Was my Procurer tanky enough?

I was suicide ganked in high sec yesterday (my first time). Now, I have no issue with the ganking mechanics- and, despite losing my ship, I did enjoy watching CONCORD deliver justice on my behalf.

I also know I was using some expensive tech II, modules, so that might have made me an attractive target- but I’m also wondering if I should have tanked my ship differently? Should I go back to tech 1 equipment in order to be safer? Did my attackers make a lot of isk off me (after their ship losses)? I have no ill will here- I just want to learn for next time.

The fit looks reasonable to me. It is not what I would personally use, but there is some room for personal preference in choosing how much reward in mining speed you want for the extra risk of the lowered tank in the ship.

Tech II modules aren’t too terribly expensive when compared to faction modules. The odds of someone seeing a T2 fit procurer and thinking of it as an attractive kill for the loot seems pretty low to me. The loot fairy was very kind to this person.

I don’t see a need to be all in or all out on your fit. Most likely you’ll be able to see if these 8 alt accounts appear in the system and when you see them, you can dock up and swap fit (or ship) to something with more tank and less expensive modules.

I think that probably someone wanted to send the message “You’re not safe in a HS island mining in a procurer.” and you just happened to be in the line of fire at that moment.

Awareness and a measured response to the situation at hand would be my suggestion.

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Yeah your tank was solid for most run of the mill things. This was a multibox ganker, so in this case no amount of tank would prevent it. In this case he used 8 ~1.3m ships to pop you. Even if he had lost them all that’s only ~10.4m vs your drop of 25m ish. Therefor it’s just a numbers game of profit, plus he gets satisfaction of a kill. He was likely hoping for a haul full of ice to drop too.

In the future mine aligned to a station and prob avoid that aras as it looks like his hunting ground.

For doing that fitting a Medium Higs Anchor rig instead of the Ice Harvester rig should help you with staying aligned to any possible warp out location (station, planet, moons, structure, etc). The rig reduces your movement speed considerably so that you can stay aligned to a place far longer at 75% speed (warp threshold speed) without having to constantly realign somewhere else to stay in range.

I would also unfit the survey scanner and fit another tank module.

Instant warp is prob overkill. As long as you are paying attention, being aligned and hitting jump as soon as you hear\see someone coming in should be plenty. A higs is going to hinder quality of life just trying to get your job done.

Your fit is fine.
Fitting anything for mining in highsec is done to protect you from dying to NPC’s.

Once an even slightly competent Ganking gang has you in their sights no amount of tank is going to save you - Stay aligned whenever possible and watch local/dscan is really your only defence.

  • Never buy a “mining permit”, all it will do is make you a target for the next guy who wants to extort isk from you.
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Agreed, never buy a mining permit, instead buy an anti-ganker token from me, it is a lucky charm that will protect you from gankers. It only costs 100 mil ISK and it works for a lifetime for all your characters on all your accounts, a true bargain. :wink:

:upside_down_face:

One part of the kill shows Light Neutron II as the damage source. Assuming all are fitted with those, cost about 6M just for weapons. Then assuming he gets half back -3M(statistically.over many kills it’s about that), it runs him about 5M per Catalyst *8 cats = cost of 40M. Net loss for him if he only got 24M from you.

Summary your Proc tank is fine.

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Tank only goes so far in avoiding a gank. You need intel. Pull up killboards and do a system search. Gankers typically have their usual hunting grounds and times they are online. Ice spawns are like watering holes in the African bush for gankers. Take all the gankers that have made recent kills in the systems you mine in and add them to your contacts. Look for other active gankers in their corp. CODE, PIRAT, Deep Core Mining (they are NPC but there are a bunch of active PVP’rs) Goonswarm, and Pandemic need to be given all bad standings (no offense to the last two, but if they are roaming in hi-sec, they probably are up to no good). Give them, their corporation, and their alliances a bad standing. Set your local chat list to where it is text only and keep your eye on it constantly. Look up other players info who are in system, see who their corp is and their employment history. New pilots or pilots with lowish security standings but have been playing for months hanging around in places they shouldn’t be should be considered scouts. Lastly, watch for local spikes… see 3–4 ships jump in, be prepared to GTFO.

IMO, procurers, retrievers and the like are best fitted with T1 modules and insured. That way if you do get ganked, the losses are not so bad. Consider using Kinetic and Thermal fields instead of Adaptive Invulnerability II’s as Catalysts with Void S ammo are the choice of most gankers. With big roids such as moon goo and ice, it can be beneficial to orbit close to the max range of your lasers as gankers need to be right up your outgoing orifice to apply max damage. You may get lucky and they land several km’s off giving you time to get to warp. In belts, start working the outside of the ring and align to station. Don’t get in the belt so if you have to run you won’t get hung up on roids.

That is about all I got.

If you want more tank, you can go DC II in the low, plus a 3rd invul instead of the useless survey. This would make you go from 56 to 81k(+44%) EHP. You then can replace the ice harvester upgrade by a 3rd core defense field extender, going to 90k(+60%) ehp.

