Your EHP means nothing if you cannot get away. It only means it will take longer for them to chew through your defences, but if help isn’t coming, neither will it come a few seconds later.
Fit your ship to slip out of their long points, which gives you another second to react to an incoming tackler. Don’t fit to stay alive longer when already tackled, because then it’s too late.
The only time I can see that extra bit of EHP matter on a procurer is when you’re actively trying to bait enemies and have a friendly fleet nearby that is ready to kill anything you catch.
My point of commenting on the EHP is that Im intersted in sacrificing EHP for more interesting ideas precisely for this reason. The EHP is only a countdown to midnight.
I’m still trying to digest all your info on points, scrams/disrupts and stasis.
Basically it seems add a warp core stab, to negate a disrupt.
So anyone with more points has to get in close and play on your terms with a scram/web?
The end game is to let active allies jump in and get the kill
It’s been a while since I used to fly a procurer for ice, but what I described above is how I approached my defence.
While mining ice you need to make sure not to sit at the warp-in spot. At that moment, there are two dangers:
Cloaky ship. A T3C, stratios or some bomber(s). There’s not much you can do to prepare except call for help / fight them off with your drones.
Tackle interceptor. They may have scram (= warp scrambler), they may have point (= warp disruptor) or a combination of both.
To fight off the interceptor your best bet is to align and warp out before he has targeted you. Your distance from the warp-in spot of the belt, your align time and your reaction speed are relevant here to determine if you can escape.
The longest range ability of the interceptor is going to be a warp disruptor which stops your ship from warping with strength 1.
So when you see the interceptor warp into your ice belt, this will be your first danger. To counter the warp disruptor I fit one warp core stab on my ship, for two reasons:
giving me a second or so extra to warp away
forces the interceptor in my scram/web range if he wants to keep me there (unless he has 2 warp disruptors which is less likely)
If I didn’t make it to get away before the interceptor got within scram range, I can now use my warp scrambler to turn off his MWD and web him if I did equip a web. This severely lowers his speed, allowing my drones to catch up on him and ECM / hurt him. The latter may scare the interceptor back to warp discruptor range, allowing me to warp off again due to the warp core stab. The former may break his target lock, but neither is guaranteed.
It’s probably better to find a quiet place and fit for max yield and take the inevitable but hopefully rare deaths, or join a mining fleet.
But if you like to pay attention while solo orbiting ice, what I described above may be your best strategy.
If this is your goal, I’d equip damage control + drone damage amplifiers in the lows, a warp scrambler in the mids, web and 2x omni shield resist.
When hostiles warp into your belt, notify your fleet to get ready. Next, pretend like you’re a miner that wants to warp out instead of a bait procurer that wants to catch the interceptor. So: align out, but do it too late. Target the interceptor but don’t fight until he’s within your scram range. Next, confirm that your fleet is warping towards you, then scramble + web + drones out to keep him from warping away.
Just know that mining ice and baiting hostiles may be combined, but as with everything in EVE, it’s better to focus on one or the other instead of doing it both.
I will add that WCS (Warp Core Stabilizers) come with 2 tradeoffs:
High CPU cost to fit (meaning less resources to fit other things)
It halves your targeting range and speed
– Be sure to double-check your current targeting range and speed and make a judgement call on whether this is worth it
When fitting WCS follow this adage: “Warp Core Stabilizers may save you today, but they won’t tomorrow. Or ever again.” (Translation: “Don’t rely on them as your primary means of escape”)
There are webification drones, but they are generally seen as worthless for a number of reasons.
ECM drones are almost universally preferred as the “get out of jail free card” due to the way the mechanics work.
You are over-thinking this. Bottom line, do you want to PvP or mine? Basically, what @Gerard_Amatin said - just pick one.
If you want PvP then look up “bait” or “battle” procurers. Lots of useful fits and ideas going back 5-8 years. But consensus is likely to be web + scram.
If you want to mine glare crust in LS then do it by the numbers. Start with upping your skills. Fit T2 ice harvesters, T2 harvester upgrades and an ice rig. Swap your point for thermal amp and fly T2 drones.
And, because you are doing this for past-time, just leave ship in system of your choice and fly to it at need. Then jet-can ice and pick it up every hour in a miasmos. You will not find LS player bases you can compress in (unless you/ your corps has one) but stations are usually available. Although not universally.
