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They are giving you a choice, just not the choice YOU want. They are giving you a choice between 16% extra mining amount, or extra crystal space.

These are obviously not the options you want, but that doesnt make it less of a choice.


How is having to plan out your mining op, and having to prepare in advance the different crystal types, and work with haulers less interactive or more AFK?

The fact that some people arent willing to put in the work to get the edge is not CCPs problem.

so when you mine for that 4-6 hours, nobody docks? what do you do with all that ore? Honestly? what im doing after this change is assign my miners each a different type of ore that they mine, I have a spreadsheet that tells me how much M^3 I have of each ore, and i use some math to assign a combination of types to each miner so they come out to have about the same M^3 to mine. then assuming that all the miners mine with about the same efficiency, they only have to have like 6 crystals in their holds in the first place.

All it takes to make the system work for you is patience and intelligence.

That is correct, my hulks do not dock up when I am mining.

What is this brilliant plan that will work with the current allotment of crystals, I fail to see it, my intelligence must be lacking.

Pick any of the 3 asteroid grav sites from small to large and work out a plan for me that will keep my 3 hulks busy for 6-8 hours with an assortment of used and new crystals (pretend that the EU guys already came along and cleaned out the arkonor/bistot and one or two other rocks or more if just the small).

If you have no idea what rocks are involved in these grav sites, please refer to the Bloodtears Industry Index, it is a little out of date, as there are some rocks much larger than they were before, but it will do. In this plan, fit in cleaning out the grav so a new one will spawn with fresh arkonor.

Also keep in mind, the ship doing the hauling does not come anywhere near the hulks due to the size of the ship, so crystal resupply will not work in this manner.

Ah, but that works for new crystals, you must take into account having used ones. This plan would not work if you are doing the moderate and especially the small.

The EU guys never mine out the C and M, they will hit something else before that. Which I don't understand, mercoxit is 2nd most valuable out there, but perhaps EU guys hate changing over to a skiff fleet.

When it comes to the spud, you save that for last usually, and hit it with all 3, cause its so slow to take down, as well the mercoxit needs the attention of all 3, due to the lower mining rate. Crockite is doable with 2 hulks, but really could use the attenton of 3 hulks if you want it to vanish faster.

I have tried this with the allotment twice before the patch and deployment, and I could not get it to work when you are including used crystals. Since you always have used crystals on hand, and want to use them up, pretty much you are going to have 60% used when you head out, with conditions varying from ready to blow after a few cycles to near as long as new.

The large is the best bang for your buck if you want to clear something fast, but sometimes you need a better mix of mins if you are building, so the small or moderate are better choices. So there are two ways to look at mining, one for max profit, and other for building stuff and earning more after the effort. In either case, you want your best recovery rate.

One more variable to consider, since this is a null sec system, typically you will see 1-3 other people from the alliance mining in the grav site (on a busy night much more), so they will be taking down rocks you may of planned for, leaving your choices to being more. Since they may show up after you start, or be there before your start, it will toss a wrench of variable X into your planning. No one ownes the rocks in the grav site, so talking about which ones to take is pointless, they will be out there with the same limited crystal selection as yourself, and making someone dock up to take different rocks is not really fair play.

People come and go when you are mining for a long stretch, so there really is no way to plan for that when your choices in crystals are so limited to begin with.

The Bloodtears Index does not say its terrible to mine the small/moderate, it just states that its best to mine the large for max profit. You are mining with the mindset of only cherry picking the best rocks, not the mindset of mining for industry production.

There is nothing wrong with hitting the other grav sites, sometimes the large is too crowded and you just move on. It is how it is, so we are back to the problem of not enough crystal selection to mine at optimal. And no the rorq can't deliver crystals when it picks up cans.

And if one choose to just mine in the belts of a null sec system, the limited crystal selection would be 100% inadequate for hitting rocks period.

wait . . . so its your contention that a T1 ship should never out DPS a T2 ship of the same size? IE battlecruiser cruiser frigate etc?

As Bill Nye use to say, Please consider the following:

Fleet Command Ships
Heavy Interdictors
Electronic Attack Ships
Black Ops Ships
Covert Ops Ships
Logistics Ships

They all do less DPS than other ships of their same size and race because they have different roles that give them different uses.

Thats the way it is with the new mining barges/exhumer relationship

Also, if you wanted to invoke set theory in your earlier statement, you should have used the word "some" instead of "any

saying that "some of the T1 Barges can out mine some of the T2 Exhumers" is much more clear as any has multiple denotations, and the connotation is "every"

well lets look at the most extreme example, the damnation vs the harbinger.

The damnation does 362 DPS max with T2 ammo and 2 damage mods, the harbinger does 657 DPS with one damage mod and T2 ammo in close and 500 DPS at longer range than the damnation.

The reason people have damnations is for fleet boosting. The point of the ships is normally to use them in the role they excel at.

IE a covert ops ship will never do anywhere near as much damage as a regular combat T1 frigate, but they cant warp cloaked behind enemy lines and pop a covert cyno.

Saying that T2 ships should always do more DPS/Mining than a T1 ship of the same size is a very narrow way of looking at the game, and doesnt take into account more than the DPS role for ships.


If I said "any T1 mining barge can outmine any T2 mining barge" what most people think is that you can pick any of the T1 mining barges and any of the T2 mining barges and the T1 barge will always come out on top.

why would they need to? they have to dock up to hand in missions, you really can't compare mission running to mining in this context.

you guys are talking bollocks about T1 v T2 ships.

of course T2 ships should mine more than their T1 counterparts, using a cov ops against a T1 frig is a stupid example as they are for different roles!, you should look at some thing like the T1 Rifter against a Wolf, or Incursus against an Enyo, these ships have the same role, damage dealers the same as barges and exumers have the same role, mining!

Also i note with interest that there was a new item about afk plex running and how this is viewed as an exploit....seems odd as we all know that people afk mine, and now CCP has released ships that might as well have "akk do not disturb" signs issued with them, why is afk mining not also an exploit?

Youre defining "role" very narrowly

The role of the mackinaw/retriever is autonomous mining
The role of the skiff/procurer is tanky mining
The role of the hulk/covetor is mining yield

Should it be a surprise that the covetor does its role better than the mackinaw does the covetors role?