One of the nice… or addicting… things about EVE Online is that even if you are on something of a break from the game, you can still feel productive. Skill training rolls on even if you just sit in the station.
Last week I mentioned that I was experimenting with armor tanking and the Gallente Dominix battleship with my alt. This week my main has enhanced his mining support abilities.
Way back in February, as a reward for a story line mission, Wilhelm Arcturus, my primary character in EVE, received a mining foreman mindlink. Just one thing stood in my way of using it; nearly 40 days of skill training.
But when you are not focused on immediate needs you can sit back work on those longer range goals. And so I managed to get there finally.
Added in to the mining boosts that go with my Orca, I am close to the pinnacle of asteroid busting, at least in empire space.
With the boost and bonuses available from the Orca, Wilhelm’s skills, and my alt’s mining skills, my mining alt in his Hulk:
- Pulls 1778 cubic meters of ore per strip miner per cycle.
- Has a strip miner cycle time of 2 minutes and 20 seconds, down from the base time of 3 minutes.
- Has a range of 22km on his strip miners, a boost from 15 km, which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but which turns out to be very useful when clearing an asteroid field. You can stay in place and fill cans for much longer.
So aside from the highwall implants, the best of which are running over 150 million ISK in my region for a 5% boost in yield, there isn’t much else I think I can tune.
Sure, I could always train up for the Rorqual (just 28 more days of training!) but that seems kind of silly for somebody who has never once left empire space.
And the ironic thing is, at the end of the day, this setup is too efficient for mining normal belts in empire space. You can literally spend more time positioning yourself to harvest ore than you actually spend with the mining lasers running.
Fortunately there are a few missions out there than spawn big enough rocks to make it worth your time. Enemies Abound is one of my favorites in that regard.
Hulk and Orca burning rocks
Back to combat skills I guess. Only 60 days of training to fly a Golem!
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
You missed Michis mining implant thast another 5% :P
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I’d forgotten about that one, but then they are pretty rare and seem to be going for 850 million to 1 billion ISK. That is a pretty big pile of ISK to pay for a 5% boost.
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I tried this game for about a month, and while it was a fun game I just can’t see making it my “main” game. It’s a game that seems like it would be a lot of fun to play as a secondary title however. Maybe sometime in the future I’ll be able to swing 2 separate subscription fees, and get back to New Eden…
Are you going to venture into the games PvP side now that you’ve somewhat “maxed” you mining capabilities? =P
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You can always invest in probing skills, if ya probe down some ore belts they usually have a big enough pile of ore in em to keep ya busy for a while, and gives ya quite a nice pile of isk in return.
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So have you considered moving to a 0.0 alliance then? all the ore you could possibly want, and far more valuable ore than in empire space. there’s no missions as such, but you’ll get all the combat you could possibly want, and the rats in the belts range from 500k to 1.5mil bounties, same if not more than lvl 4 missions. Most alliances highly value their industrial people – they keep the supply of ships flowing. you’ll also have logistical support for your rorqual, combat pilots to escort you places and other industrial types to mine with.
Casual players can fit into 0.0 alliances also – I play about twice a week for about 3-4hrs at a time and I’m having a ball up in the north, there’s always something going on.
just something worth considering.
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Been playing EVE for about a month and I’m still a noob. But I love it. I’m going down the PVE mission salvaging route for now although I want to give mining a shot at some point.
Eventually I want to fullfil the bodyguard role in a mining fleet. All of the power, none of the responsibility.
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*sigh* I’m still fiddling around in my Covetor saving the money for the Hulk ;-) With skill books and rigging (I tend to cargo rigs to reduce travel and positioning time) it will be about 250mio ISK. A good third is reached, part of it in Tritanium waiting for a new price peak.
BTW: I wonder how fast deplete the crystals for the modulated strip miners? Interestingly, I found nothing about this in the web nor in the Halada-guide.
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You can’t use the Foreman Mindlink and the Highwall implants simultaneously — they’re both slot 10. Michi’s is slot 7, so you *could* use that if you’re willing to shell out for it, but as you noted.. that’s an awful lot of isk for a marginal yield.
And I’ll 2nd the “probe out mining sites!” idea. Generally there are some good sized roids in them.
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