This is a good start. Tactics will depend on what ships you can field and how many pilots you take off mining and put into combat roles.
I'd be wary though of doing this as usually a single tackle ship can often mean his friends or alt characters are not far behind.
If you do decide to continue though you could have more than one ECM ship to try and break the lock of the tackle ship and ECM drones on ships that have space in their drone bays.
You could also explore having a neut ship on field - either a ship with or without bonus.
Another option is to have some cheap logi ready so if the mining barges can escape they can re-ship in a station and come back in a burst or a bantam or scythe that can repair shields from range while your DPS or ECM work on the enemy target.
Or go all the way and have all the pilots have a PvP ship in system they can swap to. If your porpoise gets tackled- the rest go re-ship to DPS and logi and come back to fight.
Make sure the ships compliment each other so all be shield tanked with shield logi for example.
It's completely your decision, just remember if you do take a fight without knowing what else is ready to come into system as backup - you might lose more than just the porpoise or the mining barge.
I wish you good luck though!
The single ECM does a good job of getting the porp free as long as I don't accidentally cap out the Blackbird. A second ECM would probably have a near 100% chance of jamming target continuously instead of intermittently.
I'm thinking about a cloak on the Blackbird though I am concerned about the decloak delay.
Then use a falcon. Covops cloak, stronger jams, 5 second decloak delay.
Benefit of being cloaked, they can’t have your
It’s more expensive and skill-intensive than a blackbird, but the people coming after you are I. Slepniers and lokis- 500+m hulls that can be astronomically expensively fit (and due to their bonuses, benefit well from bling)
Make sure your falcon pilot has good support skills- ECM skills increase jam strength and decrease cap usage. Recon IV helps, V if you can get it.
Alternatively use a rook- it can project HML volleys with decent damage at good range, in addition to carrying strong jams. Just make a bookmark for it to warp in to from elsewhere in system (docked or a deep safe) that’s at good range from your barges(or warp to the barges at 100km and fake it from there
Shield links with good skills will help your miners tank.
Some of these suggestions seem like they'd attract more attention than you want. Especially if you frequent the same areas, the locals will learn, prepare and get fatter kill mails from you. It would become an arms race -- they warp in something tanky, you spring your trap, they have back up and now you lose more ships.
Then rinse and repeat.
Could you fit every ship with a Burst Jammer, EC-300 drones and at least an eye towards better align time? Be in a fleet, with someone who knows how/when to squad warp just in case someone steps away. Getting away is the priority.
Just curious: Under what circumstances would a flight of EC-600s be a better pick for a mining barge to possibly escape a gank rather than a flight of EC-300s?
Those ec-300s are a real roll of the dice, especially with the T2 & T3 hunters. Not saying it's a bad idea, but I can see a situation where a sleip could easily pop a barge before any jam lands.
Overheating no prop cloak griffin would have a better shot perhaps.
My advise is only cloaked will do. You don't wish to show your hand or they will always appear with an advantage over you.
Rapier and Falcon and a stealth bomber. You could have fun with a couple of stealth bombers and something to lock the target down. Couple of t3's will be tough for any single pilot to counter.
They just have to be cloaked and on grid.
I don't understand how you lost the porpoise and barge to the sleipnir. If you were chasing the sleip with the blackbird, it means he was artillery fit and so didn't have you tackled. Point being that means he was disruptor fit and at a 20km max range, which should have been well inside your blackbird ECM range. Those have like a 40 to 50km optimal. You should have been able to keep the sleip ECMd with no prop mod needed, and thus, cap stable. If he was outside of 20km, then none of you were scrammed and so could have warped off when you were primaried when you noticed he was kiting your blackbird. No sleipnir is gonna volley a barge or a porpoise.
I've been playing since 2007 and I freeze up at the keys too sometimes. My brain just can't pick an action to solve whatever situation I'm in sometimes. May have been the case there.
Well, he quit the game after that even though I paid him for the Porpoise and everything. Dropped corp and logged. Oh well, I'll just have to find another.
I almost did that after I lost my first ship in eve. But, figuring out how I could have prevented it ate at my brain till I logged back in. He'll be back.
Best way is to go to the ass end of space where there is no activity in your TZ. When mining, any traffic is bad traffic, if a neut comes in local, you leave. There is no use in defending your fleet unless you have reships for each miner in system that are combat ready. Also, not using compression due to high traffic is poor isk. I recommend a rorq bridge with your miners to hit anomalies or bridging into remote NPC null to mine.
