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Mining with an Orca
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Black-Hawk Ellecon
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2016-12-23 21:19:40 UTC
Can someone please explain how mining with an Orca works. I would appreciate the experience of a miner who uses an Orca to tell me how it is done. I assume it cannot mine the ore itself? What is the set up required?
Elena Thiesant
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2016-12-23 22:00:12 UTC
It uses mining drones, not mining lasers. Other than that, pretty much normal. Warp to the belt, mine until the hold is full, return to station, repeat.

Please note that Orca is not available to Alpha accounts
Black-Hawk Ellecon
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2016-12-23 22:13:58 UTC
Good info and whilst I am an Alpha I am seriously considering becoming Omega very soon.
Elena Thiesant
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2016-12-23 22:16:19 UTC
It's unlikely that the Orca is better ISK/hour than a dedicated mining ship. It's a mining fleet support ship that can use mining drones.
Vortexo VonBrenner
Doomheim
#5 - 2016-12-23 23:05:31 UTC
If you are going omega then maybe you might be interested in setting up an orca (or maybe the new mining support ship the Porpoise, but I don't know anything about that) as a mining fleet boost giver.

You could form a fleet of alpha miners and boost their mining yield in exchange for a cut of the ore mined.

You could also join a 0.0 space corp, lowsec space corp or industrial corp and mine for them. Building the machinery takes materials...


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Chainsaw Plankton
FaDoyToy
#6 - 2016-12-23 23:16:11 UTC
I'd fit it up with a big tank, 2 mining command bursts and one shield command burst. Then fill the other 3 high slots with shield transporters. Then find a bunch of miners to be friends with, sit in the belt and give them bonuses so they mine better. Most people skip the friends part and make a bunch of alts.

probably much easier/cheaper to start out with a porpoise though

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Mark O'Helm
Fam. Zimin von Reizgenschwendt
#7 - 2016-12-24 04:30:53 UTC
Since the last Expension the orca is the best single mining ship for highsec. You can mine for hours without the need to return to the station.

If it is that, what you want.

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Marcus Blackthorn
Royal Assassins Guild
Chained Reactions
#8 - 2016-12-24 07:02:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Marcus Blackthorn
Mark O'Helm wrote:
Since the last Expension the orca is the best single mining ship for highsec. You can mine for hours without the need to return to the station.

If it is that, what you want.


I solo mined with one a couple of times ... but boredom set in long before I was full and I'd dock it up and go find something else to do.

If you get around 500 meters from the asteroid the drone flight time isn't too bad. Still boring as hell though :D

EDIT: Actually I can't remember how much it holds and am too tired to log in and look, I just know it was a lot and I never got close to filling it before I moved on to something else.
Toshiro GreyHawk
#9 - 2016-12-24 08:46:39 UTC
I've been gone a long time but the way we used to use it was as part of a larger mining op.

We'd run missions until we got one with a good amount of rocks in them.

Then we'd all warp in and spread the miners out so that their areas didn't over lap.

The miners would then mine and dump to jet cans which the Orca would tractor to it. At that time, the tractor range of the Orca was like 70 klicks.

Then, we'd have haulers that would empty the Orca to take the mined ore back to the station. This way, the Orca didn't have to leave and take it's mining boosts with it and the haulers didn't have to fly around gathering up the jet cans.


Thus, the Orca served as a central point to gather the ore the fleet had mined and from which the haulers could carry it back to the station.

A lot has changed since then concerning the capacity of the miners themselves so I can't comment on that.

Of course, you wanted to pay attention to whether or not someone was scanning the system but we never had a problem with people doing that.

As to using the Orca to mine itself - we never did that. The ship was way to expensive to use in that manner when a vastly cheaper ship that was designed to mine could do a much better job.

For the tank, I believe we used a combination of shield tanking and hull tanking. I don't remember the details of the tank but there should be an example here somewhere. The basic idea was to put a good damage control module on there that would buff the hull and then put bulkhead reinforcements in the lows to increase the amount of hull damage it could take - which with shields expanders and a hardener as well as using mods to increase the size of the shield the thing had quite a tank. Like I said - there should be someone around here who's posted this.