So I see all these changes to mining which are supposed to improve gameplay but im not seeing any efforts made in the rebalance / balance of the 300 mil hulk dying to 5 mil destroyer. I get the whole thing about AFK miners and what with the gankers, you really have no chance of survival at all unless:
You are always perfectly aligned to the warp out and YOU KNOW who the gankers are and see them enter the system. If you do not know who the gankers are, you are dead. By the time they get to you and you realize they are gankers, you lose your ship and maybe pod.
You have an orca alt and can switch out the hulk for another ship in the Orca ship bay during or before the attack.
Aside from this the above there is no fit or strategy that will save you or give you any chance whatsoever of survival. Often, dedicated gankers will have an neutral alt in the system that keeps tabs on miners. The gankers log on, kill people and log off again. Now all this would be fine, but the loss to the gankers is minimal, virtually zero compared to what they kill. With virtually every other situation, gankers have to invest a significant amount of resources and stand to have considerable losses if they fail. With all other situations there is something you can do to maximize the chances of survival or to eliminate the risk of being ganked at all. Not with mining.
Whats even worse, from a sportsmanship perspective, is that its worth zero to the gankers, nothing. The get no profit from it. Its just a way to cause grief, loss and turn people away from the game.
Im seeing noobie miners all over getting ganked in some new mining ship they just got. For these new guys, it took a long time to get the ISK to buy a HulkâŚonly to have it suicide ganked in 9 seconds. A buddy of mine started playing last year and after he got his covetor ganked by a 4 mil isk catalyst, he quit. His logic was that it took him a few weeks to get that isk and to have someone erase all of it in a few seconds with virtually no cost to themselves is stupid. Its not like it was some dangerous activity where you accept the risk that comes with it. High sec mining is a super nooby, normal high sec activity. His logic was sound and remains so.
Some changes need to be made to make sure these miner gankers have some kind of significant loss associated with suicide ganking as is the case with everything else or gives you a chance to actually do something to prevent it or maximize your chances for survival. You want to suicide gank a freighter, you need serious fire power, for a properly fitted industrial - the same, for almost anything else. Even if you are not AFK and the best possible fit for your barge, there is nothing you can do to prevent or survive a gank.
Hi Essara-Ta, I do hope you feel better after sharing that.
O no! Now everybody knows!
Seriously though, if you all make good use of whatever upcoming changes affect your profession, who knows? The gankers might, you know, up and leave the game. Wouldnât that be wonderful?!
The devs have specifically acknowledge the lack of utility that the T2 barges (i.e. Exhumers) have in high sec. I donât recall there being any specific ideas proposed to resolve the issue, but they are looking at addressing the survivability of T2 mining ships.
Unfortunately, though your friendâs logic IS soundâŚthere is also the counter-point that one shouldnât fly something that has that level of rISK to reward. The error there isnât ONLY in game balance, but the strategy of bringing a Hulk into a belt where you can only get Veldspar/Pyerite/ScorditeâŚthat is the blessing/curse of EveâŚyou are responsible for your own decisions.
Iâm curious what changes might be sufficient to address the issue you identified?
Maybe a CONCORD locator beacon module that improves CONCORD response timeâŚbut there would have to be some consequence as wellâŚrental fee, subsequent ârescueâ billâŚhrmmmâŚ?
That level of risk is only given by the fact that it can be EASILY killed by a 1 mil SP character with less than 5 million isk. That should not exist. Thatâs where the risk is. Other than that ridiculously absurd risk factor, anything else is acceptable risk, such as random strong spawns in belts, etc.
The reason for a mining barge is the MUCH higher yield than every other mining ship. In my opinion, the major difference between Exhumers and other barges should be survivability, for use in 0.0 and maybe a minor increase in yield.
What are you talking about? Iâve been playing EVE since 2009 (not this alt), there is NOTHING you can do in your hulk if I want to kill you in high sec with my Catalyst. Literally nothing if you donât know Iâm trying to kill you and you cant watch local for me. I will have alt in cloaked ship come right next to you and my suicide ganker will jump in and warp right next to you. You die in 9 seconds, AFK or not.
