Apart from my first experience (newbie mining in a venture, which I didn’t like) and trying it on an alt with a minimum skilled porpoise I have no real idea on actual mining income. I’m interested in learning though and might be inclined to do it “on the side”.
Lets assume the following set up: Orca with command bursts and 4 Procurers, all maxed out but without silly expensive modules, implants or mining drones.
How much would that realistically make in isk/h when mining in high sec?
Around 50 mil/h is my rough estimate. But maybe someone lese will do actual math.
For isk, it’s not worth it.
Hmm I did some calculations and with azure plag it would be 150 mil/h but with veldspar it’d be like 30 mil or so. And that is with 5 maxed out accounts.
Apart from “I actually enjoy doing this” and “I’m at work, it’s better than nothing” do people do this? Serious question.
Mining bots.
Don’t do this. If it’s about ISK there are far better and fun things you can do, like exploration or “elite” PvP. If it must be passive income go for PI and manufacturing, trade.
When I was still in ISK making phase, I had my PI farm in nullsec (restart every two days remotely, hauling every 1-2 weeks), and was producing for the market in weekly batches. While actively playing I was doing exploration for ISK.
Sounds like gank bait.
Yes, lots of people do it. But, like most income activities in Eve it is a grind and you will eventually get bored with it sometimes. This is when you run missions or do something else, which is one reason Eve is so great. Don’t worry about isk making efficiency, just have fun.
I know, was just thinking of setting up something for when I’m not really too active and want to super chill where I have multiple accounts with SP farms (so the accounts are effectively free) and miners on it. And as I have no real understanding or experience of actual miner income (and so many people doing it) I expected, given the effort and accounts that it takes, mining to be worth while.
It turns out that it’s really really not and that is even with the increased ore values.
I created a new mining alpha in a venture with T2 lasers and checked pyfa what the yield is. Mined for 10 minutes, then compressed the ore and compared that to Jita buy orders. So I knew exactly how much isk/h as miner makes (not counting travel etc).
Then I made a maxed out orca and a maxed out procurer in pyfa and had the orca boost that procurer so I know exactly what the maxed out yield is for 1 orca+4 procurers, then compared that to the venture yield in pyfa and calculated what a whole group of 5 accounts makes with mining azure plag (again not counting travel and other time wasters).
It’s pitiful. I expected it to be far far better.
right now in jita plagioclaz is 335 isk/m³ and velspoor is 230. (BO, compressed)
with 25 m³/s orca and 33 for proc it should be 157 m³/s so 565 000 m³/h so 190M/h veldspar . Now a more conservative approach would be like 40% veldspar, 40% plagio, 20% empty(time not spent mining) so 0.4×335+0.4×230 = 226isk/m³ => 127M/h
I don’t really understand how you get to such different numbers, other than me getting some different yield from the ships (orca is at 17 for me unless you use full mining rigs, which seems a mistake tank wise, and using faction mining drones and me fitting a DC on the procurers), but that doesn’t seem to be the main issue.
Let me state exactly what I did, perhaps we can figure out WHY there is a diference:
So how do you get to a realistic average mix of 120+?
I wrote the formula. Read it
The values I gave are for max skill, T2 fits. include mining drone T2 for procurers and implant for orca boost.
that’s what is for me
I figured out my mistake. I compared compressed ore prices directly without realising that you get more units of veldspar per cycle compared to plag.
So you make more isk/h with veldspar than I thought, quite a bit actually, and THAT is why your numbers are different and now make sense.
That’s why you only need your m³/s (or per hour), even reduced to take into account moving, haulin, etc (so 80% in my case) and then you want the isk/m³ of the various ores, weighted by the average quantities in belt. I kept plagio and veldspar but other ore are between - but you don’t mine all the ore.
The only thing you need is your effective yield and the volumic price.
Highsec mining is/was/always will be about 12.5m/hr per account. The numbers are a bit inflated ATM because of the upcoming indy changes.
Don’t use procurers long term - if you are worried about ganks, I would start with a set of high tank procurers, mine with them until you have paid for them and then save for covetors, replace your procurers one by one as you save isk to buy them, then keep the procurers as backup in case you lose a covetor.
If you mine with procurers continuously, you are throwing isk away that you could be making with covetors. I typically do not put any rigs on my covetors unless I need a fitting rig/ice rig/mercoxit rig as, if anything that is going to be able to destroy your covetor will not be stopped by any tank you can fit with the rigs.
skilling into a mining foreman mindlink is very much worth it. will require a lot of skills for your mining foreman, but it will help your yield signifficnatly.
Procurers or not, never mine near a trade hub. There is no amount of tank that will save you from a gank by a group that really wants to and they tend to operate closer to trade hubs. Try and find a quiet system on dotlan 5-10 jumps from the nearest hub with a freeport athanor in it that you can compress your ore in and when you have a decent supply built up, pay red frog or pushx to move it for you to market. Personally I throw the owner of those athanors a tip out of goodwill for using their facility. If they end up hitting tough times, hopefully whatever you tip them will help keep fuel in the structure so you can keep using it.
As for the reason why to mine in HS - there doesn’t need to be a reason to do it. Mining in HS is something that is relatively safe, low skill point, and is quick to get going on. once you have a good location to mine in, you just undock your fleet, mine and start making isk immediately. you dont need to go looking for sigs to run data or relic sites, or find a wormhole with sites inside it to run. I tend to run my HS mining fleet when I don’t have time to deal with getting set up to mine or rat in null, or when I am doing something else on my other accounts and have one or more accounts free that I can mine passively in the background. Its not my main activity, but its extra income and materials for me that I can use, though it certainly could be a main activity.
You’ll spend 75% of that time moving and locating rocks. 40km3 here, 20km3 maybe 35km away, then on to next belt. If you want to hisec belt mine and just keep the lazers going, you’ll basically need to fit t1 strip miners and indiscriminately mine everything within reach before moving on. That’s if you can find a system with fresh full belts.
If you wanna mine join a null bloc or make some friends with networks of moons.
It’s not had to have bookmarks in each belt in system that cover whole belt. Removing whole travel time to just warping.
yup. the system in HS I mine in has gotten sort of busy and sometimes have to warp to more than one, but its never an issue to find a belt to mine out in more than 2-3 minutes
Never fails. There’s always someone who will tell you that you aren’t having fun.
Maybe because it’s always the case and it’s important to let the clueless people know about it ?
I am pretty sure people know if they are having fun or not. 