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Hulks & Mackinaws without a sensible tank.
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Skorpynekomimi
#21 - 2013-02-26 11:28:36 UTC
I tank everything I fly. Even my undock-setting frigate has a set of passive resists fitted in case someone takes a potshot.

Economic PVP
Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#22 - 2013-02-26 14:04:01 UTC
Well - more realistic Mack setup is something on the lines of
[Mackinaw, AFK_Tanki]
Damage Control II
2x Mining Laser Upgrade II (or ice)

Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II
Upgraded Thermic Dissipation Amplifier I
Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II
Upgraded EM Ward Amplifier I

2x Strip Miner I (or Ice miner II)

Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I

i.e., not shield extender rigs but the ice and cpu ones. Granted some people dont mine ice at all, but as its very afk friendly activity many who do use the "afk" barges also use ice rigs. Thats approx 32,5k ehp against kin/thermal.

A gank vextor does approx ~930 dps (Neutron blasters with null, 3x Ogre II) - that would give it survivability of approx 35 seconds against single vextor. Without the damage control the ehp of a Mack drops to ~24k against kin/therm if you try to tank the mids within the cpu you have. Thats ~26 sec - still plenty for the COCORD to come even in sec 0.5.

A gank catalyst does approx 600 dps. Pair of them against tanky mack ~27 sec. Three of them ~18 sec (getting there in sec 0.5 probably) and four would take down tanked mack in 13.5 sec, thats already pretty reliable in most of the hi sec. Against non-tanky mack it would mean ~20 sec for pair of catalysts, not quiiite enough, so three would be needed with some time to spare.

So what does this mean in simple terms.
(1) Single Vextor - not quite enough for taking down mack, with our without damage control if mids are a bit tanked.
(2) Pair of catalysts - not quite enough for taking down a mack, although the one without damage control gets deep into hull.
(3) Pair of Vextors or thee catalysts - the mack will go down, propbably, tanked or otherwise. With damage control its close call, might survive with sliver of hull, might not. Without damage control it will go down, no questions there.
(4) Anything more - it will go down, tanked or not.

Retris are made of wet towels. You can "tank" it all you want but all it does for you is that the ganker will need to use vextor instead of catalyst, or pair of catalysts, if they want to have enough time to pop the pod as well. Retris top out at approx 16k EHP. That is enough for single Vextor to take down. If its without damage control then single catalyst is sufficient.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.
Dave stark
#23 - 2013-02-26 15:33:02 UTC
Fluffi Flaffi wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Haste Renalard wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Fluffi Flaffi wrote:
Being as ignorant to not read the explaination why makes you look like you think no end of yourself!


i did read it, your post got considerably worse the longer you spend reading it.
you're still using a more expensive ship, to mine slower.

just a quick thing for you to think about; if my idea about the retriever is so bad, why is around 1/3 of all high sec ore mined in a retriever?


Because Ret's are a lot less time to train than a Mack/Hulk is? Ret's are a more newbie friendly mining ship. Plus a lot of botters / multi boxers use ret's because its less training time and they are running 3+ miners at once anyways


i'm not sure i believe 1/3 of high sec miners are less than what, 3 months old? i mean, really? do you believe that?


Yes! And it's exactly more or less the ratio in our corp. All the ones, who are not focusing on mining have trained mining barge to Level 3 or 4 and when the mine from time to time they use Retriever and especially at the beginning when every ISK counts you do not invest in Mackinaw for a few % more yield. For them as trader, explorer, mission runner or whatsoever it's not worth to train Exhumers, expecially not in the beginning. They just skill rapidly Mining Barge to attend mining operations or do some afk-isk-mining when they are not at the keyboard.

As stated above already: You are ignorant.

And now just stop posting bullshit. You didn't even replied to one of my points why your replies are just plain dumb. I know why, because you know I am right in every single point, but you can't accept that as you think you are Mr. Eve.

