EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi,
got my retriever for solo mining.... this changes a lot than Osprey ^^

I equiped it with strop miners I (later will upgrade to Strip miners 2 + crystal).

Is there anything I can do to maximize yeld ?
Both fitting and skills ? Or anything that I could do to maximize the efficiency of my new ship ? (I mine in safe zone for now).

Tks,
Xo

No such thing as a safe zone in Eve, you can fit Mining laser Upgrades (MLU) to get a bit more out of it, but you definitely need to fit some sort of tank as a retriever is made of paper, the problem with the retriever is that it only has one midslot, so you have a choice, shield mod or survey scanner (great for finding how much is in a rock). if you go with survey scanner, fit a damage control in the lows.

oh and combat drones as the poster below says, you'll need them.

The few things you can do with mining barges and exhumers, is considering them as expendables as any other ship, many miners go emo about their boats but they're no more precious than others.
With little to no effort you will make up the investment, fitting and insurance of your ship, so if you lose one now and then to random gankers, shrug it off. If you can't afford to replace the boat at least once right when you undock, you shouldn't undock in it. (of course you can always rat in a noob ship and work your way back up, but better avoid it)

Now for the boat itself, don't bother with tank, mining barges are well insured and making enough profit to shrug off the loss of one ship is the best tank you can get on that one.

To improve it's yield, you need mining to 5 and mining upgrade to 4 at least, so you can fit T2 strip miners and laser upgrades. To use crystals with strip miners, you will need the processing skills for the types of ore you will use the crystals on, like Veldspar Processing (train to 4 to use T2 crystals). Crystals take damage over use (T1 and T2 both), so you will have to replace them now and then, but they provide a significant boost.
Now, to fit that kind of stuff and use it efficiently, you will need quite some fitting skills, to maximize the powergrid and cpu, increase the capacitor and its recharge rate, because these beasts are greedy.
With T2 strip miners and crystals, without maximized skills, you might need to wait out the recharge of the capacitor just to activate the second laser on some ores (the rarest the ore, the more cap it requires to activate the laser) and if your fitting skills aren't really good, you won't be able to fit mining laser upgrades and might need to put in CPU upgrades or Reactor controls instead just to fit the lasers. So yeah, training the basics like engineering, electronics and such, is very much needed to make out the most of it.

Electronics and Engeneering increases your CPU and Powergrid.

You should be able to fit all T2 with a CPU rig.

And also Astrogeology increases mining yield.

You will also want to load up EVEMon to help plan the skills you wish to train. EFT will allow you to load the skills needed into EVEMon, so you can start working on building your skills up. Both are really good tools.

As has been said, there are no safe zones in EVE...safER zones, maybe, but nowhere is 100% safe. Sometimes people do things they are not "supposed to" (shocking! ) just to be...difficult.

Mining is ok, I guess, but there are a lot of other things to do in EVE too, of course. I understand there will be some changes coming to mining (sometime in the next year? - I'm not sure of the timeframe) that are intended to make mining more interesting.

Fit a survey scanner (very useful) and a damage control module (DCU)! Better less ore and a bit tougher ship than a blown up ship and no ore, eh? DCU won't make your ship untouchable, but it will help.

Lookup Concord Police captain in eve-kill, add the ystems with catalyst kills in your avoidance list and never mine there, avoid systems with a high traffic and unless you do something horribly wrong, you should be able to mine afk for weeks or months at a time without seeing a ganker. Though some wicked ones might just lookup your name with a locator agent ... posting in forums can be funny like that :whistle:

Be bold, be proud do not ever fear and always post with your main.

As a genral rule, you will get 2 cycles per roid after the daily update. If you are not even getting a full cycle, it is because someone already tapped the rock.

EDIT: When picking a mining spot, anything close to hub will be over mined. If you are serious about mining, you need to be well away from a hub area. By well away I mean more then 6 jumps, and sometiems that is to close.

Thanks for answers. And to know the cycle of current laser, I should calculate it by testing it on a rock and counting, or is there a way to have this info somewhere ?