hi so i’m interested in everything eve. I’m researching moon drills and i was wondering how t best defend them. as a new player i don’t know enough people to jump into alliances. i also know if an alliance is war decked all corps in alliance is war decked. i love mining the most so i’m interested in learning everything about mining including a moon drill. but before i even move towards saving up for one. i would like as much info on defending one from being blown up for its core. while i do other content i’m not big on pvp. i won’t have a moon drill in low or null sec. i do understand where best to place one to keep out of sight. i know how to view the zkillboards. but what i dont c is how best to defend. i read about anchoring defenses to station but can’t seen to find what those defenses are. this isn’t any immediate plan but one in trying to learn as much about as possible before i decide if its worth it. i don’t wanna do all this work to just have it blown up. and i don’t want to just join an alliance for protection as i don’t have much to give back to any alliance. if anyone has tips or pages or videos with more info i would love to c it all. as there’s so much info out there its hard to sort and find the relevant current info. and while i know nothing is 100% safe in eve i just would like the best info i can to protect a moon drill should i decide to go for it. im a newer player but am really invested in this game and understand the basics. i have never in any game had goles set so high and am motivated to do so many great things. its just a bit difficult to find al the info i need to make future plans or even decide if this is a rout i want to go. Please give me info on this subject and links are always welcome. and please don’t try to dissuade me from getting a moon drill as im newer. nothing set yet i just want the raw info to make informed decisions for the future. thanks
There are a lot of alliances that welcome new players, and who already have many moon drills operational.
They usually have the corp that has the structures, in a separate corp/alliance away from the main, so when they do get wardecced it doesnt affect the main corp.
Its not about anchoring defenses to a station, and more about fitting stuff like missile launchers to the structure.
Way back in the day, when you had to rely on a POS to passively moon drill, you could anchor defensive structures. But now, with the advent of Citadels, there is no more anchoring of defensive structures to defend your citadel.
Short of it is, dont do it.
Anchoring a citadel to moon-drill, requires significant investment, and continued investment.
Chances are, if you cant call upon a 100 man fleet to help defend it, then you will not be able to keep it for long.
And even if you keep it, the amount of isk you will get from mining, will barely cover the cost of operating, if that. Hisec does not have that valuable a moon to mine, and there are limits to how much a single player can moon mine. Remember, the mining field does despawn after a few days. So you, as a new player, have a couple days to mine as much as you can, and then its gone.
Its just not worth it as a new player, unless you dont care about using your credit card and spending tons of money on the game, or you have a dozen mining alts.
There are tons of hisec mining corps that own moon mining stations. Join one of those, and start mining.
Or, just find a random athanor that already has extracted the chunk, and is ready to detonate. Check back every few days, and just mine it when its available. There is no restriction, and it is not against the rules to mine someone elses moon-ore asteroid field.
does it make a difference thati have non new player fireds who will help fund it. they just never ventured into such things befor
No, it doesnt make a difference.
Not unless your friends are willing to bring 40, 50 other friends to defend it.
If you want to have your friends fund it and want to spend isk to do it, go ahead. No one is saying you cant.
But you have to look at reality, too. Dont fool yourself. Go forth with the understanding that:
a). You will most likely not make a profit. You will operate at a constant loss. Athanors require fuel to operate, and you will have to buy, transport, and refuel your athanor at regular intervals.
b). You will most likely lose your athanor. The core of the Athanor, which is required to activate the athanor, always drops, and is worth 700 million isk, so it is very lucrative for pirates and anyone really to take them down. You need to be able to defend your station, or it will be destroyed.
If youre fine with that, then go ahead, and good luck.
I am not sure about moon drill stations but ALL player owned stations are targets due to the 880 million ISK core. My station wasn’t online for less than a minute, there was literally no time to install defenses. As you can see, they waited until the Upwell Quantum Core was installed to launch an all out attack.
My friend ran her Raitaru for about 6 weeks. She also built an Astrahus back on Valentines Day of this year and that one is still running. I don’t know why, maybe it is just luck? The engineering stations have very limited defenses, where the Citadels have the option of fighters.
I went moon mining with a fleet, didn’t think much of it. Not much different than finding good belts. I mostly mine gas these days.
Fly safe o7
I think you might actually know the answer to your situation that to protect your corp when anchoring a structure.
There seems to be a strong push to reduce the number of corporations anchoring their own structures without first acquiring the necessary arrangements of protecting their assets.
This stops the spam from years past.
If a corporation wants to safely anchor their structure there should be a service provider who provides proper protection.
We currently know of large alliances and Mercenary services.
It’s all a part of risk vs reward.
