The problem is that, with no effort whatsoever by the miner, they are unprofitable to gank (and thus unlikely to be ganked). Unlike any other fitted T2 ship (fit with guns, damage mods, no tank, just like the average Mack).

Before the silly EHP buff, miners could actually put time and effort into keeping themselves safe, or put neither in and roll the dice.

CCP Soundwave made a howler of a statement, that he (quite rightly) never defended when he was called on it.

Because, according to a simple reading of his statement, Freighters should gain more EHP the more ISK they fit into their cargo hold.

Yes.

The mack is the problem ship as the hulk, coveter and retriever are all profitable to gank if they are untanked. The mack is not profitable even without a tank and when coupled with the largest ore bay we see the reason why it is the most popular barge on the market and why ganking of exhumers is at an all time low. Changes do need to happen because right now the barge lineup is broken and the goals of teircide have not been met.

And as has been pointed out countless time the bare hull was never profitable to gank alone.

The dev said they should have cruiser EHP. I think they should have cruiser EHP because of that.

Ah now thats not true either. A mack could easily fit a 16k buffer tank while also being able to fit a MLU. That put it far out of profitability to gank.

The mack needs to be brought in line. In order to turn a profit barges must be fitted with T2 mods and no tank. The mack is an exception in that it has enough tank to make it unprofitable without fitting any tanking mods at all. Not only that but it also invalidates the skiff which is ment to be the tankier option.

if fitted with T2 gear. Most of them are not fitted with T2 gear.

Then by your reading, Exhumers were fine before the buff.

I do care about ship balance and ganking miners is much like running missions to me. I get my kicks out of getting megathrons to do things most would think impossible.

I'd like to add to this that the yield of both skiff and mack should be toned down more as well to make the hulk more viable. I rarely see hulks anymore.

Make sure they have acceptable fitting resources and this is exactly what I was envisioning. The miner can choose to specialize via the three ships and further choose to specialize based on fitting. Why CCP decided massive EHP buff and everyone's yield should be basically the same is beyond me.

If all yield is the same you lose trade-offs, once again completely ignoring EVE design philosophy. Its fine for the T1-T2 to be similar within reason but for all T1-T2 to be the same is the exact same as the EHP buff. It's completely unwarranted and completely against EVE design philosophy.

Reduce the cargohold on the Retriever. Or the yield.

Ah, I didn't realize that tiericide was an all or nothing buff, and that reducing the yield or cargohold of an overbuffed ship was the same as calling for undoing tiericide.

Cripes.

If people all use Skiffs then I say GREAT! They have given up something in order to be safe (cargohold and yield).

Again, you're entirely forgetting the Tanked Hulk, which was perfectly survivable (show me a profitable gank killmail of a brick Hulk) which provided what the Skiff is meant to provide. Safety without active effort. That was the "escape into a survivable hull" pre-exhumer buff.

If they did as I have suggested and that lead to everyone flying skiffs then gankers would not have a leg to stand on when arguing against mining ship tank/EHP. The miners chose safety when they picked the skiff and are compromising their yield as well as cargo for it. That is literally EVE working as intended.

VV Mind-Reader extraordinaire.

Your choice not to avail yourself of an option does not mean that option stops existing.

My complaint has always been that the Tank of the current Mackinaw is such that it is unprofitable to gank (and thus safe from all significant HS threats),

and that fact combined with the fact that it has the best cargohold (HAG evidence shows this is the most important stat for most miners) means that HS miners have gained safety from all significant threats at no cost.

If I were against miners being able to exert themselves to make themselves safe, why would I have spent most of HAG detailing methods by which miners could make themselves safe from suicide gankers?

And my point is that their choice not to use them does not mean that they were not an option.
You claimed that "Before tiericide the mining ships were poor excuses, there was no way to "escape" into a survivable hull." Are you now claiming that the brick Hulk was not a "survivable hull?"

Since I happen to know some miners used brick Hulks during HAG (remember, I got started mining, and still have friends who mine), your claim that "nobody used them" is simply false.

The simple fact here is that the barge lineup is broken and far from balanced.

I have no idea why you decide to always go off on tangents whenever you are losing an argument...

Functioning suggestion while retaining tiericide:

-Revert all EHP buffs.
-Set skiff tank at untanked BS level, set hulk tank at untanked cruiser level, and set mackinaw tank at untanked cruiser level.
-Set hulk yield to high, set mackinaw yield to low, and set skiff yield to low.
-Set mackinaw cargo hold to high, set hulk cargo hold to low, set skiff cargo hold to low.
-Allow enough fitting resources slots/pg/cpu to permit differing levels of compensation for these three factors. For example someone with no fitting skills will be able to increase one of the low stats to below average or specialize having one stat be extremely high at the expense of the others. A person with moderate fitting skills would be able to generalize including what a no fitting skills trained person could do. A person with amazing fitting skills would be able to the same as listed prior to a greater magnitude.
-All of this also applies to T1 stuff.
-Add rigs for gas mining.