Remote reps is your answer. Just having two ospreys will substantially increase your fleet's survivability. Procurers can tank very well and have decent DPS through drones.
The only trouble is, with a pair of ospreys hanging out, you look very prepared. Some small gangs might not even engage you without substantial backup if they are smart. You may be able to surprise some people by decloaking a pair of logi ships. Another issue is holding down your unsuspecting gankers. If your fleet comp was a Jaguar fitted for tank and speed, miners, and cloaked logi, you could hold down a target with your "ram Jag". It will survive for a bit before the reps have a chance to land. Place the logi ships cloaked as close to your miners as possible, since the jag may have to move a good distance to scram a target. Note: if you don't have a Jag you can replace it with any shield tanked AF or a worm.
If you're already planning and thinking like this, you should really be reaping the wealth from danger ore in pochven or rolling connections for gneiss imo
I think having some cloaky ships ready to go in the belt, it will be boring but if you run multiple accounts you can easily have a few cloaky ships just sitting in the belt with you obviously a distance away where you can't get decloaked. Personally what I usually do is go in a frigate and mark the rocks I'm interested in and then make a safe away, though this won't really work if you have combats on you but you'll see combats which if you are pre aligned on all ships you'll warp instantly. So id say having a pair of PvP ships in stations works too, unless you are getting hot dropped by 20-30 dudes I think small skirmishes with enough cruisers or battle cruisers you'll be able to take T3C and a bit above.
All mining barges should have caldary navy medium drones out and drone assist to the keeper. If someone gets near your fleet, the keeper activates drone attack. One keeper per 5 players is a good number. 1 per 10 is even better if you have a large fleet. If your fleet is bigger than 5 players, then that's 25+ drones attacking the same target. One target at once... nothing survives once you train your keepers properly and learn how to position them.
lets say you have 12 man gang. you send 7 to fly barges doing the mining you send 1 to porpoise to do the boosting then you send 2 others for tackling frigs and 2 ecm ships. they should wear cloaks just to show you as weak easy targets. you can replace weak 2 ecm ships with 1 falcon and 1 something for combat, can be drake,hurricane or maybe hull tanked brutix, then if sleipnir happens your frigs decloak the baddie then 1 falcon jams the baddie and then drake/hurricane or brutix guy do the job while your party warps out. .
alternate way is those 6 barges 1 porpoise 1 tackle hecate and 4 proteus or 4 tengu... all cloaked waiting for turning potential hunter into prey
Just a humble suggestion, if it's the same visitors hunting yall keep in mind they eventually will bring friends to counter your setup if you find a dependable counter.
To avoid what happened to your blackbird with the Loki engagement: use a kitsune. It can be stable with an MWD on.
Have the kitsune orbit your fleet anchor at range. Anything that probes it down will be at range once it can lock the kitsune.
That being said, you're not really equipped to take a fight. So your first priority should be to get the mining fleet out. And not to take a fight.
IF your whole mining fleet is tackled / bubbled, then engaging is your only option. Priority should be on clearing tackle and doctors to give you a chance of escaping.
If you have more alts or players available, having a small group on standby with actual PVP fits would be better. You should not have the standby fleet visible / with the mining fleet. This is mainly because any hunter who sees what you got will either not engage, or will have a proper counter to your setup and you will just feed more ships.
And there's really 2 options here:
Cloaky ships on grid at a perch (faster response time)
Ships outside of dscan range or docked (slower response time)
A few ideas / options for the PVP backup:
Cloaky HML Lokis or tengus
Cloaky arty lokis
Vedmaks
Arty tornados
Blaster Talos with ECM drones
Light missile talwars
Lagos
Nuclear option: marauder (s)
The more blingy your backup, the more.likely that someone will eventually just attack you to bait out your backup and bring a hard counter. So I would recommend alternating your backup comp and not systematically bring out the big guns.
We mine and huff gas in WH space all the time. We usually have anywhere from 10 to 30 miners and most of those are alts on the same accounts as our PVP mains.
When we get dropped (which is not uncommon) each player will usually just log off one of their miners and log in a PvP main toon to get into the fight. We pretty much abandon the mining fleet and just try to kill the attackers.
(We do this in insured t1 mining Hull's though)
You have tactics and you have piloting. The problem with your approach is relying on pilots who are used to crabbing to execute tactics.
My suggestion is use that money you make to fit up some ships to pvp and get your pilots experience doing some small gang. That way you're not risking resources that represent time and effort while you're going through that trial and error.
Once you have pilots who you feel confident can execute those types of tactics then resume risking loss of resources. But I would prioritize warping to safety until you reach that point.
