Mining Report: Orca + Hulk + Retriever

[RobinGBrown]

So having finally got hold of an Orca I tried a little mining op today. Took two jumps to a system (Augnais >> Alsottobier?) with no stations and there were plenty of asteroids in the belts unlike some other systems where they've been mined out this weekend.

The Orca has 40K cargo hold + 40K corporate hangar + a ship maintenance bay that can hold two mining barges or exhumers

I stored a hulk and a retriever fitted for my miners in the ship bay, had my miners in frigates, fleeted up and flew to the target belt.

Boarding ships from the ship maintenance bay is easy - just right click the Orca and 'open ship maintenance bay' to view the ships stored inside, right click a ship and select the 'board' option and you swap from whatever your flying to the selected ship (must be within 1500m). If your miners can also put up a fight they could fly combat frigs/cruisers to and from the mining site and swap into them if pirates arrive.

The Orca also provides a fitting service allowing you to rejig your ship in space - remember to take some spares if you plan on doing this.

For mining theres a choice of jet canning or staying close to the orca and moving ore directly into it. The Orca has a tractor beam range bonus so it can tractor cans from quite a distance.

I filled both the cargohold and the corp hangar in under an hour so for long sessions a dedicated hauler would still be needed, however the Orca does give you a good reserve of secure space to use. It would be possible for the assisting characters to fly maxed cargo blockade runners and swap them in and out to make the most of a single trip. This would only work wioth blocakde runners as all the other transport and industrial ships are too big to fit more than one in the ship maintenance bay.

Important point to note - you can't store a ship in the ship maintenance bay if its got any cargo in it other than charges (ammo)

I'm training up cloaking for wormhole mining expeditions...

Update: Day Two - I now have two hulks mining (although one is only with ordinary strip miners) and it took me exactly an hour to fill the Orca. Both the hulks had only one mining laser upgrade so I'm going to refit with dual MLU for tomorrow.

Interesting to note that the Orca has a fitting service so you can reconfigure your hulks on the fly - I'm now carrying around a few spares in the corp hangar so I can quickly switch to ice mining if I want to or swap mining/combat/logistics drones around.

Next step is to reopen the account with a hauler pilot so I can do longer sessions if I want to.

[Souca]

Cool. Sounds like it's a boxers dream ship. Even if you can't fit an Itty 5 in it, I'd have my hauler fly it out there anyway since she can't really fly anything else.

As for wormhole, you'll likely need more than just a cloak. I'm treating it as more dangerous than 0.0 as there aren't any stations you can dock to for safety.

- Souca -

[Alptraum]

I want to start exploring wormholes as well but I don't feel anyone under 20m sp's will safely live threw any kind of confrontation with a sleeper...so either I pump up my main bigtime, or I pool all my iskies and buy another character that's already pumped up and able to smack a sleeper around.

Orca's are amazing from what i've seen, they truely do pump up the yeild a ton, as well as hauling..although its very easy to overload your orca with a few hulks in a mining fleet.

Current Eve Goals: 100 billion Isk seems to easy of a goal to achieve, I'd rather set my goals a bit higher, and earn enough isk to purchase a 75million SP character...caldari pvp'er...this I believe is considered a rather godly character, and from what i've seen in the character bazaar area..will cost ya a pretty penny....so im setting my sites on something like this to work towards. I will use my main and alts to expand my working capital till I can buy out one of these godly characters and then become the terror or 0.0 :) hehe

[RobinGBrown]

Hehe Thats an impressive goal Alptraum, I salute you. I suppose I've always wanted to make my own characters - however the ghost training change will make creating new characters 25% more expensive than old ones that gained the benefit of ghost training (grr at EVE devs for that).

I'm going to try and do an hour's mining (enough to fill the Orca's holds) most days - hopefully better miners will minimise the time required - that to me seems to be a fulfillable goal while my chars train up for other abilities

I'm still interested in joint mining ops though - would be nice to have a couple of squads in a fleet of miners/haulers/orcas/defenders

Regarding wormholes - as I haven't done anything about them yet - would a pair of 13-14m SP characters be okay? Maybe if a group of us went through? Although that sounds like a recipe for losing all of them...

