EVE General Discussion

Sigh...I wish I could resist wasting time in this pointless thread, but can't help myself.

The last of my indy alt accounts lapses in 8 days, because I am sick of the crap I see in game and read here.
But that is irrelevant to this idiotic discussion.

Here is a tanked Hulk, that used to be flown by my indy alt when I ice mined in a system with a couple gankers.
It was left alone in that ice belt by the casual gankers, but that was BEFORE Hulkageddon and the gankers got really organized.

[Hulk, Tanked 3 Cycle]
Damage Control II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Medium Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field II
Magnetic Scattering Amplifier II
Heat Dissipation Amplifier II

Ice Harvester II
Ice Harvester II
Ice Harvester II

Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I

This fit required a CA-2 implant in slot 4, and a 1% PG in slot 6.
Tank was a little over 27K when flying solo, with a cargo bay of 9200 cu m.

But no way in hell I would fly that in an belt during Hulkageddon, because it will STILL die easily to a very small group of 3M ISK suicide catalysts.

A suicide cat can produce about 750 DPS.
But lets say it only produces 80% of that, 600 DPS.

In 0.5 space, Concord will take 18 seconds to respond and finish off a suicide boat.
That means that a single Catalyst does 10,800 damage before dying.
Three do 32,400 damage, more than enough to melt my tanked Hulk.
That means it only takes 3 Catalysts, at a cost of approx 3 M each.

That means for an investment of 9 million ISK, 3 Catalyst pilots are guaranteed a kill worth 300M.
And of course, they then have access to any modules that might drop, plus for every 10 Hulks they blow up, another 100M.

So, from a ganker's perspective, if he can grab 2 friends, assuming he gets ZERO modules and loot from the Hulk he killed or his own wreck, a 30M iSK investment gains him 10 Hulk kills, at a 100:1 ISK ratio on his killboard, PLUS 100M ISK.

It makes perfect sense for the gankers to invest in this program.

From a Hulk pilot's perspective, he has to warp out to station every 3 cycles to drop off ice, dock, undock, warp back to belt and start the whole thing over again. That works out to about 60% efficiency compared to flying a Hulk that has a large cargohold, sacrificing tank, and warps to station every 6 cycles. And that does not even factor in the obvious risks of suicide ganking.

A pilot is far, far further ahead to run missions than to mine, even with the fact that things like isotopes have doubled in the past month, and pyerite is hitting 10 ISK in some systems.

That of course, is part of the plan of the null sec zealots, led by the failed lawyer and soundwave and the rest of that bunch.
Hulkageddon has many, many spinoff effects. I will list just a couple:

1. Isotopes have skyrocketed. 2 nights ago I checked the ice belt I formally used. Typically it has 20-30 Hulks and Mackinaws in it. There were 4 ships two nights ago. Those that don't have access to a null sec ice field are at he mercy of the market. Some people are starting to take down high sec POS's, even null sec POS's, due to the increased costs.

2. By driving more people out of mining and into missions, this injects more ISK into the economy. Now the null sec propaganda teams start screaming "Nerfing Incursions doesn't work!!! Eve still has rampant inflation! Nerf L4's!" Naturally, the ex-goon (may still be goon) lead dev, with a wink to his null sec friends solemnly states "sadly, our small tweak to Incursions was not enough to stem the flow of runaway ISK into the game. For the sake of Eve, we must nerf L4 missions".

And voila. The null sec zealots will have successfully driven another stake into high sec.
If you don't think that mittens and soundwave did not discuss this before extending Hulkageddon, you are incredibly naive.

Just FYI, If your Orca has less than 175k EHP, you deserve to be ganked. I am running mine at 198k and there is still room to expand a little. And that is with cargo rigs. You COULD run tank rigs, but that would be a bit silly.