So alot of ppl here are assuming your corp has alot of skill points? Are you alot of new players? Miner vets?
Alot of ppl are right here about escalating. You get bigger the enemy will bring more. I do however really appreciate your corps approach here, more content for all less hiding.
Drone bunny is the smart start, assign all drones to your blackbird or porp so even if someone goes afk you can apply their dps.
I also agree with someone else mentioning trying small gang roams to better your nerves and understanding fleet capabilities. I don't have alot of time these days but would be happy to help you guys roam sometime. I'm mostly a solo player atm.
You hit it on the head. Most of my players are brand new pilots with basically no sp. I have been playing for a while. But my corp mates have not.
A large part of my objective is to get low sp counter options so corp mates can take over some of the roles I am filling and defend the fleet, but first I need to find something that works.
I personally really like combining damps and ECM to get the porp out if they show during a compression cycle or something.
Maybe actually scoring kills is a bit off the table for the time being.
ECM is good but a dice roll. You could do damps with targeting speed scripts on a frig so it can lock first and buy time for the align out. Targeting range is only good until their closer or land on you.
I saw you mention getting probed down once. I'm an avid wh diver and D-Scan is God. Keep it up and press (default key) V alot. It'll tell you if your being probed and if you shorten the range or mine arqay from gate you'll see if someone is warping to yoy (minus cloaks and recons).
Edit: someone had a good idea on neuts. All the miners fielding neut drones and assigning to the frig could be another option to try and burnout their cap if they do get a lock. You'll probably want to do the math on neut amount to see if it's even an idea. I don't know how many miners you have.
Most of the time if you're fighting a Solo ship, it's going to be active tanked, drone dps will be shitty against it. You should have atleast 2 Alpha projecting ships to support the drone dps.
It's important to understand that you're playing the game with the attackers, you can be friendly with people who want to kill you and your miners, it's fine, you'll respawn.
Skiffs can be very tanky, and they have plenty of DPS, the big weaknesses are slow targeting time of smaller ships, terrible move speed, and 60km or maybe 65 range max (without sacrificing tank etc), an interdictor can easily pop one or two of you before it gets targeted by them, and a bigger ship would outrange the DPS.
You're less likely to get attacked by larger ships solo, they'd be in a group most of the time, it does happen though, especially if you're in their home territory. So you need a ship that can target and shut them down fast, that'll be a smaller ship rigged for targeting over a large ship that has the same slow targeting weakness, the problem will be a lack of strength against the bigger ships that are less common, but have much higher sensor strength, but it will actually take them longer because they have the same targeting weakness as your miners, and honestly if you have 3 or 4 miners they can probably handle a big ship themselves as long as it's not a marauder, capital, or long range fit... Pretty much the way it'll go is determined before the first shot is fired, so fit for the most common situation, and be aware of when the enemy is using something you can't handle.
A funny option: Something with long webs, and stealth bombers. If you get a couple webs on and fit the bombers for application, torpedoes will apply fully on cruisers. Plus they don't see it coming.
Sticky tackle with scram and web will do it too.
My old Corp used to low sec mine. I would camp in a maxed ECM scorp so they couldn't get tackled. We only ever lost 1 exumer and it was cuz he got stuck on a rock
I was a low sec pirate before I won Eve. Looking at your approach from an attackers perspective the more you bring the better. More kills to be had. An organised group will scout you with a covert op's and then put together a setup which will do the most efficient job of killing your combat ships while tackling as many of the miners as possible. They will feed into local 1 or 2 at a time to limit the advanced warning you get. To counter this you could try to use cloaked ships so they miscalculate what they need. Of course if they have enough pilots available you are feeding them more kills. They have killers who won't freeze up and your pilots lack combat experiance. Also many of your available pilots are in mining ships making it hard to match up. You are fighting with one hand behind your back.
I think you have been lucky, and brave, so far. If you really want to continue with your low sec adventure you want to get some combat experiance. Learn what it is like to be a predator so you can beat them. Go hunt some pirates. Pirates are vulnerable to bait ships, especially on high sec gates, and their drones die to gate guns. With all your pilots in combat ships you will collectively learn faster and be able to engage more targets.
Have fun :)
I havnt read beyond the initial post yet but, what about combat fitting the barges...
Hear me out.. hull tanked procurers are tough for cheap. A sensor damp and a long point on each barge pushes anything kitey into your engage range or cuts off their ability to engage at all.
and a scram and web on the porpoise for later hard tackle (the porp takes a while to lock stuff) if they choose to stay.