And I use a more expensive ship when mining afk to mine more (because of higher ore cargo hold!!!) not because it mines a little slower. And when I mine actively it is mining much more than your simple retriever fit. But this I have explained already in detail above. Seems you are too dumb or too ignorant to understand and accept this. Sorry for being so direct.


so, no, they aren't less than 3 months old in your corp. in fact, you indirectly just proved my point. they haven't trained for a mackinaw, because there's simply no value in doing so. just like my alt, it can sit in a mackinaw but it never will.

one of the issues with the barge rebalance is even though individual ships are now closer in yield, the gap between exhumers and barges is too small. with the price of barges vs exhumers that price difference really does make it worth "isk tanking" rather than fitting an appropriate tank to an exhumer. it's cheaper on isk, cheaper on SP investment, etc
there's no denying the mackinaw does things better than a retriever, it's a direct upgrade in every regard. however, when you sacrifice an MLU for a damage control you've then got a ship that, in order to not get ganked, must mine less. conversely you can get a higher yield in a ship that at the end of the day, is irrelevant if it gets ganked or not, because it's so cheap.

yes, the mackinaw has more ore bay space, by less than two cycles. the hulk, holds less than two cycles, just as perspective.
if you're mining directly in to an orca, (because, for example, you only have one mining ship (yes i know, flimsy reason but bare with me)) your retriever will outmine your mackinaw. the simple fact is that the mackinaw is not worth it's price tag when the mining barges are so close to exhumers.

you can call me ignorant all you want; that doesn't change the fact that it isn't true and it's just you calling me ignorant.
you're welcome to type what you want on a public forum, no need to be sorry, i'm a big guy i can take it.
Dave stark
#24 - 2013-02-26 15:35:14 UTC
Carniflex wrote:
2x Strip Miner I


gonna have to stop you right there.
really? strip miner Is? last i checked that was a 16% yield loss right there. that's actually massive, that's more than the hulk's exhumer bonus.

i'm hoping you just missed out an I?
Tharin Malkyre
Knights of the Ouroboros
#25 - 2013-02-26 21:08:23 UTC
I tank everything. Even my hauling Mammoth has its mids full of resist amps. My Mack is skilling towards:

[Mackinaw, Thumper]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Damage Control II
Inertia Stabilizers II

Survey Scanner II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Medium Shield Booster II
Explosive Deflection Amplifier II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Plagioclase Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Plagioclase Mining Crystal II

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Warrior II x5
Salvage Drone I x2
Mining Drone II x3

Any yield loss is far outweighed by reducing the chance I'll be blown to bits while I'm reading Game of Thrones.
loyalanon
The Conference Elite
The Conference
#26 - 2013-02-27 02:55:17 UTC
We have ganked a ton of mackinaws and hulks in the past few months, and I have found the best setup to use is to at least use a damage control, one thermic hardener and an invuln field.

But miners are greedy and it is rare to find a miner who has a solid tank. one small shield booster will not help you. Proof of kills below -

http://eve-kill.net/?a=corp_detail&crp_id=298890
Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#27 - 2013-02-27 04:47:44 UTC
loyalanon wrote:
We have ganked a ton of mackinaws and hulks in the past few months, and I have found the best setup to use is to at least use a damage control, one thermic hardener and an invuln field.

But miners are greedy and it is rare to find a miner who has a solid tank. one small shield booster will not help you. Proof of kills below -

http://eve-kill.net/?a=corp_detail&crp_id=298890


How do so many people on that killboard field a 180M hull and not even bother throwing on even a modest tank?
Petya Gladiator
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#28 - 2013-02-27 06:22:54 UTC
I was still able to gank a mack with 37k ehp. Your best tank is when your not afk, and orbiting a belt.

http://killboard.enl-i.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=66316
Dave stark
#29 - 2013-02-27 07:42:22 UTC
Petya Gladiator wrote:
I was still able to gank a mack with 37k ehp. Your best tank is when your not afk, and orbiting a belt.

http://killboard.enl-i.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=66316


or for the price of that 1 mackinaw, i could lose at least 5 retrievers, that would have also had a higher yield than that mackinaw.
Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#30 - 2013-02-27 07:54:31 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Carniflex wrote:
2x Strip Miner I


gonna have to stop you right there.
really? strip miner Is? last i checked that was a 16% yield loss right there. that's actually massive, that's more than the hulk's exhumer bonus.

i'm hoping you just missed out an I?


