Science & Industry

For someone who's never trained for mining & starts now is it really worth it if they never plan on more then solo AFK mining to train for a MACK? The things cost 200million more & thus are still tear bringers targets. The Exumer bonus is 1% per level
For what I am doing it just does not look worth it to train for a full month TBH.
If you plan on making it a career sure the percentage points over months will add up but as a side hobbby for a few extra ISKies while reading Evenews24 I can't justiy training for the MACKINAW

But someone else hasn't min/maxed all the possible fittings and put them up on a site. Oh God, I can't think for myself, what do I do? Tell me.

1. if you dont think 5% is a big improvement, take a look at the price of 5% implants some time.
2. you get 7,500 more ore bay, almost a hulks worth of ore bay
3. you get WAY more EHP, better resists and more slots for tank

The Retriever is now a great low-skill mining platform for both solo and gang work in hisec. Due to limited tanking ability I wouldn't use it below .5 systems, but it can tank most belt rats just fine. Don't bother rigging it, and you can throw a shield of some kind in the mid (or a roid scanner if you want to avoid wasting cycles on roids close to popping). I'd use a Ret rather than a Mack in some scenarios: during Hulkageddon, for instance, or when I'm prowling around for new "home" systems to mine in and want to get a feel for the belts. I can put a Ret in lots of target mining systems without investing a lot of ISK.

A Mackinaw is now a hisec pimpmobile. You get a bigger ore bay and more mids than you get on a Retriever, and a bigger tank, but I still wouldn't take this boat out into lowsec or nullsec without escort. (The Skiff is the only way to mine out of Empire now unless you're in friendly space or have a lot of armed escort.) But like the Hulk before the patch, it's expensive. You have to figure whether the moderate yield increase and bigger ore bay offset the 200M+ ISK cost (about 10x that of a Retriever). If you're outfitting a mining corp, it may make more sense to just use Retrievers. If you're flying solo, a Mack might make sense, but that's a lot of up-front ISK.

I'm becoming concerned about the Mack being overpowered, in fact. It's a great platform for AFK mining in hisec, especially with ice. In fact, it's almost as if CCP designed it to appeal to AFK players, given the ginormous ore bay. I love the vast ore bay myself -- it finally means that I can turn my hauler alt into a mining alt -- but it's going to ramp up mining like crazy, at least for awhile. Maybe that's the point: maybe CCP felt that mineral prices were getting too high, and wanted a stealthy way to bring mineral prices back down.

Speculators who bought up barges when they were cheap (Procurer, Retriever) are going to make out like bandits for awhile until the miners get their fleets rebuilt. It'll be interesting to see what use cases the Skiff ends up filling -- that tiny nugget with a battleship tank has some interesting uses beyond running lasers on rocks.

Confirming I've got a stack of retrievers in hisec that I bought for 3-4M ea some time ago. So happy.

Now... do I sell for huge profit, or try to invent for even more profit but with more risk? Decisions, decisions.

Or just mine the crap out of pyro for a few days and call it good...

I have to admit, CCP's initiative in stamping out Bots is, very simple, intriguing, completely unique, creative and intelligent.

The most recent patch, im seeing improvements everywhere, some really good Game maker improvements, no more market search clutter is my personal favorite.

Their simple little upgrade to mining ships hopefully will allow our newbie numbers to grow, now all they have to do is hit the advertisements on the internet and allow some of those rage quitters to come back and start fresh without any one ever knowing their past.

it's really just the expense of them and the risk of being a gank target because of that. if you plan on getting the best out of the retriever then you'll want barges and astrogeology at V and the Mackinaw is only a few hours beyond those prerequisites.

Since the retrievers are not made from moon goo I sort of figure that goons will never put out a bounty on them like they do for hulks & Mackinaws during Hulkageddon.. Too bad the retrievers with thenew material costs are 20 million back when they were worth 4-9 million ganking them just wasn't worth the ISK still how much is it really now that it only takes 3-4 ore loads instead of 1-2 to pay for the the gank loss ( versus 30-40 with a Mackinaw)

EDIT: Guess not: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=121168

from my point of view keep training up, even though atm it seems pointless you will find those skills useful if your around long enough I can fly any ore ship but choose the procurer its now a great platform for solo miner and retriever if you really need lots of ore or hulk if your fleeting but in one haul you can make over 2+million mining prox but if your starting out go procurer if you lose it it won't be a tear jerker.

Sure, if you like the Drake its a great ship, the Golem is pure awesomeness and I am training for that very ship even though I can fly tengu, nighthawk, and even Amarr BS, more options is better better