EVE General Discussion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Those minerals aren't free, they cost as much as the difference between what you make mining, and what you could have made spending the same amount of time doing something less worthless. One hour of incursions is worth, at a rough estimate, 5-10 hours of highsec mining.

if you are going to mine, i highly sugest joining a 0.0 mining corp. They provide everything you could need.
If you are smart enough, you won't be ganked. Its not rocket science. I've listened to plenty of people on coms talking about losing their industrial ship/mining barge/badger/etc. Its up to you whether you get ganked or not.
A good mining corp in 0.0 is in deep in bear land and completely safe as long as you aren't asleep at the computer.

If you're going to spend time mining, you may as well make as much as you can.
When I mined, long ago. I used 2 hulks with no tank and t1 strippers, i think t1 strippers use less fitting requirements than t2.
I want to say with 2 basic t1 hulks i pulled 40 m /hour. give or take....bear in mind this was 2 years ago. This is on abc ore in grav sites daily. a

I don't mine in game at all. although I would like to see mine botting legal and even coded into the game.
I'd like to see people train up foreman 5 along with leaderships and introduce a new line of skills into the game which would allow a person to automated mining operation. I would assume the skill train path from scratch would take a year and some months. But, I'd like to see the whole mining op completely automated. Botting already exists in game so i cant see the counter argument.

tl;dr version

1 mining in 0.0 is safer and more profitable.
2. legalize and implement bot mining in game.

Mining is very unprofitale- and people still think the minerals are free* - the same people think tier 1 goods extracted from planets are free*-


Going to throw in the 'rmt' into this thread and go as far to say that if we didn't have rmt in this game- the price of everything would be astronomicals- so yeah dont bother mining.

<3 my first troll and 100% success ratio \o/

Actually their true cost is the price of SP spent on the relevant skillset (calculated from the price PLEX), and the ISK value of equipment used divided by the value of minerals you have sold. If you mine 1 unit of Veldspar in a T2 fitted Hulk, it's pretty damn expensive. If you mine 99000000000 units of veldspar, it gets already pretty damn cheap.

Valuing your time is more complicated, and opportunity cost is actually bit different from the lulzversion of what is typically thrown around here. You either weigh your current actions against what you could realistically do with your current skills and equipment at that very moment, or you weigh it against something that could theoretically be done inside the boundaries set by EVE's game rules. Often L4s and incursions are thrown about as actions that produce more ISK, and thus are the opportunity cost.

But that's bullshit. My 800k SP trade alt currently makes 3-4 times more than the best incursions pilots per hour, and started with capital that wouldn't buy you even a decent faction EANM. According to your logic, this means that they are losing 300mil per hour because they waste their time on Incursions. And there are thousands of bigger traders and industrialists who regard small regional cuteling fishies like my trade alt as some amusing little algae in their fish pond.

If you don't factor in you realistic options, the only valid opportunity cost is the action that produces most ISK per hour in whole EVE. I'd imagine this would be something like controlling all the moons while collecting rent from all other alliances while using all your available manufacturing and research slots, order slots, running six planets, using all your market orders and contracts while soloing incursions in a class 6 wormhole with bounty bonuses (that's the ISK-Rayet variety, google it up) and officer drops, while scamming the locals and ganking a few plex-filled freighters on the way to bank.

So stop running Incursions as you are losing 92043 trillions per hour for not doing that ^

Or you can just chill about economic theories and do what you like, you will never minimize your opportunity cost for real.

Thank you! Yes, I am quite happy about my game at the moment :)



And I'm here to ridicule your choice of the pitiful little trinkle of ISKies from Incursions as a measurement stick for opportunity cost in the vast universe of EVE. There are guys who make more ISK during their morning fart, than you'll ever do in a nightly Vanguard session... AFK.

If you are really worried about not being efficient in an internet spaceships game, you should now feel terrible for not starting trading right after Sisters Epic Arc, and not obtaining financial independence to mine in a bloody Navitas if you damn well please. You have wasted 6mil SP on turret skills that don't produce as much as one level of Marketing.

Scam, steal or make lottery or whatever you can do to make as much as isk as possible with as little effort as possible- if that is your goal in EVE. I know it's not my goal, and probably not for many others either.

You can't reach the roof for isk/hour in this sandbox, which kills the concept of opportunity cost- unless you constrain the opportunities to your realistic options. For veld miners, the relevant opportunity cost might be of mining kernite, if that ore currently happens to yield better minerals related to their goal.

Personal goal is the key concept you are missing. Measure your actions against that, just like in real life. It's not about the bottom line for most humans.

Mining tips:

NPC corp freighters with escorts and double / triple webs to speed up warp times can be a good idea.

Okay, just to cover the bases, let us run through the general tips for mining in dangerous areas.

-> Book mark two points - drift between them along the length of the belt, with "Approach" at 0.75 of top speed then if someone arrives, your speed is up to instantly warp away to them.
-> D-scan - find a good guide that will help you set up your D-scan. You want to watch it for approaching ships and warp away.
-> Scan for gravimetric sites. You get more warning when the probes are closing in on you and see them on D-scan than them just warping to your belt.

*A* D-scan guide - [Click]

These two are more for ganking if you have Concord coming to the rescue. Doesn't help in a war dec.
-> Tank up - implants, CPU rigs, Damage Control, et cetera.
-> Carry drones - ECM if they haven't been nerfed yet might help.

You can scan while cloaked. Mining in gravimetric sites is safer than belts.

D-Scan:

Click for diagram.

1) Right click the tabs and "Add Tab"
- name it "WH"
- click it so that a white border appears around the inside edge.

2) Click the Overview options and select "Open Overview Settings"

3) Right click and "Deselect All" on every group.

4) Add the following:
- Celestial = Force Field, Stargate, Wormhole, Wreck
- Charge = select all
- Deployable is optional.
- Drones = select all
- Entity = Spawn Container
- Ship = select all
- Station = yes
- Structure = Control Tower

5) Overview options "Save Current Type As ..." and put "WH"

You can right click to load groups of settings on a tab.



You can do something in EVE while doing something on the other screen, such as this forum, work, another game, reading web comics and such.
It is more social than fighting as there is more time to kick back and just talk to your fleet members.
Combined with manufacturing, it can make a corporation and alliance a great deal richer by selling things and by supplying those items to their members more cheaply.

I tried to give an example of my trade alt that getting into trading is much easier, faster, and also much safer than Incursions.



I agree with this, it's a slow way to get rich. But it does offer satisfaction of building something completely from scratch. Hard to put a price on that.

What you say has some amount of truth in it, but I guarantee you that CCP is looking to nerf the drone poo in null....and they should, just as soon as they make mining more interesting and profitable.

Ah, forgot about the drone lands!

Good troll, dude. I had my suspicions and yet still bit all the same. Mining-haters really get my back up, lol. I'm currently training up a trade alt. About time too, because for ages I have known that the trade profession is the most profitable in Eve.

I'd be interested in seeing stats about reprocessing.

How much of the output comes from Ore, modules, drone poo, and so on.