So in advance of Hulkageddon, my industry alt bought and fit out his first Hulk. I'm hoping to take it out for at least 1-2 sessions before Helicity's fun begins. There was a small (3 hour) interruption on the road to Jump Freighter to fit the fancy T2 Deep Core mining lasers on the Hulk, but I think the bonuses (especially on some of the heavier minerals) will be worth it. This boy (who still doesn't have a new portrait) is now clear sailing to Anshar, and once completed moving the short stretch to Orca (and Rorqual). Funny enough, taking the time to train the jump skills for the Anshar make the Rorqual a shorter haul. I've decided that this toon will be a bit overweight (or as much as you can with the new character creator) - can't wait to experiment with that.
My combat main finished Battlecruisers V, and when in the implanted close (3% DPS implants in all the slots) is quite nasty in a Blaster Brutix. Think it's time to explore the Minmatar BCs now, since the skills for both types of turrets are equally trained now. Started the road towards missile effectiveness - working on the support missile skills first. It amazes so many folks that this character can't fly a standard mission drake (T2 HAMs) with almost 45 million SP. I did a portrait for S.W. but not so happy with the posing and facial structure, so I will be redoing this with the bonus redo from CCP (thanks CCP!).
Super Secret Alt is a blue-haired beauty, who needs to look a little meaner. I'll be tweaking her expressions and send her to the gym for some free weights, but this was the best portrait I did (I did 3 of 6, and it was the third). Not sharing it yet, because I want to tweak her some more. She's about to complete Battleship V on the road to Dreads and Carriers. This one is not going to be an easy to pass as a solo account for any sort of serious espionage, since she is so clearly a well-focused combat character. She's also a great place for me to experiment with Minmatar fittings, since she is a pure minnie pilot.
I'm getting some destroyers together for my 54th Mass alt to fly in Hulkageddon. Funny enough he's on the same account as my miner/industrialist. Thrasher armies descending on Hulks. Makes me both happy and sad - it will be fun for some (but not all), but EVE is a game...
Now on to something else. There's a thread in the EVE-O forums about losec mining. I think the risk/reward ratio for Losec mining is pretty poor. You should only be using T1 barges to offset the eventual ship loss, and if you don't you can end up losing a lot (Had a corpie lose an orca, 2 hulks, and pods with +5 implants mining in losec - but of course he made a cardinal mistake and went AFK). I would think (and the thread backs this up) that you have better risk/reward and return rates mining in a Wormhole than in LoSec, even if you get a LoSec grav site. Anyone care to share a Hulk or Covetor fit for WH mining, or experiences on WH mining? I hear the sleepers don't spawn right away, so you might even be able to get a couple cycles in before having to deal with that. Is it true?
What about you? Do you know anyone who mines, and if so, do they ever do WH or LoSec? How do they deal with the risk/reward ratio?
You heard correct: in a WH the sleepers don't spawn until about 20 minutes after you first warp into the site. We usually had a Covops trigger the site, wait until the sleepers show up to pop them, and then brought the mining ships in.
ReplyDeleteThe fits of our ships varied. When mining in a group, we had normal fits, but stayed aligned to our POS. Some of our folks did mine solo in their Hulks, but then usually fitted a number of warp stabs. And of course always run the d-scan.
The real problem always was to bring the ore out - we're talking quite large volumes.
Lo-Sec mining we haven't done in a while, as it just wasn't worth the time. With the jump in Nocxium, we may have to look into that again.