Science & Industry

you need to be mining in a barge. mining drones/mining lasers arent very good miners. strip miners are where the m3/hour is.

1. frigate/cruiser mining (you are here) now work towards :
2. retriever (astrogeology IV, mining IV, science IV, mining barge III, industry V)
3. covetor (astrogeology V, mining barge V)
4. hulk is the "best" but overpriced imo.

if you want a bare minimum mining ship so you can focus on other things at least get the retriever. there is also the procurer but if i remember correctly i skipped that ship altogether.

the skill plan you posted wouldn't take much longer to use a retriever, bs mining is kinda a pain and highly over rated., but what you posted looks just fine for what you want to do. once you see the m/3 per cycle of a strip miner compared to lasers you will see what i'm talking about

the retriever is not the best by any means, cheap and a good alternative if you don't want to go all out mining skill plan. the real reason i don't like BS mining is because of inventory management. if you really have your heart set on BS mining the rokh is far superior atm.

i agree with droxlyn here mining really only pays out if you specialize towards it, going for the BS you may as well just do missions.

One thing to note is to skip the refining side of things entirely for the near term. In for it to be worth refining anything you need to get lvl 4 with the refining skill for the ore in question and get your faction with the station you are refining at. Other it's often cheaper to just sell the ore. Also if you join a corp you can likely sell your ore to a corp mate with perfect refining for at or near market rate. As a newbie it rarely makes sense to refine or manufacture.

I think the most important thing is to skip the idea of battleships for a few months. Sure, work toward it, but don't fly one for a few months, even if you can. Especially in PVP.

Bigger is not better in the EVE 'verse. Frigates can and will mess up your Cruiser, Battlecruiser, or Battleship if you do not know what you're doing. Just because you meet the requirements to fly a ship doesn't mean you should or will do well with it.

It will take a while with mining to get a base of ships to get blown up in. Once you get some cash, buy a bunch of frigates, modules, and ammo for them and fit them all up so they're ready to go. Then go out and play around, blow up, and learn. There are corps out there that will provide ships and modules while you learn. That might be the way to go if you're seriously intersted in PVP. Even then, battleships are way down the line.

if you want to mine, go for the covetor asap.

if you want to make isk, stay away from mining. [he says, sitting in his hulk]
people in a battleship/carrier/tengu all make roughly double what i do, and they're useful in pvp fleets.

also when ship prices go down, it's less time ratting for people in ratting ships to buy things, but for miners it takes the same amount of time regardless since if ship prices are down, that means mineral prices are down, and that means your isk/hour is down.

not to mention over the last week most of the most profitable minerals are falling in value, and with the constant changes coming through the game at the moment with ship rebalancing nobody really knows what's going on with the market.

Skip all the crossed out points. The only reason you would ever mine is to make ISK. And if you're going to train combat-related skills,you might as well use those same skills to run missions or exploration sites, and earn several times more ISK, without all the time wasted on skills you will never use for anything else.

Now that the mining haters have all shown up to posion the thread.

First thing for a new miner is to train up a mining cruiser.
I highly recommend caldari but any will work.

Get some giant secure containers and place them in a few belts in a system you enjoy mining.

Use a good industrial ship to pick up the ore from the containers.
I recommend bestower for this.

This will make sure they have have a cheap cruiser ready for pvp if you are in need.

I recommend caldari due to it's mining cruiser being a shield repair ship and having the black bird avalible for ecm.
This will make you usefull to any corp during war or other pvp/pve activities.

After you have your cruisers minng skills maxed out head toward a mining barges then exhumers.
Once barges are complete you can find a nice corp that runs mining ops that will improve your isk per hour.
Slowly work your way up to harder areas to mine. wormholes or 0.0

You can also get that cruiser skill to 5 for some nice t2 and t3 cruisers once you have enough isk made from your ore.