Jump clones are really useful in that situation - my 'main' has +5 implants so if I have to play her somewhere risky I can use a jump clone with no implants - then if she's killed I don't lose the +5s. I'll be opening my 'main' account in about four weeks, when I've got a miner sufficently trained to transfer, so will be looking for additional activities then, going to be training towards a Marauder and/or Strategic Cruiser.

[Alptraum]

75million + characters seem to be averaging about 25-30billion to buy outright....might seem high, might not...to me thats just the price you gotta pay..no way can I start a fresh toon and train up to that level without spending the next 5 years..at which point those same toons will now be nealry 150million skillpoints. so If u cant beat em buy em right.

Mining/Trading up 100billion is an easily attainable goal...its just a very long grind as I figured it, like you've said you mine for an hour each day, so many times a week per month, continuing to do that will eventually allow you to hit that 100b, although realisticly its gonna take you a very very long time, better luck using this strat to build your isk capital to a certain point then heavily invest that nestegg into manufacturing or stock options from trusted corps...much faster/larger return values on some of that, but thats not to say the mindless mining grind can't bring in the same returns.

Some buddies have rented a 0.0 spot where they run nearly 24/7 mining ops..and when hostiles come into the area they bribe them off with isk..so operations nearly never stop..it just depends how you set yourself up and who you know really in game. But I mean if your not able to have fun playing the game why keep playing right.

Im also open to mining ops with anyone almost anytime...though work right now has me so busy I dont get to do much lately except log on to add more skills to the queue and read a few eve emails.

in regard to sleepers..im honestly not sure..i've read that they hit prety hard, so unless we go in with some serious skills and good ships it's probably gonna just turn into a gank fest with us being the guys getting ganked...my piloting skills are only up to a raven and that's not fully tweaked out for shield tanking or cruise missles yet.

[d0z3rr]

I thought I would have covetors this week but realised I still need to train mining barge 5...and I'm at 3 now. ARGH!!!!!

[nomenquis]

in regard to sleepers..im honestly not sure..i've read that they hit prety hard, so unless we go in with some serious skills and good ships it's probably gonna just turn into a gank fest with us being the guys getting ganked...my piloting skills are only up to a raven and that's not fully tweaked out for shield tanking or cruise missles yet.

One raven (if fittet for tanking) should be plenty for a class 1 wh. Just make sure you're in a class 1, and bookmark the exit :)
We've managed to clear a class 2 site with a drake and 2 cruisers.

kind regards

[Alptraum]

Yeah my main character is rather all over the place in way of skills..im not 100% confident I have enough of the right skills at present to fly my raven into an encounter and survive..im likely more of a liability, although im always up for a few good laughs...



One raven (if fittet for tanking) should be plenty for a class 1 wh. Just make sure you're in a class 1, and bookmark the exit :)
We've managed to clear a class 2 site with a drake and 2 cruisers.

kind regards

[RobinGBrown]

You need to be sure about your tank before everything else, DPS is secondary to a good tank in my opinion (but hey, I'm a tank at heart).

I'd have assumed that for wormhole exploration a good cruiser or battleship tank would be sufficient - i.e. something that can withstand lvl 4 missions - ther's plenty of lvl 4 mission fits on battleclinic so grab one of those and train for it.

I'll have my main back online in a while and she can fly a curse/pilgrim so I'll start to have a poke around then - she has all the astrometrics required as well.

Again I'd be up for working with other people - even though that's not a multiboxer trait...

[nomenquis]

I'd have assumed that for wormhole exploration a good cruiser or battleship tank would be sufficient - i.e. something that can withstand lvl 4 missions - ther's plenty of lvl 4 mission fits on battleclinic so grab one of those and train for it.


Just a word of warning, if you're going in there with several ships make sure they _all_ can take a beating. Aggro from sleepers works completely different from 'normal' mobs. They've got a tendency to switch to more fragile targets / hit ewf ships first.
And if one small ship gets warp scrambled it's pretty much gg for it.