I think the Prospect needs some balancing because it was designed to mine solo in hostile space and it can not do that efficiently. First because it can not take care of the NPC spawns and second because the ship should be designed to be used without boosts. What good if is a covert ops cloaking device if your booster does not have one. Also keep in mind that this ship should have to travel to a safe space to unload its cargo. So i believe a larger cargo hold or the ability to remote compress the ore is to be desired.
The solution.
Give the Porpoise enough drones to deal with the rats that are inside the space you intend to use the ship. If it is null space keep in mind that it needs to be able to kill battleships (about 250 DPS or above). And i say kill not tank indefinitely because Guristas rats can jamm the target.
Also if you do not want the extra yield you give the Porpoise to not be abused making the ship overpowered, make it imune to mining foreman boosts or make them less effective.
Thank you very much for reading this far,
Best Regards
I presume this (and other places) is a typo, you mean Prospect?
Have you tried sig tanking the rats? When I was out living in NPC nullsec (Great Wildlands) solo, I either sig tanked the rats or just went to a neighboring belt / anom with no rats if they contained certain Angel spawns.
Sig tanking is quite effective and is in some ways more efficient than outright DPS. You don’t need to waste time killing rats, and if anyone tries to warp into the site the rats are there to switch targets and apply DPS to whoever is trying to jump you.
Boosting and compressing are nice-to-haves. If you’re wanting these luxuries while mining deep in hostile space, it seems like a reasonable expectation that you’re going to have to make tradeoffs here. Accepting the increased risk & rewards, or not taking the risk of moving a Porpoise in the first place.
Covert Ops cloaks are kind of a crutch anyway. I think many pilots rely on them too heavily instead of getting comfortable flying visibly and working on their piloting skills to reduce the associated risks with doing so.
There are creative playstyles that can mitigate this risk. Unfortunately, the way I used to do things is not longer viable (I think compression arrays are now functionally useless). However, here’s one creative way:
Take your prospect out day tripping with >4 Giant Secure Containers.
Use your Prospect to scout for your compression alt Porpoise while you travel to a destination hostile system.
Log off your Porpoise at the destination system.
Anchor your GSC’s in >4 different spots in system.
Sig tank mine with the Prospect.
Whenever you’re full, drop off the ore in the various GSC locations.
Every once in a while, log on the Porpoise, warp to GSC locations, scoop the ore.
Every once in a while, log in the Porpoise, warp the Porpoise to a safe and briefly use the core 1 cycle just to compress the ore it’s collected from GSC.
Optional: Warp the Prospect to the Porpoise and get 1 round of boosts.
When done, scoop the GSCs with the Porpoise, log it off in the hostile system, and take the compressed ore back home with the Prospect.
Next time, you just have to return with the Prospect, the Porpoise + GSC setup is already waiting in system. However, use fresh & new bookmarks / GSC locations every time. And change systems occasionally.
This sets up a system where you can mine relatively steadily in a hostile system, without having to risk the Porpoise on-grid too much, and getting some benefits of compression and boosts. However, this requires comfort using D-Scan, situational awareness, and more mechanics (not outlined here) that can help mitigate risks when not flying with Covert Ops cloaks.