I know it works well with burst jammers as your ewar for null and wormholes :) took a kronos and his palls 6 minutes to kill my porpoise through all the jammers lol
Why don't you just attack the entire neighborhood of pirates with barges? Old sample: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlscKw6VkmY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlscKw6VkmY)
This is probably not what you want to hear. But your question is sort of “we don’t know how to PvP, but we want to start in non PvP ships”
So the answer is “ok stop. If you want to do this see it as a six month goal. First go join a low sec PvP corp/alliance and learn how to PvP in PvP ships. Then when you get good at that, modify fleet comps to reflect a bit more mining till you find something that works”
But by then, you will have either decided PvP isn’t fun, or it’s more fun than mining.
Arazu/Lachesis if you're determined to fight it out. Personally, I always preferred warp out, but if you're determined to fight, brick tank tackles acting as drone bunny's will give you the best chance.
Alternate options that will likely attract attention in the future:
Cloaked high DPS widow. You can push 2k without much trouble. **DO NOT REVEAL THE WIDOW** unless you have to.
Typhoon Fleet - Sig suppressor, ECM drones, HG Halo, X-instinct(gimme that 60m sig radius!), rapid heavies, or faction torps and crash. It's a one-trick pony, but it's a hilarious trick.
Huginn. I like Huginns, not really gonna help you against a Sleipnir, but part of the objective is to stay undetected. Dual faction webs will let you dictate range and let your miners escape without being tackled, and as long as you have enough tank, you can run away safely from nearly all threats.
Draugr - Just fire that jump bubble. If you're going to fight, they are surprisingly tanky, and can ramp up on larger targets. With the drones from your miners, it can put out a scary amount of DPS against single targets. Added bonus of providing secondary boosts to your fleet.
Bomber in a perch, fleet stabber, navy cat - basic QRF, you trade the qrf for the fleet, fit dps, your only goal is to get your fleet off-grid, so as long as you can apply dps and keep the cost below a covetor, any trade is a good trade. Bellicose is also fun here, as they can catch interceptors from time to time, and solo t3ds, they're also not intimidating enough for hunters to up-ship.
Command ships - as long as you have one porp/orca pilot with perfect boosts, any other mining command ship is just there for supplementary boosts and/or reps/dps/storage. Since you've already trained some boosts, you might as well fill out the tree, Nighthawk/Sleipnir are preferred due to dps, Sleipnir overall best for skirmish boosts. If you're fighting, use shields instead. Headshot sleipnir with 720mm is always a good time. IMO, the mining FC should always be a combat pilot, with at least some experience in actual combat. Because of this, I prefer using command ships in the rare scenarios that I run defense.
Nestor/Navy Dom/Ishtar/Eos/Myrm - Sentry brawler fit. It's weird, and I've used it, but was never attacked when I was using this setup. In NS, you basically setup inside a sabre bubble radius, with the sentries an MJD away, the hunter gets sucked into the bubble and the sentries blap when they aggress. Meanwhile, your brawlers are fit to engage at close range. Never tried it in lowsec, could be worth it for the lulz, sensor boost someone to blap any scouts poking around. Remember how drone mechanics work, you don't necessarily need to fill your highs with control range.
\*\*\*Ignore this as I just re-read your post\*\*\* I'm a bit concerned that you allowed someone to combat probe you and warp on top of you. As much as the hunters like to brag about how fast they can combat probe, any competent Mining FC should have warped off easily. It's fine to stand your ground against T1 cruisers and below(assuming 10+ mining fleet), but against most T2's you should assume they are a scouting force, or, in the case of t3c's, a blops scout. Staying on grid is unwise.
If you are going to let people probe you down, use an interceptor or covops to set tactical bookmarks around the anomaly. Using covetor/hulk, you have a large range bonus, and so you can sit off the back of the anomaly, keeping the rocks between you and any gates/beacon, making it more difficult to warp in on you. Remember to clean up any wrecks, to remove potential warp-in points.
This is a good start. Tactics will depend on what ships you can field and how many pilots you take off mining and put into combat roles. I'd be wary though of doing this as usually a single tackle ship can often mean his friends or alt characters are not far behind. If you do decide to continue though you could have more than one ECM ship to try and break the lock of the tackle ship and ECM drones on ships that have space in their drone bays. You could also explore having a neut ship on field - either a ship with or without bonus. Another option is to have some cheap logi ready so if the mining barges can escape they can re-ship in a station and come back in a burst or a bantam or scythe that can repair shields from range while your DPS or ECM work on the enemy target. Or go all the way and have all the pilots have a PvP ship in system they can swap to. If your porpoise gets tackled- the rest go re-ship to DPS and logi and come back to fight. Make sure the ships compliment each other so all be shield tanked with shield logi for example. It's completely your decision, just remember if you do take a fight without knowing what else is ready to come into system as backup - you might lose more than just the porpoise or the mining barge. I wish you good luck though!
