Try any 0.5 system. High sec moon mining is emerging gameplay, hence my need for a mobile mothership that could also double as high-volume miner. (Simply 'cause the fractured moon ore belts are themselves very high volume). From my observations so far, if you are into hunting, go to the border zones. Most of the orcas I am seeing there are deploying covetors and hulks.
You have cap issues and you can’t see anything in engineering that would help? How about cap management and cap systems operations? Continuing on cap issues, without the cap power relay, I get 12 minutes of running the Invul, tractor beam and MWD, with the CPR, it is cap stable while running the MWD. But I can’t really think of a situation where I would want to run the MWD for 12 minutes. Do you have one?
Wait what? You’re not cap stable with the MWD on? And speed tanking will not work against anything while flying an orca, you brick tank and wait for concord to kill gankers, or you recall one mining drone to send out one light drone to kill off HS rats. It should take seconds to kill them. Otherwise, you wait for your fleet members that are getting boosts (where are your boosts?!) or other miners to send their drones to kill the rats…
You would be way better off replacing all your resist amplifiers with hardeners (which you can overheat if you get ganked) and not trying to run the MWD permanently. A bulkhead instead of the CPR is definitely something to use.
Also, seeing as you have at least one mod offline, are you running out of CPU? My orca alt has plenty of fitting space to spare with your fit. The drone link augmentor is also hardly useful. Stay close to rocks when mining to reduce drone travel time and increase the fraction of time they spend mining.
You really think you are inventing something new? People mine and carry stuff in orcas since they exist…
[quote=“Erethond, post:22, topic:63689”]
You have cap issues and you can’t see anything in engineering that would help? How about cap management and cap systems operations? [/quote]
Both Cap Management and Cap Systems are at V. I was referring to shields but I take your point about not considering one issue in isolation.
I’ve just realised I do too, during simulations, hence my previously agreeing with you I can drop cap relay mod. Your suggestion of replacing it with bulkhead seems sound.
Maybe. I was looking into theoretical possibility of being AFK for hour or so. Simulation says MWD is cap stable. In reality however I am now down to 48-50% during testing, but it may now have bottomed out? And yes, speed tanking appears not terribly effective in orca, but I didn’t know that.
I have not trained for boosts and don’t intend to. As a solo operator they are of no use to me. Selfish, but true enough. As to your various other points (all appreciated by the way): gankers, if that happens whilst AFK then it happens, but a bulkhead would help; resists vs hardeners was all about being passive in operation (aka AFK) rather than active - right or wrong, it’s just what I was trying; offline mod was due to cap not cpu, but again only under artificial simulated conditions of all active mods on at once; drone link augmentor was really 'cause I hated to see so many empty hi slots, simple as that!
Wasn’t trying to be arrogant. All the old forum posts I could find talk a little about orca as hauler and even less about solo mining - and even that only in last two years or so? My observation of other orcas in-belt is when they do drone mine and boost, they all (?) still trundle around without using prop mod. That doesn’t seem practical to me in context of high sec moon mining (but may not be that different to ice belts?). Anyway, yes, I am tweaking (at very best) not inventing wheel. I misspoke if suggesting otherwise.
When you run the simulation, it will not only say “stable” but also at what % of your cap you will be stable. Much like shields, cap recharge is at its maximum around 30%, so often that’s around where you get stable. I see no point in trying to keep in on though, so stability with a mwd on has never been one of my objectives.
If you want to speed tank, you usually do that with an (oversized) afterburner or on ships with a MWD sig bloom bonus with small ships (cruisers and down), definitely not an orca with a MWD. You… should know that by the time you fly a ~1B ship, if not through experience, through watching youtube/reading EVE-Uni.
Fair, eventually though, having an alt (or more) in an exhumer who skill extracts to pay off their plex becomes worth it, so boosts are useful even if there is only 0-1 person at the keyboard for the fleet.
You can be AFK with your active modules still running. Even 4 hardeners should not deplete your cap and they are better even if you don’t overheat them, should you come under attack.
