Lyah Moonshade
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Posted - 2006.03.29 19:06:00 -
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Edited by: Lyah Moonshade on 29/03/2006 19:13:12
I usually try to keep the systems I'm hunting in macro/farmer free, but seriously, it's harder than keeping a street kitten free of fleas.
A good indicator is the names: ffssd, ssffd, aassd, etc. are good indicators for sweatshop farmers, while the macroers tend to be a bit more circumspect. I make no difference between sweatshop farmers and macroers since both eventually sell ISK for RL cash. Another good hint is to check their bio / corp. The usual covetor farmer is around 3 months into the game, has no bio entries and no corp.
The typical macro / sweatshop group is set up with 3 covetors / apocs and 1 iteron5. The hauler is the control unit and usually the sweatshop owner. He will guide and direct the drones and also call in for reinforcements if necessary. You may have more than one group at a time in a system and if you ever woke up to see your home system stripped of all ore you'll know how devastating those can be.
My usual tactic is to steal their ore with a combat ship and transfer it to a new can, then haul it with an alt account hauler. If you do this for a prolonged time, the sweatshop owner will call in a reinforcement, which is usually a ferox. The ferox will try to bait you into an aggro situation (you opening his can) then try to kill you. They're usually rather poorly fitted so you should have no issues tanking them. Also, they will have a bunch of WCS fitted so any scrambling attempt below -4 is pointless. I recently had a situation where they baited my ferox into a situation with 12 vespas (4 per apoc) and a ferox waiting. Well aware of the trap, I was able to outtank the damage and chased away the ferox, then killed all vespas and followed an apoc to the station it had fled to and killed that one too. The sweatshop owner convoed me after all in tears which made me feel all warm and fuzzy.
As an afterthought, I'm still a bit frustrated and appalled at CCP doing absolutely nothing against these things. And having a bit of Isk piled up too, I ask myself why I follow the rules when I know that Isk - cash sales are suffering no consequences at all.
L
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