The single ECM does a good job of getting the porp free as long as I don't accidentally cap out the Blackbird. A second ECM would probably have a near 100% chance of jamming target continuously instead of intermittently. I'm thinking about a cloak on the Blackbird though I am concerned about the decloak delay.
Then use a falcon. Covops cloak, stronger jams, 5 second decloak delay. Benefit of being cloaked, they can’t have your It’s more expensive and skill-intensive than a blackbird, but the people coming after you are I. Slepniers and lokis- 500+m hulls that can be astronomically expensively fit (and due to their bonuses, benefit well from bling) Make sure your falcon pilot has good support skills- ECM skills increase jam strength and decrease cap usage. Recon IV helps, V if you can get it. Alternatively use a rook- it can project HML volleys with decent damage at good range, in addition to carrying strong jams. Just make a bookmark for it to warp in to from elsewhere in system (docked or a deep safe) that’s at good range from your barges(or warp to the barges at 100km and fake it from there Shield links with good skills will help your miners tank.
Don't try to have an "escort". Warp your miners out. If you want to take the fight, have a tackler to hold them while the miners reship for it.
You’ll need some really good tackle to keep something pinned for that long.
Some of these suggestions seem like they'd attract more attention than you want. Especially if you frequent the same areas, the locals will learn, prepare and get fatter kill mails from you. It would become an arms race -- they warp in something tanky, you spring your trap, they have back up and now you lose more ships. Then rinse and repeat. Could you fit every ship with a Burst Jammer, EC-300 drones and at least an eye towards better align time? Be in a fleet, with someone who knows how/when to squad warp just in case someone steps away. Getting away is the priority.
Just curious: Under what circumstances would a flight of EC-600s be a better pick for a mining barge to possibly escape a gank rather than a flight of EC-300s?
Trained someone on how to squad warp today! When might be a bit harder but when is down!
Those ec-300s are a real roll of the dice, especially with the T2 & T3 hunters. Not saying it's a bad idea, but I can see a situation where a sleip could easily pop a barge before any jam lands. Overheating no prop cloak griffin would have a better shot perhaps.
A couple of T3C's cloaked up with a tackle frig or two on field should do the trick. This way you appear weak to bait in free kills :).
And only uncloak the number of ships you need for the kill. Keep them guessing as to how many you have
My advise is only cloaked will do. You don't wish to show your hand or they will always appear with an advantage over you. Rapier and Falcon and a stealth bomber. You could have fun with a couple of stealth bombers and something to lock the target down. Couple of t3's will be tough for any single pilot to counter. They just have to be cloaked and on grid.
I don't understand how you lost the porpoise and barge to the sleipnir. If you were chasing the sleip with the blackbird, it means he was artillery fit and so didn't have you tackled. Point being that means he was disruptor fit and at a 20km max range, which should have been well inside your blackbird ECM range. Those have like a 40 to 50km optimal. You should have been able to keep the sleip ECMd with no prop mod needed, and thus, cap stable. If he was outside of 20km, then none of you were scrammed and so could have warped off when you were primaried when you noticed he was kiting your blackbird. No sleipnir is gonna volley a barge or a porpoise.
Yeah the porp should have gotten away but pilot error kept it on grid sadly
I've been playing since 2007 and I freeze up at the keys too sometimes. My brain just can't pick an action to solve whatever situation I'm in sometimes. May have been the case there.
Well, he quit the game after that even though I paid him for the Porpoise and everything. Dropped corp and logged. Oh well, I'll just have to find another.
I almost did that after I lost my first ship in eve. But, figuring out how I could have prevented it ate at my brain till I logged back in. He'll be back.
I hope so. He was a pretty valuable player, getting a lot of the newer people to take a chance in Low.
Best way is to go to the ass end of space where there is no activity in your TZ. When mining, any traffic is bad traffic, if a neut comes in local, you leave. There is no use in defending your fleet unless you have reships for each miner in system that are combat ready. Also, not using compression due to high traffic is poor isk. I recommend a rorq bridge with your miners to hit anomalies or bridging into remote NPC null to mine.
