Science & Industry

Hey, Hello, Wasup

After reading about some guy making 800m an hour using his 12 alts in a mining fleet I decided to create my own, albeit, with a few less alts. Currently the plan is to have an Orca pilot boosting three covetors. I have a few questions regarding my fledgling mining fleet for all of you experienced players who do this kind of thing often.

1. How much isk/hour can I expect to make with my desired setup? Based on my calculations I would need to make around 175M a day in order to buy the plex needed to keep the four accounts active. Right now, using the alts without max skills and an orca boost, I’m able to make the required 175m a day but it takes a REALLY long time. I would have to mine the better part of an afternoon just to meet the minimum amount of isk I need, leaving very little profit left over. How much isk can I expect to generate per hour when my full alts have max skills?

2. Should I focus on one particular ore or should I just clear out the entire belt? Basically should I warp into a spot, suck up the most valuable ore, then move on OR should I just stay at the belt and drain every rock until its gone. I have noticed that a lot of mining fleets will clear out an entire belt before moving on to the next one and I would like to know if this is the most profitable choice out of the two.


3. At what point does my orca become a gank target? I know losing a ship every now and then is just part of being a miner in eve, although usually I spawn concord at the belts where I am to reduce the chances of getting ganked. How much would my orca have to be lugging around before it becomes a viable gank target?

Thanks in advance for the replies!

I'm going to be totally up front with you here... don't mine for isk. If you are looking to make isk do incursions, ded sites, exploration, anything other than mining to make isk for plex or anything else, because trust me it becomes a second job. How do I know this? Because I was a mutliboxing mining for a long time, at my peak I was mining with 32 accounts at once making the isk needed to plex all the accounts -- mind you plex at the time was 800-950M --, plus 5-20B on top of that from mining. What I was mining ice at the time first started with White Glaze and then moved over to Blue Ice because the systems were less crowded and I could mine more ice per hour. If I was paying attention and on the ball I could melt a highsec belt in less than an hour easy. But I quit mutliboxing once they announced the isboxer changes. Now to answer your questions:

1. Find some systems that are close to ice systems, so that you can mine the ice when it is up because its a nice change to mine something different from time to time. I would recommend Everyshore region to mine because it has a total of 15 ice belts and a lot of them are only a jump away from each other and a few systems have more than one belt in them. Don't mine in anything other than a Procurer or Skiff because gankers will most of the time ignore you because of the high EHP, but make sure you fit it right too! For how much you'll make an hour I won't know anymore, but on isk per hour with my old setup its saying about 24.8M an hour.

2. I use to just mine the whole belt out and move to the next one, but that is because I had the luxury with the amount of accounts I had. Nothing like seeing 150 mining drones attack nodes. :D

3. Everything in Eve is a gank target from an Ibis to a Titan and the only thing you can do to protect yourself from getting ganked is to make sure your ships are tanked and not fitted for something like max output or max cargo.

Hope this helped.

I think I'd say that is more reasonable than a speculated 200m ISK per hour.

Also, does Orca yield more production than a Rorqual?

You can use the mining tab on the application in my signature to figure out what your setup will yield based on the ship setups and skills you have (assuming they are all the same). Every different setup will yield different results. Same with your ore choice.

You can make isk with a mining fleet, but I don't think using a mining fleet to try to plex your accounts is worth it. Adding miners scales, but almost at the same rate as the cost of an extra plex.

That said, there is a lot of good fleet mining information at this New Eden Mining site. Pay particular attention to the posts in May 2014.

As far as the orca, if you use bulkhead rigs and a DC II your EHP will be so high it is very unlikely that anything less than a 10 man gank squad will bother you. Your covetors on the other hand will be easy prey.

The covetors also require a lot more attention because of the small hold size. I liked to use Procurers and would occassionally use retrievers when I wanted to be semi-afk and there was no danger around. I would use covetors/hulk when I was trying to mine faster than the competition in an ore anomoly.