Iâm no high sec miner so I wouldnât know about the best tips and tricks the miners there share, but even I can think of multiple ways to avoid that:
mine aligned and while keeping an eye on d-scan. Catalyst warping in? Warp out before heâs able to target you.
mine in an low visited system. See a new name appear who suspiciously isnât visible anywhere on d-scan? It might be a cloaky alt, so get ready for point 1.
mine together with other miners. Put out sentry drones. Assign drones to one fast locking ship. Catalyst warps in and starts shooting? Instant dead catalyst.
have an alt/friend in a cheap ECM burst suicide frigate nearby. Gankers show up, warp it in or decloak and break their dps.
moreâŚ
Just be a little creative. Donât rely on CONCORD to do everything.
Maybe try mining outside high sec for a while, learn how to stand on your own feet and apply that knowledge in high sec.
No, because Ill kill you before you can warp out. The Dscan distance is too short to help you once im in warp. Usually id just bump you with the cloaked ship
Trust me, there is nothing you can do really. I would have to mess up.
If the mechanics donât directly benefit you, theyâre âbrokenâ; if they donât benefit us (the gankers), theyâre âworking as intendedâ.
Do you see how difficult it is to discuss balance, without bias?
All these things have been talked about for many years, and the two sides rarely agree on anything, except the need to continue to argue about stuff.
Your thread wonât change that, Essara-Ta. I will wait until the fine-tuning of these proposals has taken place before putting on my theory-crafting hat. If you have suggestions, make them, but what you wrote, above, sounds dangerously like a rant, and that isnât helpful in a discussion setting.
After entering dscan distance it will take your destroyer multiple seconds to arrive and lock up the barge. Anyone paying attention and aligned would be warped off in that time.
Bumping the miner with the cloaked ship might help, but that gives away the identity of your cloaked scout.
What needs to be improved is the survivability of the mining barges / exhumers. The reason is not to make them kill proof but to make it harder to kill. Killing them to require lets say 50 million loss vs 5 million. Right now there is no loss to speak of for the ganker, none while the damage is extremely high to the ganked.
Either you increase the natural HP to much higher levels or you dramatically increase fitting capabilities, which would make the survivability skill / direct activity dependent. Personally I would much rather go with the power grid / cpu upgrades and additional slots to significantly improve tank and fitting options. This way, you need to mine actively, paying attention and being able to tank when necessary. Essentially use the shipâs abilities to survive a gank.
Dont get me wrong, I absolutely HATE afk miners and multi-box bot miners. Those should be permabanned. Code started out with targeting those but then they basically target everything and everyone regardless of their mining ship or being afk or not.
Theyâre pretty hard to kill already if theyâre mining in a fleet. Not sure if that survivability needs another boost just because some people fly solo untanked in 0.5 high sec systems.
The likelihood of you hitting dscan at just the right time to pick pick up the catalyst in time is very low. The chances are that out of 50 tries, I would kill you 48 times. The point here is that you need to do 20 of 20 things perfect to even have a chance of survival.
They do not have any inherent survivability, none. There is no âboostâ right now if they are in a fleet, any more than any other ship has while in a fleet. Any ship in a fleet is hard to kill, exhumers are the easiest of all.
If weâre talking about cost, Essara-Ta, itâs important to remember that few (if any) gankers target the same boat, time after time. We gank, then move on to the next target. You miners are quite a wealthy lot, generally speaking. âAlready replaced!â was a comment I often received from miners, in Local.
I used mainly T2 Catalysts, because it was less heavy on the number of accounts I needed. But for each gank, I naturally lost however many of them I brought to the party. And had to replace them to move on to the next location. A professional ganker might do this multiple times a day. It costs, and those costs are rarely covered by the meagre drops from random mining vessels.
We make it as cheap as we can, but you have to bring enough firepower to do the job.
I just donât want you to think that gankers lose nothing in pursuing their activities. There is always a cost; CCP has seen to that, and I never moan about it. I factor it into my enjoyment of the EVE experience.
Im not arguing against ganking or pro ganking. Im arguing that it takes 5 mil ship to kill 250 mil ship, without a way to prevent it except not fly it. Ganking should be done and ive done it, but the investment or risk has to match the reward.
You only need 1 catalyst to gank a hulk. People who gank miners do not do it because of the isk they gain from it, they do it because of the zkillboard kill value vs lost value and the kicks they get from it. There is no inherent profitability to it. If you want to gank for profit you gank industrials in Jita or Uedama, or abyssal ships. Not barges.
I canât use a high-risk, high-reward ship safely. Thus, it is clear to me that the risk needs to be reduced. Not the reward though. Keep that the same.
Also, ganking is too risk free. So that needs to be changed.
Also, I donât know what Iâm talking about when I say that there is nothing to do to prevent or survive a suicide gank.
