Hi all. My question is simple: given my actual skills, ship and drones I use, I can theoretically obtain about 12million isk/hour mining ice or 17million isk/hour mining ore.
However, since ice asteroids take longer to run out, I can get effectively around 12million isk/hour, instead with ore I can get much less, maybe 4 or 5 million isk/hour, because of the fact that I have to constantly redirect the drones and move the ship and because the amount of rich and azure plagioclase in a single ore belt isnât enough to reach the theoretical goal of 17million isk/hour. So I spend my time jumping from a belt to another and redirecting drones because each single asteroid run out really fast.
Am I wrong in doing something or are things just like that?
there are a lot of variables. Ore and ice prices fluctuate. Also a âbeltsâ size can vary greatly depending upon the sec level of the system and whether it is a popular system or not. Also you have npc miners that can strip a system of ore even when it is not very popular. So if you are mining strictly to sell the ore/ice - what to mine and where to mine it is situational, varying over time. But yeah, as a general rule, the less you have to reposition your drones/ship, the more you can mine.
Honestly, if mining is your thing - what you should do is find a corp with a moon mining operation in .5 space. You will get much bigger, better rocks with some moon goo thrown into the mix.
Hisec asteroids are indeed small and will require you to⌠play the game and target new rocks frequently. Ice takes longer to deplete, but you also need to factor in they arenât always available and often there is more competition.
There are larger asteroids outside of highsec, as are moon chucks produced by refineries. But yes, to gain maximum efficiency you will have to micromanage retargeting often, and even use a survey scanner to avoid wasting time mining empty rocks.
This site tells me that plagioclase give roughly more than 17 million isk/hour with my skills, ships and drones, while veldspar only produce 13 millions isk/hour, am I wrong?
The price you get varies with both time and place - try entering the various ore-names into https://evemarketer.com/ and selecting âBuyersâ and youâll see what I mean.
compressed rich plagioclase 6,018.55 vs 1,550.00 compressed veldspar, taking the best buyers offers at the moment. Isnât plagio better than veld then?
Bear in mind that ores have different volumes. Plagioclase is .35 m3/unit. Veldspar is .1 m3/unit. You mine m3/cycle so it takes you 3.5 times as long to mine a unit of plagioclase and it takes up 3.5 times as much space in your cargo hold.
Compressed plagioclase is valuable because of its mexallon content - nullsec imports it, so you can get a pretty good price in Jita but you also need to factor in the cost (and risk) of hauling it from wherever your mining operation is located.
If you think outside the box, you can make a surprising amount of ISK by seeding Veldspar (Edit: and other standard ores required for the Materials For War Preparation missions) on the market in stations with storyline agents - easily charge double what you can get selling to buy orders.
I would just add - that if you want to stay in highsec - just move away from hubs. The less popular the system and the lower the sec status the bigger the rocks will be. Also Ice is on a cycle - I think it respawns every four hours? So ice is not available all the time. Most people I know who mine - typically moon mine when moon belts are up. Then when those belts are down they may switch to ice. I honestly dont know anyone who still mines regular asteroid belts anymore.
As stated in this thread, the biggest asteroids in hisec are generated from moons in 0.5 sec. These rocks can be around 130,000 m3, so about the same size as larger ice asteroids. That will solve your problem.
The sparkling plagioclase from moons is also at +15% yield, so better than either rich or azure. In fact, all of the minerals from moons are higher varieties than anything you can get elsewhere in hisec.
Moon belts are player-created and only last two days on average, so no guarantee any moon will have a belt at any given time. But, it is unlikely if you were to go through an area of 0.5 systems (say two or three together) that you would not find something to mine.
Bonus is, if you stick to plagioclase, or other low end rocks, no-one who owns a moon-mining op is going to mind if you take it. Still polite to ask, but not necessary. (The temptation is that you will find much better rocks to mine, like arkonor, gneiss and the like, and someone might shout at you.).
So, all you have to do now is work out your own list of preferred ores, based on isk/m3 mined. And latter should be based on Jita buy price for compressed ore, as you have already discovered. And off you go.
One last thing - boy this thread is like a trip down memory lane - reminds me of the old days - if you are going to mine in ore belts, those belts are static as they respawn in the same place every time. So just make a perch above or below the belt at about 200k away. This makes relocating a whole lot easier as you can just warp to the perch and then down to your new rock.
Thats because you try to recruit new players in almost every single thread, without actually helping, even though everyone else outright answers in a helpful manner.
Come to Joppaya. I can invite you to the boosting fleet. Lots of large high yield rocks in the moons that take an hour each even with 5 people on it. No need to move from rock to rock very much.
