Science & Industry

When I first started playing EVE I decided to focus on mining thinking I could amass some wealth and learn the game at my own pace. My plan worked somewhat. I got myself skilled up for a hulk and got all the associated skills. I joined a new Corp and was mining for them and myself. The corp didn't have a clear direction and fizzled after a month or so. I moved my base of operations for them twice. Safe to say it was a bad experience. I found myself teaching them more then they were teaching me and I was only parroting what I have read and had no real Eve experience. So I was solo again. I lost my first Hulk to an involuntary AFK mining session due to some superb chronic. I ended up letting my subscription lapse and took a break. I came back to Eve a few weeks ago. I had 25 million isk, a Mammoth with 27,000m3 and a Hulk and a desire to conquer all that I surveyed. I had a slightly better grip on game mechanics this go around. My plan was simple. Exploit some of the price differences between trade hubs and amass some wealth as I learned the ins and outs of the market and so on.. After a few days I has parlayed my 25 million to 200 million by hauling goods between Jita Amarr and Rens. Players would try to target me but I always warp to 0 and am never AFK. From all I have read this was a relatively safe strategy. On one trip from Jita to Amarr with close to 200 million in goods in my cargo hold I was destroyed. There was no attempt to target me, no warning what so ever. I went thru a gate and poped out on the other side and instantly was in my pod with my giant containers floating around me. I was dumbfounded. I looked at the kill mail and it said I was killed by a 750mm Howitzer. As you can imagine I was slightly upset. Luckily I had just enough isk set aside to outfit a new Mammoth in the same fashion as my old one. I attributed this kill to a fluke as I could find no information on the forums about high sector piracy. I started hauling again but this time I was being extra careful. I stuck to Jita and Amarr. I was getting better at finding deals. I was able to turn 8 million in capital into 625 million in under a week of trips between Jita and Amarr. I found an exceptional deal last night and had 600 million in the hold when I was popped in the same fashion as before with absolutely no warning. 1400mm Howitzer. Now I am back to 25 million. I am a few days away form minmatar industry 5 which will put me in a Mastadon or a Prowler.

I'm thinking that since I was making my purchases and hauling with the same character it was easy to determine when I had a full hold of groovy stuff. Do you think buying with an alt will help me??

I'm thinking that a Mastodon or a Prowler might also help. Des anyone think it will be a much tougher target to take down?
The only thing that makes me wonder about this is the way I was popped with no warning or targeting what so ever.

Any insight will be helpful as the next time I haul I would like to have better end results.

Thanks

You're probably being passively targeted and scanned. It might be in the system you're getting popped in, but actually a lot of haulers are scanned several systems in advance. In an industrial, never travel with more than 50 to 75 million isk in goods. Anything more is very tempting to pirates. While you can try tanking the mammoth, generally, pirates have already done the gank math and will be able to pop you regardless.

Freighters can carry about 1B before being a good ganking target. 75M for a mammoth should be ok I think.
As for a mastodon, I didn't do the math on one of those. it depends on how you tank it I suppose.

Prowlers can be nice, but remember to fly cloaked all the time, if you can avoid the scanner, you will probably not get ganked, still the best strategy: Don't put all your eggs in one basket, from what I read, you spent most of your money on every trip, so if you got busted, you were almost penniless again, once you have a little capital, save some for a rainy day when you get ganked.

Let Someone Else Do It.
Put up a courier contract with appropriate collateral. Have someone else take the risk. If THEY get ganked, you get the money back.
If you can get jump clones, you won't even need to enter a ship.

I Think its 40,000 M3 in a corp hanger in the orca!

But thatnks for the info on the cans

Get an Orca or better yet a Freighter.


Minmatar Industrial 5 as you say is a few days away, so you only need some extra training and the capital to buy a Fenrir. You won't have problems with it.

You could try hiring Red Frog Freight in the meantime to transport the goods for you, for a fair fee (they're quite cheap imo, I'd charge more).

For what it's worth, I regularly move 350-400mil worth of goods in a tanked Mastodon (32k-ish EHP), get scanned all the time and never got even shot at, let alone popped. I suppose the math works out to drop about 200mil and since you need 3 Tornado's to pop it reliably before you get killed, the net profit of 20 mil-ish is not worth it.

you mean an alt on the same account, right? Is this the famed logoffski?

Interesting. i think the Mammoth can be tanked up to about 24k EHP if you lose the cargo expanders. (Granted, then it becomes tiny.)

Got a link to patch notes for this? The last change I saw was npc customs can scan but not players.