NPC Pirate Spawns-Mining

[NascentChemist]

Occasionally while mining, I'll decide to call it a night early or be called away unexpectedly.

When I return to the game, a brand new instance spawns. Pirates (and rarely cops) will drop in. They'll meander over and scan me. If I'm flying my T-9 and an Anaconda pirate spawns, I'm in trouble.

I've played around with silent running, or manually turning off everything but life-support (and maybe sensors) to avoid being picked up by these pirates. This has never worked, no matter what distance the pirates spawn at. I've got A-rated sensors, so I can seem them start well over 5 km away. Despite having silent running on or heat idling around 7%, the pirates still make a bee-line for me.

Are the NPC's that spawn into these instances scripted to find and scan players, irrespective of thermal signature? I've been able to avoid random pirates around Haz Res by keeping my heat low (I think).

I'm just as simple miner, why can't I mine in peace!?

Spoiler

Please don't tell me to switch to a 'conda/cutter/corvette. I have all three and the credits to buy any as a dedicated miner. Please keep the discussion on point.

 

[Chris Simon]

Unfortunately the way things work is that when you enter the instance (be it by dropping from SC or logging in after a break) the random ships will spawn. No way around it.

That being said, you have several options. T9 isn't exactly what you would call a sneaky ship, unfortunately, but you CAN disappear from their scanners if you're quick. Though much safer option would be to sacrifice a bit of cargo space and buy a better shield and a fighter.
T9 can fight, contrary to popular belief. Fighters are great at stripping shields. For a fixed beam fighter with at least Master pilot, even an Anaconda isn't that much of a problem. And if you take a couple of missile launchers on your space cow, you and your fighter can be done with the Pirates within a minute or two and you can go about your business.

 

[NascentChemist]

That's what I've been doing. I've got a fighter bay, turreted beams, and decent (for a space cow) shields.

I don't mind the NPC's spawning, I don't like them knowing where my invisible ship is.

 

[SilentFlame]

Best thing you can probably do is install a heat sink launcher into your ship. When a pirate starts heading your way, pop silent running and then pop a heatsink and fly as far away as possible. Popping a heatsink will drop pretty much all lock on's to you as other ship's instruments can no longer see you (locking on in elite being done by heat)

I remember when i was mining to unlock an engineer that's what i use to do. Drop into random parts of the ring, then when the pirate NPC spawned in, silently flew away and continued mining. They wouldnt come back until i reloaded the instance again.
It might be worth noting this was pre 2.4, i don't know if anything has changed

 

[Pville_Piper]

I'm just as simple miner, why can't I mine in peace!?

It's all that tasty cargo! If you don't have anything on you let them scan you and they will move on. If you are in a Res site, nothing you can do. Suck it up and fight them off or simply go to a random section of the ring away from the res sites. When you drop in, don't be carrying any cargo, they will scan you and leave. They won't be back until you re-instance. If you simply fill up and leave, they won't be back. Non res mining will take longer but will be quieter.

 

[Camisade]

Just tried mining for the first time. These pirates are ridiculous.

The thought of mining isn't really my thing, but tonight I thought I'd give it a try for ONE reason: I'd like to unlock Selene Jean for some hull and armour engineering. I've only been at this game for a few weeks and have the common first-five engineers unlocked and maxed. TBH, I'd much rather take my FGS or FDL out on pirate assassination assignments, or run other various RPG'ish missions in my Viper or Vulture, and even get some alone time in my AspX, heading off into the deep black to explore and tag some systems with my name for all time. But Selene requires ore, so ore I will mine...

So I reconfigure my Passenger Python for mining. I go onto the Galactic Web (Google), learn how to do new type of play, get the refinery, get the collector limpets (so cool, compared to my early days of scooping cargo!), then I hit my first asteroid belt and do some experimental mining. I get the hang of this, collect some ore, and see how it's auto-refined. Okay, I think to myself, I this makes sense. I'm off to find a RES so this grunt work will go a little faster.

Zheesh, what a goat rope. <banging head on keyboard> Two hours and 3 Python re-buys later, I've mined 15T of low-value metal (all lost to pirates) and I'm fed up with this aspect of the game and this engineer's requirement. And, frankly, a little that (so far) I've spent over 18MM credits to get .33% of the way through unlocking Mean Jean.

It's a mystery to me why ANYONE would subject themselves to this element of game play. It's not that the mining part is so bad (sometimes mindless grinding is just what you need), but the unbelievable plethora of pirates that miners apparently attract like hyenas to a fragrant carcass is just ridiculous. (And, to me, inexcusably poor and unrealistic game design in this mechanic -- when I drop into a RES with my combat pirate killer, they're nowhere to be found. But show up in my sluggish sled of a Python, with two hardpoints sacrificed to mining lasers, and I'm suddenly smothered with billionaire pirates looking for 5K credit hijacking?!).

How/why is it that I'm constantly jumped by pirates, and re-visited by pirates, even in a high-security system and even in the vast RES field, and even 12K away from the RES zone center? And to make matters worse, even when I jettison the cargo they demand, they blow me up anyway.

Because it turns out that my 6A shielded and mil-spec hulled Python apparently only attracts pirates in 'Condas or Imperial Clippers, and who can apparently blow me to smithereens in less than 15 seconds. So, basically, NPC pirates flying ships that cost over 200MM credits (with even low-grade outfitting), have nothing better to do than demand 1-2T of some cheap- ore from a ship that's only had time to mine about 8T? Really, Frontier?

I've read the suggestions on how to avoid this silly game design element, but ...I can't believe someone once thought this was a defensible design element.