Science & Industry

*Imagines a fleet of Machariels in a belt with mining lasers. Awesome.*

CCP has done a pretty good job of making a number of old useless ships actually useful with their teiricide effort.

Remember in the old days, nobody would ever use a Procurer because it could only fit one strip miner, and by the time you could fly it, you were hours away from flying a Retriever with two strip miners? Nobody would fly a Coveter with three strip miners, because by the time you had the skills to fly it, you were hours away from flying a Hulk with a much better tank?

Today all the mining barges have close to the same yield, so all of them can be useful.
The Procurer and Skiff have the best tanks. Use them when you worry about being attacked, and you can still get a decent amount of ore.
The Retriever and Mackinaw have the largest cargoholds. Use them when you are alone, and need to dock up each time your cargo hold fills.
The Coveter and Hulk have the highest yield, but only by a few percent so that the other ships are situationally valid choices. Use these in larger fleet operations.


I don't know where you got your yield numbers, or the guess that the Mackinaw will spend 5 minutes an hour docking and unloading rather than mining, but using your own numbers look when you add one more person to your fleet:

4 Hulks and a dedicated hauler: 81.3k m3
5 Macks: 80k m3

And it goes up from there. The more people you have, the better Hulks are in comparison. (And the more juicy target you become for gankers.)


TL:DR
Why should Hulks always be the best choice? Why shouldn't miners have a variety of ships to choose from depending on the situation?

With the changes to industrials, you no longer would do the 2x orca option either. 1 orca, 1 miasmos for hauling.

Actually the cool kids use a freighter and a MTU to haul.

All level 5 with no boosts or links:

[Hulk, New Setup 1]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II

Yield: 1547



[Mackinaw, New Setup 2]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade II

[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal II


Yield: 1339


With implant and max orca links:

Hulk: 2548

Mack: 2205


That said, I won't use anything but a Skiff, though I do have an alt to haul for me. I would only use a hulk with a dedicated fleet, including guards. Which doesn't happen that often, given how boring it is. The hulk is better by the numbers, even without factoring in travel time, but its not enough to justify the micromanagement and non-existent defense. CCP should have given the mack and skiff 2 effective turrets instead of 3, imo.

and 4 empty mids on a hulk is 4 mods that could have saved your ship, made you slightly less attractive to gankers etc.
Ditto the 3 on the mack.
Dropping one for a DC2 when running a fleet is just sense if you don't have some other ship to handle gank attempts, and reduces the margin they win the isk war by significantly.

I really prefer the skiff for mining. 56k or so EHP goes a long way towards making me feel better about the lower yield. Also, if you are actually mining with a survey scanner and stopping laser cycles early to not waste cycles, it is much easier to track 1 strip than 2 or 3. I'm willing to bet that when I am "active" mining, I mine more than most if not all hulks that just mine until the rock pops.