17 belts across 3 neighboring systems completely wiped out. There were 15 NPC retrievers still just sitting in an empty belt. I warped to another belt that was already completely empty and before I warped out there were 10 NPC miners warping in…TO AN EMPTY BELT. The next belt there were 10 NPC miners just sitting there in an empty belt, along with 3 rats. Why do the rats not attack the NPC miners? The rats are Guristas Pirates. They are directly opposed to any and all NPC mining corps that mine in the belts, so why don’t the Gurista rats attack the NPC miners? It’s getting pretty damn ridiculous…
Someone worked out how to deal with them on /r/eve the other week.
If I recall correctly, the process was to kill all but one of the NPC miners, and then shoot the last one a little bit to scare it off.
So, spend the entire time that I had allotted for mining trying to fight off 100 NPC defense fleet ships with logi support? That’s not exactly a solution…
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If you can shoot down the transport ship, the NPC miners cannot mine if their cargo is entirely full.
If not just warp in something, shoot once when you are aligned to something and warp right away, they should go away pretty soon
Alternatively ask someone more suitable for the job to blow up the haulers, T1 are pretty simple if you got loooads of dps, T2 haulers require more work.
If you shoot an NPC miner your security rating goes down right?
I now regard NPC miners as a drone-like menace. I’d kill them if they didn’t react with overwhelming force.
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Nope, you only get a standing hit for only the corporation that owns the NPC miners/haulers/response fleet, it does not affect faction standing so no need to worry too much about it, only if you care about doing missions with them.
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Send some out to Null to help raise the indexes 
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No. Standing to that NPC Corp drops, but there is no impact on security.
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Your standing with the npc corp goes down and if it goes down far enough they auto aggro you. No big deal, except there are reports that npc mining haulers are showing up around npc stations and if you are low standing and nearby, they summon a reaction fleet to come to their aid even if you are ignoring the hauler. Someone claimed they lost their ship to this mechanic, but I cannot verify it; anyone have further evidence of this possible twist?
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I hope this is going to make the ore that is left more valuable…? I found the same empty belts, especially in low-sec, total system after system empty, in high sec it is less worse. Shooting on the NPC fleets doesn’t seem to work any more, they return now already after couple of minutes, whereas before this was actually an hour how I understood from others.
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Someone whining about npc miners is a new low in this game.
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What it ussually comes down too in EVE Online, Shooting ends up being the answer.
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You only need to do it once, and the effect lasts until the last miner is destroyed.
So I was curious and went to Syndicate space to do a lil belt ratting. And 90% of the belts in my system had been stripped clean. There’s no risk:reward to speak of when the reward has been totally erased. And this was null sec. NPC miners are broken.
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while you can kill them or make them stop , it’s a bit too late after the belts have been stripped for the day .
getting on right after down time , warping to a belt will get them to spawn . in less than 10 mins i watched the barge npc pop 3 of the fresh roids .
it used to be , when the last player exited a solar system , that system would go ‘off line’ , and no npc activity would take place . i don’t think that’s the case now , as jumping into an empty system and warping to a belt , will find them still busy mining .
whoever signed off on this as ‘complete’ needs a kick in the pants and back to work to finish all the mechanics of the npc miners …
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I might be wrong, but I think your standings are only affected if you actually kill the npc.
Just because I was curious when those NPC miners came out, I waited for the hauler to pick up the ores and I killed it and collected all the ore from the wreck.
Mining 2.0
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Let the NPCs do the mining for you. Haulers now warp full back to NPC stations. Tornadoes or Machs make short work of the haulers as they take 10 to 30 seconds to dock up (use heavy warp distruptor for T2 haulers). Not to mention bonus loot from secure cans. The slow response time of the NPC defense fleets makes it easy for alpha or polarized blap fit to gank and run without any further hassle.
Some haulers will be holding 200km3+ of ore, if ore is what you are after. The standing loss after killing dozens of haulers can be made up with a mission or two if standing is important to you.
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Interesting, seen a few fleets and non existent belts but there’s tons of other places to mine, hasn’t been an issue for me.