Friday, June 13, 2008

When Carebears Attack! - Video

I would never have believed it had I not seen this video! A miner by the name of jnb got fed up and installed a tank ship setup on her Hulk - an Exhumer for crying out lod! - and then had some fun with her attackers. Watch the whole video, it's simply amazing!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

So much win in that video.

Basically a shield tank + nos + attack drones right? How did she scramble them? (can you tell it's been a while for me...)

Anonymous said...

mids have: booster, two points and a webber.

:-P

real question is how did she take out the arbiter... that thing should have taken her drones out in seconds and not even asked questions... ~_~

Anonymous said...

If they weren't that experienced they wouldn't have known to take out the drones, or would have been too fricken surprised when the exhumer started tearing them up and locked them down.

Anonymous said...

GREAT video CK! Truly shows that ore tippers and the like do get their just rewards.

:)

CrazyKinux said...

It does indeed restore some pride to the mining carebear population out there!

CK

Anonymous said...

Good find, CK!

It's pains me to say that I have lost the link to a similarly enjoyable story written by someone who combat-fit an osprey while keeping a single mining laser. My googlefu isn't up to the task..

Dubbed the pi**offsprey, it sounded like a hoot! A little trick to catch unsuspecting can flippers that even new players could get involved with.

Lachesis said...

I'm still pretty new to eve, less than 1 million skillpoints, but I don't know why I didn't start playing ages ago. The game is great.

Anyway, in reference to the above video, I have some thoughts of my own.

I engage in relatively small scale mining with one of my RL friends who convinced me to try EVE. We're all pretty unskilled, still learning, etc, but I've taken it upon myself to be the 'engineer' of the group, coming up with ship designs. Naturally, as lowbie miners, we're doing a lot of high-sec jetcan mining, and coming to grips with the inevitable presence of ore thieves.

Having gotten kind of fed up with getting taken for a ride by these guys with no real way to retaliate (they run if you bring in any weapons), I had an epiphany of sorts, and was curious as to what a more experienced player thought of my idea. :-)

The most common tactic I've seen ore thieves use is to steal the ore and warp away, then come back every minute or two to see if you've stolen it back from them, so they can gank you. If you try to bring an indy in, they stick around and won't leave until the hauler leaves.

So my idea is: trojan horse. After a few hours of looking into matters, it appears that a Badger II can actually be turned into a cheap, mean little surprise for unsuspecting pirates.

Low modules: 3
Signal Distortion Amplifier I
Signal Distortion Amplifier I
Capacitor Flux Coil I

Mid modules: 6
Warp Scrambler I
ECM - White Noise Generator I
ECM - White Noise Generator I
Stasis Webifier I
Small Capacitor Booster I
Small Capacitor Booster I

Hi modules: 2
Small Energy Neutralizer I
Small Energy Neutralizer I

After running the math, a cargo hold full of Cap 150s should enable this thing to hold out with all of its modules running for almost 12 minutes. Net capacitor usage, per second, is 0.7 units.

Basically, after the pirates gank your ore, you and your buddy warp away. One person flys back with the Badger II and closes in on the ore. When the pirates show up again, and close range with you (something pirates seem to love to do, I almost never see them hold distance), throw up the warp jammer, hit them with ECM and stasis web.

Then call in your friends, hit your target with the neut, and the pirates are pretty much doomed. This setup should be able to hold down two cruiser or battlecruiser sized pirates, provided they don't have ECCM onboard.

I'm eager to try out the setup, but pirate activity the past couple of days has been pretty slow.

It also occurs to me that you could use this ship in any number of nefarious ways. People just don't seem to find industrial ships threatening. Its perfect pirate bait.

What do you think?

Anonymous said...

@Patrick,

Sounds promising at least for the 1st attempt.

From my time in Eve-University we dealt alot with ore thieves and how to respond and catch them.

The biggest problem are the theives that are really just looking to gank you.

Often they want you to flag yourself, or attack them, or even blow up their ship (watch out for what looks like a throw away ship). Then they'll come back in a much bigger ship like a Battlecruiser to blow you up.

So if you do pull off your stunt, you'll want to mark a safespot in space out of scanner range to hide in if you still are flagged, then dock at a friendly station in case the pirate tries to come back with something bigger (unless you have a tricked out hulk to take them on with too!
0.

