I fitted an expanded launcher and combat probed them down, only to realise I found someone else’s abandoned drones… I scooped them and probed again, same result… and again… and again… and again… when I finally found my drones my cargohold was full.
It seemed like a decent source of income at the time, until I realised that drones (even t2) are pretty worthless considering the time investment.
Of course, if you lose a pair of geckos, that’s another story.
Can’t you just slap on a mining I and call finding your lost drones worth it? Sure you’re not mining very efficiently since you’re not using a ship that gets any bonuses to mining whatsoever, but you’re almost sure to get your lost drone if you lost it an hour ago. The drone, at least if it’s t2, even if worth less than what you’d make if you wrote it off at a loss should still be worth more than the difference between mining very efficently and mining inefficiently.
You have to consider time in your equation. How much time do you need to find and recover the drones? If it’s fun like a side quest, go for it, but even in a Venture you make more ISK if you carry on mining with new drones and buy another dozen now and then when you are shopping anyway.
Well if you think finding drones is fun, obviously it’s better but I’m assuming most miners just want to get back to mining so let’s assume that finding the drone is only being done to avoid having to place a market order.
Going out of your way to find them is probably a huge waste of time if the only thing you’re doing is trying to find them.
But what if while you’re probing, you can mine? So you’re not losing the income you’d have made from the Venture during this time. You’d be losing maybe 70%.
Hmm, one Venture full of Veldspar makes about 550k ISK via buy orders atm (50’000 units to 11 ISK).
So speed is your limit, but it’s less than 10m ISK/h for sure.
You can probe while mining, but you won’t fit a combat launcher on a mining vessel due to CPU issues. Usually you have got a special combat probe ship for these purposes because the combat probe launcher is hard to fit.
To be honest it’s much easier just to remember where you have been mining before. If it’s deadspace, get used to set a 3 hour bookmark, they won’t litter your bookmark collection.
Yeah I was making the assumption that you could just slap on a mining I on one of those probe ships. I don’t know why @Trevor_Dalech did probing alone. He said he seaerched for the drones and then realized he was wasting time. If he put on a mining laser on the probe ship, he’d at least be making something instead of nothing while he went to look for it. If it’s a t2 drone you lost, surely it would be worth it. Althought your suggestion of expiring bookmarks is probably better since there is not need to change ship.
So from worst to best I think it is
Breaking out the probes to find your lost drone.
Just writing it off.
Bringing the probing ship, but slapping on a mining I (you’re going to be in range of asteroids anyways)
Using bookmarks so probes aren’t needed.
Not forgetting the drone
Is it possible to find a drone without probes if you bookmarked the space? I lost another one, this time not because I had the warning off, but because someone felt that a Venture was worth a meeting from CONCORD, who I didn’t trust to save me if I didn’t just warp to the that planet ASAP. I think I saved myself and went back to mining, but it would be nice if I could just pick it up again. I don’t think it’s more than 7 km from the bookmark. If I can’t find it, so be it, but it’d be nice if I could just pick it up again while mining.
Sure, if you have the location, warp there and grab it. You might find the remains of a destroyer too by the sound of it.
If you are in range of a lost drone you can try reconnecting with it by right clicking your Capacitor and selecting ‘reconnect with lost drones’. They then fly back to you, rather then you having to burn to them.
Destroyers are commonly used for high sec ganking, they have crazy high dps and in the case of artillery Thrashers high alpha - they do a lot of damage in a single hit.
Yes, but only if the drones are still there. They can also be destroyed or stolen. As you scarpered, probably the ganker had enough time to kill or scoop your drones.