Mining OP progress

[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.