EVE General Discussion

1. Less warp time more time in belt.

2. Gonna guess and say that using mac's unless you got an orca is gonna be better unless you get into high enough numbers, at which point should should have an orca and be using hulks, also no can.

After the change did the Hulks not disappear, but they are all docked up. So if you see someone mine in a Hulk then that is because he does not have a Mackinaw, does not want to buy one or lost one recently.

A Hulk is only useful when you have an Orca around or some other means to unload the ore and not having to dock. It is now a ship fully dedicated to fleet mining.

This. Old habits die hard and some people never do read the blogs.

It could also be the only exhumer he has, used in mining ops normally but just running some solo time.

The Mackinaw is clearly the better solo choice now which is reflected in the numbers in use, especially for Ice harvesting but also for ore mining. Hulks are quite a rarity now as noted.

It also makes more sense safety wise, with the Hulk still solo gankable in a Catalyst if not tanked properly.

Lastly, if you have multiple alts, especially with a max Orca boost it gets pretty hectic to keep on top of the Hulk ore hold capacity limitation switching between them and any strip miners going off line or slow switchign to the next doid can soon outway the superior mining rate of the Hulk over a set of Macknaws. Not forgetting the time and attention to local/ dscan and safety.

In the end time spent travelling between belt and station is wasted time. if you have max Mining skills then you will fill a Hulk up fast and make 12-13 trips per hour emptying it to station (without Orca boost). Allow 2 minutes (optimistically) per round trip this adds up to over a third of your time not mining.

As to 2. you kind of argue against yourself. Why would you use a Hulk given the above? The Mackinaw may have a larger ore capacity but unless you jet can and the take ore from that to the Mackinaw ore hold you can't put it directly in from the Hulk. The Mack will fill up faster and require more trips = reduced time mining and having to move ore around just makes it less efficient.

The extra ore mined by the Hulk just doesn't make up for the lost time and hassle.

The Hulk remains supreme by some margin when it comes to Orca boosted mining fleet operations though. And with the use of EFC there are more options for static mining them haul.

Working it out is not so hard. All the figures were set out in the Mining Barges Update blog, so just remove the Orca bonus and you have your answer.

~15% or so.

when you consider a flight of mining drones is roughly a ~11.5% increase in yield for a max skilled/boosted hulk bonus...

not really reigning supreme. a large group of mining ships will attract attention, i'd rather have the extra tank of the mack for such a small yield bonus especially when it has the added bonus of letting me be a lazy bastard.

edit: woopsy was calculating without like for like implants.
on second thoughts, slightly bigger difference than i thought, but meh laziness and ehp still tips it in favour of the mackinaw for doing everything.

I still use a Hulk because, as other have mentioned, I had one before the change over. When mining in high-sec I often am stuck with pebbles that only take a partial cycle to pick up. I am very much 'at the keyboard' when I am doing this, and the Hulk is actually very effective at this. If I was going large asteroid mining where I could walk away for six to nine minutes knowing things would be fine I would use a 'smaller' barge.

Then again, I really only mine for ammo,while watching crap on Netflix, or I'm too drunk to fish in WoW.

As for using two mining ships, unless the math has changed dramatically, until you get three players, it is still better to use two mining ships to haul to a station than one hauler and one mining ship (even with the bonus from an Orca).

lol ........



almost amusing, but only almost.

My mining fleet does a lot of this sort of thing. Corroborating the above:

a single hulk ferrying every time upon maxxing cargo is really stupid as far as limiting yield.

The old format still holds true as far as I know: two hulks and an Orca with a maxxed pilot is better than 3 hulks. Same is true if using Macks. But Hulks NEED the Orca because their cargo hold will fill in like one cycle...