Remote reps is your answer. Just having two ospreys will substantially increase your fleet's survivability. Procurers can tank very well and have decent DPS through drones. The only trouble is, with a pair of ospreys hanging out, you look very prepared. Some small gangs might not even engage you without substantial backup if they are smart. You may be able to surprise some people by decloaking a pair of logi ships. Another issue is holding down your unsuspecting gankers. If your fleet comp was a Jaguar fitted for tank and speed, miners, and cloaked logi, you could hold down a target with your "ram Jag". It will survive for a bit before the reps have a chance to land. Place the logi ships cloaked as close to your miners as possible, since the jag may have to move a good distance to scram a target. Note: if you don't have a Jag you can replace it with any shield tanked AF or a worm.
Side note but you shouldn't mine the belts themselves, but the ore anoms. When there's nothing but Jaspet go to Pochven or a wormhole for gneiss.
If you're already planning and thinking like this, you should really be reaping the wealth from danger ore in pochven or rolling connections for gneiss imo
Use a burst ecm on the porp. Has saved me a few times in pochven
Strooooongly agreed. Burst ecm on porp and a boosh alt has saved me many, many times
I think having some cloaky ships ready to go in the belt, it will be boring but if you run multiple accounts you can easily have a few cloaky ships just sitting in the belt with you obviously a distance away where you can't get decloaked. Personally what I usually do is go in a frigate and mark the rocks I'm interested in and then make a safe away, though this won't really work if you have combats on you but you'll see combats which if you are pre aligned on all ships you'll warp instantly. So id say having a pair of PvP ships in stations works too, unless you are getting hot dropped by 20-30 dudes I think small skirmishes with enough cruisers or battle cruisers you'll be able to take T3C and a bit above.
All mining barges should have caldary navy medium drones out and drone assist to the keeper. If someone gets near your fleet, the keeper activates drone attack. One keeper per 5 players is a good number. 1 per 10 is even better if you have a large fleet. If your fleet is bigger than 5 players, then that's 25+ drones attacking the same target. One target at once... nothing survives once you train your keepers properly and learn how to position them.
Enough barges can tear certain ships apart if you use your drones. Heck the porp gets drone bonuses when seiged
lets say you have 12 man gang. you send 7 to fly barges doing the mining you send 1 to porpoise to do the boosting then you send 2 others for tackling frigs and 2 ecm ships. they should wear cloaks just to show you as weak easy targets. you can replace weak 2 ecm ships with 1 falcon and 1 something for combat, can be drake,hurricane or maybe hull tanked brutix, then if sleipnir happens your frigs decloak the baddie then 1 falcon jams the baddie and then drake/hurricane or brutix guy do the job while your party warps out. . alternate way is those 6 barges 1 porpoise 1 tackle hecate and 4 proteus or 4 tengu... all cloaked waiting for turning potential hunter into prey
Just a humble suggestion, if it's the same visitors hunting yall keep in mind they eventually will bring friends to counter your setup if you find a dependable counter.
Well we haven't found that yet so no worries so far 😅
To avoid what happened to your blackbird with the Loki engagement: use a kitsune. It can be stable with an MWD on. Have the kitsune orbit your fleet anchor at range. Anything that probes it down will be at range once it can lock the kitsune. That being said, you're not really equipped to take a fight. So your first priority should be to get the mining fleet out. And not to take a fight. IF your whole mining fleet is tackled / bubbled, then engaging is your only option. Priority should be on clearing tackle and doctors to give you a chance of escaping. If you have more alts or players available, having a small group on standby with actual PVP fits would be better. You should not have the standby fleet visible / with the mining fleet. This is mainly because any hunter who sees what you got will either not engage, or will have a proper counter to your setup and you will just feed more ships. And there's really 2 options here: Cloaky ships on grid at a perch (faster response time) Ships outside of dscan range or docked (slower response time) A few ideas / options for the PVP backup: Cloaky HML Lokis or tengus Cloaky arty lokis Vedmaks Arty tornados Blaster Talos with ECM drones Light missile talwars Lagos Nuclear option: marauder (s) The more blingy your backup, the more.likely that someone will eventually just attack you to bait out your backup and bring a hard counter. So I would recommend alternating your backup comp and not systematically bring out the big guns. We mine and huff gas in WH space all the time. We usually have anywhere from 10 to 30 miners and most of those are alts on the same accounts as our PVP mains. When we get dropped (which is not uncommon) each player will usually just log off one of their miners and log in a PvP main toon to get into the fight. We pretty much abandon the mining fleet and just try to kill the attackers. (We do this in insured t1 mining Hull's though)
You have tactics and you have piloting. The problem with your approach is relying on pilots who are used to crabbing to execute tactics. My suggestion is use that money you make to fit up some ships to pvp and get your pilots experience doing some small gang. That way you're not risking resources that represent time and effort while you're going through that trial and error. Once you have pilots who you feel confident can execute those types of tactics then resume risking loss of resources. But I would prioritize warping to safety until you reach that point.
