I’ve just got enough money to get an orca, but I don’t really know how an orca works (I’m using procurer).
How does an orca work? What should I pay attention to when I use it? Any recommend fittings? How can I use my orca efficiently?
Would be glad if anyone can help me out!
Um, I don’t know if you know this or not, but an Orca mines less than a procurer. It’s main advantage is boosting the mining yield of the entire fleet. I haven’t done the math, and it’s likely to have changed over time, but I once remember a miner telling me that you need at least 4 or 5 barges in fleet before it becomes better to bring out an Orca, instead of another barge.
Anyway, the orca can use mining drones, but unless you’re multiboxing or have friends, you’ll want to stick with a procurer/skiff (or possibly a yield tanked covetor).
Also, mining sucks without friends. I’m sure there are many good mining corps out there, but the only mining community I’m familiar with is Eve University’s Amarr Mining Campus.
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Actually not, orca is better than third miner - it mines at the rate of half of boosted procurer. so basically you end up with 2.9 procurers, but then they don’t have to constantly fly to drop off cargo because they can drop it into orca which brings yield higher than 3 procurers. Any extra ships and it gets even better.
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That assumes perfect yield with t2 rigs, top tier mining drones and the procurers not using drones.
Reality is drone mining is never perfect, and why are you using procs and not covetors with an Orca anyway.
So you are better still using a third barge and Orca as your 4th.
However @KKAddi_Boi If you are solo use a retriever or if you really need the tank a procurer is ok.
If you go perfect then orca has yield close to perfect yield fitted skiff. 2/3 if skiff if boosted. But bling drones are gank magnets so only idiot would use them.
The orca brings +60% lasers yield to the field, and +24 m³/s from its drones(actually I’m wrong, jsut better for calculus). so it’s worse than another barge, if that barge mines more than 60% of another one +24 : that is if that barge, unboosted, has better 40% of its yield than 24. ie if that barge, unboosted, mines more than 24*100/40 = 60 m³/s.
Of course this is partially false if that barge uses mining drones. considering that, we need to deduce that value from the mining of the orca drone, eg instead of 24 we use 14 m³/s if a barge has 10 m³/s from drones. In that case, the barge alone must have better laser yield than 35 m³/s (100×14/40) for the orca to be worse than a second mining barge.
The real formula is actually (orca_mining-barge_mining)×100/(100+orca_duration_reduction_pct)
- with orca mining 24.8 m³/s
- with hulk drones mining 7.5 m³/s
- with orca boost reduction being -40.4
the minimum value for a barge being better than an orca is thus 29.
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Orcas are hybrid freighter/drone boats/mining vessels. They’re really quite good and versatile as overall industrial platforms, since they can gather, haul, and protect large quantities of raw materials. However, they’re also very slow and like a lot of hybrid ships they aren’t the best at any one of the things that they do.
It’s true that barges have more raw yield than an Orca, but Orcas are more secure and flexible platforms, they can stay in the field for hours without interruption, and they require less attention to operate than mining barges.
It would take too long to type out a good answer to your questions about how to fit and use them, but if you send me a note in-game I can give you a hand.
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