Lachesis said...

@scott:

Thanks for the advice!

I've developed kind of an antagonistic relationship with my local pirate gang. I've actually relocated to a quiet little branch system about 12 jumps away to get away from them. I've got most of them buddylisted, so I can tell who's available to reinforce them, if it comes to that.

These guys are *definitely* out to gank for fun, though they will haul your ore away if they think they can get away with it. The two I deal with most often fly a Maller and a Harbinger. The Harbinger I'm wary of, but the Maller I think we can take. I also doubt they've got a (much) bigger arsenal back home, their characters are only about 6 weeks old. Either way, after popping them, we'd head to quiet space to chill out for a while.

To be blunt, I don't think these guys are very smart.

I've got my friend building the "attack" arm of this little plan, a nasty missle-spamming Caracal, while I work on the trojan horse. He should be able to stay out of range and run if things go south. I consider the Badger to be expendable (it's worth less than the ore it can haul).

My question is: what's the deal with warp jammers and aggro? It seems like setting off a jammer could be dangerous, if it flags aggro towards everything within range. What happens if you're fighting these guys, with a jammer active, and some poor sod in a mining frigate just happens to warp in and get caught in your bubble? Would that be an act aggression, thus triggering Concord? Or does setting one off just have the same effect as say, stealing ore, IE they can attack you if they want, but its not counted as a direct assault?

If it is a direct assault, it seems like there are ways to exploit/abuse that. When my friend and I first started mining together, we'd use one jetcan. This led to only one of us being able to reciprocate against the pirates when they'd show up. I learned that the hard way; I thought that being in a fleet meant you'd share aggro... Concord disabused me of that notion. To solve the problem, we started mining using two cans. That way the pirates would steal from both of us, and we'd both get aggro.

However, if a warp bubble is a direct attack, this opens up another tactic. Go back to using one can, (say mine). The pirate then steals from the can, and I get attack rights. I go get a hauler, and my friend orbits the pirate at close range, with no aggro. When I show up and steal the ore back, and the pirate drops a warp jammer, that's considered an agressive attack on my friend, and Concord shows up.

Of course, I don't quite understand how warp jamming works, and I don't feel like flying to Jita and turning on a warp jammer just to find out. O_O

I guess my last question is: where's a good place for a lowbie like myself to actually meet like-minded people in-game? My school corp isn't exactly what you'd call ambitious. I'd like to get involved in larger scale mining ops, fleets, etc, and that's not an option in an NPC corp. As you might have guessed, I'm particularly interested in anti-piracy actions. :) The corporation recruitment pages seek kind of, impersonal. Any thoughts?

Unknown said...

Salute! jnb is no noob when it comes to dealing with problems.

jnb said...

Thanks guys - it was a blast to make this vid, as you can probably guess :)

aselus - the key to taking on cruisers in the Hulk'o'Doom is making sure the pilot is < 3 months old. Beyond that you're toast. The arbie fight was the longest fight I had - approx 8 minutes from start to finish, and looking back at the entire footage, he did pop a couple of drones (though I almost always carry spares) before his cap was dry.

With decent drone skills, you can take on any T1 frigate or destroyer and have a very good chance of winning regardless of pilot age. Beyond that, I can only urge caution :)

The second key, ofc, is the minute they're popped, grab their stuff and dock yourself till the aggro timer runs down. They *always* come back in a BS or BC.

But yes, on the whole, most can-flippers were so stunned by the whole turn of events (or on corp chat bragging about the Hulk they're about to pop and forming gangs) that their reactions weren't the fastest. Often, by then, it's too late and they're wondering where all their cap went.

New build post NOS-nerf (and much, much more fun) is:

Highs: 1xstrip, 2x Small Neut II

Mids: best named web, best named scram, shield booster (pref Gistii A-Type Small otherwise T2 Small) and 1x Utility item (sometimes cap booster, sometimes ECM jammer or Tracking disruptor, sometimes invuln field)

Lows: 2x Shield Power Relay II

Core Defence Field purger rigs (or EM) for preference.

Anyways, glad you guys liked it, and maybe see you in space sometime.

Fly safe o/

CrazyKinux said...

Thanks for dropping by jnb, and for the set-up info.