Mining Barge Align Time in Group

Industry Gameplay Center Mining & Extraction
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Wait what? I know people use those but that wasn’t what I was talking about. They were using mining barges, although in principle the same thing works with Hulks instead of Procurators. None of the two Orca pilots who came up with that idea are using people with…

Did I say two? A third Orca pilot from the same corp had the same idea. After finishing a moon of theirs they came into the belt I was mining and offered a boost. The only reason I feel safe mining with them is anyone raiding is going after their corp, not mine (if you’re after corp A and see one ship of theirs with 70of corp B with 30 of them being combat ones, picking a fight with all 71 is just dumb), and that killing an Orca is a bigger bag than a Retriever. I asked if he heard about the other Orca pilots. He mentioned the one I initially talked to (the guy who they know is leaving their corp) but didn’t get this idea from him.

Yeah, this is why through traffic is a concern. I mentioned one time I mined with the first Orca pilot, the one who pitched the idea to me, after making the original post we did another mining op with some people and I posted scouts on my own initiative. In null, there is no through traffic, Scouts seeing hostiles would report hostiles. One of the Scouts spotted the group of raiders 3 jumps out and went to check zKillboard to get intel to see if they were through traffic or not and I heard him on coms warning me… about 20 seconds after they landed on grid. I’m not doing it right if my scouts tell me when they land on grid.

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He probably should have called them when he saw them. Not waited. It also shouldn’t take 3 jumps for a z kill search.

When my group used to do ls mining we did it in a dead end system only accessible via an entrance 2 jumps out. It was in faction warfare space and we signed up for the caldari militia. Not only did this help us limit possible threats but allowed us to build relations with other militia factions who both helped us with the odd gang but also provided more Intel.

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In Low don’t we have lots of through traffic? That’s why he went to z kill… not sure why it took so long.

Well, assuming I manage to recruit that Orca pilot and convince him his idea is dumb, that’s not an option for us since that means we only have 3 systems and 3 moons, so backing into dead ends is going to put a damper on our mining.

What method of Scouting should I use if in a system that isn’t a dead end? I mentioned I posted 5 Scouts to cover 8 systems, that’s obviously wrong, but that was on my own initiative, the Orca pilot could have used some of his buddies to cover the systems I was missing. However, the fact that I was told on coms these guys were dangerous after they landed on grid shows that what I have isn’t working well.

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This entirely depends on where you are. There are loads of systems out there with low traffic.

He should have called regardless that there were pilots heading in your direction while looking up z kill. Odds are of people are moving in a group they are looking for fights.

I mean the entire idea you guys are attempting has been a series of putting square pegs in round holes.

There are plenty of dead ends out there with open moons still.

Without knowing where and the geography I can’t help much, how many gates are there into the system?

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Well, this Orca pilot he’s been nice to me and he’s corp shopping. Even if he joins a different corp, since he’s been nice to me, I’d rather he doesn’t lose his Orca in the first 3 weeks of whatever new corp he joins. especially if he joins us I’d like to keep him safe.

I did convince him using a magnate to scout a wormhole and then sending an Orca through alone was comically bad, so I might be able to convince him on the value of not waiting for hostiles to land on gird. My first thought when he pitched the idea was that I realized the Orca’s align time was as good as it was going to get so I was wondering if the align time of the mining barges mattered, but when I got here you guys quickly pointed out that the align time shouldn’t matter since waiting for hostiles to appear on grid is living too dangerously. In other words, I first came here to optimize a bad idea, you guys pointed out a good idea (scouting), and now I’m trying to optimize that good idea.

If he doesn’t use scouting the question is going to be when he loses his Orca.

We’re not going to be able to set up more upwell structures in the area we’re in.

That time the system we were mining had 3 gates and an NPC station. There were 8 systems 3 jumps out, 9 if you count a dead end.

I posted 5 Scouts in 5 of the 8 systems, the ones with the most pod kills in the last 22 days, and prayed no one would come through the others. Apparently yesterday, during the mining operation, they saw 30 solo ships, 1 duo, 7 trios, and 8 large groups. 3 of those large groups were escorting a DST. 5 of them looked like small roaming fleets. Of those 5, 4 of them entered our system. Of those 4, 3 were through traffic and 1 were the raiders. The scout who saw the raiders correctly identified them, but a bit too late. So far we have 45 true negatives the scouts discarded and 1 true positive. It was this positive that was reported in coms to me. If I was designing the operation, the Orca pilot would be on coms with me and the scouts, not his corpmates who are all on grid. But if he joins us, he’ll be on coms with us so that’s not the issue.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong besides not having enough scouts to cover the systems I needed. My scouts saw the raiders. They correctly identified the difference between through traffic and the one heading for the mining op. And I got my warning when they landed on grid. I asked them to check latency issues with z kill, thinking that might be the cause of the delay, and that’s not the problem.

