I wrote how I think that Caldari Ice interdiction is a bad idea, but to get better results, I went to ice mining myself in an unboosted procurer using T1 harvester: Otela: 78, Piekura: 23, Gekutami: 57, Vattuolen: 72, Hentogaira: 60, Hurtoken: 36, Wuos: 84, Osmon: 187. Almost 600 units of ice collected, worth of 173M ISK, about 15M/hour, mostly AFK. The first and most important thing I noticed is how easy it is to find ice. One of the Odessey changes is that ice belts are fairly small, disappear if mined out and reappear after 4 hours. Only 80% of New Eden's ice demands of that time can be supplied from highsec if they are fully mined. But they are not. Wherever I went I found ice belts in 5-10 minutes, which could be followed by hours of ice mining. Despite there was no interdiction yet and the prices already spiked, ice mining was very far from the theoretical maximum. To make it worse, the ice belts of Athulaima and Mitsolen were closed due to an incursion, and the rest still could not be depleted by miners.
This can be interpreted two opposing ways: one is that ice isn't an issue, therefore messing with it cannot be an issue either. The other is that ice mining is still a fairly casual activity that is ran by bad players who are easy to massacre and probably run away instead of adapting. To see that, I put a ship scanner to my procurer and checked what miners fly. On the surface, it seems the Goons have lost before they even started:
To maximize gank effect, the gankers usually spawn Concord using noobships, then go gank. In a 0.5 system, a max-skilled ganker in a T2 fit Catalyst can put out 15K damage, enough to kill an untanked Mackinaw alone, or kill a Hulk, covetor or untanked Retriever with enough time left to lock and kill the pod. After the gank is complete, the ganker gets into a noobship and undocks to pull Concord away from the belt. This is very easy alone. It is equally easy in a squad acting as one.
However the "acting as one" was a problem even in the pretty experienced New Order squads, now imagine the mess that Goons will make. If members of a squad get lost during or after the gank, by warping to wrong places, by not having insta-dock bookmark and get sniped on the station, by going AFK after docking or by any of the hundreds of ways to mess something up, the result will be an imperfect pull: some Concord squads left in the belt. Now the next wave of gankers will fly into a trap: some of them will be killed almost instantly. Since the belt Concord picks the first aggressors, the fastest and most skilled players get removed, leaving the clumsiest to try to destroy a 100K EHP target. And this just snowballs, as every failure creates more misplaced Concord squads, demanding the next wave be even larger, creating even more misplaced Concord squads. Since a Procurer or Skiff takes a squad of 7 perfectly skilled and fitted Catalyst doing everything right, you see the trouble ahead with line Goons flying T1 catas.
But the Goons aren't lost, thanks to the stupidity of their targets:
[Procurer, Interdict this]
Damage Control II
Ice Harvester Upgrade II
Medium Shield Extender II
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Ice Harvester II
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Hornet EC-300 x4
Hobgoblin II x1
90K EHP against catalysts, 105 if you overheat, 130 if you also have links. Costs 30M, less than the catalysts needed to kill it. It takes about 10 average gankers to take it out, each having to waste about 4M in ship and 20 minutes GCC + formup while the "victim" will be back in the belt in 3-5 minutes. Procurer ganking is self-griefing.
Now if you fit a Skiff the same way, you get 15% more EHP for 660% higher cost. Whoever has 10 catalysts to kill a Procurer will have 12 to kill a Skiff. But the abomination above wasn't even that, it missed the DCII, had EM field, passive termic and so on. How should you fit a Skiff?
[Skiff, anti-gank]
Ice Harvester Upgrade II
Damage Control II
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Limited Kinetic Deflection Field I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Ice Harvester II
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Vespa EC-600 x4
Hobgoblin II x1
While it has 10% less HP than the max-tanked, it is much safer due to its 650m/s orbit speed. The Catalysts will land way beyond optimal range and have no chance to catch up. A Skiff doesn't tank cheap and effective gankers, but outruns them, while tanked enough to make long-range fit ganks uneconomical. Needless to stay, most Skiffs I've met did not know this and were stationary. Skiffs have significantly better mining yield than Procurers, despite EFT says otherwise. They have 25% larger ore hold and their speed removes lot of lost minutes slowboating.
A badly fit stationary Skiff is still much better than these symptoms of terminal case brain cell degradation:
How do you fit a Mack in highsec? The same way as you fit Hulks and Covetors. You don't! These ships have no place in highsec and when you see one, you see a dumb miner. Hulks and Covs can't AFK for longer period of time, which is the point in highsec. If you are mining actively, you should do it where the ore is much better: nullsec and WH. Mackinaws cost 8x more than Retrievers for +10% ore yield and 2x larger tank. They also belong to Nullsec where you warp out when neut comes anyway. The only reasonable choice in highsec besides Procurer/Skiff is the Retriever which "replacement tanks". It's cheap enough that you don't care losing it (only fly it with an empty pod). For this reason, this is equally dumb:
Last thing: dumb Orcas. If you are in an ice belt, this is the only good fit:
[Orca, Belt]
Damage Control II
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Mining Foreman Link - Laser Optimization II
Siege Warfare Link - Shield Harmonizing II
Third link or tractor beam
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Vespa EC-600 x5
295K EHP omni, 315 if overheating. That's almost twice the EHP of a freighter and it can be insured to limit the loss to 400M. So can you tell what's the worst thing on this screenshot?