Actually - I did not. If you gonna strip the belt anyway and do so semiafk then theres not much wrong with Strip I. I'm aware ofc that T1 crystals in modulated strips would give me 8% yield bonus and T2 crystals about 16 % yield bonus. But one would be required to carry some crystals for that ;)

But for actually-at-keyboard mining Strip II + crystal is ofc the best. In that case you would also want to use ore scanner and to stop the miners when roid would pop and so on. then again, in my opinion, if you are already at keyboard there is much better things to do that yield substantially higher isk/h than mining. Incursions, Lev 4's, Exploration even. Or mine in null sec as you are there anyway to look at the local.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.
Jayson Kassis
Carbon Industries
#31 - 2013-02-27 09:44:41 UTC
Exhumers are a bad joke. They are only beacons for bored gankers. 200million for a Mack does not justify the extra ore hold and less yield (assuming tanked) considering the amplified risk that comes with owning one. You will lose it eventually and it will suck.

I think people don't tank it because they feel safe. Only when they lose it, do they realize they should be using a retriever.
Fluffi Flaffi
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#32 - 2013-02-27 10:38:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Fluffi Flaffi
Dave Stark wrote:

so, no, they aren't less than 3 months old in your corp. in fact, you indirectly just proved my point. they haven't trained for a mackinaw, because there's simply no value in doing so. just like my alt, it can sit in a mackinaw but it never will.


That's just as stupid as your previous replies. There is a clear difference between I don't train an exhumer, because I rarely mine and between I can fly Exhumer, but doesn't do so because I'm dumb. I have not proven any of your point. How ridiculous is that statement from you, honestly?!

Dave Stark wrote:
one of the issues with the barge rebalance is even though individual ships are now closer in yield, the gap between exhumers and barges is too small. with the price of barges vs exhumers that price difference really does make it worth "isk tanking" rather than fitting an appropriate tank to an exhumer. it's cheaper on isk, cheaper on SP investment, etc
there's no denying the mackinaw does things better than a retriever, it's a direct upgrade in every regard. however, when you sacrifice an MLU for a damage control you've then got a ship that, in order to not get ganked, must mine less. conversely you can get a higher yield in a ship that at the end of the day, is irrelevant if it gets ganked or not, because it's so cheap.


Bullshit. I have just proven earlier to you, that Mackinaw pays out against Retriever already within 100 hours, just by using the Mining Drones! You can not just ignore that and still insist on your false opinion, that they are not worth the extra money, if you can afford them. You can't just stupidly compare a DC2 Mack with a max yield Retriever. That's useless.

Dave Stark wrote:

yes, the mackinaw has more ore bay space, by less than two cycles. the hulk, holds less than two cycles, just as perspective.
if you're mining directly in to an orca, (because, for example, you only have one mining ship (yes i know, flimsy reason but bare with me)) your retriever will outmine your mackinaw. the simple fact is that the mackinaw is not worth it's price tag when the mining barges are so close to exhumers.

you can call me ignorant all you want; that doesn't change the fact that it isn't true and it's just you calling me ignorant.
you're welcome to type what you want on a public forum, no need to be sorry, i'm a big guy i can take it.


"Your" Retriever will not outmine "mine" Mackinaw when mining into an orca, because:

1. in that case I would rather use a Hulk
2. if I would only have a Macki in that system it would have been fittet 100% for max yield.

You just don't read what I wrote in my first post:

A) Mining afk it's usefull to have have a tank with Damage Control II, because you are not on the priority list of many gankers anymore and it doesn't make any difference in isk. That's why T1 Strip miners are OK as well. Everyone who is mining afk (!) is not checking every 10 seconds if the asteroid is empty. So often coming back and nearly no strip miner is running anymore and asteroids are depleted and ore is in my cargo hold. If I would have used T2 Crystals and max yield fitting there wouldn't be more ore in my cargo hold. That's why it doesn't make a difference.

B) Mining actively with Orca or without you always can have eyes on D-Scan or what's coming in the system, etc. if you want, so your chances to react on a threat are higher, which is not a guarantee to survive though, for sure. But then you gain a lot more by being fitted for max yield instead of tank.