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I mean we have listed several lol king among them being the use of an orca at all.

Why don’t you join their coms?

Honestly this entire scenario is so insane I had to check z kill to confirm your alliance really is repeatedly doing things like losing 3 unsupported skiffs in low sec. Or regularly trying to use ventures in a current FW hot spot.

I mean the one bad idea you did prevent with the wh is one I used to do regularly lol

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He’s not in my corp. He’s just a guy who shows up when I’m in belts when he’s done with a moon pop and asks if I wanted a boost.

What?

I get the idea of waiting hostile to land on grid is bad. So I put some guys out on my own initiative, but I mentioned I still didn’t get warning in time.

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Does your Corp have some sort of rule about going into someone else’s coms? I’m regularly in and out of coms of different groups. Sometimes multiple at the same time if the need is there.

Faction warfare.

I was also talking about using an orca in the first place for what you were doing. You mentioned having 5 pilots out scouting. Wouldn’t you be mining faster if you swapped the orca out for a porpoise and put those 5 guys into procs?

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No, I just don’t have the coms of his corp.

Thanks

I don’t know. We do use porpoises in my corp. However, for the new potential recruits, that idea is vetoed so I’m left with scouting, which is better than waiting for hostiles to land on gird.

Which… I don’t know why this is failing me. Moving some guys from combat ships into more scouts is a start. But there is another flaw in my execution since my guys can see people approaching, but I still didn’t get a warning in time. I’m trying to figure out why the scouting didn’t work.

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Well because it took so long for the Intel to make it to you.

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Maybe I should just have every ship be reported and align when something is spotted until the scouts decide if something is dangerous or not?

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Yeah that’s why I said he should have reported them while looking them up rather than waiting.

He also needs to get faster at looking people up.

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It also depends on your command structure. Typically in an operation there is a FC that calls the shots and is responsible for the decisions. They’re given the intel directly ASAP from the scouts (drag 'n drop names from local to private intel channel). FC looks them up quickly so scouts can focus on staying safe and focusing on keeping watch. FC then makes the decisions based on who they are looking up, the context of which scout it is from, where that scout is, and the FC’s own context of being actually present at the operation site itself.

You can push the decision to all to your individual scouts but then you’re at the whims of like 8 different people telling you potentially conflicting things, plus none of them are where you’re actually mining.

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In-house operations are more organized than my ad-hoc efforts. If this starts being an in-house thing, everyone will share coms for one thing.

Specifically where the scouts are or just how many jumps out? When there are 8 systems 3 jumps out, each one seems fungible to me.

Hmmm, good point.

OK, let’s try another attempt to make a plan that makes sense. I’ll pitch it to him if he joins corp or the point someone gets him, whichever happens first.

A core mining operation with the Orca and Mining barges mine a moon, and then move to the belts as that clears.

A scout placed in something cheap (thrasher or whatever, T1s are cheap) at each of the systems 3 jumps out to make sure the fog of war is lifted. When they see people enter the gate heading towards the mining operation, names and ship class are dragged to fleet chat.

The FC looks up the pilots. Any time a group is entering, everyone prepares to align. With 3 jumps of head time, this shouldn’t be difficult. If it’s very dangerous, everyone evacuates immediately.

Another scout is placed in the mining system and jumps between the gates, depending on which way someone is heading in.

And a few of those extra people can hang around in combat ships and do whatever they want. I know some of them genuinely want to maximize the odds of success of the operation and would be willing to do whatever they were told (scout, mine, whatever) and some just want to go out in a blaze of glory when hostiles hit the grid.

Does this seem like a reasonable way to use scouts? The FC should get plenty of warning before hostiles appear on grid. The FC should be anyone other than me since I’ve done PVP maybe once and I had to use a different ship that the one given when I found out I lacked skills needed to use one of the modules on the ship, so I didn’t learn much about organization.

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Put a Higgs Anchor rig on the Orca align time is only a few sec’s

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I mean sure… if by only a few you mean well over 20 even with stabs.

point of a higs is that it lets you align with a really low max speed so you can basically drift in one direction for a long time w/o getting to far away from where you want to be. not to drastically reduce your align time.

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