If you're going to possibly use two orcas on large-scale mining ops you might consider putting the armor and shield resistance gang mods and a large remote shield booster on one and laser yield with a pair of large remote boosters on the second. If all of your mining ships are running fairly standardized builds and you synchronize when their ice harvesters start you can time your hauler orca's movements so that you can pop in and out of the station/whatever in time to restart the gang mod and keep the bonuses intact.

This gives you dual EHP bonuses that are always on, a mining yield bonus that should, with proper timing, never be down when needed, and the remote rep capacity to handle three ships under attack. If you really want something for loot/salvage/tractoring then put a noctis in your ship bay and one of your pilots can swap out for it as needed.

Thanks for the feedback...C:

Regarding the use of EFCs and freighters, we will have to see whether those can be used by the corp. I am going to try and test all methods (an itty is cheap to test, we already have another Orca and we also have freighter pilots) before deciding on which fits the doctrine we want.



I dont think there is much merit in using an armor link, since all ships would be shield tanked. The noctis is a good idea to use as a tractoring ship if the number of miners involved is big enough to warrant more tractor beams. Regarding remote shield transporters, I do not think they can help a lot in this scenario for 3 reasons.

1. The amount of time you have to respond to a suicide gank is not enough to make LSTs worth it. By the time the Orca targets the afflicted ship and starts boosting (about 12s with lvl V skills and immediate response times), the ship would be probably dead.
2. The afflicted ship would have to be very close to the Orca (under 9km with lvl V skills), thus endangering the fleet vs SB attacks.
3. Since we are willing to use heavily tanked ships, the need of additional catas to pop one makes suicide ganking impractical. Thus, having logi support is superfluous, especially when it takes the place of more useful mods like links or tractors on the FC Orca.

hope that helps, cheers...C:

I dont think there is much merit in using an armor link, since all ships would be shield tanked.

1. The amount of time you have to respond to a suicide gank is not enough to make LSTs worth it. By the time the Orca targets the afflicted ship and starts boosting (about 12s with lvl V skills and immediate response times), the ship would be probably dead.

2. The afflicted ship would have to be very close to the Orca (under 9km with lvl V skills), thus endangering the fleet vs SB attacks.

3. Since we are willing to use heavily tanked ships, the need of additional catas to pop one makes suicide ganking impractical. Thus, having logi support is superfluous, especially when it takes the place of more useful mods like links or tractors on the FC Orca.

Every last bit of EHP counts.

get rid of the useless mining ganglink and get a shield harmonizing instead if you're worried about tanking. Another 18% resistances

Thanks for the feedback. The loadout you posted has half the tank of the Skiff setup we are going to use. As I have said, max yield is not the issue for this fleet.

Also, a thing that if find all the time in HS mining ships when ganking them. Most of the miners try to close the em hole of their ships, but that does nothing against suicide ganking. Plugging the hole makes sense when mining in LS/null or if mining under a wardec. Remember that ganking ships use predominantly blasters due to their isk/DPS ratio, so the damage you want to resist against is thermal and kinetic.

Hope that helps, cheers...C:

Thanks for the feedback.

The difference in DPS between a T1 ganking thrasher and a cata is about 150, or 100 if you use a coercer. The difference in ships needed for a tanked mackinaw against blasters is ~0.8 ship if you try and take advantage of the EM hole. But gankers tend to not do that, mainly due to the fact that they have hybrid support skills and doctrines trained.

There are very good reasons why we use blasters against exhumers. And one of them is that miners use a couple of BC recommended fits that try to plug the EM hole for omni tanking in LS/null...by far the most hilarious though, is the 4 civilian ssb one that many copy/paste from this...XD