Mackinkaw: 287m sell/263m buy
Hulk: 224m sell/170m buy
Skiff: 190m sell/164m buy

I thought the intention of the barge buff was to remove one barge being best. That being the Hulk. The Mackinkaw has taken the Hulks old roll as king of the barges, the yield is almost as good as the Hulk, it has better tank, and it has a massive ore hold which is the primary thing that's making it so overpowered.

And the denial doesn't end here either ;) even though the screenshots i posted on the previous page paint a clear picture of just how popular the mac is and how unpopular the hulk has become. I think someone pointed out that market price reflects this too?

There never was a stranglehold on economy. Jihad/hulkageddon only effected the lazy an the stupid. It is impossible to die in HS if you pay attention.

Price of ores all around have all ready started to take a nose dive.

lol TA.

... it goes up or down or stays the same.

GǪwhich you can link to, hopefully.

And still: why does the Mack need to be nerfed?

It makes all the other ships useless, Last night 1 hulk in over 30 macks in 3 hours I found, an today those macks are still botting away an not one single hulk.... That alone says volumes. Naturally enough CCP will say its a feature, because they dont like to be wrong. So they will say Mack was designed to be the new ship of choice for aspirating botters everywhere.

I just wanne say thanks CCP to give the botting **** a great ship.

Sure I do. For instance, I know how to get a MSE on there, which does you a whole lot more good than an active booster.

Then the booster is even more meaningless. They have no clock to fight against and your active tank is insignificant compared to the DPS they can bring, even if they choose to go after your main resists. There's also no unavoidable loss so they can bring whatever they like. How many cycles do you think you'll get off when you're staring down the barrel of 5k DPS?

In short: don't fit an active booster. It does. Not. Help. You.

You're missing a rather important column in those screen shots. There's nothing to suggest that any of those actually group mine. The numbers don't lie, but all they're showing is that people like the solo playstyle. This is not news. It doesn't contradict that the Hulk is a better mining ship and that it excels in fleets.

I suppose that, like Zishy, you are not familiar with the word GÇ£contextGÇ¥. He offered it up as something that could not be ganked by Catalysts. In highsec, the shield booster is a bad choice because it doesn't help any more (and in fact much less) than an expander would; outside of highsec, it doesn't help at all.

Yes, you would need a booster if you're caught alone, but that's completely irrelevant to the kind of problem he incorrectly claimed it could solve.

There are. ECM, logi, counter-ganking, mutual webbing, etc. etc. etc.

GǪand none of those are problematic for a well-sorted fleet to overcome. A fleet is not a goup of people solo-mining together GÇö it's a group where each person fills a slot and does a specific job. Again, that is what Zishy's picture show: people solo-mining together. If you do not intend to use a fleet properly then yes, a Mack will do a better job. This is by design. If you get your act together, then the supposed disadvantages of the Hulk become irrelevant and its advantages destroy all competition in terms of yield.

GǪmeaning his comment was both off-topic and full of bad advice. He was just flat-out wrong.

That's their problem. It doesn't mean the means and mechanics are not there GÇö it means they are not willing to use them and claiming that nothing exist is ignorant.

Yes. And the effort pays off. A tiny bit of effort will also give them far more than zero survivability. The purpose of the Hulk is to achieve maximum yield. It does exactly that when supported by a fleet. If you GÇ£YGÇ¥ is something else than GÇ£get the most mineralsGÇ¥ then yes, the Hulk might not be the right choice. This is by design.

Yes? And? People like to solo mine. Macks and Retrievers are the solo mining ships. What's the problem?

And that's what they were designed to be. "Glass cannons" for roid munching.

The hulk was better than every other mining ship in every single way (except ice mining perhaps). The current mackinaw is not better than any other ship in every single way. Actually it's not better in any way. It's a ship for compromises. Which happens to fit what the solo afk miner likes to do.

The tiercide was not meant to make all the ships equally used. It was meant to create roles for every ship. And that's what it has done.

I'm merely stating the fact that while everyone is talking about suicide ganks, he steps up with a nonsensical fit and claims that it is enough to protect against a catalyst gankGǪ and when called on it tries to get away by discussing a completely different and completely irrelevant scenario.

so don't be dishonest by claiming that there are none.

Again, it's no surprise that people who have consistently shown a preference for solo and AFK work has a matching preference for the solo and AFK ship.

No, it really doesn't. It's fully in line with tiercide: they are to mining ships what tier-3 BCs introduced to that class of ships GÇö more oomph at the cost of almost everything else. Glass cannon is an excellent parallel and it shows perfectly with the idea that each ship has its own role and speciality.

Actually 15% is quite huge when you start multiplying it by every hulk in a fleet. Let's say corp A uses 10 mackinaws with full fleet boosters etc. They can mine (in theory) about 1000k m3 per hour. If they're mining arkonor that means about 350m isk per hour. On the other hand corp B is using 10 hulks and they're mining about 1150-1200k m3 per hour. Which translate to about 410m isk per hour. Tell me again why the hulk isn't worth it.

P.s. Those numbers were pulled from the eve isk per hour calculator.

Edit: Disregard the m3 per hour. Forgot to account for the reduced cycle times >< Isk per hour should be accurate though.

Those same annoyances apply to the mackinaw as well. Though I agree that a "real world" test would be the best comparison between the two. I'd love to see someone doing it :)

The Covetor/Hulk is meant for fleet ops. Hisec miners don't generally participate in big mining fleets -- though they should, at least once in a while -- but lots of people in 0.0 do, and I expect that's where the new Hulk will really come into its own.

"Appealing" is in the eye of the beholder (or the Retriever, you might say).

Good thing, then, that I'm not doing that.

But wait, I did not read that Tiericide = one ship class now is relegated to strong sov 0.0.

Tier 3 BCs have this thing: they effing shine at their purpose.

Absolutely. Although I'm using a covetor rather than a hulk (although with the current price drop I might take the risk and buy a hulk) dual-boxing with an iteron mk5 for hauling gives me a significant increase compared to a retriever. But I'm only mining casually so I don't have personal experience on the differences when it comes to a full-blown mining op.

Never said I was mining in a belt :P

Actually all missions that are worth mining have roids spread like a belt. So you'll always have a roid in range and by the time the cycle finishes you'll be near it and have the next roid in range. The cargo hold of the mackinaw/retriever though is worthless since you're pretty much obligated to jetcan because of the usually long distances between the roids and the entry point. Which is why I'm using a noctis to gather the jetcans and the iteron to haul the ore. Otherwise it would take ages to get back to the roids with the barge/exhumer.

I'll put this as nicely as I can - you seem to be arguing from a strictly hi-sec perspective, and a subset of hi-sec at that.

Tracking and tank are absolutely a huge tradeoff for tier 3 BCs. For a large, well organised 0.0 mining op, mined m^3/hr is all that counts.