What’s the deal with all the blue NPC mining ships I see around stations and asteroid belts? (the ones marked with a “•”)
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I forget when these were introduced, but they are a huge pain in the ass. Sometimes you will have to visit 40 belts across 7 systems before you find one they haven’t mined out. You can kill them without Concord intervention, but the NPC have their own response fleet that can be pretty nasty. Your standard gank Catalyst can easily kill the T1 barges or haulers and warp out before the response fleet can target you though. You can get ship skins and other things from killing the haulers. You get the ore they mined if you kill the barge.
Fortunately they are NOT in ice anomalies. Yet…
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Are these high-sec only? Can the response fleet been solo’d in something like a Rattlesnake or Marauder?
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There are various videos on YouTube of players taking on the response fleet to varying degrees of success. I’m not 100% sure, but I think the bigger ship you bring, the more fleet they bring, including battleships. And they will neut and scram you. They also have logi support.
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I believe if they’re blue then that means you have positive standings with them. I’ve heard they will RR your ship if needed and will only attack when provoked.
The actual idea for that content seems good but it was implemented much too heavy. Also in my opinion that content should have been implemented just in low and null sec space, not high sec. For years CCP has been trying to entice players to go to low and null sec space, now it seems the main intention for this and other content such as FOB’s is to forcibly drive players out of high sec space.
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You will take a standings hit from the NPC corp that the mining ships belong to if you destroy one. However, if you simply attack them then warp away without killing them, you won’t incur any standings loss. If your goal is to just get them out of the belt you want to mine in, just attack a couple of them and they will warp out, then you warp out and wait a few minutes and come back with your mining ship. I use a cheap Corax fit to do this. I attack 7 ships at once using light missile launchers. Just align to a celestial of your choice, target 7 NPC ships, hit 'em with a couple flights of missiles, then warp out as the response fleet arrives. I have yet to incur any standing loss doing this.
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Ahhh, good info to know.
Do they stay away from that belt or do they return after a while?
Sometimes they return, sometimes they don’t. I haven’t ever really timed it to see how long.
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Personally I find them annoying. Not because they mine belts - it is no issue for me. But just imagining being the poor sob who comes to eve before DT - like 04 eve time… between npc miners and players there is barely anything left to mine.
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