Mining OP progress

[Redbeard]

Howdy,

Just wanted to share my current progress. I ended up with 6 accounts, thats pretty busy but managable.

Right now I have:

2 pilots in hulks.
1 pilot in an iteron mk 5 hauling
1 pilot in a retriever.
2 pilots in beginner ships.

I've just spent the last of my money buying 4+ implants for everybody, now its time to work on more ships / skill books.

1 of the hulk pilots will be getting an orca (when i can afford it) and his hulk will go to one of the other miners.

Thats it!

[calyco27]

sounds awesome dude. I'm noticing a distinct lack of info around for eve on the actual gameplay side of boxing it though. Currently making a few notes and stuff and screenshots of my gameplay to try and make a guide on it, if your interested at all you could help work on this and try expanding the amount of eve boxers?

[Grondir]

Nice setup.

I'm still in the process of learning the basic skills and completing the tutorials.

I have 4 accounts at the moment, still solo playing each one until all the tutorials and Sisters of Eve arc are done. Got a set of 3 +5 & 3 +4's for the 'main', think i'll just get +4's for the others (i.e. full set of +4's is cheaper than 1 +5!!, wish i'd known before I purchase the +5's :()

Will eventually have an orca and 3 hulks, but may end up with a 5th account for some more protection if required.

Hope the mining operation is successful! Maybe we should form a mining consortium :D

[Kedash00]

i had 3 accounts, but shut them off, might be time to dust them off and get back to it since cata didn't really "do it for me". I keep getting emails saying come back to eve for a free 14 day trial, but when i try to log in they want me to put in a character's name on that account to verify i'm the owner, and i can't for the life of me remember what i named the characters or which account they are on.
Anyone know a way around this?

[calyco27]

long shot.. does evemon have the names saved or EFT?

[Duane]

long shot.. does evemon have the names saved or EFT?
Evemon has names in it for sure. I think I found them in a text file in my Evemon folder.

[Redbeard]

I had the same problem with not remembering which chars were on which account. When you try to put in the char name, if you get the wrong name there is a link that says File a petition or something like that. If you send one in just tell them youre trying to come back to the game and remember your uname/pwd but cant remember the char names. They emailed me char names for 3 of my accounts. Got me past that step.

Im interested in getting mining together but honestly it will have to wait til I head to 0.0 at some point. I already destroy belts and its going to get even worse... so high sec mining cant really sustain too many miners.

[Duane]

I had the same problem with not remembering which chars were on which account. When you try to put in the char name, if you get the wrong name there is a link that says File a petition or something like that. If you send one in just tell them youre trying to come back to the game and remember your uname/pwd but cant remember the char names. They emailed me char names for 3 of my accounts. Got me past that step.

Im interested in getting mining together but honestly it will have to wait til I head to 0.0 at some point. I already destroy belts and its going to get even worse... so high sec mining cant really sustain too many miners.
Have you thought about using exploration to find gravametric sites? The ones I found seemed to have a ton of rocks.

[Redbeard]

No, to be honest I dont know much about that. Do you mind giving me/us a run down?

- How do you do it? Skill intensive?
- Dangerous? belt rats / other players etc
- Can be done in high sec?

Thanks.

[Duane]

No, to be honest I dont know much about that. Do you mind giving me/us a run down?

- How do you do it? Skill intensive?
- Dangerous? belt rats / other players etc
- Can be done in high sec?

Thanks.
This is all off of memory since I haven't played in a while.

-Exploration isn't very skill intensive to start. You just need one of the racial frigs with scanning bonuses. More skills just shorten your scan times and make your scans more accurate.

-I don't remember seeing anything in a grav site that was bigger than a frig.

-I did all my exploration in high sec.

[Meeo]

To further expand

the general rough rule of thumb for high sec grav sites is that the ores will be the equivalent to a system of one or two security statuses lower.

Ie, in a 0.9 you'd expect to find stuff like Omber, which you'd find in a 0.7.
In a 0.8 you'd find something like a bit of Kernite, obviously found in 0.6 and below.
In a 0.6 you could get some Jaspet or similar.