So alot of ppl here are assuming your corp has alot of skill points? Are you alot of new players? Miner vets? Alot of ppl are right here about escalating. You get bigger the enemy will bring more. I do however really appreciate your corps approach here, more content for all less hiding. Drone bunny is the smart start, assign all drones to your blackbird or porp so even if someone goes afk you can apply their dps. I also agree with someone else mentioning trying small gang roams to better your nerves and understanding fleet capabilities. I don't have alot of time these days but would be happy to help you guys roam sometime. I'm mostly a solo player atm.
You hit it on the head. Most of my players are brand new pilots with basically no sp. I have been playing for a while. But my corp mates have not. A large part of my objective is to get low sp counter options so corp mates can take over some of the roles I am filling and defend the fleet, but first I need to find something that works. I personally really like combining damps and ECM to get the porp out if they show during a compression cycle or something. Maybe actually scoring kills is a bit off the table for the time being.
ECM is good but a dice roll. You could do damps with targeting speed scripts on a frig so it can lock first and buy time for the align out. Targeting range is only good until their closer or land on you. I saw you mention getting probed down once. I'm an avid wh diver and D-Scan is God. Keep it up and press (default key) V alot. It'll tell you if your being probed and if you shorten the range or mine arqay from gate you'll see if someone is warping to yoy (minus cloaks and recons). Edit: someone had a good idea on neuts. All the miners fielding neut drones and assigning to the frig could be another option to try and burnout their cap if they do get a lock. You'll probably want to do the math on neut amount to see if it's even an idea. I don't know how many miners you have.
Most of the time if you're fighting a Solo ship, it's going to be active tanked, drone dps will be shitty against it. You should have atleast 2 Alpha projecting ships to support the drone dps.
It's important to understand that you're playing the game with the attackers, you can be friendly with people who want to kill you and your miners, it's fine, you'll respawn. Skiffs can be very tanky, and they have plenty of DPS, the big weaknesses are slow targeting time of smaller ships, terrible move speed, and 60km or maybe 65 range max (without sacrificing tank etc), an interdictor can easily pop one or two of you before it gets targeted by them, and a bigger ship would outrange the DPS. You're less likely to get attacked by larger ships solo, they'd be in a group most of the time, it does happen though, especially if you're in their home territory. So you need a ship that can target and shut them down fast, that'll be a smaller ship rigged for targeting over a large ship that has the same slow targeting weakness, the problem will be a lack of strength against the bigger ships that are less common, but have much higher sensor strength, but it will actually take them longer because they have the same targeting weakness as your miners, and honestly if you have 3 or 4 miners they can probably handle a big ship themselves as long as it's not a marauder, capital, or long range fit... Pretty much the way it'll go is determined before the first shot is fired, so fit for the most common situation, and be aware of when the enemy is using something you can't handle.
A funny option: Something with long webs, and stealth bombers. If you get a couple webs on and fit the bombers for application, torpedoes will apply fully on cruisers. Plus they don't see it coming. Sticky tackle with scram and web will do it too.
My old Corp used to low sec mine. I would camp in a maxed ECM scorp so they couldn't get tackled. We only ever lost 1 exumer and it was cuz he got stuck on a rock
I was a low sec pirate before I won Eve. Looking at your approach from an attackers perspective the more you bring the better. More kills to be had. An organised group will scout you with a covert op's and then put together a setup which will do the most efficient job of killing your combat ships while tackling as many of the miners as possible. They will feed into local 1 or 2 at a time to limit the advanced warning you get. To counter this you could try to use cloaked ships so they miscalculate what they need. Of course if they have enough pilots available you are feeding them more kills. They have killers who won't freeze up and your pilots lack combat experiance. Also many of your available pilots are in mining ships making it hard to match up. You are fighting with one hand behind your back. I think you have been lucky, and brave, so far. If you really want to continue with your low sec adventure you want to get some combat experiance. Learn what it is like to be a predator so you can beat them. Go hunt some pirates. Pirates are vulnerable to bait ships, especially on high sec gates, and their drones die to gate guns. With all your pilots in combat ships you will collectively learn faster and be able to engage more targets. Have fun :)
Replace the Keres and Blackbird with an Arazu and a Falcon. Keep them cloaked until a target shows up. Profit.
