EVE Online English Guides - Mining & Avoiding Ganks
Mining & Avoiding Ganks
Advanced Guides > Gameplay Specifics > Mining & Avoiding Ganks
Last revision 99 months ago

Introduction

If your main activity in high-sec is mining, you may have noticed that a group of player is warping in Asteroid Belts, and destroys mining barges using Catalysts, despite the presence of CONCORD. These people mainly belong to a group called "CODE", a high-sec ganking organisation with a bit of a roleplay touch. You can know more about them on this blog.

This guide will teach you how this type of ganking works, and the techniques that will enable you to reduce or prevent ganking attempts on your mining barge. Because in the sandbox, well balanced mecanics always have counters.

 Workings of a gank

The short version is that when an illegal aggression happens in high-sec, CONCORD, the in-game police, teleports to the crime scene after a delay. This reactivity delay is set by the Security Status of the system. On fragile ships, and using very offensive ships, the victim can be killed before CONCORD shows up to blow up the aggressor. Note that it is note possible for the aggressor to escape.

Gankers will also use a cloaked alt to provide a warp point to their ganking ships, so that they land very close to you. Combat probes can also be used. Then, as soon as the warp of the ganking ships ends, the gank can start.

Once the gank is over, gankers have to wait 15 minutes before they are able to undock ships again without being blow up by CONCORD.

RIsk reduction techniques

In order to minimize ganking risks, there are a few techniques at your disposal:

Use a Procurer

Explanation

Instead of using a Retriever, which is the mining barge with the best cargo capacity (therefore minimizing the need to do back and forths with the station), it is possible to use a Procurer. A version of the mining barge with less cargo capacity, but more tank.

With an appropriate tank, killing a Procurer will require at least twice as much effort from the gankers, which is generally enough to substantially diminish ganking risks.

Aligned mining

Explanation

Since your ship can instantly enter warp, as long as you have 75% of your maximum speed with the correct vector orientation, it is possible to mine while being aligned toward a warp out point.

This technique however requires reactivity, and being actively watching the screen at all times during your mining, something that is not so easy to do due to the frankly awful mining gameplay EVE has to offer.

Weaknesses

The issue with mining aligned, is that it is harder to stay at range of the asteroids you are trying to mine (since your ship is constantly moving). You therefore need to regularly re-align to somewhere else, leaving you vulnerable in the process, and requiring a lot more input.

Solutions

There is however a solution, which is the Medium Higgs Anchor I. This rig reduces your ship's maximum speed by 75%, improves its agility by 55%, and doubles its mass (resulting in a net 10% gain in agility). This rig enables you to be very slow and very hard to bump, but most importantly in our situation, it enables you to stay 4 times longer then before at range of the same asteroid, before having to re-align!

The only issue with this rig, is that it prevents you from quickly reaching your target asteroids... To counter that, a solution exists in the form of Mining Perches: Bookmarks, locations in space that are created by yourself and onto which you can warp. Placed at more than 150km from the asteroids, warping to a perch instead of warping directly to its corresponding Asteroid Belt (You need to create perches beforehand inside your mining system), will enable you to cherry pick which asteroid you want to warp to. (Try not to warp at 0 or you may bump against it).

The shortcut for creating a bookmark at your current location, is CTRL + B.

Concord Pulling

ExplanatiON

Third and last technique, CONCORD Pulling enables you to move CONCORD to your Asteroid Belt. Because when a crime is commited, CONCORD teleports onto the crimescene, kills the aggressor... And stays there! At least until another nearby crime is detected, or until the server downtime.

What makes the preemptive presence of CONCORD so valuable, is that the apparition delay due to the Security Status, doesn't apply here. Which stops most ganking opportunities.

Method

In order to pull CONCORD yourself, you need to use a secondary character which you don't care much about, and on which you are ready to ruin your Security Status. You then need to commit a crime at the location of your Asteroid Belt, which is accomplished by illegally attacking another player there.

NOTE: Be aware that biomassing secondary characters too often to avoid Security Status consequences, is a breach of the EULA. Therefore, do NOT try to biomass your secondary characters repeadedly to avoid falling too low in terms of Security Status.

Not to mention that it doesn't matter, as you can keep pulling CONCORD despite a low Security Status.

It is however important to note that gankers can also use a similar technique to move CONCORD away from you, by committing a crime elsewhere in the system, far away from you. It is therefore important that you keep an eye on your CONCORD pull to ensure that it is still nearby.