer is: nothing, they are economically immune to him. That is clearly intentional on the part of CCP, but as a result incentivizes solo, AFK and non-interactive gameplay, and hurts new players who are out-competed by veterans with their invulnerable Skiffs and mining boosts.

Thankfully, invulnerable mining boosts that add no real gameplay but benefits established veterans at no effort and no risk are on the way out. I can understand why you personally would want a ship that is economically nonviable to gank, yet provides a competitive yield to the other ships, but I would think you would at least consider the plight of the new and solo player, who has to fight the multiboxers to scratch out a living that is a fraction of what they could make exploring or missioning or doing anything else.

It's unfair to push all the risk onto new miners and yet let Skiff fleets keep all the reward. While the Skiff could use a slight nerf to yield (or the other two a slight buff), I think the real answer is adding more active and interactive forms of mining that allow a single account player to significantly increase their yield by active play or taking on more risk. I have high hopes that the Drilling Platform might be one of those mechanisms where a small group of active miners can out-compete the Skiff fleets by deploying and defending infrastructure. I'd also love to see additional forms of more complex mining, like comet or perhaps a complete revamp of moon-mining, that allow a dedicated player to beat the efficiency of the AFKers and multiboxers by actually playing the game, instead of watching Netflix while they mine many accounts.

Then you need to get out of your system more. When I go MTU hunting, I come across a lot of Skiff fleets with Orca support sitting at a station. In fact, there was a large Skiff fleet stripping belts in Manatirid, who basically ignored me as I started bumping one of them away from an asteroid just yesterday.

They are out there...go forth, young padawan.

You are missing the point. True new players get ganked because they haven't learned all the game mechanics yet and make poor choices. It is not their fault they are ignorant of some of the sometimes arcane game mechanics in Eve. Getting ganked is part of the learning curve of Eve and perfectly fine and normal and nothing to be ashamed of. There is no shame in losing to someone who has been playing the game for years, has access to better ships, and knows the game mechanics much better than you. In fact, new players that are ganked are more likely to subscribe to the game so this isn't the issue.

The problem is that once they are over that initial hurdle and decide they want to be miners, they are faced with a market for ore that is suppressed by the oversupply of ore by the Skiff fleets. The only way to compete is to join them and multibox as much as possible. The OP was thinking outside the box and was looking for ways to disrupt his competitors, and the sad truth there is no way possible. Any attempt to gank the Skiffs will result in more losses for the OP than his opponents. The game mechanics are such that veterans can mine with impunity, and new and solo miners can do nothing about it.

There is a big difference between Eve being "unfair" in the sense it is not a balanced PvP game where the sides are equalized, and that certain game mechanics unfairly hurt certain types of players. It's a tough balance because the whole point of a persistent MMO is that you gain advantage for your efforts and time spent playing, but if you let the veterans gain too much of an advantage new players will just not play as they cannot be competitive. Off-grid boosts (both combat and mining) are one of these situations where veteran players gain an advantage from training a boosting alt and buying a boosting ship, yet it has no counter and adds little additional gameplay other than making having an off-grid booster mandatory to be competitive. Tanked Skiff fleets also have no counter which is a failure of game design.

Skiff fleets make for boring, uninteractive gameplay. I think near-invulnerable mining should be possible however, but it should not be such that is the most profitable way to mine given how content-phobic the Skiff is. We can argue about how many Skiffs and Skiff fleets are mining in highsec today, and whether that it too much, but given both of us don't have access to the real numbers, it is pointless. But it does seem in my travels that Skiffs fleets are common, and the Skiff itself is by far the most used mining ship seen in highsec today, and that mining still pays terribly compared to other activities as a new/solo player, and is only viable when done AFK or when multiboxing. Whether these facts merits a change to the tank/yield balance of the Skiff is up to CCP of course, but I would not be at all surprised to see a slight tweak to make the other mining ships more attractive in comparison to the Skiff as part of the upcoming barge rebalance.

I too took out a wt mining in a skiff. Well I wasn't actually mining I had a neut fitted but still it counts right?

What does any of this have to do with the fact that Skiff fleets immune to the actions of other players plague highsec ice and asteroid belts?

Eve is a competitive game where players jockey for resources on many different levels, both directly and indirectly. There are counters, feints, traps, and straight out fighting for the bounty of New Eden almost everywhere - except in highsec mining for some reason. Miners have no choice right now but to multibox as many Skiffs as they can to out-Skiff the Skiff fleets of their rivals as the OP's question reveals.

As I said, the fix for this uninspired gameplay and failed game design does not have to be to make Skiffs useless or explodable. I would keep a mining ship that is essentially immune to ganking as a tool in the miner's tool chest. But better mining yield through buffs to the other ships, new types of mining, and/or lucrative mining infrastructure is what is needed to break the stranglehold of the Skiff fleet and empower the new and solo miners of highsec to be able to do something to compete with the multiboxers other than get more accounts and multibox harder.

I think I have made my point and the OP's question has been answered. Mining is long overdue for a shake-up however, and when CCP turns their mind to things and revamp a whole mechanic they tend to infuse it with a good dose of the essence of Eve - player-driven conflict. I fully expect the Skiff and multiboxing Skiff fleets not to be so dominant and immune to disruption as they are today, when they are through.

Pedro - you're going on about the skiff being out of reach for new players. How long does it actually take to train into a skiff (assume +3 attribute implants, 1 remap, no in jectors). Not that long really. Cut the "but the children" crap - it's negligible training to get into a skiff. Skiff's don't hurt the newbro, they give him something to train for. Assuming the a guy has a job, a credit card (pay pal.... whatever), and a desire to be in a skiff - He can use skill injectors. Using skill injectors, the time sink for a newbro to be in a skiff is actually the time it takes to download the game.

Here's what I think the skiff does for miners. They have an option to go with a tanked mining ship that minimizes the chance to be the victim of an uncontested gank. Being that there is little recourse once a gank is in progress (I'll assume a gank squad can do math and afford catalysts), it seems fair that a miner can choose to fly in a gank resistant barge.

In respects to fair play: There is a huge discrepancy between the cost of a hulk and the price of the cats it takes to gank it. The skiff is exactly the same but the inverse. It seems balanced to me.

OP - skiff ganking isn't a thing for math reasons. There is no magical trick to beat them. Pick an easier target (there are many out there) or pay the toll. Ganking is ALL ABOUT math and has little to do with anything else. Most but not all equations work out in the gankers favor. Don't dwell on (or in Pedro's case whine about) the few edge cases where the math isn't heavily in your favor. Your chosen eve profession has both juicy low hanging fruit and some coconuts that don't crack so easy!

I look at it the other way. I buy ice products. Let them out-skiff each other until POS fuel is free!

I've done both mining and ganking. Mining is "uninspired gameplay". There is no joy or excitement in it. Ganking is "uninspired gameplay". Once the math is solved there is no joy or excitement in it. One guy warps to a belt and blasts defensless roids and one guy warps to a belt and blasts defensless barges. The only difference is the spelling and graphical depiction of the 2 items being removed from the game.

Historically gankers are better thinkers and adapt the mechanics of the game to their needs better than miners. I think it's funny that you are crying that gankers are 'defenseless' against the tank of the skiff and get all upset. The procurer is defenseless against the catalyst (kb data proves this to a high degree of certainty). I have yet to see you rail against the unfairness of the procurer,s daily slaughter. Your version of fair comes across as somewhat skewed.

In the words of your ilk: Skiffs aren't immune to ganking it just takes effort.

TL/DR - hahahahahahaha - cheap ice for all - woot!