Science & Industry

A word of advice: ignore hisec grav sites. They're not worth the trouble of scanning them down. (And ironically, they tend to be the hardest sites to scan down. Go figure.) In any system above .5, all you're going to get is Omber and Kernite, and you can find more and better roids of those kinds out in the belts. Very occasionally you'll run into Hemorphite/Hedbergite/Jaspet sites, but often they've already been mined out by the time you scan them down. And really, given the time you had to invest in finding the site and then assembling your mining crew, it stops being worthwhile pretty quick.

Nine times out of ten you're going to get omber in hisec grav sites, and that's just the game putting up a MAXIMUM TROLLING sign.

I've actually found it more profitable to mine out mission and plex sites, because while the roids you find there aren't "rare", they can be huge -- and you have them all to yourself. That's why I always forward-stage my Orca with an alt while I'm missioning with my main. It can carry fully-fitted mining barges, combat ships, and provide salvage/hauling capabilities at the same time.

I think CCP should just remove grav sites from hisec altogether, or start stocking them with ABC roids to make them worth running. (Cue screaming from the nullbears.)

EDIT: Also, yes, if you're running a grav site in losec, you're going to get scanned down sooner or later. Use a Skiff for these excursions if you want to survive.

wat

As far as low sec grav sites go. If there are pirates in the area that activly scan for targets, (which is most low sec systems within 3-4 jumps of high sec) chances are they scaned down the grav site and book marked it long before you got there. You will not get the warning of seeing combat probes on scan. they will see your ships on scan and warp to the BM of the grav site.

Even a heavily tanked Skiff will get tackled and taken down by any pirate group who bothers to go after you in a grav site. And mining with cruisers as suggested will drop your yield so much you would make way more just staying in high sec.

The safest mining I have found is the level 4 mission sites. Many have huge roids of veldspar, scrodite, and pyrox. These rocks are sometimes spread out a bit but are way bigger than what you find in the belts. very few gankers who target miners bother to scan you down, and the bigger rocks make for more profitable mining.

My thoughts exactly. What is this ??

3 minutes? you've got a far better technique then I do... It takes me 5-10 minutes in a probing ship with skills in the 3-4 ball park... Maybe I'm doing something wrong

http://swiftandbitter.com/eve/dsp/lowsec.html?str=10.7&f=4&sec=1

It allows you to find the site you want by using a single Deep Space probe in one scan. Only look at the grav site. Set the grid up for your scan strength and area. It will make finding the grav site you want easier.

A 0.03 sig almost guarantee for' a grav site in high sec so look for 0.03 sigs.

He's linking to a table that pertains to low-sec, not high-sec.

Grav sites not only in highsec suck but the ones in nullsec are **** as well. yes you can find Bistot and Ark grav sites out in null but the amount in the rocks and the distance between them make it not worth the time compared to just mining the sov grav sites, I can safely say iv never mined a nullsec grav sites despite finding tons of ark and bistot ones. They really do need a change.

I think removing fixed belts would just be too big a mechanics change for the game. Lots of mining toons don't have scanning skills trained, so forcing miners to scan down sites would impose a huge productivity hit -- and thus mineral availability -- for a while if such a change was made.

The entire game economy depends on large supplies of Trit, so if you limit that pipeline significantly, you open the door to large and potentially game-breaking side effects. No, for better or for worse I think the current mining mechanic is here to stay.

But grav sites need a complete re-think -- maybe they should just be removed from the game entirely as it is rarely worthwhile to run them. (In fact, I'd advocate removing the mining missions as well -- those "fake" ore missions are a waste of time and effort, and the payout/standings gains are laughable compared to the effort involved.)

The only way to make grav sites worthwhile in highsec would be to populate them with bigger standard ores (and I mean a *lot* bigger), or put ABC ores in them. Or just introduce a new ore type that can *only* be found in grav sites, and would give large refining yields of minerals -- low-ends in highsec space, high-ends in lowsec and null.

Aye. Level four mining missions are good for the LP. Some have drones spawning but they can be destroyed with not much trouble using T2 drones. Other than that you will just get the usual belt rats spawning on the fifteen minute cycle plus the occasional hauler rat spawns. Shame that only a few NPC corps have agents offering mining missions though.