So I'm not sure. The amount of ships needed to gank will definitely force Goons to fight against large amount of opportunistic PvP-ers. They will have lot of dumb miner kills, but they can't disrupt the ice supply. If you are a professional miner, I'd suggest having bunch of procurers and mining Caldari ice until the price returns.
This can be interpreted two opposing ways: one is that ice isn't an issue, therefore messing with it cannot be an issue either. The other is that ice mining is still a fairly casual activity that is ran by bad players who are easy to massacre and probably run away instead of adapting. To see that, I put a ship scanner to my procurer and checked what miners fly. On the surface, it seems the Goons have lost before they even started:
| System security | Away | Unspawned | In belt |
| 0.5 | 25 | 20 | 6 |
| 0.6 | 20 | 16 | 6 |
| 0.7 | 15 | 11 | 6 |
To maximize gank effect, the gankers usually spawn Concord using noobships, then go gank. In a 0.5 system, a max-skilled ganker in a T2 fit Catalyst can put out 15K damage, enough to kill an untanked Mackinaw alone, or kill a Hulk, covetor or untanked Retriever with enough time left to lock and kill the pod. After the gank is complete, the ganker gets into a noobship and undocks to pull Concord away from the belt. This is very easy alone. It is equally easy in a squad acting as one.
However the "acting as one" was a problem even in the pretty experienced New Order squads, now imagine the mess that Goons will make. If members of a squad get lost during or after the gank, by warping to wrong places, by not having insta-dock bookmark and get sniped on the station, by going AFK after docking or by any of the hundreds of ways to mess something up, the result will be an imperfect pull: some Concord squads left in the belt. Now the next wave of gankers will fly into a trap: some of them will be killed almost instantly. Since the belt Concord picks the first aggressors, the fastest and most skilled players get removed, leaving the clumsiest to try to destroy a 100K EHP target. And this just snowballs, as every failure creates more misplaced Concord squads, demanding the next wave be even larger, creating even more misplaced Concord squads. Since a Procurer or Skiff takes a squad of 7 perfectly skilled and fitted Catalyst doing everything right, you see the trouble ahead with line Goons flying T1 catas.
But the Goons aren't lost, thanks to the stupidity of their targets:
[Procurer, Interdict this]
Damage Control II
Ice Harvester Upgrade II
Medium Shield Extender II
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Ice Harvester II
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Hornet EC-300 x4
Hobgoblin II x1
90K EHP against catalysts, 105 if you overheat, 130 if you also have links. Costs 30M, less than the catalysts needed to kill it. It takes about 10 average gankers to take it out, each having to waste about 4M in ship and 20 minutes GCC + formup while the "victim" will be back in the belt in 3-5 minutes. Procurer ganking is self-griefing.
Now if you fit a Skiff the same way, you get 15% more EHP for 660% higher cost. Whoever has 10 catalysts to kill a Procurer will have 12 to kill a Skiff. But the abomination above wasn't even that, it missed the DCII, had EM field, passive termic and so on. How should you fit a Skiff?
[Skiff, anti-gank]
Ice Harvester Upgrade II
Damage Control II
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Limited Kinetic Deflection Field I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Ice Harvester II
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Vespa EC-600 x4
Hobgoblin II x1
While it has 10% less HP than the max-tanked, it is much safer due to its 650m/s orbit speed. The Catalysts will land way beyond optimal range and have no chance to catch up. A Skiff doesn't tank cheap and effective gankers, but outruns them, while tanked enough to make long-range fit ganks uneconomical. Needless to stay, most Skiffs I've met did not know this and were stationary. Skiffs have significantly better mining yield than Procurers, despite EFT says otherwise. They have 25% larger ore hold and their speed removes lot of lost minutes slowboating.
A badly fit stationary Skiff is still much better than these symptoms of terminal case brain cell degradation:
How do you fit a Mack in highsec? The same way as you fit Hulks and Covetors. You don't! These ships have no place in highsec and when you see one, you see a dumb miner. Hulks and Covs can't AFK for longer period of time, which is the point in highsec. If you are mining actively, you should do it where the ore is much better: nullsec and WH. Mackinaws cost 8x more than Retrievers for +10% ore yield and 2x larger tank. They also belong to Nullsec where you warp out when neut comes anyway. The only reasonable choice in highsec besides Procurer/Skiff is the Retriever which "replacement tanks". It's cheap enough that you don't care losing it (only fly it with an empty pod). For this reason, this is equally dumb:
Last thing: dumb Orcas. If you are in an ice belt, this is the only good fit:
[Orca, Belt]
Damage Control II
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Mining Foreman Link - Laser Optimization II
Siege Warfare Link - Shield Harmonizing II
Third link or tractor beam
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Vespa EC-600 x5
295K EHP omni, 315 if overheating. That's almost twice the EHP of a freighter and it can be insured to limit the loss to 400M. So can you tell what's the worst thing on this screenshot?
So I'm not sure. The amount of ships needed to gank will definitely force Goons to fight against large amount of opportunistic PvP-ers. They will have lot of dumb miner kills, but they can't disrupt the ice supply. If you are a professional miner, I'd suggest having bunch of procurers and mining Caldari ice until the price returns.
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