EVE New Citizens Q&A

True, why would you train indu skills to fund you PVP ships when you can train combat skills and fund your PVP with missions? Once you understand what to do with the LP stores "mining" rats in missions is better ISK than minign Ore anyway. A bonus is, that missions/LP get you better weapons and ammo, I got kind of addicted to fraction ammo once I tried it on my Trasher. No T2 skills yet? No problem.. LP store stuff will bring the pain!

This. I would go so far as to say that mining is the WORST thing you can do if you're into industry, especially as a beginner, as doing so frequently causes people to delude themselves regarding their industrial profits.

I'd also just flat out say mining is horrible for new players, period, for several reasons:

-It's boring as ****.

-It's poor income, so it's a boring-as-**** thing you have to do for a long time to accumulate an appreciable amount of money.

-The skills are fairly single-purpose. Your mining skills are good for mining. That's it. People tell new players that mining is an easy way to get started, so they sink SP into mining while ignoring the opportunity cost of that training time. Aside from a few edge-cases (battle procurers? cyno prospects? compressed ore refining for real manufacturing?), their only utility is within a very narrow band, whereas combat and exploration skills have a multitude of uses. Even in an Eve with skill extractors, this is bad.

i mine

not anacado mine

haha

seriosly, mineing sucks

only make 10 mill

i need 5 billl

Seriously?

Youre calling mining, end game content?

Wtf.

Some of the best times that I've had in this game have been in mining fleets. Even solo in a high population null sec mining system mining can be a lot of fun. Not so much because of the mining it's self but because of the interactions that it brings about. People working together joking and sharing links, sometimes click at your own risk links but links none the less. It can be a fun way to chill with friends and just have relaxed fun playing together.

To me it's the closest thing that I've come to how things used to be when I was a kid and would find other kids to just hang out with and goof off.

A couple of years ago I ran a small ice mining fleet in Everyshore - 3 Skiffs and an Orca. Income was in the 50-60 mil/hour range when the ice was there. My characters were also trained for PI, research/invention and manufacturing which eventually became my primary source of income. I shut down the mining operation and consolidated 3 characters on 1 account.

Today I mine ore when I feel like it - unboosted with Exhumers 5, T2 crystals, T2 mining drones and level 5 reprocessing skills I'm probably in the 12 mil/hour range assessed by the value of the minerals I'd need to buy if I didn't harvest them but the account is earning a few billion/month with 3 characters doing research, production and PI. It's mostly background stuff so the less I login the more impressive my ISK/hour would look!

I think people planning a career in PvP should probably move to Faction Warfare as quickly as possible - but a lot of players are attracted to Eve because of the economic simulation and play a very different game in the same sandbox. It's a complex system with diversity, connectedness, interdependence and adaptation - which is what keeps it interesting.

Another consideration for maximising income is picking the right ore. The various ore types have teo richer versions, one provides 5% higher yield of minerals per refine batch, the other provides 10%. As an example you have Veldspar, Concentrated Veldspar and Dense Veldspar. If you focus on Dense Veldspar, you increase your mineral yield by 10%.

Then you pick the ore which is most valuable to mine.

And then you start station trading and never look at a mining laser again.

Seriously, mining is not a particularly good income stream for any level of player, and it is a shame that CCP continues to nudge players in that direction. There have been many suggestions for improving the activity over the years but it is still a basic activity of rock up to asteroid belt, point lasers at asteroids, wait.

EvE is different, forget what you experienced/learned in other games, it wont be applicable.

It's funny how OP just shares some math, but all the vets immediatelly jump him and beat with "MINING SUX" posters.
On topic : Procurer is probably the most balanced mining ship to aim for. You'll save a lot of training time by skipping Exhumers, it has amazing tank, decent ore hold and decent yield. By the time some truely dedicated gankers fgather ten pilots fleet to blow it up, you already mined enough to buy ten more.