Jayson Kassis wrote:
Exhumers are a bad joke. They are only beacons for bored gankers. 200million for a Mack does not justify the extra ore hold and less yield (assuming tanked) considering the amplified risk that comes with owning one. You will lose it eventually and it will suck.


What kind of noteworthy risk are you talking about?

I am mining very often and in my mining system (Caldari ice system, so quite attractive for gankers!) nearly every day in average somebody is ganked. I am mining most of the time afk with 3 chars in 3 Mackinaws, all fitted with tank. in more than 2 years I haven't los anything. There is a strict rule in our corp for mining ships: Tank them at least a little if you mine afk. And you know what, I just checked our killboard. We have lost 1 Hulk (in our wormhole system!), but 4 Retrievers and 2 Covetors in the last year! And as all serious miners in our corp are using Exhumers it's white easy to understand, that Retrievers seem to be more attractive, because you can gank Retrievers solo without a problem and with very low costs, but you can not solo-gank a tanked Mackinaw solo with very low costs. I have ganked for some weeks in my system with a neutral alt as well, just for fun. Did I ever tried a tanked Exhumer? No. I always were choosing the ships were I was 99% sure that they will lose their ship!

And again for all those, who just overread the very important information: It takes me less than 5 days of continued mining to fully pay the difference between a Mackinaw and Retriever. Everything beyond that is extra profit compared to Retriever. Now counting, that I am mining for more than 2 years ... you can do your own calculation.

PS: No, sorry forgot what I said: Everybody should mine in Retrievers. Less ore on the market, higher prices. More ganked Retrievers, which I produce and sell on the market. So overall a lot more money for me! Lol
Victor Maximus
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#33 - 2013-02-27 13:06:14 UTC
For me at least I look at it this way:

Lets say your mining ice, nice and mostly afk solo in a 3 Ice Harvester Upgrade setup. Lets ballpark your yield at say, 5 mill isk per hour. Removing one IHU drops your yield to around 4.5 mill per hour.

Since your mostly afk and in a mack you can just let things run, probably for a decent amount of time per day. Lets say you get in about 4 hours of ice mining per day.

At 180 mill the value of your mack will be made up by those little .5 mill differences in 360 hours. At 4 hours per day your looking at making that difference up in 90 days.

So the question is this. Do you think you will get ganked more than once every 3 months? If so its more cost effective to drop a mining upgrade and fit more tank. If not you would be loosing money fitting a tank. Now this is ice mining, in a very expensive ship. If you are making more isk per hour than this (you should be) then that repayment window would only be smaller, likewise with a cheaper ship.

Having never been ganked I have no problem running with only a couple resist mods (whatever fits after the upgrades). I'm way ahead compared to where I would be had I fit a tank.

So my personal view is that i'm safe enough not to get ganked enough to justify fitting a tank.
Melikor Tissant
Odd Fluffy Bunnies
#34 - 2013-02-27 14:07:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Melikor Tissant
You want to AFK mine or ice eat? Get a skiff.
Everything else will most likely die at some point, even with 30K EHP.

That is the reason people mine without a tank. Most of them know that if you want to kill them, they will lose their ship anyway. So better yield as much as you can to cover the loss before someone comes.

I have seen an ice belt where 20 out of 15 ice eaters blew up to ganks, tank or not. The 5 who didn't die where AFK with a skiff.
Vince Snetterton
#35 - 2013-02-27 15:50:14 UTC
Look, it is pretty pointless to mine in an area known to have a bunch of griefers operating in it.
If they want a ship dead, it is dead. Full stop.

Tank means nothing.
Sure, some may go after low hanging fruit, but many look at a well tanked Mack as merely as a minor challenge.

So 3 griefer cats can't break the 37-38K tank of a fully defensed Mack?
No problem, swap to three 900 DPS Vexors, or if the griefers are flush with cash, 2 Tornados.

Anyway you cut it, the only way you can avoid adding to the sick pleasure these "people" get from a gank, is to move away from them.

