Science & Industry

tl:dr Mining missions earn you more isks and will make mining more profitable.



CCP changed the agent mission some time ago and I am sure many of you did not realize this. I think so because mining is still so unprofitable. Mining agents only give mining missions now and they pay a bundle of LP.

If you change your focus you can:

1. Make more isk in the short run.
2. Harvest tears from non-miners.
3. Make mining ore more profitable than it is now.

If you multibox mine for ore or ice -- STOP! Or at least pause. The more people that do so it will have a greater impact. Instead mine for LP (loyalty points).

My experience has shown me that with L4 mining missions:

A. Most agents will never send you more than 1 jump outside the home station and the majority of missions will be in the home station

B. LP average 5-9 thousand lp per mission or better depending on skills and system security.

C. You will earn at the VERY least 2-4 times as much as mining ore or ice depending on the corp you work for and the items you choose from the LP store.

The setup:

3 characters. One in an Orca and two miners. The two miners fly at least Covetors (Hulks optimal) with max skills for ore and ice (including T2 upgrades) and fly T1 cruisers with 5 gas harvesters. The Orca pilot should be maxed for his ship be able to field scout drones as wells as shield maintenance bots. He should also be able to use remote shield repairers and siege gang links.

Each character should be trained for max social skills including Mining Connections V. (implants are optimal).

The Score:

At the dock the Orca holds two barges (or Hulks) set up for ore or ice mining with the their additional mods in the corp hangar. The other two characters in gas mining cruisers (I use Moas). Each character accepts a mission.

Fly to each mission and mine the ore, gas or ice. Change out fittings needed at the site. Use the Orca to stow the materials mined. Done this way, you can do three missions before having to re-dock and turn them in for more. If the station/system has multiple agents it becomes more efficient.

Unlike security missions, your efficiency scales very well with each character added. but in my experience three is the most efficient per crew. more on this later

Your Take:

Much more than you currently earn mining. Best of all? You compete with mission runners and incursion runners for profits from LP and you do so with the skills you already have. If you have a perfect Hulk and Orca characters in empire and you are mining in belts you are wasting your potential. A pair of Hulks and an Orca with average skills can earn more than 2X the LP of an average mission runner no matter how many toons he uses (including mission blitzers) unless he splits his crews. I know no one that runs multiple security mission crews with much success.

You are a mega mutiboxer? No problem. Just remember 3 is the most efficient number for a group. So if you have six characters divide them into two crews of three. Never pay cash for game time again with the isk you will earn.

Go get LP! Imagine that NPC corps are paying you a premium to mine for them!...or keep selling regular ore to the market for a loss

Best/Worst case scenario:

If a significant number of miners do this it will reduce the amount of ore on market and dilute the profits from LP. BUT...If it truly effects LP value negatively it will increase the value of ore! Why? Because that means most of you stopped mining ore. That drives up the price. So continue mining on a limited basis and horde your ore...or build stuff but only sell when you need cash. Make isk from LP until it is devalued.

When ore is more profitable stop running missions and return to the belts. If ore crashes, make fuel blocks. If Ice crashes...back to missions and sweet sweet LP...or do all three if you have enough accounts. The point is LP has not been truly exploited to its maximum potential.

What's in it for me?

Nothing really, I truly just want to see the price of minerals skyrocket. I want the tears of those who hate industry, industrial corporations and industrial focused characters to flood the boards. The majority of eve characters make their profit from L4 missions and the LP it provides. No one has the ability to crash markets better than the "free minerals" crowd. So get to it. In the end you win not matter what.

Mission runners will hate the fact that they have to share LP with you. So much so that you may want to consider using barges instead of Hulks.

If you run a well trained crew you will out mine/misson them. If you choose BPCs from the LP store, you may out build them. (most faction BPCs require a T1 item and your minerals are "free") If you have decent marketing skills and refine skills you can price your items lower than them. This competition is in your wheelhouse.

If you have ever lost a mining ship to a gank, consider it payback :)





Patri

It'll drop, not skyrocket. At least at first.

I should go back to this, though. Maybe when I don't need my hulk for mining ice for PoS fuel, and can keep it in my mission hub.

*facepalm*

As a n additional benefit, some of the R&D NPC corporations have mining agents. This allows you to build up your standing without having to train up to a BC for security missions, or run time consuming distribution missions. Get your standing 5.0+ with the R&D corp, get the research skill trained and start building up a passive side income in datacores.

I love how people just assume every Barge in in a belt is a bot. From the bots I have seen. They are usually inefficient and not very productive. Good way too tell if some one is a bot or not. Wait a few minutes to see if they use a survey scanner. These are a must for productive mining. Also bots tend to warp in sit there for 30 secs then mine or bounce off a rock and do nothing for several minutes before warping away. I don't think you will find many bots outside of 0.8 sec. Since well they are likely to get ganked. If you were you to watch me mine you would assume out of stupidity that I was a bot. Why? Because of the common miss conception bots are SUPER efficient and a human can't out mine a bot. You also completely ingore the fact I use a alt for hauling my ore or think he was a bot as well. Once you know what and how to do it you develop a behavior, and some might think you're a bot since you do it so well.

I dont remember the LP form them but L3 mining missions are also of interest. They are always in the same system, so you can just dump the orca in a safe spot, boosting. The range bonus is sufficient that you hardly ever need to move the hulk form the mission warp in. The rats can be killed by the Hulk's drones. The cargo is always less than a maxed out hulk can hold. And they are always ore mining missions, so no need to re-fit or re-ship.

But, it is just a L3.

Edit: I make about 50% more per hour of mining as I make and sell stuff with the ore, than if I just sold the ore. Also for many miners, its not the isk per hour thats the driver, its the isk per click. Doing a mining mission takes many more clicks in the client interface. That's less time spent reading, watching TV, talking to the wife, chatting, and so on.

Last I checked, if you dump your lp into fast selling ammo or implants, you're looking at ~800 isk/lp. If you take your time, you can get ~2,000+ isk/lp for particular items depending on the market. So that's 16M to 40M+ isk from the LP (not counting the isk loss from the time taken to convert the LP to isk.)


You could probably supplement your income by joining or starting a company that sells standings increases.

Yeah, most of my mission isk comes from the LP store. You just need to find out what items are profitable. I can get about 2500 isk/lp for an item I know of...which I will keep secret. Sorry

To the OP though, not a bad idea to try out. Something to do during Hulkageddon though for sure.

Don't worry about the mineral prices. You always have to give 100% of what you mine to the agent, and they aren't refineable ores anyway. Your income will be based off of agent reward, LP conversion, and any random loot you bother with from the wrecks of the belt rats or mission pests you bat away. Sometimes they don't show up right away, so if you are in a weak ship, send a combat ship with a miner I on it to trigger combat, clean up, return with barge/exhumer. If you were going to mine anyway, you'll probably come out ahead doing the high-end mining missions vs mining ores.

As someone who actually runs mining missions, I have to ask, is this a joke? I do it for the standing not isk/hour. There's no blitzing, you have to chew through a lot of ore or ice. You usually have to do some slow boating with the slowest ship in game. And the mining LP stores are pretty much the same as the other non-combat LP stores. There's less non-combat LP than combat LP, but it's not that exciting. There are some interesting LP stores such as ORE and Thukker mix, but unless you're doing those, you're not picking up LP store opportunities that anyone running missions for a normal non-combat faction wouldn't get.