I recently purchased the Apocalypse battleship for my Amarrian Princess. I went to look at fits a builds and I use this guy Aceface on YouTube among others. He stood out above the rest, I noticed he had done a gimmick build just for fun and made the Apocalypse an alpha mining vessel. Near as I could figure from the video, his ship was able to collect ores at a rate of 768 m³ per minute and has the costly miner II lasers. There was also a lot of other costly items my character wasn’t trained on. I decided to make a more new player friendly frugal version I called “Bare Bones”;
[Apocalypse, Bare Bones]
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Co-Processor I
Co-Processor I
Co-Processor I
This ship at my character’s current skill level can harvest ore at 584 m³ per minute using the cheaper EPS Gaussian with a longer range. My ventures do 302 m³ per minute, the Apoc miner collects 51% faster. I jetcaned all the ore until it reaches between 42 and 46 K in total. Then picked it up in my Miasmos. All of which can be done with an alpha. Just make sure you are quick about the pickup.
While I can see both pros and cons to using the Apoc for mining, I am not into speed running. I would rather use it for defending the miner from being disturbed. I refitted “Bare Bones” and call it “Death Blossom”. Here are my tactics;
I find my mining spot using the “Death Blossom” and the Amarrian princess.
I then safe log off in that area.
I use one of my other princesses come in their venture and mine the low security ore without issue.
When rats or players show up, I warp tunnel back to station.
Log off and back on as the Amarrian using this battleship as a Jack-in-the-Box.
So far I haven’t seen any players take the bait. Take a good long look before you attack those ventures in low security, it could be hiding a battleship just offline.
I understand, my tactics are just old news to the long term players. Walking across old bones and thinking, oh this is new, is pretty common in old games, when one has never played it before. It is as King Solomon wrote thousands of years ago, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, See, this is new? It has been already in the ages before us.”.
I see the Oracle in the ship tree. I set the Amarrian to skill up to the highest battleship with the knowledge she can use all the ships below it on the tree. She still needs some skills on the large weapons to complete. Her skill points just hit 2.9 million and can fly all the Amarrian alpha ships. I plan to carefully place the remaining 2 million skill points in areas that can help with those ships.
Is there something about the Oracle that makes it a preferred ship in that class? I was looking at the Navy issued Prophecy for her next ship purchase.
I meant if you’re going to mine in a combat ship. It has 8 turrets slots just like some battleships, but is cheaper, so you might as well use it instead.
I wouldn’t train for anything related to battleships (hulls or weapons) as an Alpha player, though.
I just checked, the Oracle doesn’t have the needed CPU power or enough low power slots to get the mining lasers up to speed. At 480 in an Oracle, might as well be mining at 302 in a Venture. However as I said, the whole build is just a gimmick to see what ship can mine ore the “fastest”. Of course I will continue to use my ventures, as I told Aceface, I would rather lose 10 ventures than one battleship mining in low security. Doing so would open the ship up as a prime target with nothing but drones for offense. Slow and steady wins the race.
Was curious if you use it so checked your KB and as you don’t, also as you harvest gas (so surely not use drones to do it as they don’t exist AFAIK) and in beyond hi-sec space I guess it is safe to recommend you use this to increase your chance of getting out:
Have fun if the goal. Long ago in a 0.0 home when all the good pve was taken…mining rokh was run. It ran pretty decent too. Mining BS can be kind fun in a pinch.
If jetcan mining just know if a quiet night, it’s the hauler that will be having you work the most lol.
High power
6x EP-S Gaussian Scoped Mining Laser
Medium power
4x Large Shield Extender II
3x Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Low power
7x Expanded Cargohold II
Rig Slot
1x Large Cargohold Optimization I
2x Large Cargohold Optimization II
Very true, if I am deep in low security it makes it most difficult to get the hauler to market. If the cargo is gas, it is almost impossible at times. I know there are cargo scanners, but some pilots seem to enjoy shooting at my empties. I recent started using the small tractor beam on my Miasmos.