Or you just find bigger roids.

The rats that spawn in the belts will not be harder then anything currently in the system.

Also, Gravs sites have to be probed out as stated above.
To probe things out you will need Science 2 or 3 and the Astrometrics Skill, you generally want astrometrics 4 or 5, to be able to launch enough probes to scan it down faster.

There are several youtube/guides online for probing, i currently do not have know of them offhand, i would also have to look them up.

Edit: Also take note that you may run into other anomalies when you start probing things. I would highly recommend staying away from Wormholes, until your are more comfortable with the game.

[Yopie Ismypie]

I started playing Eve about 6 months ago and I can honestly say it has the steepest learning curve I have ever experienced in a MMO!!

Right now I am playing on 7 accounts with a setup of:

3 Hulk miners
1 Orca/ trader
1 Freighter/soon to be hulk miner
1 inventor/manufacturer
1 Pvp pilot

6 of my guys are into PI and they live in 0.0 space.

The indy stuff is good, but for me the pvp is where I am having the most fun.

All the other toons are there just to support my pvp habit...lol!

[Mickthathick]

Damn I shouldn't of read this thread, I put my 3 accounts to bed about 4 or 5 months ago after realising that I had paid good money for the third account to just have it sit there and train skills :p

Kinda over WoW a little though, maybe I might start playing again this week...

[RobinGBrown]

This is all off of memory since I haven't played in a while.

-Exploration isn't very skill intensive to start. You just need one of the racial frigs with scanning bonuses. More skills just shorten your scan times and make your scans more accurate.

-I don't remember seeing anything in a grav site that was bigger than a frig.

-I did all my exploration in high sec.

Spawns at exploration sites will be in line with the security rating of the system and the size of the site. There's some exploration guides on the evelopedia site - look in the main EVE site forums for the guides section there will be links there.

[Redbeard]

I read some info on it... seems like it might be a big time investment doing the probing before I can find the sites though, hrm.

[d0z3rr]

Can someone guess exactly how many days IRL it would take before you can do the probing?

[Duane]

Probing isn't that skill intensive:

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Probing#Skills

Astrometrics requires Science 3 as does Astrometric Rangefinding.

[RobinGBrown]

I don't think Redbeard meant that it would take time for his characters to train the astrometrics skills but that it would take time for him to actually do the probing task himself.

Probing is one of the few actual player skills in EVE and it takes a lot of real time to practice and get good at it as it's quite counterintuitive at first (or the GUI is badly designed!) it's also a bit hit and miss as you always find a lot of wormholes but not very many mining sites as there's a good chance there will be no gravimetric site in a given system.

So scanning for gravimetric sites in order to clean them out with miners means probing down signals in a whole constellation which might take an hour or three before you can fleet up and start mining, all for only a small upgrade in the quality or quantity of the ore to be mined.

[Duane]

I don't think Redbeard meant that it would take time for his characters to train the astrometrics skills but that it would take time for him to actually do the probing task himself.

Probing is one of the few actual player skills in EVE and it takes a lot of real time to practice and get good at it as it's quite counterintuitive at first (or the GUI is badly designed!) it's also a bit hit and miss as you always find a lot of wormholes but not very many mining sites as there's a good chance there will be no gravimetric site in a given system.

So scanning for gravimetric sites in order to clean them out with miners means probing down signals in a whole constellation which might take an hour or three before you can fleet up and start mining, all for only a small upgrade in the quality or quantity of the ore to be mined.

I'm not a great player by any means and it never took me more than 15 - 20 minutes to probe a site down in a frig with scanning bonuses.

[Redbeard]

Yes Robin has it right... at this point my main guy has 52m SP and 5m sitting banked that i can spend on whatever that i got back from learning skills.. so not worried about the skill investment.

If its 15 or 20 minutes and it will give me rocks that will last more than 1.5 cycles from an exhumer, sounds like it might be worthwhile. If its a few hours then definitely not.

