Ships & Modules

Mining Barges and Exhumers are different.

Well if you fit a Retriver as a tank you dont get to mush mining i guess... :(...


But you get kiilled easy by this pirats in high sec. because they are willing to get concorded to get 10 times as mush in loot as they have payed for the ship that get concorded :(....

I feel they made a mistake when they rebalanced the Retriever and Covetor. They should have gotten 2 or 3 Mid slots each for MSE / Invuln and standard Survey Scanner, less then the Procurer but still something. I also believe the Mackinaw and Retriever should have gotten only 2 Low Slots or the others gotten 3 Low Slots. The Retriever and Mack should have gotten the same potential yield as the Procurer / Skiff instead of being Mid Way between the Hulk / Covetor.

Besides that there are various things you can do to lessen an attackers potential threat.

[Mackinaw, New Setup 1]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Internal Force Field Array I

Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Speculative Ship Identifier I

Modulated Strip Miner II, Scordite Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Scordite Mining Crystal II

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

[Procurer, New Setup 1]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Medium Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Residual Survey Scanner I

Modulated Strip Miner II, Scordite Mining Crystal II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I

[Skiff, New Setup 1]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Residual Survey Scanner I

Modulated Strip Miner II, Scordite Mining Crystal II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I

I prefer a bit more tank IE 1 MLU plus MAPC + T2 Tank on the Mackinaw but that is a personal choice. I also would use a Procurer / Skiff for Ice Mining since warping back to the Station is a minute and the choice of warping every 45 min or hour and a half = very little profit lost verses the defense.

None of these pop with a 10 million ISK Catalyst especially in above 0.7.

The Rebalancing is fine. The Mining Barges and Exhumers needed an overhaul and they got one. CCP broke these ships into 3 categories, Cargo (Being the most popular), Yield and Tank.

Retriever/Mackinaw = Cargo
Covetor/Hulk = Yield
Procurer/Skiff = Tank

The first group can have a tank.. and they can have a tank that works that wont break the bank.

Well if im right your talking about T2 ships here and the Retriver is a T1 ship ...

So what your saying is that a ship like Retriver should only be used in high-high sec. and not in low-high sec. becuse the defence is to low ?

[Retriever, Retriever v1.1]
Damage Control II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I

Mining Drone II x5

for in a group, or Hobgoblin IIs, if your solo, don't AFK mine, don't leave your drone out... or AI will eat them. This is good for 1.0-5.0 if you know what your doing.

If your worried about Gankers, use a Skiff or a Procuror, and tank it, or use a mack befow:

[Mackinaw, Mackinaw v1.3]
Damage Control II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Cap Recharger II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II

Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I

Hobgoblin II x5
Mining Drone II x5

This is good for anit-gank with a resists to "alpha" damage, if you want anit-rat - semi-afk then mine with this:

[Mackinaw, Mackinaw v1.0]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Small Shield Booster II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II

Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I

Hobgoblin II x5
Mining Drone II x5

Cap stable, move your drones in and out as needed for rats and mining, you can simply sit in a HS system and run everything change out your crystals as you need to, and put out your hobs for rats... this is fin for semi-afk monitor mining... if you have problems with this in HS your doing it wrong.

Don't AFK mine unless you in a tanked procuror anywhere, that you can prob get away with, in HS, if it's cap stable, but I wouldn't just leave a miner ship anywhere but in my hangar, something ALWAYS happens when you step away for coffee.

With full t2 tank, retriever will still pop to one catalyst. With higher officer/deadspace fit (low end officer/deadspace will not do), you can survive 2 catalysts. But when you do get popped by 2 catalysts, which you will, the loss is ********.

So no. You cannot survive shotgun to the head just by "trying harder."

I understand what you're saying and it does seem like the tech-I variant of the Hulk/Mackinaw are low on Mids, but maybe that's the point. To be an incentive to go to the next level, the tech-II's. The problem is you're asking for 2-3 additional Mid slots plus the one they already have, so now we're looking at 3-4 Mids while the tech-II brothers have those already.. so now it seems like an unfair advantage too early as far as Mids are concerned. Can't just give 1 additional Mid slot, because what's that going to do? I could see argument of 2 plus the Mid slot already, making it a total of 3... but even then that's too close to the tech-II variant. What do you think?


I never said anything of the sort. There are ways to mine in 0.5-0.6 security systems and it seems to me you got ganked, but instead of trying to learn from it, came to the forums to complain about it. Again, the Procurer is a great little ship, yes it gets less yield than the Retriever, but not by much. If you are getting ganked, or are afraid of getting ganked, you should try one.

(V skills, w/ Orca)
Ship.............Veldspar/hour.............Ice/hour
Retriever..............1,433,390............64
Procurer ...............1,315,038............58

Actually you can, just have to have patience and work with fits. I can build a Retriever that has 17.7k ehp and the whole ship costs 45m, that's including the mining upgrades and strips as well. This ship will survive 2 Catalysts.... and if you want to go even further, throw on a Bulkhead and get 19.3k.

What the problem really is here, people aren't satisfied with the buff to Mining Barges/Exhumers and they want more. Like all 3 Exhumers wrapped into 1.

here's how you tank a retriever.

2x t2 strips, 3x mlus, no rigs, empty mid slot.

it's called isk tanking.
you'll make more isk mining in this and replacing it when it gets popped than you will mining in an overtanked procurer.

you can replace a fully t2 fit retriever in ~2 hours of mining, give or take.