Directly from the devblog about the skiff:


Yes the skiff is intended for tank, yes the mackinaw is intended for cargo hold, and yes the hulk is intended for yield. That is what CCP intended with the ship specializations. Your opinions on the suitability of the ships for highsec is against what CCP's choices for the ships specializations.

uh, VV, the ore hold isn't the same between the mack and ret, there's a (iirc) 7.5k m3 difference which is less than two cycles i think, which is under 4 mins of mining in a boosted fleet, and 6 mins in a non boosted fleet. too early in the morning for me to do the proper maths but there is a difference.

Those changes I suggested will bring about a predator-prey interaction as ganking will be profitable depending on the miners fitting. As can be seen from the past most miners will fit for max yield and cargo at the expense of everything else. This would bring about the possibility of a predator-prey relationship between the gankers and miners. Miners can choose to remove themselves from this relationship by going with a tanked skiff yet they won't be capable of AFKing as the hold will be to small. Active miners would prefer the hulk which will be hard to gank because they are at the keyboard and capable of warping away, they will still be somewhat a part of the relationship because of individual factors. While the bulk of the relationship are the AFK-miners.

Yeah you have no proof that its "super-terribad" and I avoided putting specific numbers for a reason, you literally posted "its bad because I said so." Remember I advocated for appropriate fitting resources as well, you seem to conveniently ignore that. I have no intention of rolling back the resists because a T2 ship should have T2 resists I assume that idea is respected when rebalancing them. There is no "poisoned bait" here, if anything the "poisoned bait" was in the old revamp which made everything but the retriever/mackinaw obsolete.

The only people whose resists changed were people flying Exhumers with Mining Barge 4.

considering mining barge 5 is a prereq for sitting in an exhumer....

no idea, because i just opened the show info window on my mack, and mining barge V is there as a ship requirement.

tl;dr VV thinks nerfing success is appropriate.

Looks like temporary emergent gameplay event to me.

So you're deliberately ignoring the "CCP knows better when it comes to specific numbers so I'm going to remain absract." Currently the mackinaw sits at, assuming all 5s, ~11k EHP if it were set at cruiser EHP it would be ~9k EHP. Speed, agility and such aren't a part of the argument or consideration so I'm not sure why you are bringing it up.

I've literally been the ganker so I know how much orbiting done well can screw up a gank. This is another trade-off you ignore too if the miner refuses to fit an AB, MWD, or some other speed influencing mod why should they be able to speed tank a ganker well? Also you are not looking at a T2 cruiser when referencing the mack, T1 is ~6k.

Since you're bringing up RL comparisons, show me a normal, not designed to be super tanky (because that's the Skiff), 18 wheeler that can survive an RPG intact. RPGs are cheaper than an 18-wheeler's scrap value so, assuming laws equivalent to EVE's HS, an 18 wheeler would be profitable to gank.

I listed speed/agility influencing mods;

like I said before I'm deliberately remaining abstract because I'm leaving the specific numbers the hands of the people who have the data and know how to do it like CCP Fozzie.

You brought up the comparison. And you, as usual, keep trying to shove words in my mouth.

Where did I say they should be immovable. Where did I say all Exhumers should be fragile? The Mack and the Hulk should be because otherwise there is no reason in the world to use a Skiff.

The Skiff is meant to provide you safety through tank. The Mackinaw is not.

Manuvers also work great. You can fit webs on your mining ship (and a friends) and both be fully aligned while moving no more than 7m/s (which takes about half an hour to cover 10km). You can be in warp long before a cloaked ship can bump you if you're paying attention.

You're the one claiming that Miners should have enormous cargoholds, great tank, and great yield all at once.

Speaking of, Nullsec miners manage to stay at the keyboard when they mine in order to protect their 200m investment. I wonder what lead to HS miners feeling that they shouldn't need to stay at the keyboard when they mine in order to protect their 200m investment?

Missed a word there. Kind of an important one. And a Phrase. Kind of an important one too.

Words and Phrases: All of them Matter.

The Mackinaw is unprofitable to gank with 3 MLUs. In what way is that not safe from significant sources of risk?

If you have to pee, dock/POS/cloak up. Just like everyone else has to if they want to stay safe. Or give your friend (who's webbing you) fleet command.

As I have said before. Many times. I am perfectly fine with a result of people giving up things that matter (yield and cargo) to reduce their chance of loss (Skiff) or to reduce the loss they face (Retriever). I have no problem with that, and Never Have.

My problem is that they don't need to give up anything to use the Mack. Nothing at all. Compared to its equivalent pre-buff (the Cargo Hulk), it has More Cargo, a Higher Yield, and more than enough tank to be unprofitable to gank (thus it's immune to the industrialized ganking required to present miners with some actual risk).

Vaerah pushing the "carebear dollar" myth again.

notice the vast difference in the literacy levels between those saying "yeah, no, barge pilots should make a choice too" and those saying "no we can't be bothered to learn anything beyond running our mining macros"