Science & Industry

I came back to Eve about a month ago, and after a couple weeks I realized it was worth sticking around for this time so I reactivated my old second account. I can fly covetors on both accounts and have been doing high sec mining to build up funds for other projects. Lately I have been jet can mining on both accounts, and after about two cans are out on each account I go back in on the hauler account and start hauling back the cans. This is really inefficient though so I started training and saving for an orca. After doing some research though I am completely lost as to what the path is to be as efficient as possible. This leads me to the following questions.

1) As best I can tell a hulk will only increase your ore gain over a covetor by 10% and thats only if you train its skill to level 5. Considering a hulk is 1000% more costly then a covetor, and considering hulks are gank bait, why would anyone fly a hulk in high sec? Am I missing something? In your guy's opinion would it be worth considering?

2) I am currently training mining foreman to 5, and then I'll train the mining supervisor skill or whatever its called thats required for the orca, and it mentions that after level 2 it gives 100% bonus per level to gang link modules. The modules are in the next question, but for this question I'd like to know what other skills if any I'll need to max efficiency, and perhaps an explanation of the one I just mentioned.

3) On the orca I see it has bonuses for gang link modules. What kind of increases do these give with the appropriate skills? I assume the boosts are significant enough so that just putting a few miner II's on the orca would be a waste of its potential. Also what are the usual modules and rigs that would go on an orca for high sec mining?

4) With maxed skills and the proper modules would it be possible to get the equivalent yield, or close to it, mining with one covetor with an orca right next to it compared to two covetors mining into jetcans while bringing out the orca every 40 minutes or so to suck up the jet cans?


I really have tried to research a lot of this, but after having been gone so long, and having the orca be completely new to me, I am just confused about how all these things work together. So rather than make a bunch of idiot mistakes I figured I should probably come here and ask from people who know.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Welcome back!


15% as stated above. But 15% is 15%. It adds up. Why get a Michii implant or Highwall? It all adds up. Ganking can be avoided if you pay attention and take necessary measures. Also, in a Hulk you have a bigger drone bay for mining and combat drones.


What I did was train the alt to be the max Orca pilot to boost my max mining skills. The ganglink module thing is just a set bonus and at level 1 you get the base bonus, level 2 you get 100%. Just a weird way of wording it. As far as your Orca skills, go with Mining Foreman 5, Mining Director 5, Warfare Link Specialist 5, Cybernetics 5 (for Mindlink eventually).


You can't mine with an Orca outside of mining drones. It's a great booster and jetcan that no one will steal from. I would set up with the cycle time reduction ganglink and range increase ganglink. Train for the T2 versions. I focus on combat drones (for rat killing), a tractor beam (free loot from rats), and two cargohold optimization rigs with 2 expanded cargoholds. Nothing else really needed other than some shield mods.


With my skills, I can mine more with 2 hulks over Orca and Hulk duo. It all depends on skills of the pilots of course but equal skills and a good trained Orca pilot will get you some nice return regardless. Plus you don't need to do jetcan mining as it is a pain and is just asking for trouble. Then there is the logistics of hauling back and forth all the time. I don't have this tab in the current version of EVEIPH (hopefully next weekend I will), but this is a comparison of both:

Orca Boost: http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/51/orcawithmaxhulk.jpg
Solo Hulk: http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/2251/solomaxhulk.jpg

Hope that helps