Science & Industry

I just re-subbed and noticed that the mining ships got a over haul. I used to belt mine in my Hulk but I notice a lot of people mining with a Retriever now. Is it better to solo belt mine with a Retriever or a Hulk now after the update?

Great, thank you.

CCP executed a "tiericide" on the mining barges -- rather than having tiered ships where the Hulk was the end-all, be-all mining vessel, each T1 and T2 hull now is role-based.

All of the mining vessels now produce yield roughly equivalent to three strip miners, so even the lowly Procurer hull gets x3 yield bonus over the 1 strip miner it can mount.

All barges now have split cargo/ore holds. The cargo holds are much smaller than they used to be (400m3 or so). This has caused some heartburn among people who carried a lot of T2 mining crystals in their holds (even though the volume of the crystals has been reduced to 15m3 each). The ore holds can *only* hold ore, so the need for a hauler hasn't gone away. If you refine into minerals for transport to a hub, you're still going to need an industrial hauler.

Procurer/Skiff: a battleship-sized tank (even before fitting), decent-sized cargo hold. Meant for high-risk and ninja mining ops.

Retriever/Mackinaw: A ginormous ore hold and an ice mining bonus. The Mack is pretty much the default solo miner now, mainly due to the huge 35K m3 ore hold. Even the Retriever can hold a full jetcan worth of ore in its hold. Pretty good tank, especially on the Mack with its four mid slots.

Covetor/Hulk: Still the king of yield, but with a smaller ore old than the other hulls. It has middling tanking ability, and meant to be a fleet mining vessel working in concert with other industrial ships.

You're seeing tons of Macks in EVE now because most miners simply did an old Hulk = new Mack equation, but that's not really true. If you're using a Mack rather than a Hulk, you're getting a way bigger ore hold but less yield, and if you were running a jetcan operation before the patch, you'll still be better off using the Hulk unless you're going for ice.

And there's actually a reason to buy a Procurer now! It's got a battleship-sized tank even before rigging/fitting, and as a T1 hull it's a dirt-cheap way to do ninja mining out in lowsec or null. (And there are other uses for the Procurer/Skiff hull that have nothing to do with busting rocks -- they actually make pretty good drone boats!)

Bad answer is bad.

Hell, even before that...

Everyone looks at on paper results and says its close enough to "not matter".
paper figures represent best xcase scenario's. Out in the "real" space though you start pulling roids that wont hold up to a full laser cycle. if I have 2 lasers and each mines a roid that runs out at 50% of the cycle time its more impacting that if I use 3 lasers.

In order to keep any other exhumer pulling as much as a Hulk does you need to have an asteroid scanner and be VERY attentive to what you are doing. Or you are AFK'ing and not giving a ****. But letting a laser run once a rock is empty is wasted time, and lost ore. When you have 2 highly buffed lasers you better keep them fed versus 3 nicely buffed lasers. Small mistakes will add up fast.

End of the day in the "real world" the Hulk still outshines anything else flying.

Wrong, hulk is the ice mining king.

Yes, if you are solo it is better to mine in a Retriever/Mack as you will get more ISK/h doing so.
If you're in a group it is ofcourse better to mine in a Covetor/Hulk as someone can do the hauling for you.

One important factor the Retriever detractors tend to overlook - it's so damn easy to AFK a truckload of Rets (and cheap to lose in case you do end up losing them), but running even a handful of Hulks can be a pain in the posterior (and significantly more expensive to replace).
Also, if you consider solo mining, the prefer-to-AFK-types might not be mining much at all in a solo Hulk, but will gladly keep a solo Retriever in the background giving it minimal occasional attention, thus more than surpassing the overall yield per day, all things considered.

According to that logic you should be using a skiff / procurer as their cycle duration is the fastest.

I would expect bots to use either the procurer or skiff for that reason...not to mention its "expensive" to gank.

Bots don't care if they need to warp to a POS or station, while people do, therefore cargo space is a moot point for them. I would bet though that the mining efficiency for a bot is higher with the faster laser cycles as (I'm not positive of this) all their lasers hit the same roid. Again, I don't know much about bots other then I hate them

Few numbers to chew upon for ice miners.

Using level 5 skills, +3% ice harvester cycle implant and rorqual in deployed mode you get the following production mining ice on an hourly basis.

Hulk - 81 units, 8500 ore hold
Mackinaw - 75 units, 35000 ore hold
Retriever - 72 units, 27500 ore hold

I honestly do not understand why they decided to allow the retriever to be so close in overall production to the T2 variants. Retriever, Covetor and Procurer all should be at least 30% below where they are in terms of output.