EVE New Citizens Q&A

Me and about 4 of my friends (all of us relatively new to the game) stated a corporation hoping to work as a group to make more isk. At the moment we are trying to figure out how we should go about earning it (mining ops or mission running). We have considered saving for an orca and running ops with hulks and covetors but aren't sure if we have enough people to turn a decent profit even with the orca's buffs. So the question is if we had a fleet of 1 hulk, 3 covetors, and 1 orca, would we be making a decent enough profit to justify the purchase of an orca, and if not, what is a good alternative?

Thanks a lot for the info, I didn't know pvp was a problem for miners in high sec. Glad you told me about EFT or else I might not have found it.

there are guides and videos out there that show you how to use EFT. It is a very powerful app and I think that most players that use it don't even know how to make use of all of it's features. I know for sure that there are some features that I don't fully know how to use and every once in a while I seem to learn about something that it can do that I was not aware of. So it's probably worth getting to know EFT.

As far as high sec PvP for miners is concerned you are mainly worried about CODE. you will want to have those guys set to red by corp standing so that you can see them pop into local. They gank miners, which means that they will blow you up even if not at war with you.

The next risk of course is war decs but for those you get a 24 hour warning. But it is helpful for you to know in advance so that you don't' make all these plans for high sec orca boosted mining only to find out that high sec mining is too much of a PITA.

If ore mining is what you want to do and you think that you might be willing to try null sec I could give you some basic advice on that if you want to eve mail me. I'm no longer and expert miner and have not done it in years so I might not be the best candidate but I can give you some pointers as to how to get into null and how to operate there.

Also I always recommend miners train to be able to fly some kind of reasonably effective, low SP combat ship like a battlecruiser. I don't think anyone actually likes the idea of being totally unable to engage in combat if the situation dictates even if they prefer to avoid combat.

If you are dead set on mining: if you get wardecced fly a bunch of ventures into lowsec and learn to survive there. the wardec corp will more than likely get bored after a week. And you get some rare ore, and interesting game experiences.

if not, it isn't too late to pick a profession where you get paid actual isk instead of mining. Since mining can be semi-afked without too much difficulty and it isn't hard to multibox there are a bunch of lazy people out there driving down prices.

As for the orca, I think the math says if you have 3 or more it starts to make sense. plus the orca can either help haul a lot or act as a decent way to collect the ore and pass it off to a hauler.

I would suggest to not focus on the most isk p/hour vs as Brave likes to say it "fun p/hour". Run a bunch of missions together or mine, get a nice little bank roll and then go crazy some weekends with whatever you wanna do. Just remember why you're making the isk and don't focus to much on making isk.

Good stuff so far, I have a few things to add.

There are 3 decent fit tools to use.
My preference is EvE HQ or PYFA as I find EFT to be lacking in many ways but that is all personal preference.
All of them are decent tools and all of them have specific strengths and weaknesses so use the one you like the most.

EvE HQ - http://evehq.co/
PYFA - http://www.pyfa.net/
EFT - https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=24359

Mining in high sec can be profitable if done correctly, but I always found that you can make more by running level 4 missions.
Work as teams one or more players kill the missions bookmarking things on the fly and moves on while another comes in behind and salvages / loots the mission pockets after they have been turned in. The use of the MTU can be extremely helpful in these situations. This will likely make more ISK than you can mining and there is not as much chance for suicide ganking as there is with mining.

Boredom for the salvage character is the biggest problem here so you may need to take turns doing it.

Mining income scales linearly with the number of people involved, roughly, assuming you've got a source of roids capable of supporting them. Three players mining = 3x the isk generation of one player mining.

So that's your starting point, and every person NOT mining (e.g. if you're doing low and have guards) is dropping your isk/player from there. The equation is relatively simple.

Doing missions scales in a much less simplistic fashion. Usually two people instead of one is ALWAYS an increase in isk generation per member, because it will much more than double the speed with which you get through missions, both because of clear time and because you're less likely to 'run out' of missions by hitting two you need to decline.

Past two, though... it really depends. Three may be an improvement again (it usually is, but not always) because the increase in clear speed might not make up for dividing the bounties and loot three ways, four is almost always at least something of a net loss vs 3, 5 is almost without exception a net loss over 4, etc.

All this said, in honesty the whole "what PvE activity gives the best isk for my group size" problem ITSELF is more effort than it's worth. In a small corp, you play with whomever's online in whatever that group size is, because they're your friends (or at least people you don't hate) and generally hanging out >> soloing in a multiplayer game. And if you're looking, you can usually find an excuse to fleet with your mates if you want one, e.g. one of you has access to L4 missions the others don't so grouping with you helps them all grind standings faster.

Hi OP. I'm one of those bad wardeccers people have warned you about.

Don't worry, I don't look for targets in NC Q&A. Anywhere else on the forums this post would have placed you on the watchlist, but I believe in fattening up the prey first

Firstly, mining is boring and a poor way to make ISK, because legitimate miners have to compete with bots. Bots get banned a lot, but enough exist that the ISK per hour is low.

If you insist on mining, safety is YOUR responsibility.

Chainsaw's advice is reasonable, but you might do better temporarily relocating to wormholes if you want to use ventures under wardec. Wormholes have excellent ore and while they have their own unique challenges (you should read up on these), they are more lucrative than highsec.

I make my ISK through trading. I have a very solid knowledge of the economic impact of miner ganking and have carved out a niche buying mining supplies from gankers for resale to, uh, future ganking clients, and supplying weapons to gankers at discount rates. I make more doing this in a week than I'd be able to make mining in a month. You can look for niches like this to make ISK.

In general: 2 ships, its best if they are miners. 3 to 5: one orca and the rest miners, the orca hauls when full. 6 and above, add a hauler to keep emptying the orca, so the orca can remain in the belt.

Wars: Do not go out and mine in high sec during a war. You can try low, or have everyone drop to NPC corps for the duration, or play on your alts for the duration.