Hy, one of my current main activities is killing NPC haulers, so I guess I can answer most of your questions.
First, you asked for the loot. If you kill an hauler, they normally drop a stronghold box (of the specific mining corp) with a chance of ~90%. The wreck can also contain ore with a chance of ~50%. The ore drop differes extremely. It can be a few thousend m³ or a really huge ammount. The biggest ore drop I got from a single hauler was 180.000m³ (normally its ~ 40k).
The boxes always contain a permanent skin for a mining hull.
- Venture, Prospect etc: 1 Mio. - 4 Mio.
- Mining Barges / Exhumers: 5 Mio. - 20 Mio.
- Orca: 100.000 Mio.
Its natural that skins of lower value drop more often than the ones for the big hulls.
Beside the skin there is also a chance to get a second (rare) item. - Mining Laser Upgrade: 300 Mio. - 400 Mio.
- Harvester Mining Drone BPC: 300 - 350 Mio.
So either you open the boxes OR you simply sell them. You can sell the boxes for 25 - 30 Mio. in Jita. When I sell boxes for this price, they are normally sold within 24h. In average I can farm 2 - 5 boxes per hour + the mentioned ore.
To the method:
I only kill T1 haulers in High-sec because they drop the same boxes as T2. The only difference is that T2 are harder to kill and the bounty (200k for T1; 500k for T2) but I never got a bounty for killing a hauler so far, so its maybe bugged. Anyway, we dont hunt for the bounty.
If you only kill T1 in high sec, forget the “Microwarp” or “volley” methodes, just scan-flyin-kill-loot-flyout.
Everything you have to know is following:
1, Scan the system with combat probes. Warp to the hauler (or to the mining fleet and wait for the hauler).
2, Get in close range and scramble the hauler. If you attack the hauler (it does not change your security status), all NPC mining ships try to warp out to a save spot (thats why you have to scramble the hauler). If the miners are out, a response fleet appears. In high sec either:
- only frigate fleet (most of the time)
- only cruiser fleet (~10%)
- frigate/cruiser mix fleet (very rare)
The frigate fleet uses up to max. 2x warp disrupter!!! (-2 warp core strenght)
The cruiser fleet uses up to max. 2x warp scrambler !!! (-4! core strenght)
Cruiser/frigate max 6!!!
So choose a ship with proper tank to survive ~30 seconds, fit 2 warp core stabis and thats it. Watch the overview what kind of response fleet is coming in. If you see only firgates, just tank the damage, kill the hauler, loot the box and warp out (come later with a hauler to loot ore). If you see cruisers, warp out asap, dont mess with them.Thats the reason why you should use a battlecruiser, because battleships are to slow to warp out before the cruisers start to scramble. And yes, cruiser fleet ripps BSs apart (insane damage, EWAR, NOS etc).
I use a Myrmidon with blasters, armour tank + 1 repairer. It has enough CPU to fit 2xstabi + combat probe launcher (200+ cpu). It has ~ 450 dmg. It can easily tank the required damage.
Here some other hints:
- I sometimes (only 2 times so far) see blue mining fleets (the normal ones are white). Dont attack them, they dont react like the others do.
- Sometimes (only in some special systems) you will scan down NPC Ventures, fly in and realise that they are (red) Guaristas. Warp out asap, they will call an entire fleet of 20 - 30 ships as response.
- If you escape a cruiser fleet dont scan the system again. You will scan the same fleet on its save spot. If you warp in you are daed.
- As said, attacking a hauler will not change your sec status. You only get a penalty for the corp status. -0,01%. Thats like nothing. You can kill dozens of haulers from a specific corp, doing only one LVL 1 mission will you get back to the old standing.
- If you have to wait for a hauler: Haulers will come in shorter periodes to exhumer than to barges than to ventures.
If you want to try, I would recommed you to start in a 1.0 system with the mentioned Myrmidon. The chance for a cruiser response is very low here. You will learn very fast how it all works.