My friend just poops out stations for no reason and keeps them fueled. I know for a fact she is running a private corp with 3 characters. She is just burning ISK on them and doesn’t care. When she placed her Raitaru inside a wormhole, I told her it wouldn’t last long in there. After a few weeks, I was convinced to try it myself. I had everything ready to go in a transport nearby but as soon as the core went in the raiders showed up and blew it up. They were waiting for it. I chalk it up to bad luck, but station creation is just not something on my list of “fun things to do in Eve”. The whole station thing is so obvious an ego gimmick to allow alphas anchor them so omegas can easily wipe them out and make the paid customer happy.
@PyroSaphuron if you seek to make profit, you can rent some offices in low sec very cheap. I have a few I pay 10K per month for with my private corp. This gives you hangars to share and sort goods among your characters. Pick an ideal spot in 0.4 low sec and you can often mine gas, find WHs to mine, or just collect valuable ores. Transport was an issue at first, but I found it best to ignore auto-paths and make your own way. Wishing you the best in whatever you decide to do next.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but you have this backward. You join alliances to get to know people.
Not sure where you are alluding to this. Wormhole means you can be scouted and popped (it’s also awful moon goo). Low sec in Molden Heath or Derelik or Aridia (backwater regions) will have big fleets that scout you. NPC null will get popped by locals. Highsec will invite wardecs unless you pay the racket (yes even in HS islands). Pochven and Zarzakh you cannot anchor.
So there is no „best out of sight“. There is only „what is your plan when it gets attacked“ and if you were relying on „out of sight“ then its not answering the question.
The best plan is have friends with 50 accounts or more and be good at fleet PvP.
Or just dont plant one and mine other peoples stuff
Hmm. Or just make sure you earn enough to cover the loss.
I had an Athanor for two chars in a WH for 2 years, including core and always fueled, it was a nice time doing juicy PI. But you never know when it will be over - only that it will eventually happen, that’s for sure.
from my experience a Athanor in 0…5 is the only structure that is profitable in a reasonable amount of time, in highsec, even if you pay someone to help you in wardecs.
Sounds like your friend ratted you out, to weed out competition.
Im not sure why this would be the case when it takes a ton of isk to buy and anchor these structures to begin with, isk that normal new players would not have.
No, she is my neighbor and she would never do that sort of thing, even to a complete stranger in the game.
I didn’t say new players, I said alphas. Alphas can buy and assemble stations, you don’t need an omega to plop down a station. As for tons of ISK, it is just not much “fun” to spend almost 2 billion just to see it blown away in 24 hours. However I make billions as an alpha and so does my friend. I assume, when one has very little ISK millions can look big, when you have billions, they no longer seem as much as they did before.
The core popping out is the obvious reason for this gimmick, player made stations are space pinatas for large omega players to bust open. Recently a bunch of stations were destroyed one jump off Jita in Perimeter.
Thats what you think.
Evil is its own reward.
Outpost construction is behind the omega paywall, so they cannot assemble a station.
So what does Alpha have to do with omegas coming in to tear your structure down, unless you were a new player? If i went Alpha today i would still have enough ISK to hire mercenaries, and enough friends to help defend. Being Alpha has nothing to do with omegas coming over to take your structures down.
Again, why Omegas? Are you saying that Alphas cannot fly the ships required to apply enough DPS to destroy a structure, and cannot fly hauler ships to transport the loot dropped?
Yes, and none of it had to do with the owner being alphas and the people destroying it omegas. Im sure there were plenty of Omegas who owned those structures, and there were more than a few alphas who partook in the destruction.
Really? Better check your facts. How is it I owned a Raitaru station and my friend owns an Astrahus right now? IF stations were behind the paywall, then it would be omega on omega action. Allowing alphas to buy and deploy stations is the gimmick. Without the budget for defenses, anyone setting up a station is toast. The OP was talking about a moon drill operation, unless they are made out of ISK, it would be better they just ask a corp to mine with them on their next operation.
Alphas can only build medium sized structures. Anything larger must be omega, but can be transferred to a corp with an alpha ceo.
Also, they can only anchor anything that uses anchoring I
Read what I said, and thats not what you said. Assembling a station, i.e. outpost construction, is behind an omega paywall.
You just told me you make billions of isk as an Alpha.
So you, as an alpha, make billions and therefore can afford to budget for defense.
Which means that it has nothing to do with being alpha, and everything to do with having enough ISK. If you were omega and poor, you would still struggle with a station just like an alpha.
Again, your argument proves that deploying stations has nothing to do with Alpha players feeding stations to omegas. Can you please stop making this stupid argument of how its a gimmick for alphas to feed stations to omegas, when everything you said proves the opposite?
For moon drilling, you need an athanor or Tartara, both of which require outpost construction to build, which is behind an Omega paywall. They cannot be assembled by alphas, which is what I said.
Ah gotcha.