Aww boo hoo, did I **** all over your canard? I'm sorry, try another one.

What if its piracy they want? Should they play a different game? Don't you want Eve to be a sandbox? Cipher Jones does.

Thank you, your tears are delicious.

What if its piracy they want? Should they play a different game? Don't you want Eve to be a sandbox? Cipher Jones does.

I remember when we had hisec mining bots back when the ore of the day was Plagio and then Scord.
I remember when nearly every Ice system in hisec would have 150+ miners on the ice.

I recall that CCP did begin some program that turned out to be pretty effective at removing actual bots as toons that we all knew locally as bots went away and never came back.

That was well over a year ago, maybe even 2 years by now.

I also remember when hisec began to be swarmed with red flagged pilots coming in from null at the beginning of the ganking that has now become rampant.

These days you can't even dare to recruit anyone that is an unknown as they are very likely a ganker waiting for an opportunity to gank a corpmates strategic cruiser when they get a chance. It happens.

It appears that the game has tilted too far towards the killboard, which is a perverse measure of success at best and the reason to exist at all at worst.

These days rich hisec asteroid belts no longer have numerous miners in system, no noob wreck scavengers or budding ratters. No small mining frigates or mining noob cruisers.

Ice belt systems in hisec now normally have closer to a dozen miners rather than what was once ten times that number.

The bots are long gone. Stop lieing to yourselves.

Cipher Jones is a dumbass.

Bizzarely I saw a few pods too, warp in and just sit there, waiting for like 3 minutes, then warping back to a station, then reapeating this strange behaviour. Dunno what they were up to...

Cipher Jones is a dumbass.

Sure, some people gank "for the tears", but they'd be foolish to not have a friend loot and salvage. I've watched people with -10 sec status do this sort of thing repeatedly by themselves with a covops trained alt who does the warp-to and salvage.
Use 2 Destroyers and a tanked Mack or cargo-fit Hulk will still go down in the half minute you have to pop them.

Destroyers are also quick with warping. You have 20 to 30 seconds to get from 0m/s to 75%(warp) from the moment someone comes in system (on d-scan or not). If they've got a cloaked alt sitting next to you, you can kiss your ship goodbye. More often than not, the cloaky alts are quite clean for killboard stats. They look like any average non-threatening player.


tl;dr: Ganking is very profitable currently, so there's not much reason to *not* do it.

Mining is still very worthwhile as getting ships through mining and industry is way cheaper the just outright buying them

"way cheaper".....hmm, then how come when I go to produce a T3, it costs more to make it than to buy it on the market?

Not just T3, Kid.

Math off any ship or module in EVE. It's not even strategic sales where you sell the ship at cost and bleed them on the modules. Everything in the game is priced below its mineral value. Manufacturing in EVE is bankrupt. Sell the minerals, you make more ISK.

The funny part to this is you don't even need to use a covt ops. I use an alt in a salvage Dessie, with cargo/ship scanner and blatantly bump them around a bit scanning them ext..ect. I use destroyers simply because there are vultures that will try to steal the loot/salvage so u have to be quick or someone else will get it.

These so called miners that we gank can't "all" be AFK. I actually convo every single target I pick out and if they actually answer I don't gank them, just because 90% of them never answer a convo so it's a rarity.

Wait, so actual human beings actually do the exact same process 24/7 without going insane?

The reason why there is a lack of (human) miners is because of the following.

1. Mining is boring as hell, anyone who could possibly find the process of undock, shoot rock, do nothing but watch, dock up and repeat constantly probably needs their sanity checked. I heard some people mine because you can do multiple things while you mine like sell and buy on markets, manage PI, science industry etc. But I cannot believe how people just mine and nothing else. Normal people tend to realize what the hell they are doing, the others are either playing from the insane asylum or are bots.

2. Mining is irrelevant to EVE in the grand scheme of themes. Most minerals are obtained from missions or reprocessing old ships and modules.

3. Mining has little to offer. After a year or two you'll be able to fly every mining ship in EVE and they all perform the same basic function. As a result a dedicated miner can get bored of the game very quickly. The end game ship for a miner is the Orca. You could make an argument for the Rorqual but miners don't like working with others or taking risk and the ship requires you to work with others and take risks (venturing into low/null/wh).

Also the base of the EVE economy are not the miners. Do you know what would happen should all forms PVP be taken out of the game? Mining would be worthless because the number one reason for industry is the fact that people lose ships. Most people lose ships from engaging in PVP, voluntarily or involuntarily (if you don't like that EVE isn't for you). Without ships being lose as often miners would be worthless.

The base of any economy are the customers. If there are no customers there is no demand. If there is no demand there is no economy.

I've said this over a YEAR about T2 ship production, and I always get hooted down.

Glad someone else has seen the light.

Time to make babies?

As a relatively long term indy alt toon I have noticed something many of you are probably unaware of.

Hulks and the noob mining barges as well are vanishing from the game.
Our little neut alt corp is active in a couple of empires and many regions and are familiar with many rich mining areas that all have something new in common.

NO MINERS

ganking miners seems to be a case of biting the hand that feeds. you need the miners so can keep buying those ships and being foolish dumbas*ses that you are.