EVE General Discussion

I'll put it in a way that sounds cool.
I am taking pre-algebra in a University.
University of Alaska Fairbanks. :D

Remember that all of these calculations require a mindlink and a max skilled orca. Without a mindlink you are losing massively on the possible yield so I would say that is the most important thing to go for. I'm quite surprised actually that you trained up 14 accounts and did not find out this first hehe. Are you the heir of a baron or something spending money like that? :)

With a max-skilled Mining Director with Industrial Command Ships 5 and the Mining Foreman Mindlink, you get a teensy bit more yield and heaps more utility from putting that Mining Director into an Orca rather than a third ship of the the same type as the rest of the fleet.

Until that point, the number is greater than 3 mining ships. Of course we can use maths to figure the number out for every situation, but you need to know what the question is: "how many mining ships do I need in my fleet before it's worth my Mining Director flying an Orca instead of another mining ship?" I'll be generous and substitute "player" for "mining ship" and we can use an invented unit p.

The easy way to find out p is to undock with your orca pilot and miners, check the tooltip display for yield & cycle time of the mining modules, then turn on the Laser Optimization link and check the numbers again. The only number that will change is the cycle time. You then divide the longer cycle time by the shorter cycle time to find the percentage yield with the link active. i.e.: 180 seconds will be reduced to 120 seconds under a "perfect" orca booster, giving you a 150% gain in yield per hour.

So from that percentage you take away 100%, and divide 100 by the remaining number. That is how many mining ships you need in the fleet to justify the Mining Director flying an orca instead of a mining ship.

So if your orca booster gives each ship 133% of base yield per hour, you will need three mining ships in the fleet to justify flying an orca (i.e.: 1 x Orca + 3 x mining ship). If your orca booster gives each ship 120%, you will need five mining ships.

Let's run through that all over again:

1. Undock with your current mining fleet, with Mining Director in an Orca with the Laser Optimization link turned off
2. Record the current cycle time for one miner, call this A (e.g.: A=180s, note the unit "s" for seconds)
3. Turn on the Laser Optimization link
4. Record the modified cycle time for one miner, call this B (e.g.: B=120s)
5. Calculate the modified yield as a ratio of the original yield: Y = A/B (e.g.: Y = 180s/120s = 1.5 with no dimension/units)
6. Now subtract 1 to get the gain over base yield: Yg = Y - 1 (e.g.: Yg = 0.5, still dimensionless)
7. Now divide 1 mining ship (using our invented unit p) by your number, rounding up to get the number of miners necessary (we'll call that N, for Necessary or Needs): N = 1p/Yg (e.g.: N = 1p/0.5 = 2p)
8. If you don't have that many miners, have the Mining Director fly a mining ship instead, because you Need N people to justify the Orca instead of a mining ship

And again with a non-perfect Mining Director:

1. A = 180s
2. B = 136s
3. Y = A/B = 180s/136s = 1.324 (I am being needlessly precise at 4 significant digits)
4. Yg = Y-1 = 0.324
5. N = 1p/Yg = 1p/0.324 = 3.1p, rounding up to 4p
6. I would need four players (mining ships) in fleet to justify flying an Orca instead of another of the same mining ship since three mining ships would only produce enough extra yield to compensate for missing 97% (0.324 * 3) of that fourth ship.

Note that using dimensional analysis is a simple engineering trick to help figure out how to get the answer you're looking for, and is why I invented the unit p.

And for the readers who are still lost: A and B represent cycle times (A being original yield, B being Boosted yield), Y represents boosted Yield as a ratio, Yg represents "yield gain as a ratio", N represent "Needs" and p is our unit representing players because I'm in a weird mood and assuming that we are mining in fleets with other players rather than multiboxing and playing with ourselves.