EVE New Citizens Q&A

I make nearly 100% of my isk gas mining anymore, so a few pieces of advice. Take it for what it is, but this is what I do. Take a combat ship, a PvE ship, gas mining ship, and a scanning ship. The k-space rats in gas sites are about the same as the rats in ore sites, so a drake would be able to do the job. If you're paying attention, you easily have time to warp you venture out when rats spawn.

I personally live in WH space and do most of my mining there, so be careful when gas mining. sleepers spawn 15 minutes after the first person arrives at a gas site in wormholes, but there are also a LOT more gas sites, so you can make very good ISK simply mining each site for 15 minutes. There's a good 10 second window to jump out after they spawn, so you shouldn't lose a ship.

As far as ships go, I have a few lowsec bases set up for more relaxing gas mining in low-traveled places where I can jump into empty null, as well as roam around LS. Roam around in your scanning ship of choice (I have mine purely set up for scanning speed, no relic/data analyzer), scan everything and bookmark everything. After some time scanning and bookmarking, come back in your data/relic ship or venture/prospect (and train a prospect, it's definitely worth it) and do all the sites. I typically fight the rats in a PvP fit T3D or T3 cruiser, in case anyone else shows up, but they don't scam you, so grab your drake and give it a shot.

By far the biggest thing is to find somewhere you can dock up to house a half dozen ships or so, then get to know that LS/NS area. Gas can take up a decent chunk of cargo space, so I don't use a blockade runner, I use a deep space transport. I keep an eye out for WHs that lead to HS and simply avoid the risk completely of transporting loot through null or low.

I'd strongly recommend joining a corp. 99% of the time we clear the rats from all gas sites as a corp and run them in groups for safety, etc., but I do have a few solo setups and that's what I'm describing now.

My favorite setup (which I selfishly won't give the location away to anyone) has a loop of 20 or so systems that are inhabited by people who live on the other side of the world from me, so most of the time I'm online they are completely empty. I found it when roaming around in a scanning ship, and there are stations I can use. When I am going solo, I typically fly the loop of 10-20 systems depending, scan every sig in those systems and bookmark every site I want to run, I then come back with a combat ship/gas mining ship/relic ship as needed.

And even saying that is somewhat of a lie, because I run multiple accounts at the same time, so I have one account scanning while the others run sites, but I'm writing this from the perspective of how someone with only one account would do it. Basically think 'batch processing'. Do all your scanning/bookmarking (and in low/null find and mark the location of every hostile pos/citadel, take notes on who owns it and what corp/alliance they are with) then run all the sites.

That's one reason why it's good to set up a base. It will take some time to get ships in and scout out who the local residents are and where their assets are that could potentially kill you, but once you have done that for that pocket of space, it's done and will probably save you from losing a few ships.

And for clarity (because this is definitely subjective) anything less than 15 jumps away I consider 'close' to whatever base of operations I'm currently using

No

Gas site rats do not respawn.

Sometimes you can harvest gas by staying out of agro range but within harvesting range. However, you can't begin by warping to zero.

Last question - I promise!

I'm having issues getting a Drake out to null-sec (Drakes aren't as easy to move as Covert ops ships...) - is it possible to clear rats in something like a Caracal or maybe an Assault Frigate?

** edit ** I would try it out myself but my station is being camped at the moment!

Strategic Cruiser, or perhaps a Stratios.

It took me two Tengu to clear C5 & C6 ore and gas sites, but that did involve a little strategy: get the sleepers shooting at the first Tengu before warping in the second to rep the first. Start with the battleship(s), and enough will be dead by the time they switch targets. Why? Because you don't want both Tengu to be capacitor drained by the battleships.

Nulsec sites don't have neuts AFAIK.

The Prospect was designed for gas harvesting.

not sure how this turned into a discussion about wh gas but null sec gas:

mainly used for drugs
special sites contain hacking cans that can drop the expensive drug related skillbooks and reactions

Not too sure about the actual gas value but the hacking sites are definitely worth doing. Not sure if caracal can clear them though, I used a Gila.

I've tried to run a gas site in null once.

Landed on grid, was instantly neuted out by the structures already on-site and the rats popped me before I got into warp.

Fact that I'm notoriously bad at PvE aside, I suggest you check out the site with a cloaky first. And maybe, just to be on the safe side, get something that can blap from afar in case you do need to bail.

The ship I lost was a Huginn. Yes it's replaced, No I haven't tried to run a gas site ever since-- I'd have to PvE for a month to earn it back OR I could blow up some poor random guys, steal their loot and call it a day. It was one of the easier decisions in PvE I've ever made.

Well well, who knew? Thanks for explaining. Guess I better try again then huh?

True, I keep a T3D and a T3 cruiser on hand and use as needed, but I also do WH sites.



I was the first to bring up WH gas, and didn't mean to derail this thread, so sorry if that's what I did. I wanted to point out what it takes to do WH gas as well as LS/null gas. I just didn't want a newer player learning how to huff k-space gas then jump into a WH and pop because of different mechanics, so I felt it was worth mentioning both.