Ships & Modules

I'm new to Eve. I have a retriever with 2 strip miners. I have a small shield booster in the med power slot but am wondering what I should fit on the lower slots.

I will be mining in high sec at the moment but at some point may venture into lowsec, I will have a combination of mining drones and hobgoblins depending on where I'm mining.

I was looking at thee possible modules.

Warp stabilizer. Could be useful if I'm solo mining in lowsec. I noticed that stabilizers reduce scanning range and max targeting range. Neither is a problem for mining barges (in my opinion). However would the max targeting range penalty apply to drones?

Mining upgrade module. Which ones apply to strip miners?

Armour upgrades. Which ones would be best?

Thanks in advance.

I would not suggest you use tech 2 strip miners if you're new to mining, even if you're able to fit them. They are a lot more expensive and might just be a money drag if you accidentally lose a couple barges while learning. Tech 1 strip miners are more than adequate.

For maximum mining yield, you can definitely put on two mining laser upgrades, possibly even three. But you can also better resist suicide ganks by using a damage control and a couple of armor hardeners or energized adaptive nano membranes.

Due to the slots, there's not a lot of ways to tank your Retriever. Here's a few tips:

- Forget any kind of armor tanking. Your base armor is the lowest of shield/armor/hull, you can't fit a plate bigger than 200mm because of the grid, and even if you went all Trimark rigs to max out your armor buffer, you're still lagging behind a shield setup. Anything armor is also low slots, which means less potential MLU's, which means less yield. If you're concerned about EHP above all else, just fly a Procurer. You can get the same yield with a 3-4x better tank at the cost of the massive ore bay.

- One mid makes your shield choices pretty limited. 3x CDFE's is the way to go for rigs (dropping one for an ice mining rig loses you ~1k EHP). For the mid, you'll be best off with a T2 invuln, but beware you'll need some amount of cap skills to make this stable (EFT it for sure to see if it works for you). If you can't use T2 invulns, a named T1 invuln gives you ~700 less EHP. A named is better to use than T1, as it has lower cap usage. Really though, just train for T2 invulns, it just neesd a single Level IV skill.

Also RE: Shields, a Shield Booster of any kind is just an awful idea. Even a small eats too much cap to stay stable, which means either devoting rigs or lowslots to cap recharge, which means you'll lose tank in the end. A shield extender isn't a terrible idea, but you'd need a Medium to be in the same ballpark as a T2 Invuln, and that means a MAPC for powergrid, which means 1 less MLU. If youv'e got the cap skills, a T2 invuln is the better choice. If you don't, though, a best named MSE and a T1 MAPC is a good option as well until you get those cap skills trained up.

- Fit a Damage Control. 6k EHP on a ship that won't break 20k is huge, and going with 3x MLU's would require either a 6% CPU implant or a +CPU rig (at the cost of a CDFE and thus even more tank) at Max Fitting Skills. You'll need a 2% CPU implant at All V's if you use a T2 DC, but a best named fits without any implants.

- Hull tanking isn't really going to do much. T2 Bulkhead adds ~1k EHP at the cost of a MLU (since you need a Damage Control to make any kind of Hull tank work at all) assuming you keep the In

What you end up with is this:

[Retriever, T2 Strip Barge]
Mining Laser Upgrade II
Internal Force Field Array I (or DC II, see below)
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal I
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal I

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

For Drones, you can do 1x flight of mining drones, or 1x of combat. Go with your heart.

19.3k EHP with the best named DC, 19.8k with the T2 DC (2% implant needed). Cap Stable with Cap skills at IV. T1 strips can be substituted for the T2 strips easily if you need (they need less fitting), just less yield obv.

I just fired that fit in to see how truly bad it looks, and EFT only gives me 16k EHP (Uniform Damage profile) at All V's. Not sure how you got 31k.

The best way to tank your Retriever is to use a Procurer instead.

Looking for a Retriever fit for WH C1.

Is it possible to tank the sleepers, spawning in a gravimetric site in a Retriever or do I have to change to BC and kill the sleepers before continueing with the mining?

I am asking because I have no clue about the damage income of Sleepers in C1. It's just a plan at the moment.

have your combat team clear the spawn of sleepers and tehy never respawn in the belt again. on another note if a player catches you mining tank is the least of your worries

You have to look at the amount for each type of damage. It's around 31k average between lasers, all projectile ammo except for depleted uranium and proton, and any single damage type. It's weak to anything that deals a significant amount of EM or thermal along with a significant amount of kinetic or explosive.

It works for ganks because most people just fit one ammo type. Most highsec mining barge suicide gankers seem to use either a destroyer or a tier 3 battlecruiser, and the weapons they use tend to either be small blasters or large artillery. Neither one of these is reasonably capable of finishing off the retriever fit I gave with any ammo type, even with tech 2 weapons.

If you mine in low sec watch local, it's easier that way to avoid all enemies. If it's not a friendly it's an enemy, I would just dock up or warp between safesports (moons, something) for the minute or so to see if they pass through the system if they don't you definately need to dock up NOW. Warp stabs are something I am not even sure I would consider, even for travel fits. As for trabel fits I rather use the MWD + Cloak trick, and as long as you watch local no one should be able to scram you, as you want a quite EMPTY system.

At end of the day I am not sure if low sec be worth the trouble, i may be, it may not be. I never mined so I can't tell you.

EHP: ~20,000
~25% chance of at least one of the ECM drones working against a Catalyst.

[Retriever, New Setup 1]
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Damage Control II

Residual Survey Scanner I

Strip Miner I
Strip Miner I

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I


Hobgoblin I x2
Hornet EC-300 x3