Killing Farmers

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An ISK farmer is a player that runs numerous Raven accounts (often with the aid of a bot) in order to farm money for little effort, usually selling the ISK produced for real-world currency. Depending on how their bots are coded (or personal experience if a human is actually behind the character), they will either continue ratting or safespot and cloak when a goon enters local. Larger goon gangs will cause all of them to safespot and perhaps log. In our new regions, the farmers' bots are usually tame and will continue ratting (however they usually have support nearby).

China issued a ban on selling game money for real-world currency in late June 2009, but farmers will still exist in game or try to find other methods of keeping the business alive. As a result time card value crashed and mid-level mineral prices spiked.

Farmers can be found in many backwater systems with good truesec and/or a high belt count. Several can still be found in western Delve by Fountain or in many quiet Querious constellations.

[edit] Behaviour

Farmers generally all behave the same way:

1. They generally fly Ravens, usually badly tanked. The Feythabolis farmers tend to fit Pithi B-Type Small Shield Boosters, worth about 30M ISK, in order to permatank Angels, while most farmers tend to fit a heavier tank using a Large Shield Booster. You can almost always solo a farmer Raven with a DPS-fitted Autocane.
2. Their fittings generally include Cruise Missile launchers, smartbombs and a maximum of one Warp Core Stabiliser.
3. Upon seeing any hostile enter local, they immediately safespot and cloak. However, they will not actually turn on their cloak until 10-20 seconds after arriving at their safespot.
4. They don't worry too much about neutral characters, such as a newbie corp alt. They will often continue to rat with newbie corp characters in local.

[edit] Getting the Tackle

The first and most significant challenge is to get on grid with a farmer Raven, either by probing them out or by tricking them. Both of the following methods require good timing and plenty of patience, but are extremely effective.

[edit] Moostang's Method

The following method is lifted shamelessly from this forum post:

1. Create a newbie corp alt on an existing account, put it in a shuttle and move it to Goonspace.
2. Once you've found a system with an active farmer, sit your shuttle alt in a safespot in the same system.
3. Log out an alt in a tackling ship (preferably a Heavy Interdictor) in an Asteroid Belt a few AU away, and wait until the Raven starts ratting again.
4. Use the directional scanner to tell when the Raven has arrived in the Belt that appears above the one you logged your alt in (ie, in the order that they appear in the Asteroid Belts menu). Log your alt in to the character selection screen.
5. The moment the Raven disappears from a scan of the Belt, log your tackling alt in all the way. The Raven and your tackler should arrive in the Belt at about the same time.
6. Tackle, rape, post killmails. Remember to pod him.

Killmails from this method: http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/243700 http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/241422