Science & Industry

I've spent the last couple hours pouring over how to establish a moon mining POS. I'm a relatively new player, I fart around in my Mackinaw and make a nice little bit of ISK for myself, but I want to engage in some of the more complex industry gameplay on offer in EVE.

I've read over how to mine moons: One must acquire a control tower, moon harvester, silos, etc, as well having sufficient standing with the sovereign faction that presides over the system . Simple enough. I can also use my Mackinaw to mine ice to help with fuelling the thing, and run an Iteron V for hauling to and from the POS back to my hisec base of operations three jumps away.

But here's my concern: This can only occur in 0.3 space and below. How is it even possible to warp into such a low security system without having the station occupants immediately undock to ruin your day? I PvP in 0.4 space frequently, it takes all of 3 minutes to end up in a fight -- I can't imagine how it's even possible to warp in, scan the moon, transport the gear, set it up, turn it on, all without drawing attention. And once it's set up, it seems like it would be destroyed in a couple days anyway once some gang happens upon it and decides to use it for target practice. I've also read that dominant alliances in the EVE universe kind of run an unwritten monopoly over moons, so if I were to find a decent moon, I feel that my POS would be vaporised even quicker. It all just seems like a dead end unless I'm part of some megacorporation.

Am I being too pessimistic? Is this how it's actually done? I'm in a reasonably well-developed alliance but this was a pet idea that myself and a friend who joined up last week want to undertake. Can a two-man mini-corporation successfully set up and maintain a moon mining POS without having it all blown to pieces and wasting our time? I'm setting aside about 600M isk to start this up... Should I spend it elsewhere?

Thanks all.
o7

It's not an isk faucet it does not directly inject isk into the economy. Materials faucet, yes it is this.

All the moons worth mining are taken (or will be taken when someone scans the moon you're on). And genreally speaking, unless you can adequately setup + maintain as well as defend said pos, expect it to be bashed "for the luls". You're either mining a moon and making a profit (and will likely have the moon taken soon) or you're mining a moon while hemorhaging isk on the pos fuel.

Seriously, if you have to ask others if it's worth doing, you shouldn't be doing it. That pretty much goes for the majority of things in Eve, imho.

As most of the other people have written already, you wont find any moons in and around empire that will make profit from just moon mining, the price of the fuel is too high. However running complex reactions is profitable and mining even the cheapest moon material will still improve your profit. And if you set it up right, then one single Caldari tower can do the entire process from moon mining to complex material.
You need to attend the tower each day thought, but if thats the business you are in, then its no big deal.

Try out my POS production tool here, to help you to see which moon material to mine for and see which complex material is most profitable at this moment.

Killing a L tower is no fun i tell you! and not something anyone do just for the fun, so if your tower is on a moon with low end moon material then id say you are fairly safe.

Good luck
Dedaf

Reaction Farms > Extraction Farms as far as personal moon goo income goes. It also circumvents the issue of good moons.

But to really be worthwhile, you're gonna want to have a JF.





Really can't emphasize that enough. Even when all your POSes are in one system.

Lots of moons are available in NPC nullsec. Not the best moons, but still some ISK to be made.
If you want to be serious, you will need several towers, a lot of investment (several billions) and a jump freighter to haul "safely" fuel and reacted products. So 'im not sure it's what you wanted to do :D

It can be done, it can be profitable with reactions, but be prepared to put in the hours. Unless your an every day, several hours a day, player I wouldn't waste my time on it.

If you have the time, then get into a cloak transport ship. I found it was the best way to move around and stay hidden with POS modules, fuel, etc. Also look for a low sec system that is a mission hub/research hub. I know it sounds crazy because there are lots of people in there, but the upshot is that most of those people are too busy to notice your POS and even if they do they don't care about it as they are always looking over their shoulder or looking for quick GF's. It's not to say someone won't decide to nuke your POS for fun, but that can happen anywhere.

You do not need to extract a single component to make isk with a complex reactor. Buying all the ingedients still yields profits.

Let ne echo some of the above. I run sonething like 12 towers and PI as much as I can across 6 toons. If it wasnt profitable I'd be considered insane. Some reactions fill a silo every day so it's like watching an infant.

This is actually not a problem since your POS will have to be in lowsec, where you don't need faction standings or starbase charters to anchor and run the POS.



Scanning the moons can be accomplished with a covert ops which, when used properly in lowsec, is extremely difficult to catch and kill. Just make sure that if you launch a survey probe at a moon with a tower that you recloak before the tower locks on to you and shoots you.



As people have said before, it is extremely unlikely to be shot at "for the lulz." And if you did happen across a high value vacant moon, then you can count on it being shot up soon if word about it ever gets out. For any of those good moons you definitely need to be a part of a large corporation/alliance capable of fielding a fleet to take and defend that moon. Generally speaking, moons are what large groups fight over.

Low value moons, however, are not likely to get shot up because they aren't worth much or they are so plentiful there are vacant ones to take. Of course these are not very valuable, so it may not be worth your time unless it's part of a profitable reaction, alchemy, or other scheme you have to make isk.



From the management standpoint it's certainly possible for a couple people to setup and run several moons. From a defense standpoint, they won't be able to stop a group who wants to take them. But if the moons are common or low value, then you may not have to for a few months or ever.

Before you set anything up make sure you know how much all of your costs are (usually on a monthly basis), how much you can sell the products for, and what your profit margin is based on this. Don't be one of those people who sell a month's worth of product for 250 million isk, but spend 300-400 million isk to keep the tower running.

Prowler > Covops.

But as bad as running a POS farm is, Moon scanning is worse. Which is one of the several reasons why reaction farming is better than extraction if you're not an alliance.