CCP by whatever weird math they use or sense of what Eve should be, has decided that the number of accounts they lose by allowing this behaviour in game is acceptable. So the miners have to live with it, and do the best they can my moving away from the griefers to as remote a location as they can.
Mal Lokrano
CALIMA COLLABORATIVE
Atrox Urbanis Respublique Abundatia
#36 - 2013-02-27 17:36:53 UTC
Most likely imo is that they just don't stop to think that a tank might be helpful, even if it is just a couple passive resistance mods. Just yesterday someone lost a mackinaw in my alts industry system. All he had was a survey scanner for mid slots with 3 empty slots beside it.

"When going to a Party with wine, women, and song. Always ascertain the vintage of the first two."
Bugsy VanHalen
Society of lost Souls
#37 - 2013-02-27 18:30:56 UTC
Tharin Malkyre wrote:
I tank everything. Even my hauling Mammoth has its mids full of resist amps. My Mack is skilling towards:

[Mackinaw, Thumper]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Damage Control II
Inertia Stabilizers II

Survey Scanner II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Medium Shield Booster II
Explosive Deflection Amplifier II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Plagioclase Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Plagioclase Mining Crystal II

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Warrior II x5
Salvage Drone I x2
Mining Drone II x3

Any yield loss is far outweighed by reducing the chance I'll be blown to bits while I'm reading Game of Thrones.

Sorry massive fail there.
Inertia stabilizers are useless, agility is nice but Mack is to slow for it to get you out fast enough.
Field Purger rig? Seriously? you will be dead before any amount of shield regen kicks in. Tanking against gankers requires buffer, passive shield recharge is useless.

Medium shield booster, While much better than a small booster,again is useless, a ganker will burn through your buffer way faster than you can rep anything. Better off with more buffer. the idea is to survive long enough for concord to arrive.

If you get hit by a 14k Alfa and you have less than 14K ehp, you will insta pop. shield boost and passive recharge make no
difference.

a damage controller is you single most effective tanking mod. At least you got that right. if you want a second low slot tank mod, reinforced bulk heads work well.

Rigs I would say at least 1 field extender, if not two. If only one I would recommend a cpu overclock rig,Or an ancillary current router as in my experience fittings are tight and the limiting factor for tank on the Mack. You can ease the fitting by using faction mods, but this also makes you a bigger target, so up to you.

you then want a medium shield extender, and hardeners. I usually go with thermal and invulnerability, but you can omni tank by filling the EM hole if you wish. A ganknado will almost always have faction EM ammo. While a Talos or catalyst will be fitting blasters that do thermal kinetic.

While it is true there is not such thing as ungankable, most gankers are at the very least looking to pad kill boards, if not make a profit off the gank.

Best mack max tank fit I have used is;

Highs
Strip miner II's with t2 crystals

Mids
F-S9 medium shield extender
Invulnerability field II
limited adaptive Invulnerability field I
Thermal hardener II

Lows
Damage controller II
Reinforced bulkheads II
Reactor control II

Rigs
medium Shield extender I
medium processor overclocking I

leaves me 9.5 CPU and 0.3 PG with almost 30K ehp for em at 65/86/79/83 resists. 2 gank nados would likely fail trying to gank this. two Talos might do it if fully T2 fit. Would take several catalysts.

For a little more mining you can drop the reinforced bulkhead II for a MLU II and the limited adaptive Invulnerability field I for a survey scanner and still get over 24K ehp with 55/83/73/78 resists

either fit can swap the thermal hardener for an EM hardener for more Omni resists. But this will make you more vulnerable to the Blaster fit catalyst or Talos which seems to be the most common gank boats at the moment. But would be stronger against a ganknado with EM ammo.

The problem with tanking a Mack like this is it defeats the point of moving up to an exhumer. This mack gets less yield than a retriever. might as well just fly a retriever and isk tank it for more yield.

