In my travels, I’m noticing fleets of mining ships in the various systems; I thought at one time there were just a LOT of people mining but now that I’m getting some experience in EVE and running d-scan, I realize there’s nobody in local where I’m encountering these “miners”.
So they MUST be bots! I thought mining with a bot was illegal…
NPC mining fleets exists as well.
Those are CCP bots.
They think it will make players in Mining ships leave High Sec space…
The White Diamond Barges drop Ore
The Industrials Drop processed ore, mostly Pyrite
You must set a bookmark to run as they call for backup and are tank fit, align to your bookmark before engaging and if you are quick at a few simple tasks you get to return and loot though best achieved in small numbers.
Attacking them lowers your standings but doesn’t flag you.
Thanks for the clarifications!
I’ve got news for CCP - the more they try to force me out of high-sec, the more I resist leaving it.
Well, those NPC Mining Fleets clear out entire belts in no time at all.
CCP has reduced the Ore types in High Sec belts to Veldspar, has removed regular Ore asteroids from mission sites and removed all Ore Anomaly sites from High Sec space.
So yeah, I think they’re trying very hard to make players in Mining ships leave High Sec space.
Far from true - I was just mining Azure Plagioclase and Massive Scordite from a high-sec belt to top off my manufacturing jobs…
Well then I guess CCP lied in this Dev Blog about the redistribution of Ore.
They didn’t lie - but tritanium [veldspar] isn’t the only ORE left in highsec is all I’m saying, it’s easy to get confused by that wordmass…
But I’ll buy lowsec OREs before I EVER go back in lowsec to mine - I refuse to be ganker bait. If nobody goes into lowsec for ORE for a week, the gankers will get very tired of sitting there cloaked behind the belt rats that are appearing now…
Gankers might be having fun attacking defenseless mining ships - but I can assure them that gankees don’t think it’s fun. Deny them their jollies.
Plus, gankers wait until you’re involved with the rats before they come out of hiding to finish you off - I have zero respect for that kind of game play, no matter what the trolls say! Ok, have at it…
If those miners have diamonds next to their ship names in the overview, they’re NPC rats. I call them “drats.”
Drats are tougher than normal rats, work in organized packs, and yes, they’ll eat an asteroid belt in short order. You can come back with a fleet and take them down, but it’s probably easier to just warp off to a different belt.
They’re a common occurrence even in nullsec, but not so common that it makes mining impossible. As far as bots go, in my experience it’s fairly easy to call in a few friends and deal with a bot miner; I haven’t seen them operating in fleets very often.
clarification, Tritanium isn’t ORE, but a mineral.
True that you did find plagio and scordite in Hisec, because according to the blog DMC posted,
which would lead one to believe that Scordite and Plagioclase are in Hisec since they were removed from Low/Null.
so no DMC they didn’t lie about it.
now, as far as minerals go, Tritanium should be the only mineral in hisec, even from moon goo.
Its NPC miners. Real miners dont do that on such scale…
I think like others have said the miners that you saw were probably NPC miners. However, if you do come across 'bots that aren’t NPCs, please do report them.
Reporting probably won’t ever completely stop 'botting In EVE, although it’s still important to report.
To me, the whole thing feels frequently like an arms race …
'Botters develop (fairly sophisticated) applications to help them cheat … CCP monitors, analyses, tracks, and then when they do catch them there’s an immediate ban on the account. However (it feels like) almost the next day they pop up somewhere else, with a new account and a new character but you’re damn sure that they’re the same person.
The more players do report, the more hostile the environment is for 'botters* which in itself is no bad thing at all because their behaviour degrades the game and the player environment for us all, but as someone who has never cheated, the behaviour of some people really annoys me.
As a miner, I’m obviously not a massive fan of ganking. Having said this, when 'bot users are being entusiastically bumped, harassed and killed, my attitude tends to be, more power to their (the gankers) elbow.
There is a side of me that wonders why the gankers haven’t realised that a PR coup is within their reach.
If, instead of running dodgy protection money schemes and fostering personality cults, they instead positioned themselves as a rank and file police force taking out cheaters, pretty much all of the legitimate mining community would support them.
It would involve honesty however, and ethics, and integrity and maybe that’s why they haven’t.
Wait, what am I missing here with that comment?
Real miners? Am I not a real Miner? If so then I am in the clear and can stop sending isk to Princess!
Fixed that for you.
Can’t wait to see the massive drop in player count when they nerf Orcas and Rorquals.
Dibs on those Orcas/Rorquals.
If you have everything automated and only pretend to use your fleshy body to do it, then yes, you can stop sending isk to Aiko. That also means you achieved the state reserved only to CCP creations and you have to stop.
Sounds like there is an opportunity here for CCP to put a bounty on mining botters. And make it 10X to keep gankers off of legitimate miners out trying to keep the EVE economy alive…
I don’t really understand why they put gangs of NPC miners in the belts to compete [for what?} with players paying for the privilege of mining.
What would be the point of putting a bounty in a banned account? 
Well, they aren’t banned yet, if they’re mining…
The point is to get rid of the illegal mining bots and leave us legitimate miners alone - give the gankers a big bounty to do this instead of going around space killing unarmed civilians.