Re the rats, you are perfectly fine in 0.4 and 0.3. Even against Lord’s BS. The clones can be tricky though, from 0.3 down. 0.3 will likely be a grind but trick when in difficulty is to warp out and back in. The clone will keep approaching where you were and once back in and orbiting at 5 km it will likely never hit you. It’s when it’s approaching and hitting from a distance that tank can drop real quick.
As to tacklers etc, just dock up. Old school.
Note, I have used all this effectively, but dual boxing a pair of endurances is even better. Good speed tank. Better ore hold. Six T2 drones (not five) will take out 0.2 clone. And both can simply sit cloaked if required.
I want to mine, but be able to lock someone down and call in the cavalry, I actually got a fit from someone and it basically followed the fit recommended here.
AFAICT the guys in ‘The Grey Eagles’ are doing all the things it sounds like you want to be doing, but in WHs at Ore anoms rather than low-sec with Ice (which changes things up a bit)… but from my perspective I knew it was bait but reallyreally wanted that Procurer kill! Unfortunately for me long range webs (rapier) & scrams (arazu + broadsword, maybe proteus, memory fuzzy) meant I was not able to keep my distance from the things that could hurt me.
I don’t know the procurer fits they were using, though one had a point (which on the first encounter gave away the fact they were bait, so I was able to gtfo by MWDing to safety), and one had an ECM burst (which on the 2nd encounter broke my lock as the targeted procurer hit ~ 1/2 structure). But I can say they had a massive tank, able to tank long enough that I saw the HFI on dscan, “keep shooting”, it landed & engaged, then the rapier decloaked and webbed me, “hmm, web him back & pull some more range… but keep shooting”, then arazu decloaked, “oh crap, pull more range & keep shooting!!”… it was about this time the MWD stopped working (not enough range), all the things were overheated but it didn’t matter cause I was dead. I will add that the drones from both procurers weren’t an issue or a consideration going in.
So be aware that a procurer pointing you is a sure sign it is bait and backup is on the way but does not necessarily mean the attacker will bail out… (the attacker being bad helps!). Just ensure your friends bring along the long range webs & scrams and they’ll be killing things in no time.
Alternative may be an afterburner for your bait procurer. You want to stay in range with whatever you baited as long as possible, so either you slow them down or you speed yourself up (while scrammed, so no MWD).
Either compare 1 procurer with 1 endurance, or 2 procurers with 2 endurances. Multiboxing 2 ships is going to be better than flying one in pretty much any case.
But I agree, the Endurance is a good alternative to the Procurer for ice mining and definitely worth looking into. Except when you want to bait, then nothing compares to the Procurer / Skiff.
Again, context is everything. If you are using skiff on ice, fitted with ice harvesting and drone mining rigs, then with an ice mining drone you effectively end up with 2.5 ice harvesters. Almost to the second.
Every four blocks from harvesters you get “bonus” fifth from drone. Given skiff holds 15,000 m3 that is 15 ice blocks, which is perfect. Six rounds of harvesters and you have full hold each time. This is most useful for solo. But, if jet canning or dumping to industrial, less so. (Not timed the benefits in procurer but its 12 block hold will likely make it more trouble than worth.)
As aside, this is also why some folks think endurance better than a prospect. Although endurance is ice boat, if you use 3 x T2 mining drones and a mining laser it will actually out-mine prospect on ore. And it can still swap for combat drones for rats.
Well it’s easier when you’re asking a specific question, rather than some hypothetical theoretical mubojumbo
Wasn’t concerned by the damage the 2x procurers may have been putting out as I knew I could tank them plus a friend or 2 (within reason). But yes, was concerned about being held down by his allies as they started to grow in numbers and consisted of specialist ships (the recons/HIC), which eventually lead to my demise. Edit: obviously it was the DPS of the HFI/Proteus that killed me but not being able to dictate my range to these ships enabled their DPS to apply.
I’d suggest tank. Stabs may help, maybe, but will reduce your lock time, which on anything small (frigates/ceptors/dictors) is going to be horrible to start with. I’d suggest you want to maximise your time on grid so your friends are able to arrive and assist.
There isn’t any low slot module that adds range to points/webs, except the role bonuses of certain ships.
I’d suggest dmg drones as with more than one attacker on grid you can assign them to a friend and ensure all the damage is on the same target, which frees you up to maintain tackle (range/heat/etc).