Isk tanking is effective as the idea is that your ship and fit is worth less than the ship and fit that will gank you. in many cases a catalyst. Thsiis bad for the ganker as it makes their kill board look bad. at least when they gank a ship worth more than the loss, even if there is no profit, at least the kill board ratio of destroyed isk compared to lost isk gets better. This is important to most PVP corps and alliances. This is called padding the kill board. Ganking exhumers can be an effective way of padding a kill board, while ganking barges is not, unless they are pimp fitted.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#38 - 2013-02-27 18:53:29 UTC

This is what I consider the optimal "tanked" Mack Fit:

[Mackinaw, Mine]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Damage Control II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Survey Scanner II

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

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

1046 Strip miner yield, 39.6k EHP, and joining a fleet will a decent squad booster will add several k more EHP...
It is not the most yield, nor the most EHP, but is a fairly decent middle ground that will thwart any casual assault...
A standard group-ganking catalyst does ~500 dps, and gets ~20s in a 0.5 system before concord destroys them... meaning this fit will generally require 5 catalysts to take it out in a 0.5 system, 7 in a 0.7 system, especially if you overheat your hardeners when you are attacked.
Jayson Kassis
Carbon Industries
#39 - 2013-02-27 18:58:34 UTC
Bugsy VanHalen wrote:
The problem with tanking a Mack like this is it defeats the point of moving up to an exhumer. This mack gets less yield than a retriever. might as well just fly a retriever and isk tank it for more yield.
Dave stark
#40 - 2013-02-27 19:00:48 UTC
Fluffi Flaffi wrote:

That's just as stupid as your previous replies. There is a clear difference between I don't train an exhumer, because I rarely mine and between I can fly Exhumer, but doesn't do so because I'm dumb. I have not proven any of your point. How ridiculous is that statement from you, honestly?!



Bullshit. I have just proven earlier to you, that Mackinaw pays out against Retriever already within 48 hours, just by using the Mining Drones, not even counting the extra yield! I mean drones, just the drones? You can not just ignore that and still insist on your false opinion, that they are not worth the extra money, if you can afford them. You can't just stupidly compare a DC2 Mack with a max yield Retriever. That's useless.



"Your" Retriever will not outmine "mine" Mackinaw when mining into an orca, because:

1. in that case I would rather use a Hulk
2. if I would only have a Macki in that system it would have been fittet 100% for max yield.

You just don't read what I wrote in my first post:

A) Mining afk it's usefull to have have a tank with Damage Control II, because you are not on the priority list of many gankers anymore and it doesn't make any difference in isk. That's why T1 Strip miners are OK as well. Everyone who is mining afk (!) is not checking every 10 seconds if the asteroid is empty. So often coming back and nearly no strip miner is running anymore and asteroids are depleted and ore is in my cargo hold. If I would have used T2 Crystals and max yield fitting there wouldn't be more ore in my cargo hold. That's why it doesn't make a difference.

B) Mining actively with Orca or without you always can have eyes on D-Scan or what's coming in the system, etc. if you want, so your chances to react on a threat are higher, which is not a guarantee to survive though, for sure. But then you gain a lot more by being fitted for max yield instead of tank.


you can't just say "that's ridiculous" every time you disagree with me.

i didn't ignore your fact about drones, i just ignored the stupidity of saying "look i have drones". well, i have drones too, what do we do now? oh right, we go back to the original point that my yield is higher than yours.

also, i can compare a max yield retriever to a DC fit mackinaw, because that's the exact damn point i'm trying to make. by taking a 180m ship, you make it inferior to a ~20m isk ship. which, in all honesty, is not offset by the bonuses a mackinaw has over the retriever. the ore capacity difference is laughable (the difference is less than the total ore bay of a hulk) and the tank is meaningless when you can lose retrievers with out giving a damn.

as for fleet mining, yeah i'd rather have a hulk too. but who cares.

as for the point in your original post, your tanked mackinaw is still a bigger target than my retriever. what's the bounty payout on a 40m total cost ship? 8m? probably enough to cover a catalyst...
payout on a 200m ship? 40m. i won't lie, i'm not on top of market prices for throwaway catalysts but i'd say that'd easily cover the cost of multiple catalysts and leave pocket change.
know what i'd be picking, as a ganker. if you can find one with a miner with a decent bounty (40m is hardly a high bounty) it's more profitable to gank a tanked mackinaw over an untanked retriver.) looks like you are on the priority of gankers, after all.