EVE General Discussion

if you don't mind the expedition lifestyle, go gas mining in wormholes and ignore lowsec ore alltogether. much more money to be made that way.

i do but am chased off by sleeper rates. Hell im chased off by low sec rats cant deal with rats of any kind in a prospect.

Hence me asking or a expedition ship that can mine, kill low sec rats, or a mining support ship that can haul kill rats and not be a easy target.

And while im scanning more sites that often have sleepers already on grid, i could be mining ore or ice in hi sec with orca support with less risk. The time spent and the luck and risk involved is high, the isk i can make from doing is good but i can do better mining ice in Hi sec with orca support. That's the problem. But yes i do mine gas in worm holes it is viable those not efficient but I'm not talking about has mining talking about low sec. This is going round in circles all im saying is they could give us the tools to make expeditions into low sec or even null more viable.

OP: Would increasing the ore hold of the Prospect address your problem, or is more about the yield rate?

Its not often you meet people in this game who try to do low sec mining, first of all congratulations to you for doing it. I just dabbled with it for lol's, in other words did it because it was not the accepted wisdom to do so. I last did it before the Propsect came out, sadly the Prospect is not very good, when I brought one to NPC 0.0, the tank to deal with rats is just too appalling.

The ninja lifestyle has been continuously nerfed by CCP, the most important one was the removal of the belts that needed to be scanned, now every loser can warp straight to them.

You obviously want to control your risk, which is why WH space is not for you.

Your ideas have merit, but sadly you are wasting your time, CCP hates miners, they see you as cannon fodder for the HTFU players, they will never listen to people who want to do ninja type stuff and be a challenge to catch, they want you to give easy kills to people who generally are not very good at the game, your place is to run around in a flying coffin that is useless and give fun content to these people, just read anything that CCP Falcon says about this subject.

The Prospect was only a partial move in the right direction and I do give them some credit for this, but its obvious that no one in CCP tried to fit one to actually mine in low sec or 0.0 NPC, it just cannot handle the rats,. it is therefore a steaming pile of junk and they should be ashamed of that as game designers. I trained one toon into it and regretted that lost SP that is how bad it sucks.

Sadly your sensible suggestion will be drowned out by the HTFU forum trolls, but you have my respect sir.

Maybe make one mineral exclusive to lowsec ore(s)? That should seriously drive up demand/value.


Mining in lowsec can be fun, whether it's ninja or organized ops with PVP gangs on close call (or your PVP alt close by).


But it's mostly pointless atm given that you can get the same minerals from ore in more secure space.

I know a few guys who occasionally mine, but in 2 years roaming lowsec I picked up on dscan maybe 10 ventures and just about zero barges/exhumers.

I have no idea, mate. Though it wouldn't even need to be exclusive: just playing around with the abundance/rarity of the minerals in the ores could have the same effect (increase value of lowsec ore).

But anyway, it's different objectives. Null is about creating organized industrial activity. Lowsec would be the ideal place to create fun industrial activity. Fun = pew pew.

Just look at dotlan ship/pod kills 24h in Black Rise vs. any nullsec region. You'll see much more PVP activity, and distributed in most systems. The ideal place for some more 'thrilling' and engaging rock-munching, if it wasn't so pointless profit-wise.

The OP has some merit I think. There is something to be said for a pocket Orca that is about one third the size and serves a similar set of functions as a command link booster, ore hold, and basic additional defense for a small group of mining frigates.

Since we're talking about a tech I ship base it on the same tenants used to birth the Venture. A lightweight industrial ship with a moderate ore hold, say 20k. If you're feeling generous give it the very low signature radius and built in +2 warp strength. This way it still requires you to be situationally aware to keep it safe and alive. Give it modest tech I hauler fitting options allowing for an ok tank and some utility. Adding mobile fitting abilities allowing group members to refit on the fly in case there is a need to say change from ore to gas mining would be a definite plus, but not a necessity. A drone bay allowing for a flight of un-bonused medium drones for defense. Finally the ability to carry one command link allows it to directly contribute to a mining fleet's bottom line.

There is the strong argument that one could use a deep space transport or even a Miasmos to fill at least part of this task, but neither ship is very maneuverable or stealthy and are not well suited to keeping up with a Venture gang. The main way to survive in low-sec, and why the Venture is successfully able to survive there, is mobility. Creating a more mobile ore transport to support the Venture does not seem unreasonable.

The Prospect I think is a good ship, but only a tangential upgrade to the Venture. Without the Venture's drone bay you're left with the choice of tanking NPCs or moving. I think not having the option to kill basic low-sec NPCs is a significant disadvantage that is perhaps unfairly hindering the Prospect.