Science & Industry

Ye old question I couldn't remember the math on it. I have 3 miners, I used to fly an orca. With the ship changes I am not sure about the numbers now. Should I carry out my 3 miners or hop back in an Orca and do 2 retrievers and an orca?

I'm sorry. The question is should I fly 3 miners or 2 miners and 1 orca.

And if you knew the answer you would have never commented with something that had nothing to do with the question.

i knew the answer bc i can google and find 20+ threads on the subject, 3 of them with very detailed maths. gj at lazy

none of the ships have been changed.

I think the math would in general still be in favour of the three miners scenario, as the perfect bonus for the Orca is capped at

2.5% (Mining Forman Laser Optimazation II) * 5 (Mining Director) * 1.5 (Warfare Link Specalist) * 1.15 (Industrial Command Ship) * 1.5 (Mining Foreman Mindlink) = 32.34%

And that's perfect skills plus an expensive mindlink. So you shouldn't really consider an Orca in most cases if you have not at least three miners. Most cases? Well, there's travel time to your reprocessing location and the advantage of the Orca's cargo and ore hold. Complicates the equation a bit and makes a clear answer too complex.

But in general I would think, that you'll be better of with three mining chars compared to two miners and an Orca.

you forgot to add the yield bonus from the mind link, that extra 5 % makes 2 miners + orca > 3 miners.

also if you time it right, you can warp to station, dock up, undock and restart boosts so you never drop boosts while hauling.

That was the first thing I added when I got rid of the Salvager for the Salvage Drones.

The OP asked about retrievers not hulks.

This changes everything.

May I also say good job going with retrievers as hulk = gank now in high sec without a question.

One major question is what sec of space you are mining.

The reason for the question is the retriever only has room for one full set of drones.
Since you will want them to increase yield you have 2 options.

In a 1.0 or 0.9 with no rats you can use all miners and still get max yield.

If you go into areas with rats one now has to drop the mining drones and have a set of combat drones.
It's at this point where you can see the orca tip the scale in it's favor as it's compared to the last retriever with combat drones.

The orca can also run a shield transporter to help on gank attempts.

With the 300-395 loss in yield due to lack of mining drones the orca as your 3rd does well once again.
Actual yield loss is around 27% with the missing 3rd retriever.

If you use mining drones on the orca with light drones to defend this can shrink further. 20%~

If you are saving more than that on transport you get more yield. I doubt that will happen but you should be real close.

For myself I'd rather have the orca with the shield transfer and make the hauling easy on myself even if the loss was around 5% less yield making it into station per hour.