hello pilots, i´m newbie… so i have this question, it is delusional to go for moon mining as a standalone player? I mean, i have the ISK to buy things, but don´t have the technique. Should i try? If possible, is there a tutorial about?
Zoltun Kell
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Solo player with or without lots of alts? The moon belt will only stay active for something like 2 days with rig bonuses. That means you do not have a lot of time to mine the rocks to recover costs. If you are completely on your own, your belts will also get vultured by other players with their boosted multi-alt fleets so that you earn less and potentially can’t even recover the fuel cost for the service. Not to mention that solo player structures are sweet targets for wars because you can’t fight back.
What you can do instead is to find a group that owns such a structure and ask them if you can mine with them and contribute some ISK or ores as compensation. You can also do it the other way around and find a group that wants to mine with you on your structure. In return, they give you mining boosts and a little tax (10% or so) as compensation.
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Thank you Dyver! I don´t have any alts… i´ll try to find a group.
Recover cost is kind of a loaded concept, fuel is cheap, only taking maybe 2 orca loads a month. Recovering cost of the refinery depends on the life of the structure.
You will probably run into other pilots that mine “your” moon, but I have found that most will either share thier moon or I have even payed a tax to owners. Either way it helps to pay for your structure.
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I might be recruiting…
No, not delusional. It is quite possible.
I am a solo player and currently have three moon operations - two of them in low sec.
All three of my refineries were found floating in space mind you, in one case complete with fuel and drilling rig. I did need to loot the last two components but picking up the athanors themselves came with no penalty. So, look around and perhaps save yourself some money. Otherwise, it will cost you about 1.2 B to set up.
The moon belt stays active for 2 days without rigs - 3 days with the 800 M rig. However, even over three days you will discover if you really, really like mining, as even jet-canning with a covetor/hulk will be a very active grind, and one that will still take the best part of three working days to extract the best value.
I currently don’t use my high sec refinery as there are too many other moons locally that are freely open so I just mine theirs. The low sec ones are both a work in progress. One is active as a reactions center (but I think I am running the wrong reactions) and the other one looks like it might be more useful as just a LS player structure for me. However, with any active service module also giving a huge boost to EHP, I might as well still drill as it costs me the same fuel to use it as to just leave it on anyway, and that way I can mine enough to at least cover my costs / make money when there is nothing better to do.
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How did you found these? In what status these structures are? Just wondering how to spot it in space. I could try to find some of these…
Long story.
Was flying around refineries I had previously mapped. Just to see which ones had active belts I could mine. Spotted one that had a strange symbol on its icon. Scrolled over icon with mouse and it said ‘unanchored’. I went to see if that meant I could push it. And it fell into my cargo hold. Completely by accident. I later deployed this refinery as my “test crash dummy”. It worked fine.
Second time. Same deal. Was flying around mapped refineries in a different system. One player had numbered their moons 1-5. So, it stood out, on grid, that #4 was missing. Yet it was still in my “list of places”, so it had definitely existed at some time. I flew to my bookmark and there it was. With the same ‘unanchored’ symbol on its icon. That one took me a few crash warps / docks / ship changes before it … err … was re-purposed.
Third time. Flying mapped refineries. In a third system. But this one was different. The refinery was still in operation, with the moon drill on. I was about to fly on but I moused over this icon by accident and it said [UNANCHORING]. No idea why. I thought maybe the owner was moving it and was getting one last mining cycle in before the 7-day un-anchoring period had finished? No idea. All I know is I kept an eye on it. And one day, there it was. With the same unanchored symbol on it. Plus. This time there was a container near it, with a moon drill and lots of fuel blocks in it. Looting the drill got me a flag but ‘salvaging’ the refineries - even though they still had owners names on them - did not.
I have since tried to farm refineries. But no luck so far. You would just have to map your local systems and fly maybe once a week around them to catch any that have “come loose” or are otherwise un-anchoring.
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Thx for info, I’ll try my chances 
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