And you sound like you have no clue at all that the hulks are still flying at max yield around eve. Makes me wonder if you ever were a ganker. Maybe only a fair weather ganker. Just like every one else in eve you only look in the 4 or 5 systems around you and say all of eve is like this because it is so where I live. Get out of your tree stand and open your eyes.

Wait lets whine to CCP maybe they will fix it so hulks fly around in my system again so I can gank them.
I have none zero sympathy for you.

There were too many gankers is all. It was unbalanced. So it got nerfed like ALWAYS happens when things get unbalanced. Effective gankers have already moved on to freighters. If that gets out of control, it will get nerfed too. You are living in the past, move on already.

My whine detector is going off this morning. Bunch of gankers whining. Go play WoW, or at least some Counter Strike.

Let me start by stating that this is all the opinion of a part-time lulz-ganker based on observation of the past year's "progress" in the development of both Eve Online's community, as well as the game itself. Since I am not a miner, no doubt many will chime in with the proverbial "Nuh uh!" They are free to do so, of course, but I feel this reaction will be at the cost of their own enjoyment of Eve Online at a minimum, and possibly even their own enlightenment.

Let's start with my premise: Every system responds to pressure. This is true in video games, nature, even in your pressure cooker. Deer herds are a good example of systems responding to various pressures. Deer have finite natural resources with which to survive, in much the same way that Eve Online has finite resources. Some may say the resources are infinite, but that is only taken over an eternity. Eve's resources are clearly finite, even if renewable. The same can be said of the acorns and plant material upon which deer feed.

Let's look more closely at what happens to deer populations in response to certain pressures, shall we?

When a population of deer is actively hunted (be it by man or by beast), the overall health and happiness of the herd actually improves. This seems counter-intuitive! Surely some hunter out shooting deer for lulz (or food, doesn't matter) can't benefit the overall well-being of the herd...but he does. The reason is obvious: Killing one deer has negligible impact on the demand placed on resources required by the herd, but those resources are shared between fewer deer. This means the population is happier, save for the trophy-mounted (or stew-kettle-consigned) victim.

However, when a population of deer is allowed to range free from predation, they multiply faster. This has little change on the overall demand for natural resources, but the resources available for each individual are less. This means that the herd's health suffers when they are not hunted; both from malnutrition and from disease. This is because deer have no mechanism for controlling the size of their own herd. All they do is react to the environment around them and try to survive as well as possible.

Now let's look at how this counterintuitive fact might apply to Eve.

When a population of miners is actively hunted (be it by null-sec pilots, low-sec pirates, or high-sec mercenaries), the overall wealth and happiness of the mining community actually improves. This is because the demand for ships continues to be mostly unaffected by the minute loss of one pilot. But with that pilot's loss of resolve, more ore is available for less people to mine. This means miners are happier, save for the killboard-pasted victim.

However, when a population of miners is allowed to mine free from ganks, they multiply faster. This has little change on the overall demand for ships and modules, but the resources available for each miner are less. Consequently, miners make less ISK for the same effort. This is because miners as a group refuse to use the mechanism designed for controlling the size of their, erm, herd. All they do is react to the environment around them with cries of, "Nef gankers!" and, "Buff mining!"

The similarities between these two systems are actually quite astonishing.

It is my belief that this is an example of the "negative pressure" at work in any system involving gatherers and predators. It appears to an "outsider" (or to those who don't or won't think critically) that hunting/ganking is a "big deal" but in fact the overabundance of gatherers exerts far more pressure on the system than the hunters/gankers do. This creates a system where the results are predictably counterintuitive: In order to help the gatherers be happier as a group, it is absolutely necessary to lower their overall threshold for individual survival. In game terms, this would mean that the only way to actually "BUFF MINING!" is to nerf it. Conversely, the only way to nerf mining is to buff it.

We will see in the next year if this is an accurate appraisal of the current situation. I sincerely hope that tritanium doesn't fall below 3 ISK like I think it will. Further, I hope that ice doesn't become so worthless that managing a network of a few dozen large POS is trivial. I can potentially see the day coming when the overall health of Eve ssuffers if CCP doesn't stop pandering to our gatherer-class. In terms of long-term health of the system, it may be much more viable to support the culling of that population routinely rather than capitulate to their ill-conceived cries about "fairness" in a video game where they deliberately choose to be the deer and complain that the wolves' teeth and claws are too sharp and penetrate their dainty skin (hulls!?!) too easily.

TL;DR: I'm pretty sure that there's only one way to keep miners happy for an extended period of time in Eve. Counter-intuitively, that is to nerf mining rather than buff it.