Someone mined on Twitch with 18 barges and 1 Rorqual near a POS in null-sec.
He logged off stating his GPU as reason as I almost detected the system he was mining in.
He almost mentioned making 700m ISK to 900m ISK per hour mining though I have no records of proof.

As has been stated before it is difficult to plex the accounts with mining in high sec space. (I'd assume things might be easier in null.) However it is possible and in order to to it you want to maximize your yield/min. So if you ask me the Hulks are easily the best option as long as you don't lose them. It is the not losing them part that needs more attention than just maximizing your yield as that part is harder. It is doable with some very simple rules.

1. Add known gankers/ganker corporations/alliances to your contacts.
This helps you to notice if someone you don't want to be around enters the system you're mining in.

2. Find a good mining system.
How to find one? It has these requirements:
- as little traveling done (look for jumps done in map/dotlan)
- as little pve/pvp activity as possible
- no npc stations (this alone ensures that there is much less people interested into coming to your system)
- good amount of asteroid belts (preferably 10+ as even if you mine alone in there you actually can run out of asteroids if you mine a lot with multiple accounts as it takes few days for the belts to grow back to a size that makes them worth mining)
- the system should be far enough from trade hubs (5+ jumps can work already but it is easier to find systems that fulfill the other requirements further away)

3. Plant a POS there.
POS provides you a home and a compression array makes your logistics way easier as you will be able to haul your ore much easier. Just keep in mind that 1B in a freighter is a good maximum value when you're hauling your stuff. It is possible to offline your POS when you log off but personally I would use a small tower and keep it permanently running just to keep the added work at minimum. It is only ~100M/month (very rough estimate) which is nothing compared to keeping your fleet plexed.

4. Pay attention to local and d.scan.
The less traffic you see in your new home the easier it is to pay attention to local/d.scan. If there is only one person in addition to you and you see an Astero in d.scan you can calculate 1+1 and relax as he is just doing some exploration. On the other hand if you see him in a Catalyst you might want to fleet warp to the safety of your POS force shield.

5. Fly to safety if a problem might be brewing up.
If you follow my advice and fly yield fitted Hulks it is much better to be safe than sorry. If you picked up your system well then the trouble should not show up too often to be a problem to your income.

6. Keep low profile.
Never tell anyone you're mining. Never post on these forums about mining related stuff on your characters that are involved in your mining ops. Avoid talking to anyone. Never **** off anyone. Stay invisible. I guarantee you that no matter where you mine is going to keep you safe if you tell that you're mining in yield fitted Hulks when logged on as a miner character. The very next time you log on someone is going to use a locator agent and come ruin your day just to prove a point.

A hulk is worth 200M+. You might have implants in your head as well. +5% mining yield implant (iirc) costs another 125M so you might very easily lose ~350M for every lost Hulk. It is not worth it to boast about how you have been mining for 500 hours doing dank ISK and never ever even seeing a Catalyst in system.

7. Go for max yield.
Since with all these things taken care of you can mine in peace... go for the max yield Hulk. Why not a Covetor? Convenience. Hulk has 8.5k ore hold compared to 7k in a Covetor. This is a big deal as 2 full cycles with maxed skills do fit in the ore hold of a Hulk but 2 full cycles will fill the hold of Covetor resulting in a laser turning off. When you mine a lot this makes a big difference. Also Hulks have better capacitor so you won't run out of it if you have to restart some lasers every now and then. (Like maybe you're micromanaging your lasers by manually turning them off when an asteroid is emptied at mid-cycle.) Also the +15% yield is worth it.

Maybe with just max skills alone.

But max skills + implants + Orca boost + T2 equipment & crystals + fitted for yield, and my Hulk-flying alt breaks the 50% mark of his hold per cycle, requiring moving ore around every cycle.

This really looks like you want to make a job out of EvE. Maybe get a job instead and pay for a single account and do something more enjoyable in EvE?
Just a thought.