Science & Industry

Train the orca. the ability to off load ore into it and boost your fleet is crucial to a good op.

Mining is dead. Just sayin...

Info I'm posting is pretty general and should not be considered exact by any means. Just going off the rough estimates I made on a mining op I did a few days ago in high sec

1 hulk depending on what you are mining (and obviously skills trained) will get you roughly 18m isk per hour roughly (this is what I get per hour mining pyro). This is using the basic hulk skills not trained to level V (so exhmuers IV, using mining drones I, drone interfacing IV, 3 msm II + 2t crystals, 2 MLU II, 1 3% implant). I refer to these as the basic simply because each of these skills can be trained up pretty quickly but finishing each will take time (20 days Exhumers V, 20 days drone interfacing V, mining drones II 8 days). Finishing these 3 skills will push you up to roughly 20m - 21 million

With an orca you can assume roughly 20% yield increase with the basic boosting skills trained + gang link modules, plus the ability to haul roughly 160,000m3 (1 trip to station about every 40 - 60 minutes). IIRC with the orca with maxed boosts/ skills the hauling amount would be roughly 180,000m3 and increase your hulks yeild up to 29% (I think 29% includes the mindlink implant)

So 3 basic hulks mining Pyro would generate around (18m x 3) 54m isk per hour. But you still need to haul this (roughly 12 jetcans)

2 hulks and 1 orca would be ((18m x 2) + 20%) or roughly 43.2m. But you do not need to worry about hauling

Your 3rd option would be to mine with 3 hulks (with the orca / hulk boosting) and switching to the orca every 30 +/- minutes to haul. This means while the orca is mining in the hulk you're still getting some boosts, and while the orca is hauling increased boots, but no additional mining output.

IIRC for the orcas boosts to generate a profit you would need 5 hulks or more mining at the same time (instead of the orca mining as well). but again this dosen't count hauling needs. (5 hulks + orca boosts = 108m isk or 6 hulks = 108m isk). If you had 29% boosts you would need 4 hulks + orca.

Hope this helps.



Oh, one final thing I wanted to add as well. If you decide to not go the orca route one of your hulks should have a number of the boosting skills trained (since many of the boosts can be used without the orca, orca mostly enhances them). The booster should NOT be the hulk that will be hauling as every time it hauls to station the boosts will be lost (when it enters station).

If you are going to train an orca hulk (to mine and haul) train the orca first so you have some way to haul the ore. I would suggest for the orca hulk to train basic hauler (mammoth, whatever) than boosts and finally orca. The orca will require a number of the boosts trained all ready, and this way you can do boosting while waiting on the 24 day +/- wait time you'll be waiting on. This character will most likely be hauling all the time, but one additional option would be to train boosts, retriever than orca so it can mine if you can fit it in between hauling.

Threadjack! Setting up a 2-man operation!

I'm reading with interest the possibilities surrounding a 3-person operation, however I am new to dualboxing and I'm bringing a second pilot online with industrialist goals.

From all I've read, having 2 miners active in the fields is better than having 1 miner and 1 exclusive hauler. My primary pilot has started down the Orca path to better supply foreman boosts and whatnot, but I expect to leave him in his exhumer as his partner comes alongside and zaps rocks too.

Can I get some opinions to validate this?

From a haulage perspective, is it best to use one of the two miners to move all the rocks to a station, or have each one head in as they fill their holds?

Cheers,
-LaMotte

From a pure numbers perspective two hulks should beat one hulk + orca. However, I *think* you'd find that the quality of life benefit of orca + hulk in terms of less repeated hauling to station and slightly wider laser radius necessitating less in-belt moves to outweigh the pure number advantages.

That said, I've not mined anything in years so take with a dollop of salt.

I'll give my own personal experience in multi-boxing mining ops.

Given you are mining the best high-sec ore:
* An orca will boost a hulk mining ability by just over 50%.
* A lone perfect hulk who has to fill up and bring the ore to the station, will do below 10m ISK/h because of the travel time and not having mining upgrades as you will be using expanded cargo to minimize travel times. That is in the assumption you do not gear the hulk as a target practice (aka a bit of tank).
* A perfect hulk with an orca boost will do about 18m isk/hour as he doesn't have to move and can mine almost 100% of the time.
* You can fill the orca, and once the orca is full, travel back to the station while the hulks still mining.

All this is assumed:
Perfect refining or close, orca pilot almost perfect, hulks with exhumer 4 and T2 gear and crystals, 3% mining implants and the mining director implant.

At current prices of ore/minerals, you will be able to maybe push about 36m is/h give or take. 45m is not possible at high-sec.


Personally I'm mining with 4 hulks and an orca, with a 6th hauling the ore from the orca to the station in order to save as much travel time or having to work extra hard to cycle the strip miners.
I'm doing between 80m isk/h on belts I mine every few days, and almost 100m isk/h on belts which hadn't been mined for over 4 days (that is something which also greatly affect mining).

When I started with two hulks and an orca, all only half decent, I could do about 25-30m an hour. It takes awhile to get the orca pilot into a perfect booster and the hulks into all the T2 gear and decent implants.
The best way to also improve the income, is one of the alts be also into industry, which will help you increase income by a few % (depends on what you are making. Can be 40-50% on war times).

All the info and income is from personal experience.
A lone hulk will never ever do 18m isk/h in high sec as that does not take into account none perfect cycles, travel time and more. Especially as a hulk has to move without an orca as the rage is just 15km for the strip miners vs 25K with a good orca booster.


Regarding ice instead of ore, I never gotten into ice mining. Its much more boring and has some risks if you go AFK too much to watch TV or not paying attention, as ice miners have a tendency to be more gank friendly.

also don't forget to train refining up and work your station tax down to maximize profits.. unless you are refining in your own outpost or pos. but definately Orca two Hulks is the best way to go.. the more hulks the better your Orca pilot adds to the yield.

If you only mine in Hulks, then you have to warp them back to dock all the time. Several times per hour. Trust me, you want the Orca.

The optimal is said to be 4 Hulks per Orca, but 2 Hulks and one Orca is going to be much less frustrating than 3 Hulks, even if 3 Hulks might actually give sligtly more ISK/hour.