Ships & Modules

For a mining pos, you'll only need a small control tower of your choice, a compression array and a Intensive reprocessing array (low/null sec only version). With that you'll need some fuel block (1 per hour) and charters of the faction space you're in, but keep in mind that in low sec people will not hesitate to wreck your pos to dust even if empty, so keep it anchored and online only when you need it and put it back in station or in your orca when not used.

Not sure if using your orca at the station is a good idea, a single command destroyer could come or undock and warp your orca 100km away from the station and bump it until his friends come. You would be better keeping it in the pos shield.

For the orca boost, you need to train the skills related to Mining Foreman, so in order : Leadership I, Mining Foreman to V and Mining Director to I at least and V for tech 2 mining foreman links. And for the refining skills, these are the same skills that you need for each kind of mining crystals, each level of "Ore" Processing adding 2% of yield.

A couple of points to bear in mind:

1. A maximum skill Orca will give about 25% boost - if you have fewer than 4 barges in your fleet, you'll harvest more ore by bringing another barge.

2. One goal of the recently introduced Brain in a Box (BIAB) was to let CCP get rid of off-grid boosting. They haven't yet published the details but I wouldn't count on being able to boost a mining fleet from the safety of a POS forcefield for more than another month or two.

I was afraid I was misreading your OP when you mentioned solo mining ops. But to answer your question no there is not; only 1 active pilot per account. And on that note were you planning on leaving the Orca in the POS to boost (pilotless) because that wouldn't work either.

Well... here's the thing...

You can't actually "dock" at a POS. You can leave your ship there (right-click your capacitor HUD --> Leave Ship) and crawl into another one sitting nearby (right-click ship --> Enter Ship)...
But this leaves the ship you left behind without a pilot and thus completely inert (skills won't apply, modules will deactivate).

Moreover, leaving your ship in space (POS or not) makes it vulnerable to theft.
If someone had your POS password or is a part of your corporation, they can enter the POS shields, jump into the Orca (provided they have the necessary skills) and fly off with it.

What you are seeing (in a nutshell) is people using the Orca as a giant semi-truck. They park it someplace, unload the actual ship they will be doing stuff with, go do their thing, return with goodies, and repeat until the Orca is full. Then they pack everything up and leave.



Side note: in addition to Fuel Blocks, you want to bring enough Strontium to full up the POS's secondary fuel bay. If someone attacks your POS (which is likely in low-sec) the Strontium will allow the POS to enter "Reinforced Mode"... which will buy you time to escape when you wake up the next day.

yes

one in the orca, one mining.

Damn alright, thanks guys.

Don't mine.

not sure if it still operates, but there was a free, public Otela mining fleet going there for a while with full Orca boosts.

Well - there are many that will give you boosts and buddies to mine woth - but not set you up in the sense of give you ships. Provi is the place to carebear mine.