Have you ever think that a HS mining belt was safe as long you dont look for trouble from NPC miners fleet or goes in a hard site? well now you are wrong.
Happened to me a few day ago, i log on thinking i could spend some time mining in hs. (Manatirid) i have been a resident of the this system from quite a long time. i took the orca out, and when reaching the mining belt i got locked from what i believe were the normal rat spawn, the orca being as big fat and slow as alway, trying to move out will take long, so i drop my drones out, and to my supprise i could only notice that i started getting attacked from the NPC miners defence fleet.
As those who have tried they know, you will end up web and scramble and desperate to run away or defend. Making it short i lost like a 1.2 ~1.5 bil orca.
So now i wonder, what is worth the rebuilding an orca if the rats will kill it again? No way an orca can defend from those. i found it overkilled especially with the new update that apparately make npc miners either assist or voluntarily attacked you (i will like to have a confirmation on this one) depending on your standing.
Btw the npc miners were blood raider and yes i have a bad standing with them. Anyone got similar experience and thought on this?
You were probably attacked by Rats from a FOB (Forward Operating Base) in the system. Blood Raiders are not known for running Mining Fleets. It’s a known fact that FOB rats are highly aggressive and with increasing in activity the longer it stays untouched. From the look on zkillboard you are far from the only victim.
As to how you best can deal with the FOB (as in killing it) I can’t tell you as I have no experience with them. I’ve heard/seen reports of people using a couple of Vexor/VNI to kill it, however it will probably take a while to destroy it. Due to the FOB mechanics; Big isn’t always better, so it may very well be doable with a few Vexor/VNI speedtanking with oversized AB or what ever… you can try look at the zKB for FOB kills and see what people have been using to deal with them.
Ditto those Blood raider fleets are brutal, was om the look out for players and didnt think to check the agency as there were no comps on. Got wreked by those cruisers.
If you look in The Agency, you will see a listing for FOBs (Blood Raiders or Guristas) that are close to you. If you have one in your system, it will be a matter of time before they come after you if you are in space. For better or worse, if you have one in your system you have 5 main options:
Don’t mine.
Mine in another system.
Wait for it to be killed.
Go out and kill it yourself.
Contract a merc group to go kill it for you.
These will not despawn by themselves, so until somebody kills it, it will stay there and so will the rats.
Players requested more group PVE in highsec. CCP delivered Resource Wars and Forward Operating Bases. I don’t think there is a conceptual problem with the features but the rewards are too low to attract a lot of players. A look at the past week on Zkillboard shows about 5 FOBs are being killed per day on average.
I can understand that CCP is reluctant to open the ISK faucet any wider but the distribution of ISK entering the game is unreasonably skewed in favor of Nullsec with 15% of players getting 93% of the bounties. Highsec with 71% of players gets 6%.
If CCP adjusted the balance even a little, I think we’d see the FOBs dying soon after they spawn.
As I noticed that the recent agency rats are quite hard to fight and bring no bounties at all, I decided these agency points aren’t worth the effort, especially after other players repeatingly just shot the bs or bc and got the “price” while I had to warp out the third time. I tried to engange some of these FOB frigates, but was not really able to harm them, whilst they volleyed my shields.
Still much to learn
I’ve just learned the hard way not to mine in a system with a FOB.
RIP mining ship.
Hit warp the moment they appeared on overview but was pointed before I entered warp.
Just a thought but It would of helped if there was an ingame chat channel that popped up, like incursions warning me there was a FoB in system.
The agency window freezes when i try to use it.
Have reported it numerous times through bugs and logs.
CCP keep saying they can’t reproduce the lag.
Also industry window times out.
All since chat was changed.
