Science & Industry

I'm interested to hear what you all think about how you choose the ore you mine. Obviously looking at unit price / volume would get you a measure of its worth as we can only get so much ore out of each cycle. But now that we have the new AFK mining buffs, have you reconsidered which ore you target when AFK mining?

I recently jumped back into my retriever to see that I can hold around 25k m3 of ore in my ore hold and with my skills I pull 856 m3/min of ore ( 2568 per cycle) which means it would take 29 min to fill up my hold. I thought "Great! I can AFK mine and check in every 30 min to drop off the ore and return to the belt.

But then I saw how the size of the roid ( units of ore) and the volume of each unit of ore messed with my plan. I realized that I could only be away for a cycle or two on the veld/scordite roids because I would eat up their ore quickly (20k veld in a roid x 0.1 m3 = 2k m3 per roid -> less than one cycle). So I switched to plagioclase which often allows me to go 5 or 6 cycles without having to go back to EVE to switch to a new roid.

Scordite might be better isk/m3 but I'd rather spend less time managing my mining than getting that extra 5-10%.


current Jita prices
Veldspar - 18 isk / 0.1 m3 = 180 isk/m3
Scordite- 30 isk/0.15m3 = 200 isk/m3
Plagioclase - 67.5/0.35m3 = 192 isk/m3

Not sure how exactly you mine but its always a good idea to split your lasers. If you have 2 beams make sure you are hitting 2 separate rocks. This will increase the time between switching lasers.

For mining you need 2 separate plans. One for active mining and one for passive mining. Semi-afk mining should not focus on overall yield or isk per hour but should be around performing whatever else you are doing (work, homework, etc).

Active Mining

• Actively managing lasers
You want to make sure that you aren't running a full cycle on mostly dead rocks

• Using T2 strips with crystals
For obvious reasons

• Mining the most ISK efficient ore
• Mining Drones
I generally take combat drones but some use mining and just ignore belt rats

Passive Mining (AFK)

• Giant Rocks!
You want to run as long as you can with minimal input from you while doing it. It doesn't matter what you mine as it will all be profit anyway

• No Crystals
You won't want to mess with the extra hassle of dealing with crystals and since you are semi-afk, yield isn't as important as time

• Combat Drones
Keep them out and active so you don't have to worry about belt rats

I like Snoozerite, gives you 100 units of knockoutium on refining (after waking)... good for AFK mining.

... Veldspar, use T2 Strips, T2 Veld Crystals, Get a mack, put in a HX5% implant, fit it with 2x MLU IIs, and a DCU, mids are a sml booster II, invul II, 2x cap rechager II (making it perma tank with everything running), put on 5x Hob IIs and 5x Miner IIs, then fly to the "sweet spot" of the asteroid belt (where almost every part of it is within 15kms, then set a new overview tab to just veldspar so you can lock the roids easy, start on the far side and then work your way over to the other until full, then dock... this is semi-afk as you have to monitor it somewhat, and every 15-20 min you will have to dock up and dump your 35k m3 Ore in a pile.

but it's pretty easy on the maint... and you should net 6.3-6.8M per load of veld depending on the market avg, and that will pile up fast with this method, you can easily do many other things while doing this, but I wouldn't simply leave it there... the days of just setting a ship out are still gone, and with good reason, but this is as close as you will get without the risk of returning to a wrecked hull... if you use a Ret you will have to keep an eye on it, as the tank it's there and you could easily be alpha'ed by gankers still.

If you really want to AFK, do ice mining instead of asteroid mining. Point your lasers, turn them on, then come back every half-hour to see how things are going. It's about as passive an ISK-generator as you're going to find apart from PI -- in fact, I think a lot of the people who want to AFK mine should just do PI instead. After all, if your goal is to make ISK without actually doing anything, PI is the best way to accomplish that. You don't even have to be logged in!