First, this is for high-sec space, though I eventually aspire to move the team down to null one day. With 5 accounts I’m currently running an Orca + 4 barges. The Orca also has a drone mining fit with appropriate boosts.
From this setup, I fill up the orca quickly enough and now I’m exploring how to effectively haul the ore back to station.
So I’ve come up with the following ideas which each have their pros and cons. I’m wondering what the general opinion in the mining community is.
Stay with 1 Orca + 4 barges and just haul as the orca fills up. The disadvantage is that the orca leaving the belt causes the boosts to drop resulting in some potential downtime for the barges. Plus warping an orca is not the most swift of things.
Drop one barge and go with 2 orcas and 3 barges. Use mining drones on both orcas to make up a bit for the lost production, and have one of the orcas also serve as a permanent hauler (or alternate). Not sure if the effort here is worth it, but maybe.
Just go with 5 orcas, mining yield drops quite a bit, but definitely the most afk friendly.
Alternate out a barge or two with quick warping miasmos as the 1 orca gets full and just haul that way. Definitely not a lazy approach given the need to warp back and forth, potentially several times.
Leave a freighter in the belt and stick with 1 orca and 3 barges. I think option 2 may be better than this.
Orca with MWD warp at end of it’s cycle (10 or 12s don’t remember correct). At least you waste one min to drop ore and come back. How much you will lose in isk/h? Probable loss is not worth complicating your “fleet”.
My thoughts on this is; go with 1 Orca + 4 barges/exhumers and when the Orca is close to being full (around 80%) you swap 1 of your barges for a Miasmos (fitted for fastest align, slightly tanked) and starts hauling the ore back to station while still mining with the remaining barges and boosting with the Orca. You will be able to maintain a high effectiveness and hauling a good 63k m³ each time (30-60sec total travel time each haul)
@Mac-Gregor4 the MWD has a 10sec duration, but that is not the main concern of the travel time that would be the acceleration and deacceleration, which is slower than a BS.
If you’re going to swap 4 barges for 4x miasmos to let the Orca stay on grid, I think it’s better to warp off the Orca to haul the ore back to station. If you time it right you can give your barges another boost right before you warp off and you can dump all your ore at once.
I think one miasmos might be the best option, as it allows almost your whole fleet minus one barge to continue mining.
if he’s not hauling to a upwell structure then yea he can drop load and go back… but npc stations you can’t unload outside the station. But i figure if he’s putting this much effort, he’s got his own structure.
Just in case you weren’t aware, there is an implant that gives you better boosts + longer boosts as well as a skill that increases your booster duration.
With the implant + duration skills and assuming you don’t have a massive amount of AUs to warp, this the best play to make for isk efficiency. I would add that you can also jettison on your barges until the orca gets back if you’re using covetor/hulks.
I’d rather be turbo lazy with a freighter in the belt, personally.