How bad can it be? I’m used to dealing with Concord response fleets.
The NPC miner response fleet are all diamond rats like FOB rats, and they will scram and point you right off the bat. Their response is overwhelming. For example, I popped an NPC retriever in a single cruiser and they warped in with 10 to 15 ships just for that one cruiser. And the more ships you have, the more they bring.
Has anybody figured out their response time?
About 30 seconds after the first shot is fired at the miners.
The trick would be getting aligned for the warp out - a Hecate would be good. 30 seconds to pop an NPC hauler seems doable.
Nope it’s frigate size because the Porpoise was meant to provide links in shattered wormholes.
You can look up the mass of the Porpoise in client, you’ll see.
The good thing about popping the hauler is that the hauler contains all the ore the NPCs mined before, so you get the ore for not mining at all.
You can do it in a standard gank catalyst, well the tech 1 haulers anyway. Tech 2 are much harder to take down.
Just as a note to all those talking about ganking the NPC fleets:
Again, this is later in the day where they are more commonly just sitting in an empty belt. No hauler npcs are coming because the ore is already gone (with rare exceptions). The mining ships aren’t carrying anything because they aren’t mining anymore. At least by my understanding.
These responses about that being the answer are nice and all, but kind of ignoring the topic at hand. There is a mechanic built into the game that punishes people for living in a timezone and playing their game under a certain profession. That’s it.
I’m not certain why it’s so easy to get so distracted by a solution that is, in this case, not reliable or applicable, particularly in comparison to the other timezone. Not to mention…in order for this to be a fix for the US timezone, it would actually be the EUROPEAN timezone that would need to be consistently shooting NPC miners to fix it. xD
It’s a joke about the “X sized” that makes no sense.
It has the sig of a BC, the tank of a cruiser, and the mass of a frigate. Too bad it does not have align time of shuttle.
edit : my b, it aligns like a cruiser but has the tank of a BC. I was looking at noctis.
I find ore all the time, what system are you mining in, im gonna guess something a few jumps from jita.
NPC nullsec
Oh you mean where they lowered how much ore is out there and every null sec miner is competeing to get it before others. Something tells me its not the NPC miners beating you to the ore.
Then you’re making excuses, because I can log in right now and clearly see one thing. Then I can use DotLan and other resources to watch population of my region and jumps, average number of people in space, and extrapolate.
Seriously. I already talked about waiting for over a week to make a post to make sure I wasn’t knee-jerk reacting. Maybe you shouldn’t post as a knee-jerk reaction.
You say you cant log on during the day, so you cant confirm with 100% that it isnt players doing the mining. Your guessing its NPCs.
Please reread the thread to find out what issue is actually being discussed before you babble inane defenses.
If your suggestion is that for 2 weeks straight, 40 belts in one location and 20+ belts in another location have been ghost mined without making a data blip on any tracking tools, but where when I can log in earlier in the day and can see nothing but npcs mining, and where every couple days I find a ‘left over’ belt that did not get mined, then you are trying far too hard to make what was literally pointed out as ghost justifications.
Reread the thread. Reread what the posited problem was, which is a mechanic that intrinsically works against one timezone more than another, and reread the replies about why that mechanic affects one group over the other as a part of the game, and stop assuming that this is just a vomit post instead of someone who -has- actually noticed something that is not in line with other mechanics of the game.
Something tells me you’re being purposely obtuse because you like to imagine that everything is just whinging. If I leave up a stream of me, afk, cloaked up, watching a belt in system while I do my real life…are you going to watch it to prove me wrong? Because something tells me that you, as well, will very quickly stop watching because you realize that the probability is completely in my favor, and you’re not likely to find anything more than solo endurance or 2 man squad who clears less than half of a belt, aside from maybe one day out of the week where some sort of actual mining op occurs.
It should also be noted that today, because of CoronaVirus scares, I got to log in early. Guess what? I didn’t have to go on an exhaustive search in populated space.
I wouldn’t have to in npc nullsec either.
There are currently npc mining fleets in space. There are is one other miner in space. What more do you need to hear about how this is clearly a timezone disparity rather than player-sourced competition?
Again, you are -purposely- obtuse in this discussion, and it might help you to dissociate from whatever is making you overly defensive about a clear demonstration of what was presented as the issue with this mechanic.
Oh good, salt.
Accurate depiction of a mechanic and explanation of how it runs converse to other portions of the game and the game’s overall ‘claim to fame’ are not exactly salt.
Games that insist that all mechanics they introduce are inherently good because of the effort they put into them inevitably make mistakes, and it falls upon players to provide feedback for it. However, your pointed lack of ability to contribute to that discussion, or provide insight about the feedback, is duly noted.
Thusfar, there’s been one responder who was able to acknowledge the issue and provide examples of how to cope with the issue. There’s been no one who’s been able to point out how the tradeoff is worth it, and for those who insist that it helps promote scarcity where it’s needed, I do believe that they’d be making similar (but far less thought out) posts of feedback if similar mechanics were placed on their own mechanics.
Again, imagine if there was a release that said:
–The number of missions from each agent now has a finite number per day. NPC’s will also run these missions.
–The amount of LP given by each corporation is now a finite number per day. NPC’s will run missions and orbit FW structures to promote scarcity of LP.
–The number of capsuleer ships that can be destroyed per day is now finite. After that number is reached no ships will die or drop loot. This includes deaths to npc’s.
–The number of each type of scannable site is now limited. NPC’s will run these as well.
These NPC’s will act in fleets to ensure efficient collection of these resources. Attacking these NPC’s will prevent that particular npc from running it for an alotted amount of time, but they will respond with a fleet to any aggression.
There’d be an uproar.
You spoke your piece. We agreed with you that repopulating belts at downtime is dumb. Mission accomplished.
Now you are flipping out because people continue to discuss tangential issues - claiming that the thread belongs to you. Nice walls of text, btw. Seems like salt to me.