Ships & Modules

I've done 4x16 cycles of level 3 mining missions in my Mackinaw now, and it works very well for that, but I've heard that unlike lower level mining missions, level 4 ones can involve ice mining or gas mining, not just asteroid mining.

Can I use my Mackinaw for gas mining? I've trained the ice mining skill to 4, and as far as I know it's trivially easy to re-fit a Mackinaw to mine ice instead of aseroids, but while I have the gas mining skill trained to level 4, I've never actually used it, and I think I once heard something about exhumers and barges not being good for gas mining.

I can afford any T1 hull easily, but would prefer to avoid having to buy a T2 hull just for gas mining, even though I've found that I quite like doing mining missions, so I'll be doing more of them to boost my standing with at least one more corp from 0 to 6.7 (perfect refine), and maybe more later on.

What hulls are good for gas mining? What are the hull characteristics I should look for?

I'd prefer something that can fit a little tank too, and I only really know how to use missiles and drones as weapon systems, so a ship whose only means of defence are güns will be problematic for me. I have some level 4 skillz at armour tanking, but I don't now what modules to use so that'll involve a lot of trial and error. Thus I'd prefer a shield tanked hull, although in the end weapons system is more important, as I expect to primarily use the tanking type known as "active ganking".

^ That. The ferox in particular works very well.

I used a Rokh when I did one last...

5 is the actual limit for Gas Miner modules, from what I've read.

Cargohold space may also be a consideration. I don't know how large the gas amounts are yet.

I don't recommend you do the huffing in any ship that can't fit max gas harvesters [time=isk, right?]

And no need to kill the rats first, assuming you have marginal drone/gunnery skills. Just run the mission in any b/c, huff while you kill the rats. I usually use a Cyclone fitted so, although any b/c will work:

[high]
Gas Harvester II x5
200mm a/c x3

[medium]
Small Shield Booster II
10MN Afterburner II

[low]
Expanded Cargohold II x4

[drones]
hobgoblin II x4

Between the a/c's and drones the rats die very quickly, it's not a combat mission. Just jetcan the gas as the cargohold fills up. When you're done jump back in your favorite hauler either of these missions will fit in a hauler's hold.

I always used a Hurricane. 5 Harvester II's + a Mining Link ( cycle time ), AB/MWD in the mid and cargo expanders in the lows. Some of the folks in the corp used Moa's with the same setup. Gas in huge BTW, thus the cargo expanders.

Right now - 1 run:
Typhoon:
highs:
5 gas cloud harvester 2's (note, these take a turret slot, so that person talking about fitting harvesters/guns to their cyclone obviously hasn't actually used them before)
3 missiles (of your choice)

Mids:
1 AB or MWD
1 shield booster
2 hardeners (for tanking rats, not sure what would actually be needed)

Lows
7 cargo expander 2's

Rigs
3 cargo expander rigs

Drones
5 heavy/sentry drones
5 light drones of choice
5 backup light drones, or alternative of choice

Fit hauls in 150m3/min of gas, and has a cargohold of 5206m3. So you can fly in, start sucking gas while sending your drones/missiles to kill any rats, suck everything in at max speed, and go home without ever needing to reship. Mission should take less than 30 min to suck all the gas in one go, assuming you don't have any links running. Put an orca with links out and that reduces to 20 minutes.

As for getting the T2 harvesters... its a rank 1 skill. If you go gas cloud mining in any regular amount you owe it to yourself to train it up for the 4 days. To compare, with lvl 4 skills, you can only run 4 t1 harvesters, which pulls in 80m3/min. That means that the mission which takes you 30 minutes with lvl 5 skills takes you 54minutes with lvl 4. 4 days of training to save you almost 25 minutes (just short of 50% of the time it takes) is well worth it if you do gas harvesting with any regularity.

-Arazel

i used a ferox for gas mining when i lived out in wormhole space... for missions i assume easiest way to run them has been stated go out in a shield tanked bc (that way you can fit the lows with cargo expanders {although jetcanning works as well}) use drones to kill off rats then either make multiple trips to suck all the gas or haul the can. Also its been stated that 5 is indeed the limit on gas miners and 5 t2 miners just about double the yield of 4 t1s iirc.

Anyways before you pick a ship just realize you have to have turret hardpoints to use gas miners... which hopefully you know by now

As far as I can calculate, with 8 x T2 Expanded Cargohold in LOW slots, you increase the cargo capacity by almost a factor of 7. With 4250 gas, you need a ship with a base cargo capacity of 610 m3 in order to be able to take a full cloud home in one go.

A factor of 5.47 for 7 LOW slots, 4.29 for 6 LOW slots, and 3.36 for 5 LOW slots.

With 7 LOW slots you need a base cargohold of 780 m3, 995 m3 with 6 LOW slots, or 1265 m3 with 5 LOW slots. Assuming you are too cheapskate to be willing to rig the ship.

As far as I can see, a Fleet Typhoon can do this without rigs, having 8 LOW slots and the necessary cargo capacity, but the non-faction version can't since it has only 7 LOW slots.

dont use a transport its significantly faster to speed through it with a mining ship and then pick up with a hauler and if you want the standings then faster completion would earn you more standings in the same amount of time.

also yea my calculations were based on smaller cloud sizes where two cycles from t2s usually grabbed the majority of the cloud and so yea long term it is only a fifty percent increase but still like you said still worth it.

Edit: the transport you are thinking of is the Prowler