Darthon Zoh wrote:I'm going right for them; right in their front yard.
This fit, although good tank for the buck, falls short in two important ways. 1) Its a passive tank, yes? While I like the high EHP, and that is important, it lacks the burst tankyness I think will be all important in making them really have to put up alot in order to pop it. 2) All said and done, its a pretty small ship and would be fairly routine for them to pop. Despite its good tank for the buck, I'm looking for something with a more intimidating tank that would require them to actually think about how to take it down and then make a fleet special to do that while still maintaining really strong tank for the buck too.
I've been reading up on your research since yesterday. You seem to be falling into the same logical trap that many a highsec miner couldn't avoid: you have made an assumption, but somehow turned it into an undeniable dogma in your mind, so now you want the forums to validate your assumprion, regardless of whether it is true or not.
The truth here is: not only do the New Order and the
Code not mind your tanking up your mining vessel - they encourage it. Hence, your act would be somewhat similar to demonstratively driving back and forth in front of a traffic control checkpoint while following all the driving rules: "Yeeeeah, you see that? I'm following the rules, so you won't ticket me! Fuk da poleec!"
Besides, the things you are asking for effectively contradict each other. I believe, it stems from your ignorance of some fundamental principles of highsec ganking. The Procurer is actually the king of tank among mining barges. While outmatched by the Skiff in terms of EHP, it is roughly 10 times cheaper than its T2 counterpart. Besides, 115 thousand EHP is by no means a "routine" thing to pop - 10 T2 Catalysts at the very least - which means that destroying a fully tanked Proc will take 5 times as much resources as one needs to fit the said Proc (and I'm not even taking the miner's insurance payout into account).
However, you are, indeed, correct in assuming that a cheap and tanky vessel is an extremely unattractive target for gankers. The Procurer is arguably the least ganked mining barge in highsec - which is fine for us, given the downsides of this line of barges in terms of yield and the amount of time between ore refills. To atrract a decently sized gank fleet, you will have to commit something which could potentially give some good loot or an expensive killmail. Simply put, the bling you don't want to use is required. Otherwise, a 10-man ganking fleet will just find a less Code-compliant citizen to enforce the Code upon instead of paying you the attention you crave.
Finally, the passive tank vs. the active tank issue. Given the nature of suicide ganking, the gank fleet can't just disengage from the gank and return to the station safely. If we haven't managed to get through, our ships are wasted. Hence, every commander of a fleet that large will double-check the target's tank before undocking. They use EFT, too, so, if you have a very strong active tank, they'll take that into account as well. And it is always cheaper to fit a great passive tank than a great active tank, and the latter will never do without the former anyway. With CONCORD serving as a buffer, favouring active tank over passive is a complete waste: you go active when you want to sustain damage for prolonged periods of time, while the longest gank possible only lasts 25 seconds.
If you want to set a trap, try placing your mining barge near an Orca of yours and pulling a tanky combat ship after the gankers have started shooting at you. Alternatively, you can place a cloaked Falcon near your barge and jam the unsuspecting attackers. But, again, there's no guarantee that the fleet doesn't have the contingency plan for these scenarios.
So I will agree with those here saying that your best tank is the mining permit tank and a grain of common sense tank.
Fly compliant o7