Skill Discussions

If you AFK, then a freighter is much faster than an Orca. Most of the time traveling AFK is spent approaching the next gate, and freighters take less time to cover that distance.

Orca is the ship to use when delegated to ganglin support & hauling minerals for mining fleet.

But one should keep in mind that Orca with full cargo rigs and expanders is about as slow as a freighter to warp, has less ehp than t1 cruiser and costs some 400-500mil ISK depending on fitting.

A freighter caries foru times as much, is slow as hell, costs about 800mil ISK and it can't load cargo in space.

In high sec a freighter is better since speed doesn't matter. Orca is best to use when hauling ore in null but not between systems (use jf for this), and even then preferably by sitting safely inside pos shields until needed.

Your BPOs are still safer in a cloaky nullified T3.

Why?

1) The Orca's corp hangar drops no loot and cannot be scanned, and the Orca has a much larger buffer.

2) The Nullification Sub is less agile than any of the other propulsion subs and (AFAIK) there are no bubbles in Hisec.

If your really wanting to get into the trade and hauling buisness you will want both.

Start with the orca.

Indy-Orca-Freighter in that order. Then work on the T2's.

As someone that has transported many billions of ISK of ORE BPO in a cloaky T3, why would anybody be so stupid as to visit a busy trade hub with high-value cargo in a ship that can easily be alpha-ed?

Re-ship to a freighter (faster if AFK) or Orca (slower AFK, but more secure if it fits in corp hangar) and move your cargo with that for the final leg!

EDIT: My research alt recently finished Caldari Freighter 5. Took 42 days with a int > mem attribute mapping, but was well worth the time to get the extra cargo room.

Orca has a corp bay, that you can put stuff in. Depending on corp rights you might be able to take it out again, or others may be able to take it from you The Orca also has an ore bay, which you can put ore into but not minerals (veldspar yes, tritanium no). Finally the Orca has a hangar that you can put unpackaged ships in, i.e. ships with rigs and modules fitted.

And then there's the regular cargo hold. That's the one you expand with skill bonuses, modules and rigs. Works the same way as on any other ship.

To find total mineral haul capacity, add the regular cargo bay volume to the corp bay volume (but test the corp bay first, to see if you can put stuff into it, see what is in it, and take stuff out again. Try with 1 tritanium).

The main purpose of an ORCA is as a high sec mining fleet booster.

It does make a good mini freighter with max skills,full T2 cargo rigs and T2 expanders I think you can get the cargo hold over 100,000 m3 and then you have the 50,000 m3 ore hold, a 40,000m3 corp hanger(be carefull in a large corp with this one as anyone with corp hanger acess can fly up to your Orca and pull stuff out of the corp hanger divisions they have access to at corp offices or POSes. And finally you have a 400,000m3 ship maintenance bay that can hold fully fitted ships which can also be accessed by corp members.

The advantage of an orca as a hauler is that the corp hanger is unscanable and nothing will drop from there if it is popped. And it has fitting slots so you can tank it. It can fit a decent shield tank and with bulkhead reinforcement and a damage controller II you get a mean hull tank making it very hard to kill, or you can add some reactor upgrades and fit it with a 100 mn microwarp allowing for a 10 second align and warp while traveling.

For moving high bulk material though a freighter is the way to go. with good skills a freighter can hold well over 800,000m3 of stuff. for moving bulky minerals around for manufacturing you can not beat a freighter.

If you are buying minerals in a trade hub to haul out to where ever you are manufacturing and needing several freighter loads per week you can always use the same mineral compression trick that null sec alliances use.

The idea is to buy what ever modules you can find(mostly meta 1 and 2 items) that are selling at or below the value of the minerals you get from reprocessing them. these modules are far less volume than the raw minerals you get from reprocessing them.( i.e. mineral compression) For example the large meta 1 800mm autocannon refines into way more minerals volume wise than what the module takes up in your cargo hold.

Haul a full load of cheap modules back to your manufacturing system and reprocess them giving you far more minerals than you would have gotten from a full load of raw minerals. You can also shop around for the right modules to get some of the higher end minerals from the reprocessing. If you are only a few jumps from a trade hub than it may not be worth the effort, but if the logistics of getting the bulk minerals you need is a problem this can really help.