I wouldn’t call getting attacked by other NPC mining groups and obliterated by drifters exactly safe.
LAME, this is a sandbox, stop using AI to do players job.
Players used to fulfil these roles, but are no longer interested in doing so; blame the nerf bat and the people who called for it to wielded so liberally.
The actual fact that everybody seems to overlook is that CCP is the biggest troll griefer in this game. And they get their jollies from seeing all the NPC killmails.
As for the AI and their standings mechanic, CCP actually coded it properly but probably changed it to specifically target player ships after they found out this happened:
What nerf again? There was no nerf to miner ganking since I started playing this game. The reasons why it is not that common anymore are:
gankers advanced to better prey that is just as easy to kill - bling ships ganking with nados.
lot of miners quit EVE or the activity due to losing ship to gankers, FOB, triglavians or other reasons, hence less targets for gankers, less targets means more time to find one which makes the activity boring
due to Triglavians, it takes ages to find a low tank ship like Mackinaw and Hulk mining in space, a lot of players who were flying these switched to Procurers or Skiffs which means less content for gankers.
gankers quitting because CCP changes or they burn out or just move on. Because of that those who stays have less friends to gank with and are forced to emulate them with multiboxing. Not everyone wants to multibox many accounts so that limits options who to gank.
Miner ganking was never high profit activity, in fact you barely earned what it cost you with some lucky drops of blinged miners. Not everyone is paid by nullsec alliances and those players probably moved to the more profitable ganking. Afterall even if it does not cost that much if you use a looot of alts, you still need to pay the omega on those alts from something, and the more you have them the more it costs.
I still do it sometimes but right now I let my 2 ganking accounts unsub and therefore it limits my options a lot. I could basically only kill untanked hulk/mack in 0.5/0.6 after CONCORD has been spawned there. Which is another annoyance that is extremely bothering me and a reason why I am about to give up on this activity as well.
When that happened, 8 years ago? When I started playing which is now about 3 years ago maybe little more, miner ganking was still quite common. Sure those two ships are almost ungankable, but there were plenty of ppls mining in other hulls that are easy to gank.
Also, if there was no need to spawn CONCORD it would be much more easier to gank procs/skiffs, it is your own fault that you are against any change even if it would benefit gankers. Not that CCP would listen but I like the attitude where you are against absolutely everything no matter what is the subject and actuall effect.
I saw a victim on zkill. He had a Mackinaw fit with cargo expanders in low slots, plus the cargo rigs. There’s something in those damn rocks I say. Kills the brain cells.
frankly at that point it’s beyond “something in those damn rocks” xD
if someone got to the mackinaw and still thought that fitting barge/exhumer for cargohold is good idea, dude was either persistently braindead up from the start, or a kid sitting on CC card of it’s parents…