Just for something new to try i fit up a Tornado and tried to hit an NPC mining fleet, it was only ventures and a bestower hauler, the response frigates were only a small fleet but they owned me. Perhaps it was the fit, unsure.
Ive done some reading on this but all the info is old (although maybe still relevant). Whats a good effective ship (and tactics) to do this in.
I would practice on the test server, yanno, to test things, but still closed to the public
This guide might help you out. Good luck!
You can’t solo the NPC response fleet. They just keep coming, and the more ships you bring, the more ships they bring. If your intention is to blap the NPC hauler for the loot strongbox, there’s a way to do that.
Shoot one of the NPC miners, then immediately warp to a station. Wait 3 minutes. The NPC miners and their hauler will be sitting in a safe. Probe down their location then, using a Polarized Hecate, warp to them at 100km and immediately turn around and burn away from them. This will draw the response fleet towards you and away from the hauler. Once you are at least 300km away from the NPC hauler, turn around and warp to zero on it and burn it down with the Hecate, grab the loot box, warp off.
Long story short, if you actually try to engage the NPC response fleet directly, you will get owned.
As a side note, there is no reason to even attempt to kill the NPC combat response fleet. They have no bounties, and they don’t drop anything. The NPC mining barges and Ventures just drop a little bit of ore. The only thing of value worth killing is their hauler. The T1 hauler is less valuable, but easier to kill. The T2 hauler is quite a bit harder to kill, but has a far more valuable loot box.
Polarized bomber works for hauler too. I used purifier in Amarr space to kill pirate hauler before response fleet arrival, got better range compared to hecate and can align out as soon as decloak near hauler but had a bit hassle with refitting combat probe launcher.
Yeha read that, that is why i used a Tornado as in the option 1 they suggested.
But is warping the tornado into a belt full of miners even the way to tornado the miners?
Warping into the belt is what dessies and Bombers and maybe Naga and Talos do, but a Tornado is best used on an Undock, at a Stargate, and of cause on an Abyssal Filament.
The NPC miner can be demined on the undock just as his player counterpart. Their haulers will warp to a station to offload ore, und when the hauler undocks again, you give it the salvo it deserves. It’s not a player you’re shooting at, therefore you don’t get a PVP aggression, and if the Tornado is well positioned, it can be docked up immediately after volleying the hauler.
Yes, but you have to know which station the NPC hauler is going to dock/undock from. If you’re in a system with 12 NPC stations, it’s a crap shoot. You’ve got a 1 in 12 chance of picking the right one. If you’re in a system with only one or two NPC stations, then your method could work.
And I highly doubt you’re going to alpha strike an NPC T2 DST hauler with a single volley from a single Tornado.
Once you attack an NPC miner, whether it’s the hauler or a barge, you’ve got exactly 10 seconds before the response fleet warps in.
The NPC always docks at the same station, so once you know which one of the 12 stations it returns to, you can camp that station
I wouldn’t be sure you volley even a T1 hauler. Unlike greedy players, NPC miners aren’t cargohold expanded and cargohold rigged to have no tank whatsoever 
… and when CCP nerfed the resistance modules a few years ago, only resistances of capsuleer operated ships were nerfed, while npcs were left as they were, so “advanced” NPC ships have higher resists then their capsuleer counterparts these days 
But the diamond NPCs, just like CONCORD, aggress on the capsuleers that have aggressed on the hauler, so if you’re shooting diamonds that are not red-standings to you, you dock the first tornado and can send a few more volleys with your alts that also dock right after volleying before the response even shows up. If you still have alts out by the time the response fleet lands, it’ll aggress only on the toons that you docked anyways and ignore the other toons unless they have sufficiently negative standings to their faction, so you can lock on the hauler despite an army of diamonds being on grid, volley it and dock up… just like suicide gankers can ignore concord being on grid when they’re multiboxing and need time to alt tab through the clients as concord equally aggresses only on tornadoes that have already “been used”, ignoring all tornadoes “yet to be used” on grid.
Nice. I did not know that. That will definitely make it easier.
I’ll just use multiple Polarized Hecates at once, burn it down, grab the loot, and dock up.
thanks everyone for your responses
if the station is the same corp as the hauler , or a navy station , i’ve had the station guns respond to aggro’ing their hauler… 
warping to their safe at range and drawing the response fleet off , can be very time-consuming as they slow-boat after you .
use an unarmed prober with combat probes . locate the hauler on d-scan , launch combat probes . warp to the belt and run probes at 1AU on your position . this will return a hit on the hauler , giving its ID which makes probing it down faster . lite it up using a target painter , and warp out .
an unarmed ship usually brings the lightest response fleet; nearly always just some frigates .
re-probe the hauler and warp to it in your damage-dealer, specific tanked for the npc type. if there’s npc logi, kill them first, which won’t aggro the fleet . then kill the hauler and the tackle.