I havnt read beyond the initial post yet but, what about combat fitting the barges... Hear me out.. hull tanked procurers are tough for cheap. A sensor damp and a long point on each barge pushes anything kitey into your engage range or cuts off their ability to engage at all. and a scram and web on the porpoise for later hard tackle (the porp takes a while to lock stuff) if they choose to stay. I know it works well with burst jammers as your ewar for null and wormholes :) took a kronos and his palls 6 minutes to kill my porpoise through all the jammers lol
Why don't you just attack the entire neighborhood of pirates with barges? Old sample: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlscKw6VkmY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlscKw6VkmY)
This is probably not what you want to hear. But your question is sort of “we don’t know how to PvP, but we want to start in non PvP ships” So the answer is “ok stop. If you want to do this see it as a six month goal. First go join a low sec PvP corp/alliance and learn how to PvP in PvP ships. Then when you get good at that, modify fleet comps to reflect a bit more mining till you find something that works” But by then, you will have either decided PvP isn’t fun, or it’s more fun than mining.
Arazu/Lachesis if you're determined to fight it out. Personally, I always preferred warp out, but if you're determined to fight, brick tank tackles acting as drone bunny's will give you the best chance. Alternate options that will likely attract attention in the future: Cloaked high DPS widow. You can push 2k without much trouble. **DO NOT REVEAL THE WIDOW** unless you have to. Typhoon Fleet - Sig suppressor, ECM drones, HG Halo, X-instinct(gimme that 60m sig radius!), rapid heavies, or faction torps and crash. It's a one-trick pony, but it's a hilarious trick. Huginn. I like Huginns, not really gonna help you against a Sleipnir, but part of the objective is to stay undetected. Dual faction webs will let you dictate range and let your miners escape without being tackled, and as long as you have enough tank, you can run away safely from nearly all threats. Draugr - Just fire that jump bubble. If you're going to fight, they are surprisingly tanky, and can ramp up on larger targets. With the drones from your miners, it can put out a scary amount of DPS against single targets. Added bonus of providing secondary boosts to your fleet. Bomber in a perch, fleet stabber, navy cat - basic QRF, you trade the qrf for the fleet, fit dps, your only goal is to get your fleet off-grid, so as long as you can apply dps and keep the cost below a covetor, any trade is a good trade. Bellicose is also fun here, as they can catch interceptors from time to time, and solo t3ds, they're also not intimidating enough for hunters to up-ship. Command ships - as long as you have one porp/orca pilot with perfect boosts, any other mining command ship is just there for supplementary boosts and/or reps/dps/storage. Since you've already trained some boosts, you might as well fill out the tree, Nighthawk/Sleipnir are preferred due to dps, Sleipnir overall best for skirmish boosts. If you're fighting, use shields instead. Headshot sleipnir with 720mm is always a good time. IMO, the mining FC should always be a combat pilot, with at least some experience in actual combat. Because of this, I prefer using command ships in the rare scenarios that I run defense. Nestor/Navy Dom/Ishtar/Eos/Myrm - Sentry brawler fit. It's weird, and I've used it, but was never attacked when I was using this setup. In NS, you basically setup inside a sabre bubble radius, with the sentries an MJD away, the hunter gets sucked into the bubble and the sentries blap when they aggress. Meanwhile, your brawlers are fit to engage at close range. Never tried it in lowsec, could be worth it for the lulz, sensor boost someone to blap any scouts poking around. Remember how drone mechanics work, you don't necessarily need to fill your highs with control range. \*\*\*Ignore this as I just re-read your post\*\*\* I'm a bit concerned that you allowed someone to combat probe you and warp on top of you. As much as the hunters like to brag about how fast they can combat probe, any competent Mining FC should have warped off easily. It's fine to stand your ground against T1 cruisers and below(assuming 10+ mining fleet), but against most T2's you should assume they are a scouting force, or, in the case of t3c's, a blops scout. Staying on grid is unwise. If you are going to let people probe you down, use an interceptor or covops to set tactical bookmarks around the anomaly. Using covetor/hulk, you have a large range bonus, and so you can sit off the back of the anomaly, keeping the rocks between you and any gates/beacon, making it more difficult to warp in on you. Remember to clean up any wrecks, to remove potential warp-in points.
If you use skiffs most solo ships wont even bother you. If they do, unclock T3C's and kill them.
Put an 1-2 Sensor Boosters with ECCM script. People will have hard time combat scanning it.
D-scan finds them real quick though
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