First off, had to remove another troll post. Please do not derail peoples threads.

It may also be worth noting that when it comes to the Hulk lacking the tank that the Mackinaw has, as Bart points out the Hulk is designed around being in a fleet, most likely a player corporation fleet. However that fleet would comprise not just Hulks and Orcas/Haulers, but also protection in the form of combat vessels.

The Mackinaw on the other hand, whilst having a larger hold, is for use by solo miners or people not in player corps. Not being in a player corp would mean that combat defence ships would be unable to come to the miners assistance, thus the requirement for a better tank.

I can't believe people are still squalling about this.

CCP gives miners a superb hisec mining pimpmobile in the new Mackinaw, and they cry that their hulks are no longer king of the hill.

Trade your Hulk(s) in on Macks if you're a solo or small-gang miner. Problem solved. If you're in a fleet, continue on as normal because Hulks are still the king of yield. Mining hulls are role-based. Get used to it. It's no longer necessary to just skill into a Hulk and then use the Hulk for everything -- other ships actually have a purpose and a use-case now.

I keep several Procurers on hand to put in my Orca for on-the-spot mining opportunities during missions, and I have Retrievers salted all over the place as a low-cost way to do cheap mining ops. I have a Skiff that's saved my hide more than once in some lowsec mining scenarios. My home system's mining crew runs Macks as a rule, but on weekends when I get everyone together we run Hulks + an Orca.

I don't think so. People are complaining that the Mack is OP, and encroaches on the roles laid out for the Skiff and the Hulk. I don't think that's the case -- people just can't get their heads out of the old model where the Hulk reigned supreme over everything else. Just because you can tank a Mack to a decent level doesn't make it better than a Skiff -- my adventures in lowsec convinced me of that. And just because you can out-mine Hulks in certain scenarios doesn't mean that the Mack out-yields the Hulk -- it doesn't, if the Hulk is being used in its proper role.

The problem here is not the ships. It's with the tactics of the players. Miners are notoriously lazy, hisec miners even more so. They default to the Mack because of the huge ore bay, irrespective of other factors. Should they be doing this? Probably not, if their intent is to maximize yield. But, as ever, laziness trumps all else and so the Mack becomes the default mining vessel in the same way the Hulk did before. Smart players will leverage the other hulls according to their respective strengths and prosper accordingly.

Supposing there was a future where some magic force distributed ores properly across high/low/null according to an ideal risk/reward ratio, would it matter that the Mackinaw had a bit too much tank in highsec?

Is the Skiff actually useful for its tank in low or nullsec? I heard it's common for people to just bubble gates and watch local in null. Because they can warp to safety before an attacker can reach them, they don't need extra tank and can use a Hulk. In lowsec, it seems that if you're caught in a mining ship you're dead anyway, the extra tank just holds it off a few seconds.

If that's true, the extra tank is only useful against suicide ganking in highsec. It's said that because the tank on the Mackinaw is so high, the Skiff's tank is redundant. Does this mean only someone who wants you dead will suicide gank you? If this is the only case where somone will gank you, does it really matter how high the tank is? They don't care about profit and so will bring whatever it takes to kill you, ten dessies or ten Brutixes (Brutices? w/e)

Is this why the Skiff is considered useless? Please correct me where I am wrong

Yes to make the most popular mining ship ATM easier to gank should be at the top of CCPs list. Not the POS rework not the new Destroyers.

You would think the poor Mack had some kind of invulnerable force field the way people whine about this. Gankers still crying about some mythical right to a profitable gank.

This thread really should have been rolled into the previous threadnaught.

I've got a smashing idea: why don't you guys shoot at people that shoot back?

90% of this thread is people who don't mine trying to tell CCP how mining should be. They chose to listen to the people who do mine. I'd say they got it right.

Macki - Low yields, high tank. You are only seeing them if you hunt miners in .5 and .6 because the Hulk tank won't handle Tier 3 BC ganks of one or 2.

Hulk - High yield but requires and Orca or Rorqual for support and has a low tank. Tank not really mattering because it can't be on the front line. It needs a fleet to intercept hostiles making it the ideal ship for Null mining or a .7 to 1.0 space mining tool.

Skiff- Hard tank, unique bonuses making it a great mining ship for very specific and time consuming jobs either in null or high sec. Actually being used, something it has never had the luxury of claiming. If I wanted to mine Ice in null sec, this would be my choice with maybe a frigate alt double or triple webbing it all the time.

Now that miners are in a better place, that was in fact your best option all along. I never lost a Hulk during the glory days of miner griefing. It was triple webbed any time it was out. Who am I to ruin gankers fun though if Miners couldn't figure that out on their own?

Skiff's biggest problem lies in the mining laser being overly strong resulting in a lot of near empty roid cycles (lesser extent the mack suffers the same). A lot of the HS areas are mined out so you're going to have to spend a lot of time finding a system with large roids to run your mack for an "eon". Of course that will only work for a few days at most before you run out of large roids. The replenishment won't be sufficient to allow you to keep pulling +2100 m3 of ore for long.

OP is wrong, if miners cared about EHP then hulkagedon wouldn't have existed.

Show me something besides an Ice belt.

Something I have done in EVE since 2005 is fly from belt to belt to belt, system after system looking for Shadow Serpentis, Dark Bloods, True Sansha, commanders. I've seen more belts than most people in EVE including Miners. I can tell you whats out there. Usually nobody. Mostly Ret's. Next up is Hulks and Orca, then Mackinaw and an occasional Skiff but in most belts, there is nobody. We talk about the min max of the various barges but you never see many mention the proff as a whole. Line up ISK/hr in mining with FW or level 4 missions or ratting in Null or Wormholes. All of sudden you have a whole new picture. Mining is still at the bottom of the totem pole. Even with 6 isk Trit and pyrite bouncing between 12.5 annd 14 it is better to do most other things in EVE.

You still see miners as easy targets to pad a kill board. Get over it, move on. Christmas came and went for you. Now its January in grieferville. Enjoy the boredom.

why is everyone so busy to get things back to how they were?
it changed... get a new ship and move on

Why should you profit from ganking a ship with "worthless" cargo?