None of this will save you from getting bumped!

So good of a newly minted member of CCP to display his knowledge of game mechanics so well.

Pray tell, how does a "merc corp" protect against suicide gankers?
Until Crimewatch kicks in, a ganker will be able to suicide a ship, and nothing can be done to stop it.

Let's look at some math, shall we?
Try to keep up.

A Mackinaw, fully tricked out, has a tank of 49K, if the Mack pilot has an implant in slot 7.
Add on a fully skilled Vulture pilot in the SC or WC position, and you push that tank to 66K.
And against kin/therm, we can even say that tank is 71K.

Now then, a Catalyst has a tricked out DPS of 676, with implants in slot 6 and 9.
That ship fully fitted is a little less than 5M.
Given that pods don't get Concorded, there is zero risk atm for suicide pilot's clones.
And please don't talk about someone suiciding their own ship to pop a pod. That will just further make you look dumb.

So along comes a squad of say, 10 Cat's. They will pump out combined DPS of 8 x 676 = 6760
Let's round that down to 6500

That means the Mackinaw, with a tank of 71K, evaporates in 11 seconds
Given how easily Concord can be fooled to move to another location in a system by someone suiciding in a rookie ship in system, that means the Mack is toast in 05, 0.6, and 0.7 space, for certain.
In 0.8 and above space, it is iffy.

That is a cost of 10 catalysts at 5 M each = 50M, and the loss of the Mack, plus mods, plus rigs, is over 200M.
And when the suicide gankers' alts scoop the debris, the losses are so much lower.

So let's say the miners somehow scrape the coin together to hire a merc corp.
Let's say the mercs send out boats to alpha the 10 Cat's when they go red.
The merc's are going to need a minimum of 5 alpha ships sitting there with the miners, manned constantly, to ensure the safety of the miners.

Precisely how much is that going to cost?
And it gets better. What happens if the suicide gankers bring 20 Catalysts? Total cost is still only 100M for them, for a 200M kill.

In summary, I can understand the null sec zealots and professional griefers making the same old "fit a tank, hire merc' lines, but a member of CCP???
Unless, of course, you are a null sec zealot

Rancer. You will never see a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

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