Usually with an orca, you don’t really move much at sub-warp speeds. If you mine ice, asteroids have enough in them that you can park next to one and slowly mine it, while your fleet’s exhumers mine the asteroids further away (especially with the range boost). If you mine in regular belts, you slowly move along the belt at the same rate as your drones deplete it. The MWD is mostly to enter warp in 10s but, if you are at the keyboard, nothing prevents you from using it to get to the next moon chunk. It should be plenty enough time without being cap stable. That’s what I do too.
With bulkheads instead of the CPR, hardeners instead of the amplifiers and switching to all drone mining rigs, this is essentially the fit I use. I find that mining faster (especially if competing against other miners) is more valuable than travelling a tiny bit faster. And I spend a lot more time mining than travelling too, so boosting what I do most seems more useful.
It does too! The pictogram on the left. Did not know that; very useful.
Aha. The advantage of talking with someone … gets you out of the mindset that “active” must mean you actually have to be there. Think I’m happy now with shield situation. Will go for a bulkhead and will model hardeners and just live with the regen rate. Final question, what do you think of those who fit 4 x invuln; surely there is a better way to do it, or is that still the best even with stacking penalties?
(And yes, to all your points in final para. I am beginning to think a dedicated hauler and a separate dedicated miner - as per your specs - might be way for me to go. Thanks for all your help/courtesy; both much appreciated.)
Your tank is mostly to survive gankers, or at least make not yourself a tempting target. Gankers usually are in amarr or gallente destroyer, so they do either EM/Therm or Therm/Kin. That gives you 3 damage types to resist, so one of each hardener plus an adaptive invul works best as far as I know. The one adaptive, with the naturally high explosive resist of shields also makes that reasonable.
Glad to help!
That is a lot of things you would have learn by learning the game without injecting.
also : don’t use the same fit for mining and for transport.
and yeah, one invul+3 em/therm/kine hardeners +DC+bulkhead is all the tank you need. plus SHIELD BOOST give you more resist and shield …
You can then use rigs for more shield/hull tank.
IF you are here when someone ganks you, you can try to OL the hardeners.
Maybe. However, I believe skill injection is just as legitimate for gameplay as AFK. If I want to train my alts to Biology V, then make sure they have cerebral accelerators 24/7 during events like The Hunt, that is my choice.
Even without injection I would still be a miner and would still never have been in a battle cruiser, never mind a battleship. I also don’t “do” PVP, meaning none of these issues have arisen before, either because my ships have been too small or because I usually run away instead. Also, my choice.
Again, my choice. What you say is ideal but I’m flying solo, on solo account. A billion isk for freighter, plus dedicated alt to fly it once in a while? Did not make sense for me. That said, depending on how well these moon mining trials go, I might change my mind and build dedicated ships. But not necessarily both orcas. In the meantime, I will swap out my resists for the suggested equivalent hardeners and see how that works for me.
nobody said the opposite.
I stated that you learn a lot about the game by playing small ships. Doing L3s in a drake allows you to learn how shield regenerates. Getting ganked in a barge would have taught you what gankers use, and how to not be an easy target.
You used a shortcut on your character, that does not bring a shortcut in your gameplay style. You are still a noob, with an expensive. I’m pretty sure you have no idea how to use the materials efficiently either, because you would have made some mistakes with low numbers of materials, resulting in low number of loss.
Now I tell you a secret : an orca extracts less resources than a mackinaw.
If you have the moon belts, then you have access to the athanor to compress it, thus moving the ore in a miasmos is faster than in an orca.
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Yet both you and Chainsaw Plankton have been negative about the use of skill injection. You, for example, say it is a “shortcut”. Is that not exactly what it is for?
I have no particular issues with any of that. I typically don’t do missions however (other than distribution and mining) as they are not fun. Learning in a drake might have been a good idea but it was just never going to happen for me.
And surely my never having been ganked in a barge is a good thing? Yes, we do learn from our mistakes. It is just my mistakes appear to have been different from yours. Maybe that is also part of the reason I am still a noob? I am not ashamed of that, nor for having to ask here for help, even if I did apparently take “shortcuts”.
Does not surprise me. The orca was not primarily designed to be a mining ship, was it? It does now give exhumers a run for their money though, using drones. Plus, it transports. Including a miasmos in the ship bay, which is all part of my trial as it seems to fit my style of gameplay.