So many miners in this thread gloating that the gankers can no longer kill them

I hope they come back to gloat in a few months when they have pushed trit prices through the floor

You know I'd think CCP would want miners being ganked as it makes the mining bot problem less significant, it helps to keep the profession's income up, it helps the economy, and it provides amusement to people who patiently must wait a year or two for CCP to fix the part of the game they live in. I'm to lazy to look up the quote for moronic npc alts but I remember somewhere a CCP guy saying that it was currently too difficult to differentiate between an actual miner and a bot so I'll leave this screenshot here as an example of the state of this problem.

http://imgur.com/DbL17

For those that have trouble understanding, look at what is typed and look at what the search box suggests, I'm surprised it is so high in the suggestions.

Revert mining ship EHP buffs (except for the procuror and skiff).

why don't you and your buddies stop whining and bring out a destroyer fleet? can you seriously not get 5 or 6 goons in destroyers together to do some ganking of miners? can a 6k man alliance not put together 250 destroyer alts? have the goons been neutered by a simple EHP buff? is that all it took to turn you guys into whiny babies? where the **** is your emergent gameplay?

Which part is fiction?

"Eve ratting" had "Eve ratting bot" as the 2nd suggestion. Botting is not a problem isolated to mining and exhumer EHP being what it was didn't stop people from doing it before. Additionally given the evidence of the number of mining bots banned (mining bot forum comments, etc) it would suggest that their detection methods have improved or the comment was inaccurate.

I like mining, and I liked mining even more when cowards like you weren't mining. Suicide ganking of mining barges is probably the lowest form of PvP activity in the game, but mining is the lowest form of PvE activity in the game so they're a perfect match.

If you wouldn't even do a little bit of research to understand what gankers are doing and what their limits were, you don't belong in space flying a mining barge or exhumer. The simple facts of the matter were that a single catalyst would top out at about 10k damage. They made their profit from salvage and the very expensive T2 mining and ice harvesting equipment that many people were using to maximise their yield. All you needed to do was fit some tank at the expense of yield. Even 12k EHP would have been enough since most gankers were solo operators.

In addition, you can watch the belts, see who the gankers are, set their standings low so you see the orange or red indicator on their name in local, and make sure you keep your eyes open for their presence. But apparently even this tiny amount of effort was too much for some people: you bad miners were so fixated on maximum yield that you wouldn't take simple precautions because fitting a tank would cost you too much yield. Paying attention to the game every now and then would cost you more time and reduce your semi-AFK mining ISK/keyboard-hour ratio. So instead you unsubscribed and stated that your reason for unsubscribing was suicide ganking.

CCP destroyed my game to win back your subscription. The result is a situation much worse than suicide ganking ever was.

I don't understand something...
The goons (and that creepy faced baltec guy) keep saying ganking miners was profitable. How was it profitable? did they drop loot?

Sorry for being ignorant...

This loot (strip miners cost a pretty penny), combined with insurance for the lost gank ships would usually make it fairly profitable to gank miners.

Insurance for ships destroyed by concord was removed a while before the recent mining buff. Though I believe potential salvage drops from tech 2 ships, including barges, were buffed before that.

I don't understand something...
The goons (and that creepy faced baltec guy) keep saying ganking miners was profitable. How was it profitable? did they drop loot?

Sorry for being ignorant...

You're implying that killing miners improves the quality of supply of miners to gank. Ha.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

No. I'm not sure you read the OP, but I'm implying that killing miners provides me with less miners to gank, and therefore with less miners sharing a similar burden of demand for their minerals, the less miners will be wealthier than they would have been if gankers hadn't killed off their competitors.

Big difference.

...[snip]
I know all too well that there are costs. Most of them incurred by me.

No insurance for gankers, remember?

Edit: Dr. EyjoG (sp?) also seems to think that conflict (ie, ship destruction) is good for the economy. You can forum search for his posts.

It's a pretty consistent theme of his.

My phrasing on that summation was a bit loose. Rather than say "improves the quality of supply" (suggesting an increase), I should have said "improves the quality of the remaining stock". Your deer population analogy, along with similar analogies (forest fires renew forests... etc.) doesn't quite work.

It was still a good post, though.

Could try finding an industrialist willing to sponsor the ganking of the miners around him/her.

The problem is that you cannot make a profit anymore. They might still be gankable but if there is no money in it then nobody is going to do it. The only threat to high sec miners have more or less been removed.

That's weird, because low-sec piracy and ganking in high-sec were never very profitable activities. I was always told by people who blew me up; and there are lot of them thanks to bad luck and lazyness, that it was all up for the laughs and having fun...

...no?

Isn't the entire ganking economy based on tears, not isk?

Unless, of course, you were busy selling mining ships....

The price of strip mining lasers and crystals recently went through the roof, High enough in fact to make ganking profitable on many barges. So I wonder about your statement. Perhaps the gankers are selling these things...