Just came back from a 7 yesr hiatus and trying to figure out the most efficient mining group. I have four toons that can mine and one has maxed out mining gang bonuses. So what is the most efficient group.
4 skiffs jet can mining and when the four are full one toon grabs ore hauler and hauls till everything gone then jumps back in a skiff rinse repeat.
3 skiffs and deficated hauler.
3 skiffs 1 Porpoise. When Porpoise full dock and come back.
You can store a combat ship in the Orca, swap one of the skiffs out for it while the other two dock up, and possibly fit that Combat ship with the punt-o-matic fit which will let your Orca warp away in 2 seconds or less.
The safety play would be to use 4 skiffs and a Deep Space Transport for the collecting.
DST’s can hold two jet cans. Transports at Level 4 gives you a 60,000 m³ space. Plus they have a solid tank and access to Medium Micro Jump Drives. I would operation the skiffs in pairs, have them fill the same can.
A Command Destroyer might be an interesting alternative to the Porpoise. Sadly there is no miner version. But being able to micro jump the mining fleet out of range/danger for an incoming attack - of course all hypothetical.