Hrm.

[d0z3rr]

Yes Robin has it right... at this point my main guy has 52m SP and 5m sitting banked that i can spend on whatever that i got back from learning skills.. so not worried about the skill investment.

If its 15 or 20 minutes and it will give me rocks that will last more than 1.5 cycles from an exhumer, sounds like it might be worthwhile. If its a few hours then definitely not.

Hrm.

Yeah, it's worth it to try it at least once. I am considering this too if I return to my miners.

[d0z3rr]

(or the GUI is badly designed!).

It took me a looong time to get used to Eve's UI. Mostly the small text...and the map was kinda confusing too.

[Redbeard]

Tomorrow everyone will be in a retriever or above, one iteron 5 still hauling. When I can afford the orca the hauler will grab their own hulk, which will be sweet. Not managing 1 minute mining laser times is sweet =P

Now im starting to think about what im going to train for for mission running since mining isnt a horribly deep skill path to take (dont get me wrong i have a good few months left if i want to take them all the way).

Of course you could just have 6 killers but thats no fun. Was thinking maybe:

1 booster in a tengu built for that
3 straight up killers
1 logistics for repping
1 hauler / salvager

Just a thought, if you ask most people about dual boxing missions theyll say "run two missions at once" lol but I couldnt handle that... just want my people to be out together.

Curious what everyone else has going on.

[Duane]

Tomorrow everyone will be in a retriever or above, one iteron 5 still hauling. When I can afford the orca the hauler will grab their own hulk, which will be sweet. Not managing 1 minute mining laser times is sweet =P

Now im starting to think about what im going to train for for mission running since mining isnt a horribly deep skill path to take (dont get me wrong i have a good few months left if i want to take them all the way).

Of course you could just have 6 killers but thats no fun. Was thinking maybe:

1 booster in a tengu built for that
3 straight up killers
1 logistics for repping
1 hauler / salvager

Just a thought, if you ask most people about dual boxing missions theyll say "run two missions at once" lol but I couldnt handle that... just want my people to be out together.

Curious what everyone else has going on.

What I used to do for level 4s was this set up. Some people may laugh or think it's horrible but it worked well for me.


1 Cruise CNR
2 Sentry/Support Domis
1 Orca

The CNR pilot is my oldest/highest skilled character and the one I focused on when playing.

My two Dominix pilots were running salvagers and shield transfers in the highs, drone and cap mods in the mids and capacitor power relays in the lows. Their set ups were totally cap stable so I could perma run the shield transfers if someone else got aggro instead of the CNR. They were also set to assist my main character.

The Orca pilot was there to tractor and loot.

I was always able to loot and salvage before any ninja salvagers showed up.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

They were also set to assist my main character.
Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by "set to assist?" I've basically been using fleet broadcast targets with the fleet UI up for some of that, but if there's a better way to assist targeting for missions, I'd love to hear it.

[Redbeard]

With drones at least you can have them protect somebody, that might be what he means... so if somebody attacks his main, the drones will respond..

and skilled drones in a domi are MEAN ( i know, my main guy has gallente bs 5 and maxed drone skills ). 2 domis like that would tear stuff up. Couple that with the CNR which is a beast on its own... thats a good setup.

My problem with the drones is I dont like to have to deal wtih them getting blown up, and i dont like dealing with disconnects and having to reclaim the drones, too big of a PITA.

Regarding the orca... i know it has all kinds of tractor bonuses and a big cargo hold so that makes sense. Did you salvage from it? I need to go look and see how many highs it has.

[Duane]

Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by "set to assist?" I've basically been using fleet broadcast targets with the fleet UI up for some of that, but if there's a better way to assist targeting for missions, I'd love to hear it.
Stolen from the Eve forums because I wanted to articulate it well:


In the drone window, expand so you can see your drones in space. (it's usually best if you have them all in a drone group, but not essential). Select the drone, drones or drone group you want and then right click. Select 'Assist' from the menu and choose your fleet mate.


