Science & Industry

I just created a new character that is going to be a hauler.

What are the best skills for him to have?

what is WTZ?

I'm partial on the Mammoth. If I remember correctly, it is the biggest hauler you can get if you don't want to train up your racial hauling skill to level V. (It only requires Minmatar Industrial IV). With Medium Cargo Expander I rigs and a full set of T2 Cargo modules in the low slots, you can haul about 27K m3, or 35K m3 when filled with GSCs and still fit a decent shield tank in the mids.

As for other skills, the good ones have already been mentioned, but ask yourself "Why am I hauling this?"

Are you region trading? Accounting and Broker Relations are handy at improving your margins.
Need to stick your neck into low sec? Get Cloaking IV and High Speed Acceleration and practice the cloak trick.
Grinding up NPC corp standings? Social IV, Negotiations III and Distribution connections IV are real handy.
You can fly Level 4 distribution missions MUCH earlier than you could ever hope to do level 4 security missions, and rack up some sweet LPs during the process.

Heck, skilling up PI can generate goods for you that need hauling to a trade hub for a profit.

train minmatar indy all the way to five for the best speed and largest cargo capacity, train navagation skills for agility and speed. train mechanics skills for armor and compensations to get a better tank... or engineering skills for shield and shield compensations to help you shield tank if that is the way you go. train astronautic rigging for less drawback on your rigs.

..and think about getting into an orca.

The EVE Uni website has great info. Some stuff I pulled from the website:

Warp Drive Operation: Helps with long warps. Each skill level reduces the capacitor need of initiating warp by 10%.
Spaceship Command: Reduces align time. 2% improved ship agility for all ships per skill level.
Advanced Spaceship Command: May reduce align time. Grants a 5% Bonus per skill level to the agility of ships requiring Advanced Spaceship Command
Evasive Manoeuvring: Increases ship agility and acceleration. 5% improved ship agility for all ships per skill level.


Check it out:

Hauling Stuff

The best option if not flying a freighter is an orca fit with a 100MN MWD. 10 seconds to warp, with 72km3 of cargo, plus 40km3 of corp hangar which as an added benefit is unscannable and drops no loot if destroyed so you put your expensive stuff in there, plus a 50km3 ore bay for additional space if moving ore and a 400km3 ship hangar for assembled ships, so you can move rigged ships up to and including battlecruiser size.

Short term train Gallente Industrial to be able to use an iteron mk4. The iteron line is the best hauler for low skiled characters, and training to 4 is not that hard. (Personally I'd train all races to 3 as sooner or later you'll only be able to find that race's hauler.) Once you've done that you should consider what you want to go for. Freighters, and T2 haulers are going to need the racial Indy skill at 5. Orcas are great ship with a decent tank, and the corporate hanger is unscannable+unlootable. The downside with the Orca is the number of mining and leadership skills you need to fly it.

General Hauler
1. Minmatar mammoth is the way to go for a cheap, good enough solution for basic hauling (minerals) with a fast train time (Evemon shows it at under 4 days with +3 implants, non-remapped stats). It can haul just under a full jet can with expanded cargohold II's and cargohold optimization's rigs. It is as strong as a plastic bag though, so don't haul anything of value.

Orca
The next hauler would be the Orca, which is IMO the best of the best. But there are some very important skills you need to remember with the orca, all of which do not involve cargo space. To get into an Orca will take roughly 43 days to train (39 with remap, 36 days with remap and +5 implants).

Very important skills to remember with the Orca.

1. Mechanics V. The orca is all stricture when it comes to tank. The extra 5% - 10% training to level V is important for surviving ganks (you want to waste 4.5 days training, or 700m + isk?).


2. Large shield extender II, Adaptive invulnerability field II, Damage control II, and Reinforced bulkhead II are all modules you will be using (damage control II and reinforced bulkhead II when not fitted for yield).


3. Navigation V, Evasive Maneuvering IV, Acceleration Control IV, Warp drive operation IV. The Orca is slow. So very slow. Training skills relating to align/warp will save you so much time, and help with ganking issues.


4. Astronautics V. With 3 large cargohold optimization's I's your armor is going to take a large hit. Training Astronautics to at least level IV should happen early on.

The key thing to note with all these skills are they are some of the more basic skills that will directly affect nearly all other ships you will be using and not Orca specific at all and is only about roughly 20 extra days of training.

As someone else has all ready mentioned you can fit your orca with a cloak + MWD to get the 10 second align time. Which is very useful for those 30+ jump round trips (shaves off about 10 - 12 minutes). But IIRC you need to high your navigation skills trained up (as you should).

Blockade runner / transport

And finally (and my new favorite) the transport ship / Blockade runner. Really the most versatile of the haulers. It can be fitted for descent cargo space, speed, cloak, etc. If you train for a blockade runner for the same race you choose for your first basic hauler your training time will be about 16 days (13 days with remap, 12 with +5 implants) for the race specific Industrial V skill. This will also increase your basic haulers cargohold (if using a mammoth) to 28,260 m3 (5% more from the level V skill).

Fitted for max hauling you can get around 10,279m3 out of it, while still having a max speed of 206 m/s (compared to the mammoth with 28260m3 and 129 m/s).

Fitted for speed, bubbles, gate running, etc (polycarbon engine housing II x2 , inertia stablizers II x 2, nanofiber internal structure II) you can have 3750m3 of cargohold space while having a top speed of 391 m/s, 3.5 second align time, and 2170 m/s using your MWD.

And of course it can fit a covert ops cloaking device II.

If you stick with the Mammoth path he suggests, he's talking about the Prowler and the Mastodon. Prowler being the one that can cloak.