Contrary to what some people claim, nowhere is safe nor supposed to be in New Eden, even a tank-fit procurer in 1.0 can be killed by someone who really wants it.
Fitting more tank will only reduce the frequency of those loss.

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That’s a bummer.

Having recently made a trip to solitude (I actually flew past you a few times, remember the name) the only extra piece of advice I’d add is keeping an eye on local. At least the week or so I hung out there the biggest thing I noticed is how overall empty it is. So seeing local spike by 9, especially with names like that would put me on notice to start pinging short Dscan and staying aligned.

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I am a miner. That is what I do. The following are my personal perspectives. Use or lose these as you see fit.

Mining whilst aligned makes absolutely no difference to your warp out time. You have to be physically moving whilst aligned. And the only way to be moving and still be within range of an ice block for long enough is to fit the Higgs anchor. I have never fitted one. Don’t see the point.

A more old school option for you is to orbit the ice as you are mining. Yes, you are moving but you are not aligned. So again, it makes no difference to warp out time. However, it simply makes you a moving target, and takes just a tiny bit longer for someone to reach and lock you. Orbit at 5-7.5 km distance of ice and perhaps every time you unload, also fly back to a different ice block.

The scanner is redundant on ice simply because each block is a minimum 90,000 m3. At that size, it will take you 7/8 full ore holds to blow up. Plus, if you keep moving blocks anyway, that is two reasons why you will never need to know how much ice is left in real time. On average, you will never run out. Just dump it.

Next thing, I use procurer or skiff because they are the only ships you can fit for max yield without being fail fit. (Try putting T2 harvesters and max number of upgrades onto simulated covetor and retriever and you will see the point with respect to their tank.) On that basis, take advantage of the naturally high tank and always fit an ice rig. No real point in targeting ice if you don’t. And fit the T2 harvesters. Same reason. Plus, even with higher cost T2s, the time it will take you to mine your replacement value is maybe only 90 to 120 minutes on ice? So, shrug it off, learn the lessons. Keep moving.

That leaves the shield rigs and mods. I like resists as opposed to core or strength. And the classic resists against catalysts and/or ganks is EM and thermal. If you were keeping the scanner, I would swap one core rig for a thermal rig and replace one of the adaptive mods with an em field II . Or vice versa. But, if you are dumping scanner, then you have options. Maybe still keep the two core rigs but have triplet active hardeners in the mids instead ie thermal, EM and one adaptive. Or do the rig/mod EM/thermal thing and keep two adaptives. Your choice.

That’s awesome- I’m amazed at the people who see me in game and recognize me from the forums. Solitude is an interesting place, feels like it has its own culture.

Well actually it was opposite. I noticed you in game, and then later saw you post and was like I just saw that toon.

Yea I enjoyed my mini vacation in solitude.

Thank you everyone for the advice- it’s very helpful and I’ll take a lot of it into consideration.

I tend to only go with T2 modules when I don’t expect to lose my ship- otherwise T1 is much better for my budget.

I don’t know if I’m right, but after doing some research- it APPEARS that it may have been a targeted attack to remove ANY competitors from the ice field. That is the only system on the island with high sec ice, and there are two ice anomalies in the same system- which makes it VERY lucrative. It’s painful to see one person (bunch of alts) manage to keep all the high sec ice for themselves- there’s obviously nothing I can do about it. I guess I’ll have to find another source of income in Solitude.

I am reminded of this:

I do not know if your antagonist is related, but you could give it a read if you have the extra time for entertainment value. Dock up first, of course.

Not so fast, bald eagle. Cursory look suggests main ganker group flies in 8 hour window. With you getting tagged right at beginning of window. Any option for you to hit ice outside of that?

And of course, when those reds are on local, why would you be out flying? They arrive, you leave. They may well have spotters to reduce time they need to drop onto you. But, you should be able to put 2 + 2 together and work out who those spotters are eventually. And/or view all new bros with suspicion.

Then there is the Endurance. Not what you want to fly when hitting high sec ice, yield wise, but it does fly fast, especially when orbiting. It will also let you cloak and run (not warp) if a bunch of reds hit local. And once you can fly this ship, getting out to low sec and going for glare crust could actually be safer/more profitable for you.

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It does not appear to be the same person. The person and Corp hasn’t been active since 2018. Also, the entity attacking me was completely silent in local, not even so much as a “gf”.

So this group wasn’t red to me at the time- and the group appears to be active right around my time zone- so mining outside this window is not easy.

I can certainly move to another system- and do other activities.

I had actually considered being an isk drain for him- basically I fly a T1 tank procurer fully insured, I take an estimated 5m loss each time, while he takes something considerably larger. I continuously re-ship, and he gets frustrated with having to constantly re-fit/re-ship- each time with an isk loss.

Your suggestion of using the Endurance is solid, and that often works for me - though the travel time of getting my product to market does eat into my isk per hour.

Post flagged as inappropriate.

The miner was elite PVPd for not having a permit.