With drones at least you can have them protect somebody, that might be what he means... so if somebody attacks his main, the drones will respond..

and skilled drones in a domi are MEAN ( i know, my main guy has gallente bs 5 and maxed drone skills ). 2 domis like that would tear stuff up. Couple that with the CNR which is a beast on its own... thats a good setup.

My problem with the drones is I dont like to have to deal wtih them getting blown up, and i dont like dealing with disconnects and having to reclaim the drones, too big of a PITA.

Regarding the orca... i know it has all kinds of tractor bonuses and a big cargo hold so that makes sense. Did you salvage from it? I need to go look and see how many highs it has.

No salvaging from the Orca, the Domis each have several salvagers. It basically works like this:

The CNR and drones kill stuff before it reaches the fleet. The Orca and its 2-3 salvagers drag all the wrecks in close. You loot to the Orca's cargo hold and the Domis, positioned close to the Orca, can salvage the wrecks.

[RobinGBrown]

Interesting setup Duane. I've currently got one of my gals almost done with a sentry drone domi setup. It's a damn good idea to use the Orca with its tractor beam bonus (plus tank and cargo) to grab the wrecks and then salvage them with a different ship.

CNR is Caldari Navy Raven right?

Orca has 3 highs did you consider two tractors and say a gang link module or shieldtransfer/remote armor rep?

[Duane]

Interesting setup Duane. I've currently got one of my gals almost done with a sentry drone domi setup. It's a damn good idea to use the Orca with its tractor beam bonus (plus tank and cargo) to grab the wrecks and then salvage them with a different ship.

CNR is Caldari Navy Raven right?

Orca has 3 highs did you consider two tractors and say a gang link module or shieldtransfer/remote armor rep?
Yeah, CNR is Caldari Navy Raven.

As far as the gang module, that's a good idea as well but I found that I was killing stuff quickly enough that the extra tractor beam was worth more than any extra boost.

[d0z3rr]

I'm basically doing what Redbeard is. Right now I have:

-Bestower hauler (24k cargo space, meh), which isn't too active hauling when I'm mining, need to change that :)
-3 Hulks, right now they have t2 lasers with t1 crystals, they should have the t2 crystal in a few days, MLU 2s. They do have drones but depending on my laziness level I may or may not deploy them
-Hurricane, used to "scare" canflippers away in highsec and kill the annoying rats that show up

The hurricane character has leadership skills and is the booster. Need to get him the mindlink. He is working his way towards an Orca too.

Once I get an Orca, will it still be able to boost when I dock at a station? I guess the Bestower will be useless at that point and I'll convert that character to a fighter.

[Redbeard]

No you cant boost from in station, you need to be undocked in the same system.


These guys are saying that with an op that size an orca makes a good dual purpose hauler / booster... thats what im gonna try.

Man, right now I am trying to decide between saving for an orca and getting more hulks.

On the one hand, getting the orca will let me free up the hauler to mine (adds one retriever). On the other hand, the orca pilot is also my most skilled miner, so ill be losing some m3 / min there initially.

Orca is 450ish million seems like, with which i could buy 2 more hulks... problem is, my hauler is going to have an increasingly hard time keeping up with all those hulks in her iteron 5.

Last bit is im mining in a 1.0 system... for no particular reason, this is where i was when i logged in. Id like to go to a .5 and potentially get some plagioclase and omber, but .5 usually means more non mining activities, more missions etc, which means potentially more flippers. I guess if I had the orca I wouldnt need to worry as much about can flippers...hmmmm.

Sorry, that was a bit of a brain dump.

What do you guys think, should I just keep saving for the orca?

[Redbeard]

Well the good news is all of my people are officially in barges.

My main is skill-wise prepared to rock an orca, i just cant afford one right now so he is running a hulk.
I have another dude in a hulk and a third pilot is skill-ready for the hulk but i just dont have the isk.
Other 4 people are about a month off from getting into a hulk, mostly for astrogeology 5 and mining barge 5.

