Science & Industry

Disclaimer: I am not trying to debate who uses bots or whether or not it's ok (of course it isn't). Also, this has nothing to do with the currently Goonswarm campaign. Well, the campaign made me think about it, but this post doesn't take a stand on it.

Given that:
It is frequently asserted that a lot of bots are used to mine ice ( I have no actual reason to doubt this).
Ice mining is numerically less profitable than ore mining.

So why do bots go for ice?
Do asteroids pose too much of a problem to bots? The ore gets depleted, so you often can't get a full cycle. And eventually the whole belt is gone and you have to move, possibly to another system.
Are that many people really so dense on economics that they think mining their own fuel makes more sense than buying it?
Or are there tons of ore bots that just aren't obvious? (this would require the previous one to be true too)


My guess is that no bot is good enough at handling the way asteroids depelete to keep the yield high enough to beat the reliable yield of ice that doesn't ever deplete.

But this is such common knowledge, what kind of player needs such epic quantities of ice but doesn't have any consideration of opportunity cost (even if they don't know the term)? It's something I'd expect everyone involved in industry to suss out pretty quickly. If that was true, you could reduce ice botting with and education campaign.

You're paying for the alt account anyway, so you can light cynos and scout. No point training the cyno alt further, so you trained an ice miner toon on another slot, and just sit it in highsec mining ice whenever you're online. Your alliance buys the ice off you, or you sell it on the market. Either way, profit. From an account that'd be sitting around doing nothing anyway. That you're paying for anyway.
Ice is better than ore because you can just sit there and check in every few minutes. Set a cycle going while you grab a drink, or take a shower. Log in before work, get a holdfull or three over breakfast.

Ice has steady consumption unlike minerals which consumption is based on war . POS will always need ice.

That was my guess. But I do hear stories about people bot mining ore. Is it just a null-sec thing where there is less mining competition and some more vaulable ores?

its mostly AFK actually. Because you can get a half an hour fill time on a mack and an hour on a hulk.

There are some bots, and surprisingly, some at keyboard ice miners.

Mining is such a repetitive task that it is easily automated. Ice mining is especially so. Also bots have become sophisticated to the point where they can scan the field and switch off the miner when the roid is depleted in the middle of the cycle, target another, and start mining that one.

Ice is the easiest as the cycle time is long, and the roids never deplete.

Somewhat off-topic but relevant is that high-sec ice is terrible isk. Even thick blue ice, for example, only returns 350 units of oxygen isotopes per ice block (plus a handful of other fuel). Even selling at 500 isk per oxygen isotope (if we ignore the current oxygen isotope market for the moment) that's 175000 isk per thick blue ice block with perfect refine.

A well-skilled mack cycles in lets say, 5 minutes, producing 4 ice blocks. So in 1 hour of constant mining (doubtful, unless you have orca present or dodge can flippers otherwise you're making station runs to drop off your cargo, and you may need someone to tank the rats for you, depending) you'll make 8.4 million isk from the topes. Your p.o.v. might vary, but imo that's pretty terrible isk for an hours work.

That hour ofnon-stop ice-mining produces 16800 isotopes. A large control tower consumes 450 isotopes per hour, so thats a pos fueled for 37.3 hours for your hours work. So something like 20 hours of mining a month just for the isotopes to fuel a single large control tower, blech =P

Placeing ice in grav belt wouldn't prevent botting. Botter would just scan the system for new grav belt every time last one disapear, then put bot again. It would be like we have now. Only difference is having to scan every few days.

Ice mining is most boring thing you have in this game. Even in a group. Of course you have bots to mine ice. I do it with this character. But I'm not bot. I do it afk while doing sleeper sites with my main or watch TV or something.

Two simple reasons why Bots like ice. First mining is boring. Secondly, Ice is always in the same place.