Funnily enough, my only mining ship to ever have been targeted in highsec was a mackinaw. Apparently just because it was a mackinaw. Even using a fail-fit retriever instead, both routinely and in the exact same ice field, never got any attention. So, I used my less efficient and lower cost retriever instead (even though I did have procurers) and never got ganked. I learned useful lessons from that, just apparently not those about shields or other technical ship mechanics.
you should take a solid look at your mid slots. you have a lot of resists modules. You should think about cutting back your resist modules and adding either a few buffer modules or some active tanking modules. You will get better results.
How exactly is a shortcut something negative ?
The only negative point I talked about was you being still a noob(noob here stands for beginner), thus making expansive noob mistakes instead of cheap noob mistakes.
There are a LOT of things that need you to make mistakes to understand them. There is no shame in being a noob. I’m just telling you, you want the orca without learning to fly a combat ship, thus you will NOT learn a lot of things that are very important in Eve. I just can’t tell you the number of things that are actually not obvious.
I’m not telling you what you should do, if you enjoy the orca it’s very good. I just explain why there are things that you don’t understand but SHOULD understand if you had taken the time.
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Ok…
A) 4500 seconds assumes you are down to 0 shield hp… in which case, if you aren’t competent enough to prevent that in hisec from npc rats, you just shouldn’t be playing Eve. 4500 seconds is an hour and fifteen minutes… if my calculator did the math right…
If anything, add shield-extenders and lose the specific resists, but keep 1 or 2 Adaptive Invulns… with the DCII it will give you all the resistance that will matter. Or, know your local rats and resist specific to them… no need for universal coverage.
First line of defense is, well, defense. Being a capital ship, technically, just the bare-bones HP across the board is enough for anyone to muster up the courage and time needed to fight of ~3 hisec rats. D R O N E S . they aren’t just for mining…
B) Why in Bob’s name are you fitting a cloaking device… at all…? Wormhole mining? Yeah, I’d understand, but this is hisec… we talkin 'bout hisec. -AI
Based on the simpleness of the question at hand (we all asked simple questions at one point, not placing blame) I doubt you are wormholing… so… lose the cloaking device.
C) When there is a massive invasion of 3 NPC hisec rats every 2 hours, after you have gallantly fought off the intruders, run the small/medium shield booster you will have placed on your ship to top off what should be about a ~90% shield HP.
Hmm im boosting and mining in null sec and i have never had any issues with belt rats. My shield barely gets scratched. Ofc i dont have full drone mining yield fit. Instead i opted to have better tank and resists for belt rats
If you fit a MWD, you can fit a large shield booster, but not an x-large. Shield extenders do almost nothing since they add a flat amount of shield HP (2600) to the the orca’s already large shield HP (37500). A large shield booster will tank 300 dps, but an extra adaptive invul instead gives you 65k EHP when you overheat. So it is the equivalent of ~22s of running the shield booster. If your orca is going to be ganked (the only scenario where tank actually matters, HS rats are meaningless), do you have 22s? In a pre-pulled, 0.5 seconds, gankers have 26s, in a 0.6, pre-pulled, they have 21s. So only in 0.5 systems will gankers have enough time that the booster will be better. Now that’s actually where you are most likely to be ganked if you mine moon stuff though, so it might be slightly better for your survival. But definitely not field extenders. In reality, gankers will not plan the gank to last 100% of the response time and will bring enough numbers to take that down by a certain margin. I doubt you have 22s ever.
Shield extenders are terrible for an orca, they do almost nothing. An orca starts with 37500HP, a large shield extender II adds 2600. That’s just not worth it. Resisting to local rats leaves holes in your tank. You don’t tank for local rats in an orca, you tank for gankers. They do either EM/Therm or Therm/Kin, so you tank for all 3 (and decent explosive resist come as a side effect). And if not for tank, what would you fit in the mids? Drone nav computers? I could see a case being made for 1, but I’d rather an extra 65k ehp from the adaptive hardener. Get mining bonuses for drones from rigs, tank from midslots. No rig gives you as much ehp as an overheated adaptive hardener.
Good point on the drones though, fighting back does help.
