Hello,
I have been mining with a ret in low sec and to avoid being killed, I use a cloaking device when I feel threatened.
I have been recentrly killed and I have no idea how the guy found me.
He came in solar system with suspicious icon on his name in local. Immediatly I decide to bring my mining drones back (they were around 4Km) and cloak. It took me at maximum 7 seconds to be cloak.
After a few second being cloak (like 5-6 seconds) he jump on me about 4 Km away from me and came right at me and decloak me.
What you are saying is what I though first but I used d scan like every 5sec, did’nt see any combat prob and I don’t know how he was able to combat probed me in less than 5 sec (I was really paying attention at local and d scan). As soon as I saw him, I immediatly brung my drones back and cloak. Honestly, at first, when he jumped in the belt, I was very confident to see him going elswhere since I was very on point on checking local and d scan and did not see anything suspicious other than his icon.
You do not disappear immediately: Even if your ship is invulnerable and unlockable instantly after hitting the button, your vessel on grid is visible for several seconds. So if the foe sees where to go on grid and is this close (4km), it’s easy for an able player to decloak your whale within seconds. And then you are about to become toasted, of course.
Problem: These ships are very slow (and even slower when in cloak), so even if you accelerate, he will get you.
So if you like cloaked ships with only one mining module, you should have a look at Expedition Frigates.
Edit: You were in a regular mining belt. Make sure to gain distance to the warp-in beacon. When you are 20km away, it’s much harder to decloak you.
Was there anyone else in local who is not your friend? If the answer is „yes“ then they were the ones that found you, not the guy who jumped in with suspect timer.
If I am mining in lowsec I am using a Higgs rig to bring my max speed way down, and I have a pair of tactical bookmarks above and below my mining site. Warp to the top bookmark, down to an asteroid at 15km, align to the bottom one. Traveling the 30km to get out of range of the asteroid takes many minutes and you can instantly warp to the bottom bookmark anytime you spot a threat.
Yeah. Align fitted retriever with 8 ticks to warp - sure (istab + 2 joint rigs). Still will be killed by cov ops and maybe recons but everything else can be seen on dscan from a mile away.
Was this the first time he entered local? Or did he or another character pop in and out of local before?
It is possible that they already spotted which belt or anomaly you were mining in if you cloaked too slow, because your drones were still out or because you had left some wrecks at the belt.
Or it is possible that you simply spotted him too late and that he was already combat probing for 10 seconds before you noticed.
Either way, he’s flying a T3 destroyer with a fit like this Hecate | chung moo | Killmail | zKillboard which has a combat probe launcher to find your exact location if you don’t cloak fast enough. By the time you cloaked, he probably was in warp to your location and decloaked you upon landing.
Reasons you may not have seen the combat probes on d-scan:
your directional scanning filter doesn’t show probes. This is possible, please launch some probes of your own to check that your directional scanner can see them, and fix your filter if it doesn’t.
you did not pay enough attention and he had already pulled his probes by the time you pressed dscan again. Pay attention to local and dscan!
he did some nice combat probing trick that allows you to combat probe a target with the probes outside the target’s d-scan range, as long as the target is easily scanned and you know the exact location, like a belt that you already spotted on d-scan.
he did not use combat probes at all, but warped to the belt he saw you at, and you made the mistake to be mining at the warp-in spot and got decloaked. Never mine at the warp in spot!
Explanation aside, I really wouldn’t be mining in a cloaky barge. That’s not what barges are for, and using only one strip miner instead of two halves your mining rate!
If you want to do cloaky mining, try the mining ships that are specialised in cloaky mining: the expedition frigates. Pick the Prospect or Endurance, either of them will have more mining yield than a Retriever with only a single strip miner.
If you are within 14.3 au of a gate, the 60 second gatecloak timer is plenty of time to refine dscan distance to find your exact belt. with the belt known (and scan speed skills and mods) i can deploy combat probes, scan it at 0.5au resolution, and retrieve the probes in 15-30 seconds. So if you’re dscanning every 20 seconds it might not be fast enough to catch the probes. Prospect and Endurance are a lot of fun.
Operating in low sec is no different from operating in jspace: wear out your V button. The only difference is that at least in low sec one knows if he is alone in the system or not.