Warfare & Tactics

Greetings

As a still somewhat nooby miner who soloes a small scale mining ops I'd be needing some suggestions on how to defend myself against all the evil capsuleers around there. Never being afk, paying attention and never flying anything I can't lose is given but I'm looking for some more advanced tips.

My plan is to use a 400k ehp fitted Orca as a support ship for 2 miners and keep 2 pvp fitted ships in it's Ship Maintenance Bay for a quick swap to give the offenders a slap in the face when a need for it appears. Basically I need 2 ships that are smaller than 200k m3. I'd prefer drones for applying damage but I suppose anything goes as the second miner does not have that many combat skills ...yet. Targets will be whatever people tend to use to annoy high-sec miners with.

I also have a question about the game mechanics. Let's say someone steals from a nearby wreck of a rat I have shot (or a can of mine or whatever) to earn the suspect flag. If one of my miners attacks him the miner will naturally be flagged as killable target for the attacker. However will my orca pilot also be legal target for him to shoot at? Losing a cheap pvp ship would not be that bad but losing the orca would be annoying and maybe even embarrassing... The Orca won't be remote repping or giving capacitor/shield to the miners. Just the passive buffs from Leadership skills and mining links.

So any ship and fit recommendations?

Few reasons why I won't do that
1. it won't let me slap the evil people
2. it nerfs my yield by a big margin which I don't find necessary since I tend to be paying attention
3. striking them back sounds too much fun because they most likely won't be expecting it

Would Vexor(s) make good ships for this kind of work? I've always liked the looks of that hull. :p

I mine with a Skiff + Orca. Yes, the skiff is a lot lower yield, but the tank and the drones are adequate compensation for me. Everyone has a different risk/reward threshold, and everyone values their time differently. I haven't settled on the proper "response" ship to re-ship to, because the skiff is actually really good on its own.

I have of late started carrying a covert ops ship. I do this because I've switched my hisec mining from belts to mission ded space. Some missions can be abandoned and returned to ("Break their Will") with no loss of ore. Others have mission-completion triggers that are hard/impossible to avoid, so you have to keep a ship at the site to keep it open long enough to get the ore out. The cloaky ship lets me evacuate the orca and stop mining but keep the site open if needed.

With so many retrievers/hulks in belts and anomalies, I don't get bothered much in ded space. The only attention that I've received so far is from mission flippers, and that doesn't pose the same threat that a gank fleet does.

Attacking a suspect generates a Limited Engagement between the two that allows you to legally attack each other. This lasts five minutes by default, with the duration being refreshed every time one of you commits an aggressive act against the other. It is possible for the limited engagement to last beyond the initial suspect timer, in which case you will still both be legal targets for each other, though this usually only happens in contrived situations specifically meant to cause this to happen.

The Orca restriction applies to weapons timers (the timer gained after performing an aggressive action that also prevents you from docking or jumping through gates). As long as you have a weapons timer, you will be unable to swap ships from any Orca.


This is an amusing idea, but I doubt it will work very well. There are plenty of ships that can kill a Catalyst, but why would anyone try to gank one? Just being on an Orca is enough of a sign that you are capable of swapping your ship out and makes gankers inclined to pass you over.

I'm not from the school of "Your must fly a procurer or skiff" but any ship you fly must be tanked. I'd avoid the Covetor/Hulk in such a small fleet as they are intended for supported fleet operations. That includes logistic support. They really can't be tanked. Retrievers are hard as they have only one mid and thus their natural tank is not enhanceable. I suggest an armour buffer [50mm is NOT enough], Damage Control 2 and Thermal and Kinetic resists. Rigs should be resists against these damage types too. The reason for this is that the Catalyst fitted with neutron blasters is the ganking ship of choice. Thus Thermal and Kinetic damage types. For gawd's sake don't put more than one mining laser enhancement on your ship. This is just asking to die. A Catalyst can manage 500+ dps and in a 0.5 system you can expect CONCORD to take between 17-22 seconds to show up and save you. This gives you the numbers you need to work on.

The Mackinaw can put on a reasonable shield tank but I suspect that two or more catalysts would still have a reasonable chance against them. Same principles as above. Shield buffer [Medium extender] plus lots of resists and a damage control 2. While many are tempted to fit shield/armour repairers you will find the that the total HP in the expected time of a gank leans toward the buffer fit. However I haven't checked our the Ancillary boosters and repairers in this regard.

However the best protection is information. Get to know the other miners and mission runners in your constellation. Get into an intel channel that will tell you about the movements of gankers and pirates. Use standings to mark known gankers and scouts. If someone new shows up then treat them with a little suspicion. CODE is using miner alts and even orca boosters to get warp ins and fitting scans on other miners. Know who they are. Check kill boards for people's kills and assists. Battleclinic will even tell you who are known associates. If you get a good enough group together then maybe sort out logistic support ships. With your buffer tanks they are more likely to help than fighting ships are.

Fighting back? Yes its pretty satisfying to punish a ganker. However you cannot change ships fast enough to affect a gank. Remember 17-22 seconds? Less if there are multiples. The way to punish gankers is to have combat assets ready and waiting. Preferably cloaked with Covert Cloaks so they can target quickly. They have 5 seconds to target and 10 seconds to kill enough destroyers to make a difference. Design ships with is in mind.