Hostiles jump in system, cloak up if you are already more than 2500m from anything. It’s the fastest you can disappear. Jump into a system only to realize it looks iffy (OP has only a single account, no scouting), start aligning and cloak up, hope they didn’t notice you to de-cloak you. It buys you time if nothing else. You can even MWD-Cloak back to the gate to try to jump off into another system. Gankers can’t follow you if they have a weapons timer from shooting you.
If you have semi-decent drone skills, the one light drone you send after the rats will kill them before they noticeably hurt you. A small/medium shield booster is a wasted mid, which could be used for, you guessed it, an adaptive invul or a large shield booster, actually!
Sorry it has been a while since I actually fit the Orca forgot that it cant have Capital extenders. So good point ■■■■ the extenders. By your own point if the Orca wont survive the gank anyway so would it not make more sense to use the modules to create a tank that can hold rats by adding a Shield booster? Although I guess if you are going to run an Orca you probably have the time to run an alt with a Scimi to make your Orca a far less tempting gank target.
I will butt out here because I am obviously not aware enough of the specifics of the Orca to make it work. Come out to Null! Mining is more fun here!
No worries, we all remember old useless things (and forget new, important things… what was the name of that cute girl again?! 
)
My thinking here is: “What can I do to make an orca the least interesting gank target while still being useful”, hence maximizing midslot tank since they are better at that than rigs, which are the only place where you can boost drone mining, so valuable for keeping the orca useful. There will always be a certain number of catalysts/talos who will be able to destroy the orca, the point is to drive that number high enough that they lose in the exchange (not profitable, too much work to coordinate so not worth the time). If the thinking were “I’m gonna die anyways”, then why even fit a tank?
I’m not even sure it is an exaggeration to say that you could take an orca with no module at all and only one T1 light drone and be fine against HS rats, so for me rats are not a consideration at all for tank. So I pick what gives me the most HP over the duration of a gank. The more HP you have, the less tempting a target you become, obviously. And resists does that in all situations except the one edge case where gankers would use 100% of their ganking window.
The other thing I forgot, is that the adaptive invul not using power allows you to fit command bursts more easily. I like 1 mining (cycle time) + 2 shield bursts (resists + amount), but I can’t fit that if I swap the adaptive hardener for a shield booster (with a MWD, which I like too much not to have).
I’ll keep an eye out for you when I roam! 
The tale of icarus is a classic, the first paragraph is a pretty effective tl;dr Icarus - Wikipedia
taking a shortcut when you know how and why is great, but I’ve seen many throw their cash into eve only to burn out a short time later as they had no idea what they were doing. Often involves buying a shiny expensive ship with an even shinier more expensive fit, and losing it in some ridiculous way, that anyone with reasonable in game experience could have avoided. They fly right at the sun and are surprised when they start falling to the ocean.
It’s your money do what you like with it, I’d just suggest most people spend some more time in smaller cheaper ships and learn the practical lessons there. A ton of people highsec mine in t1 barges and they figured out how to deal with the typical NPC for example.
there are risks to going afk in space, I’ve lost a few ships because of that. Now I usually don’t go afk unless I’m docked or in a safe cloaked.
With an orca in 0.5 the normal belt NPCs should be a very small part of that risk. I doubt they break the buffer on a well fit orca, although I suppose it’s possible. the new 
NPCs may be more risk, but I don’t know their mechanics. I do see a few orcas killed by them in highsec though.
Players are probably the biggest risk, when they get bored enough they may gank an orca, as someone else said put enough buffer on it and they will probably go for an easier target. They might still bump you though.
That’s a good thing to mention, yeah. If you want to mine in ore belts in HS, afk or not, first use the agency window to make sure there is no FOB in the system. If there is, even if the belt looks fine and patrols are not that bad, NPC miners may warp to your belt and, upon seeing you, gtfo while calling for a response fleet that can definitely challenge an orca. And concord won’t save you from those, so even if your buffer allows you to last one hour, they will eventually get you unless you can shed tackle.
And there would have been cheaper ship thats almost as good as orca and 10 times cheaper. Porpoise! But anyway hope youll have a good time flying the orca its amazing ship in high sec aswell. Perhaps id now try to figure out how to defend that ship.