Science & Industry

I've been doing this in both a retriever and a venture, both have some serious drawbacks

1 neither can stand up to heavy rats, unless you cloak and run, your toast.
2 A pirate (capsule) can get you like above once within 2k, cloak drops

the problem I keep running into is the heavy rats, even with a tank they tend to scrap my ship deep into armor if I stand and fight.

now I have run this setup in a retriever recently with some tweeks

high; 1 strip, 1 adv cloak 2

mid; 1 med shield extender

low; 1 warp stab and 2 shield buffs

works okay for survivability as long as I pay attention but no yield at all.

I've been trying different fits as I go so no hard numbers.

Counter argument: Most of the time, when someone sees a mining ship on dscan, they'll be in a hurry to get you before you warp off and just head to 0 on the belt. If you're paying attention and mining far from the warp-in point (hint you should be doing these things), loki boosted long-points are your only worry, and one WCS can save you from those. Alternatively, if they have a warpin on you to land a scram, that means they've had covert eyes on you... and what the hell are you doing still in belt with a shiptype unknown neutral in system?

But either way lowsec mining is pretty pointless unless you just get a kick out of it.

so... why are you mining?

challenge.
mining.

hah.

that's not true at all.

learn the game mechanics. all the things you described are them knowing what does and doesn't work rather than some kind of skill point advantage.

example
can't warp out? a 2 day old character can stop some one warping out. that means; you can do it too.

the issue is, as you said, limited experience not skill points. practice, and learn.

Not sure why nobody is pointing this out, but you can't get megacyte or zydrine in lowsec, for the most part. Lowsec ores have a high nocxium yield, and in lowsec you can also mine highsec ores, which yield tritanium, pyerite, mexallon, and isogen. Zydrine and Megacyte ores are all in nullsec. You might find a bit of one in a lowsec grav site but you won't get significant amounts until -0.4 or further.

Your plan won't work. For starters, you seem to have completely ignored the fact that a stealth bomber can be on you, and have you scrammed before you even know whats going on.

I haven't seen many ventures in low to begin with, but any that I've found, I've gone after in a SB, and they can't get away.

Props to you for realizing you're doing something that's "not efficient" but doing it anyways because it seems like fun.... don't get discouraged by the pages of bittervet fa**otry trying to insert poop in your thread, if you're not having fun what's the point?

You can force someone to decloak by passing within 2000m of them in space.

You probably won't be able to tank most belt rats. Anyone in a cloaky ship can jump you, rather easily. You'll probably get popped, more than once. On the bright side, you're losing a 300K ship, who cares? I'd say you're better off dropping into your belt, aligning to a celestial or a bookmarked safe, and simply warping out if someone drops into your belt. Keep an eye on local, if anyone with a negative sec status so much as enters the system - warp out, cloak, and go make a sandwich.

TL;DR - You can't AFK mine in low sec. If you don't practice being paranoid to the point of warping to a safe and cloaking if a red so much as enters the system, you will eventually die. Just because they didn't bother you *this time* doesn't mean they didnt see your venture on dscan, hit their home system to pick up a stealth bomber and then come back to pop you.

Good luck, and have fun!

yep.