Using evemon, I planned out how long it would take my least skilled dude to basically "finish" mining and we're looking at 167 days, yikes =P But that would be taking me all the way, would get exhumers 5, t2 crystals for all mineral types, ice mining 5... drone interfacing 5 for mining drones, etc etc. Im not sure if ill take them that far, ive been kind of getting more interested in looking at some missions after getting everybody into a hulk. If i dont go to low sec / 0.0, anything past omber for refining is at this point just training for a potential development in the future. That could shave quite a bit of time off if i stop after getting the high sec ores only.

Anyways, rambling.

I think ill make another post about mission strategies to see what you guys are up to. My group is at the formative stage since except for my main and my main alt, the rest of the people dont really have many skills so I can take them whatever way I want.

[RobinGBrown]

Redbeard, If it would help, I can lend you some ISK for a month or two to get you over the cashflow problem.

I was looking at the 'Perfect Miner' skillset in EVEMon yesterday as well and it does seem to split out nicely into hisec/losec/nullsec sets of skill. Don't forget that you'll only need 4 out of the 6(?) hisec ore processing skills because not all asteroids are available in all areas. e.g. I'm in hisec Amarr space and I only ever see Kernite, Pyroxeres, Scordite, and Veldspar, so training Plagioclases or Omber is pointless.

Most of my hulk pilots are trained for ice harvesting as well so I can switch around when I feel like doing something different.

I also think that good drone skills are essential as Hulks ned to be able to fight back against the rats when I'm not paying attention to them. I've noticed that the rats in 0.5 are significantly more dangerous than those in 0.6 and good drone skills makes the difference there.

With crystals I've bought and researched blueprints for the ore types I need so I can make my own T1 crystals from ore I mine myself. Have tried using T2 crystals but it feels as if the extra cost does not really give that big a benefit and they're so bulky that they're a pain to move around.

[d0z3rr]

Anyone know when the fleet boost is calculated during mining? Is it right when the cycle finishes? So technically if you had an Orca, you would want to only dock when everyone is in a mining cycle, and never dock when one is about to finish, else they would not receive the boost of the Orca and other fleet boosts.

I'm definitely shooting for an Orca, but I will be getting mindlinks and maxing out the leadership skills first (haven't calculated the total time it will take to train skills yet).

[RobinGBrown]

Okay so I just grabbed my toon with probing skills, bought some sisters probes and a launcher and scanned out my local constellation for gravimetric sites.

Two and a bit hours later I've found one archeaology site which had no loot...

Probably one of the least effective periods I've spent playing EVE. Although I did improve my understanding of how to use the scannign system, and it's definitely counterintuitive in certain places.

Will try again but it seems like gravimetric sites are in short supply in hisec space, was kind of expecting to get at least one site of each type in a constellation.

[d0z3rr]

Found out that Mining Foreman + Laser Optimisation + Wing Boost will give you a lot more isk/hr. In just a few weeks I can mine the capital required for an Orca (at just 1 hour of mining a day).

I was going to do the Mining implant before an Orca, but it costs 190m isk. I'll hold off on that until after the Orca. Once my guys hit exhumers 5 then I'll work on drones a little bit more (probably get the rigs too). After that I'll have to get more crystals researched. Still a lot to do...

[Duane]

Okay so I just grabbed my toon with probing skills, bought some sisters probes and a launcher and scanned out my local constellation for gravimetric sites.

Two and a bit hours later I've found one archeaology site which had no loot...

Probably one of the least effective periods I've spent playing EVE. Although I did improve my understanding of how to use the scannign system, and it's definitely counterintuitive in certain places.

Will try again but it seems like gravimetric sites are in short supply in hisec space, was kind of expecting to get at least one site of each type in a constellation.

How close were you to a high sec hub? I never had issues probing and finding sites in .5 to .6 space several jumps away from mission runners.

[RobinGBrown]

Well there were at least two combat sites in each system and a number of wormholes but I was specifically looking only for gravimetric sites in order to do a mining op. So I did find a number of sites just not what I was looking for.