Miner

Mining is long and dull. Don’t get me wrong it’s extremely profitable and when done well can allow you some major luxuries but its something that takes ages, can be extremely risky and to do it well requires a major investment. THis is especially true of Ice Mining. This article however will only discuss mining in very general terms, We will do articles on mining the different Asteroids out there such as Veldspar, Scordite and even the ddifferent Ice Asteroids, so watch this space for further updates.

So what sort of investment am I talking about, well first off is the skills. Mining at 5 is not enough, not by a long shot if you want to do this correctly. You will need Refining, Astrogeology, Refining Efficiency, Metallurgy, Ice Harvesting, Ice Processing, Deep Core Mining, Mining Upgrades, specific Ore Processing skills, Mining Barge and eventually, Exhumers. All of which you should aim for at 5, the specific Ore Processing skills should be aimed at about level 3 as a basic requirement.

Next up is the sort of ships you should fly. Well initally a mining class frigate is useful if you’re just starting out but getting into the cruisers as soon as possible is always wiser. Mining lasers take up a lot of CPU units therefore you will not be able to fit many. But, and here’s the interesting thing, a battleship mounted with 4 mining laser IIs will out-perform the smallest mining barge with the one strip miner you can mount on it. However once you get into the medium and large sized Mining Barges you will see a noted increase in the amount of material you are bringing in. The Exhumers are the next tech level up from the Mining Barges and give you additional options. So why use a mining barge over a battleship? Well a mining barge and exhumer can fit the ice harvesters and the various strip mining modules which no other ship can. All of which will increase you’re productivity and therefore your profits.

It should be noted that the use of Modulated Strip Miners is better that Strip Miners. This where the specific ore processing skills come in. Each of those skills allows you to use the crystal associated with the ore type named in the skill. The crystals burn out over prolonged use but they will allow you to haul in about 2-3* as much ore than standard strip miners if they are mining the material the crystal is designed for. They can only be fitted in modulated strip miner modules. The standard ones will give you a base amount regardless of what asteroid you are tearing apart.

What about mining drones? Well to be honest yes they will get your minerals in even faster but they don’t hold much, even the tech 2 ones don’t hold much ore. THe best one is a tech one ‘harvester’ drone but they cost a stupid amount of money. The best thing to have in your drone bay if your mining is combat drones as NPC pirates can and will attack you, the drones will help a little if you don’t have a combat pilot guarding your back.

So you’ve now got your materials in your hold.What now? Well you can do one of 3 things…. 1) Fly back to your station and drop the ore off; 2) Call in (if you have a friend you trust with one) a hauler to take the ore home for you or 3) jettison the ore into space. Now 3) may sound like madness but let me explain one of the quirks of the game…. your ships hold may only have a few hundred m3 but when you jettison something it goes into a can and is fired into space within 500m of your ship. The can can hold 27,500m3 of material, a lot more than your hold! So now all you do is open the can and keep moving material from your ship into it by dragging and dropping. You should name the cans with the time they were jettisoned as they will usually only last an hour or so. Again method 3) requires a hauler to get the materials home but it does mean you can sit there for longer and NPC pirates don’t target the cans so it will be safe from all bar players.

Worth taking a long look at is the following post on the EVE Online Official Forums, where some truely inspired players have written an absolute kick ass guide to mining.

MINING 101

To find out more about the different asteroids take a look at our ‘Asteroids (Or Floating Rocks of Money)’ post which will be online soon.

To find out about Moon Mining please refer to our ‘Moon Mining (or Mining Without A Laser)’ post that will also be online soon.

Popularity: 6% [?]

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 11:25 am and is filed under Roles, Mining, So you want to be a?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.