Ok, the Pirate faction mining fleets need to be toned down A LOT. Was mining with corp in HS. Guristas mining fleet warps in (diamond) and IMMEDIATELY warps off with NO ONE attacking. Response fleet of 5 Rattlesnakes, 2 osprey, some Cruisers and a few frigates. WTF is up with that??? NS Rats at worse are 2 BS 2 cruiser spawns. We BARELY got our fleet out of there and I made it out with my Orca at about 40% shields.
This JUST started after the trig fleets no longer show up, which we are able to melt easily with our drones. There’s NO WAY we can take on a fleet that size. CCP is already making mining damn near impossible to do with all the NPC mining fleets with their Ventures (with 4!!! mining lasers) skiffs and retrievers. By the time our corp makes it to the belts, there’s only about 20% of it left
You were mining near a pirate FOB outpost. This isn’t a new thing. Always look at The Agency under encounters to see if there is a pirate FOB in your system or nearby.
As far as regular NPC belt miners go, they are easy to deal with. Simply fire off a single shot at one of them, immediately warp back to a station and dock up for 3 minutes, then warp back to that same belt and all of them will be gone and you can resume your mining.
You won’t even incur a standing loss for shooting at them. You only incur a standing loss if you actually kill one of them. Their response fleet warps in within 10 seconds, so, take a single shot at one of them and haul ass back to a station.
D-scan is really useful here, too. If there are diamond rats in the system you’ll spot them. If you’re -2 to them, they’ll want to womp you, even if they’re empire faction diamonds.
