“every time I go mining with my corporation, I feel really left out. They all have mining barges with massive ore tanks, so they can stay and mine for long periods of time, while I have to make many trips to and from a station to sell my ore. Plus, it takes me 2-3 warps to get to a station to sell. I believe that implementing mining barges for alphas will improve our gameplay experience.”
If your corporation is making you feel ‘left out’, then it sounds like a crappy corporation, IMHO. Most often, the way that mining fleets are run means that all miners from Ventures to Hulks contribute to the fill up the haulers together, then split the proceeds evenly. Old pros need to help out the new bros.
Sometimes, you can just join the mining fleet of an Orca providing boosts without even being in the corporation.
Occasionally, the Orca pilot will even buy the ore from you as you mine it.
As a Venture miner, you could try the anchored giant container or jet can method. As your ore hold gets full, jettison it, and it will be in a container much larger than your hold. Have a friend, or an alt, in an Industrial to come pick up the jet cans. Tractor beams help.
if you haveto restart your warp (in the same system) 2-3 times before u get to a station it a skill problem you have
if you mean 2-3 jumps to get to a marked hub like Jite, Amarr or one of the other ones its not alot
if you mean you haveto jump 2-3 jumps to empty your Venture so you can go back and mine more You need to find a better way of going it (new place to stage out of or new place to mine)
Alphas in mining barges ? Hell no
Alphas (free to play accounts) would have too much influence on the different ore or ore related markets if they where allowed to fly mining barges
But saying that I do think there should be something better then a ship you get one day 1 in the game Alphas could mine in
The obvious way to think here is a minning destroyer (better then a venture but wors then a barege)
Alphas can already mine ten times more ore in a battleship than they can in a Venture, they just don’t want to use a battleship because it can’t be AFK’d…
I agree like maybe give the venture a balance and give it give it 8 or 10,0003m I know I know you were going to say then well that’s an expedition but those have a cloaking ability and really can only use one laser if you fitted properly so I don’t think it would kill them to give 8 or 10 to the venture my opinion
so because you’re lazy and can’t be bothered to either A: make the best use of the tools CCP gives you for free and B: make a financial contribution to the health of the game, you’re solution is to whinige and whine for yet more free stuff?
Is there a mining ship you can group strips and/or miners to F1? Have I been missing something all these years? I wanna watch Netflix too while I get that risk free ISK. Man! I been doin it all wrong!
Yeah I know, a month late and an ISK short on the response.
The point, Alphas don’t want to use mining setups that can’t be AFK’d. They want to be able to turn on a strip miner or two and walk away, or have a ship like the Venture except with an even larger ore hold so they can, again, press a couple of buttons and walk away. They want to be able to mine more and not be as easy to gank, but they don’t want to put in the effort required to do so. The solution is sitting there right in front of them in the form of battleships but they are too lazy to use them…
They have already improved the Alpha program greatly, they can’t give away everything for free. Either earn enough isk ingame for some plex, stick to venture mining, or buy a sub to support and grow the game. There is a lot of great advice in this thread.
Then either sub your account or use the aforementioned battleship. Said battleship, even without guns, still has considerably better defences than a Venture.
Or, even better, join a decent corp that offers hauling from the belts. Or join a LowSec/0.0 corp and use a Rorqual’s on-field compression ability to compress your Ore as you go. Pro-Tip: You can put your Ore in the Rorq’s Fleet Hanger, right-click and compress it yourself without hassling the rorq pilot.
LOL, a battleship is defenseless? You would have a 1,000x better tank than a Venture and a hell of a lot more combat drones. Defenseless, lol. You wouldn’t hit jack squat at close range even if you put guns on that battleship anyway.
Looks like we will all be getting one in May for the 15th Anniversary. So, free ship with a base hold of 1250 that easily expands to over 2500. Its Alpha friendly. Plan to buy a few spares when the price drops on them. Rough guestimate has it mining better than a Venture if you factor in Mining Drones. Bonus you have extra Drone bay to swap out to combat drones should the need arise.
So, if you were truly looking for a cost effective improvement over venture, looks like you will get it.