Science & Industry

since the hulk's yield isn't increasing then people will be switching from hulks to lower yield ships. hence, mining yields will be falling, not rising.

besides, if some one wants to mine a belt clean, they'll still do it.

no it won't. the hulk mines 25% more than a mackinaw.

Thats assuming you dock up and do not use an Orca. Hulks win in a fleet op. Macks have an advantage in solo mining.

Edit: There are several reasons this change will increase ore mined.

Those using barges will mine more ore. Many a Retriever pilot will rejoice.
Solo miners can move to the Mack and take advantage of the hold, increasing yield.
More people will mine as ganking drops. Sure these ships can and will be ganked. But as each gank will take more players to pull off, the ganks per day across New Eden will drop. For example, the days of a solo Thrasher killing a Mack will be gone. (In that vein, all miners should consider rigging with Core Defense Field Extenders, not cargo opts. Cargo opts will not make the ore hold bigger).

Also, if you are worried about ganks, I think a Skiff with 2 MLUs will both out mine and out tank a Hulk that has zero MLUs. But even with 1 MLU the Hulk can have 70% more tank than now, around 36k EHP. The weakest exhumer will still be quite strong.

OTOH, afk mining becomes significantly easier, the skill levels needed to get into a barge should be reduced, solo miners won't have to warp to station or swap to a hauler as often, etc.. Per ship yields may go down, but an increase in casual/afk/newbie mining may make up for the difference.

mining yields are not changing for the hulk at all which is still the high yield ship. If anything this is going to drive down income a little as miners start choosing slightly lower yiield ships to favor the larger ore bays and better tanks in hulk alternative barges. So no belt changes required.

more than half.

People who are afk mining in empire with 1 hulk and 1 orca sitting side by side are not making much to begin with. I love how people keep going, " HULKS ARE MENT FOR FLEET OPS HURRR"

Most miners have 2 or more accounts and there for thats a fleet op. If i were to mine alone with just my 2 mining toons i would STILL use 2 hulks and orca in every 2 hours. If your mining in empire your obv not mining to make profit becuase you would have joined a nullsec mining corp if profit is what your looking at. And all this omg a mack can afk foreverrrr, i fill a jetcan every 6 minutes, thats not forever afk mining if i were to switch to macks.

scordite is the second most valuable ore to mine with plagioclase, pyro and veld sitting not far below bistot. Considering there is a lot more of these ores in highsec then ark in 0.0 the smart miners are doing it in highsec.

Why do most miners seem so clueless.....you mine crokite which is 11th out of 16 in value. All the highsec ores except omber are worth more than crokite.

You can mine half a belt in empire from one spot. Admittedly you don't get rorqual bonuses, but you don't get any dt due to passing gangs.

Most people look at the earnings charts and note, "Hey! Mercoxit at the top! [per m3]" Well, yes it is. The problem is that one cannot mine as many m3 of Mercoxit as one can mine the other ores. This significantly devalues Mercoxit for mining purposes.

The last time I did the math I came up with "Mercoxit is only worth mining when its price per m3 is more than 58% higher than the other ores."

According to Cerlestes's Mercoxit is currently only 23% above Arkonor, 54% above Scordite, and 61% above Plagioclase. So it is just barely better than Plag at the moment.

When I did this calculation over a year ago, it was also at about the same point, though there were more ores above it.

Unless you have run out of Arkonor and Scordite out in w-space or null, there is little reason to get into a Skiff to mine Mercoxit.