I would not keep an orca in the belt if possible. Its a giant target. CODE and some other ganker groups go after orcas pretty often and before they show up they will have scanned it and already know its tank and defensive ability. The group that shows up will be geared for that target. Orcas can still provide boosts from within a POS. This is a good option as a safespot. Of course you have to mine enough to make it worth it. Also you are generally safer warping the orca in and out to collect than sitting it in one place.

One last point. You have basically declared your wish to kill gankers in a public place. You have also given details on numbers and the presence of an orca. You even gave out a rough estimate of your orca tank. Now as a rookie you may not know about Locator Agents. These agents can find someone who is online anywhere in Empire. Takes only a few minutes. You posted with one of your miners? You have basically issued a challenge. Well guess who is going to come looking for you? I'm afraid you made yourself a huge target.

Good luck. If you want further advice try contacting me in game.

Changing sessions always takes a little while in EVE. If you're on the ball, throwing a Hulk in your Orcas SMA when it starts catching fire is a reasonable thing to do. Pulling out a Vexor and locking a destroyer before Concord finishes the job is less practical and also not terribly important unless you really care about the satisfaction of getting 10% damage on their lossmail. Stowing several Hulks would depend on how well set up you are to run multiple clients, though it's more likely that they'll only go after one target.

Dunno why I was thinking about Skiff so much...

What would you say about something like this?

[Vexor, Vexor Belt Guardian]
Damage Control II
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Patterned Stasis Web I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script

Heavy Electron Blaster II, Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Antimatter Charge M
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I

Medium Anti-Explosive Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Valkyrie II x5
Valkyrie II x3
Warrior II x9




Making this fit left me with many questions...
- Heavy drones.. (in or out?) Do they hit small/medium targets consistently enough to make them better option than just carrying backup drones?
- Range of Blasters looks very pathetic so I might have some issues with that although I most likely would be able to start the fight at relatively close proximity
- Powergrid limits the high slot usage a bit so there is just 3 guns and 1 small cap vampire, is it just waste of a slot?
- On rigs my reasoning was to just get more buffer and fill the hole for explosive damage since I don't know really what damage I might be hit with.

You're basically doing what I do. Full tank Orca with 2 mining craft. I mine in high sec.

I went through all the thought processes you're going through.

First, while I accept that the T2 Exhumers are technically better? They're not that much better. Pushing the string all the way to the edge for that "last percent" is, in my opinion, a false economy. You're just putting a bigger target on yourself.

The Orca is borderline unkillable when you full tank it. I suppose if I see 10 Tornados roll into the system... I'll get excited. I keep anti bumper ships (I prefer the Naga) in station ready for the mining ships to switch to if it REALLY goes south. And it would have to go pretty far south. We're talking Machariel won't stop bumping my Orca style south. That is probably the most credible threat. The Nagas would crash into he bumper angry birds style in that event. That's the theory, anyway. That hasn't actually happened yet.

For miners I use the Procurer. Yes. The Procurer is not the best miner. But NO ONE messes with them. In addition, they are easy to multi box with in that they just have the one laser to keep track of. I can mine while I watch TV without having to constantly baby 6 lasers at a time. I can spend a lot more time checking D-scan this way. Yes, I'm sacrificing yield for security / ease of use.

In the Maintenance bay? I keep 2 more Procurers. But fit slightly differently. The ones I prefer to mine with have 2 Mining Laser Upgrade IIs on them, the ones in the bay are full tank: DC II and Reinforced Bulkheads. All of them have Thermal/Kinetic resist at high levels.

Note: If you plan on hot swapping to the stored ships, practice it first. It's a lot slower a process than you would think, especially considering the speed at which a gank usually goes down. You have to unload the miner's ore bay (Can't store the ship unless it has nothing but charges in the cargo hold, drones in the drone bay. NO ore in the Ore hold. Then you have to have the Maintenance bay open, which is a bit inconvenient while mining. I have trouble doing all this in less than 10 seconds even under ideal circumstances. As such, I wouldn't rely on it to keep a paper tanked mining ship alive. Which is one of the reasons I use the Procurers. If one of the mining Procurers actually starts to go down in a gank? I'lll have time to swap it with a full tank one before it dies. If not? Eh. I have more in the bay. I'll just keep mining as CONCORD puts up the yellow tape.

Normally, I use the Procurers with the Mining Laser Upgrade IIs. If I see a lot of dodgy people on D-scan, or if I think I'm being scanned down... I switch to the tanked ones. Usually? They just sit there in the bay.

I see it as a chance to break the monotomy. I risk at making myself a target for people with the mindset "lol this guy thinks he can beat me" but I'd assume that most are just after easy kills. Miners are everywhere so there is no point wasting time trying to beat someone who has shown that he might be able to bite back.

Generally however I agree with you and I'd advise anyone who gets baited like this to calmly just either ignore the baiter or dock up to a station (just to be 100% sure nothing bad happens). That is going to annoy the baiter too. Maybe even more than getting blown up.




I made a spreadsheet for myself for comparison of different ships and fits. There is no surprises in it but someone might find it useful so I'll just share it here. Some of the fits I slammed together pretty quickly so there might be ways to improve them. All the fits are included in the additional tabs.