Why is everyone at an ice field sitting at a dead stop?

Industry Gameplay Center Mining & Extraction
1

I’ve been playing the Nexus festival and have done a few of the ice mining sites in high sec. I don’t do a lot or any mining outside of gas huffing. When huffing I usually take up a 500m orbit around the cloud and depending on rats needing to be kited, somewhere between 400 - 2200 m/s. On the ice sites I’ve been doing similar while ice mining. I’m flying a Prospect.

Most of the people I’ve seen sitting still are flying Endurance and exumers like the Mackinaw.

Is the yield better / faster if you are sitting still?

Maybe i’m just being overly paranoid from my PTSD of being killed so many times in low sec, but if you are sitting still in a ship that takes 5 seconds to align to warp, you are 5 seconds from getting away versus moving and at a random vector to your warp target, you are between 0 and 5 seconds from getting away?

2

No, your instincts are good. But 6 min to fill an endurance (give or take) people get lazy and if the ice ends you wind up flying off in some random direction. So they choose lazy over safety.

m

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3

You can only bring mining ships into the event ice anomalies, that’s why they aren’t worried about it….

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4

That’s so funny. I didn’t know that and, as a result of aforementioned PTSD, have been DScanning like crazy while on site. Yep, even in high sec; never safe.

5

I’ll just drop this here for people to enjoy.

:innocent:

[Procurer, Tear Harvester]
Ice Harvester Upgrade II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Stasis Webifier II
Warp Scrambler II
10MN Afterburner II

Ice Harvester II
Ice Harvester II

Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints II
Medium EM Shield Reinforcer II
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I

Warrior II x10
Ice Harvesting Drone II x1

4 Likes
6

Nice fit!

I had some success with blaster Pioneers as well, a lot cheaper and faster but more of a giveaway of your intentions. Pioneers may be able to enter but cannot mine ice.

On topic of ice mining while sitting still:

I like orbiting the asteroid to avoid NPC damage but if there are no NPCs I’ll simply sit still in an Endurance instead, at more than 2km from the ice.

If any danger appears I press my cloak and I’m instantly safe.

Orbiting may put you too close to objects to cloak at times, so sitting still is one of the safest strategies in an Endurance. And easy too. And as Mike mentioned, you won’t drift off if the target you orbit disappears.

1 Like
7

They sit at zero without moving because they are not actually playing the game and are AFK. If they would orbit like you, by the time they come back to keyboard their ship will be tens to hundreds kilometers away from the belt.

Is it that simple.

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8

It is faster to align and enter warp from a standstill than it is when moving at a large angle to the align direction, so if you are orbiting you might get lucky and be pointing it the right direction, but you are more likely to be pointing in the wrong direction and will take longer to enter warp.

An Endurance can be fairly easily fit to align from a standstill in 3 seconds, so if you think three seconds is enough to get away then it might be better to sit still than to orbit.

As I see it, the advantage of orbiting is that is harder for someone to bump you, but the advantage of sitting still is that you can get into warp faster (provided you don’t get bumped.)

1 Like
9

Thanks for reminding me of an old Procurer I had lying around. I spent some skill points to train up to the Ice Harvester II. I don’t have the skills for a Ice Harvesting Drone II yet so just using the level 1 drone.

I’m able to get ~23m3/s. Almost twice as fast to harvest 28 units and deliver to orca than using the Prospect with dual ice laser II.

Speaking of laser speed, like 80% of the people running these ice sites are using the Endurance which only has one laser turrret. Is the Endurance’s buff really make it as fast to mine with as the Prospect with 2 lasers?

Here is the Procurer fit I came up with for running these high sec sites:

[Procurer, *Simulated Procurer Fitting]
Ice Harvester Upgrade I
Ice Harvester Upgrade I
Ice Harvester Upgrade I

10MN Afterburner II
Mining Survey Chipset II

Ice Harvester II
Ice Harvester II

[Empty Rig slot]
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing II
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I

Hornet II x4
Ice Harvesting Drone I x1

Modulated Strip Miner II x2
Mining Laser Upgrade I x2
RDLF-10L Lowsec Ice Storm Filament x6
DSHR-01H Highsec Ice Storm Filament x6

10

:rofl:

That fit I posted wasn’t for harvesting ice, it’s for harvesting tears from the miners running those sites. The ice harvesters are camouflage so you can get in range to use the web and point in the event site where combat ship’s can’t go.

2 Likes
11

Because there’s no rats in 0.9/1.0 systems.

Rats in 0.6/0.8 are easy to tank and kill anyway so I sit at a couple of k away, if rats appear I put out Hob 2 drones, then a salvage drone, because I salvage everything.

My Endurance holds 19 ice blocks and has a cycle time of 47.7 sec and a 2.9k speed to hand them in faster.

1 Like
12

You can’t just align and stop and still be aligned. You have to be aligned and still moving in that direction at 75% velocity to instantly go to warp. It’s a common misconception. If you’re always moving away from an ice block, you’ll soon be out of range and have to go back to the ice to restart your strip miners. So aligning doesn’t really work if you’re stationary.

Orbiting won’t help with that either. In EVE Online, you align more slowly (or rather, take longer to enter warp) if you are moving in a direction different from your intended warp target. If you are already stationary at zero velocity, the time it takes to align and warp will be the same regardless of which direction your ship is facing.

As for rats, unless it’s the infamous Diamond Rats, there’s nothing to worry about. All rats in High Sec are ridiculously weak. The only exception are the Diamond Rats. If they show up, you’re toast if you can’t get away. It’s unfortunate that they’re so rare. They’re fun to deal with since they’re so scary!

13

Mining bonuses for perching ( sitting static)? No

If im in a WH, hugging, the sleeper/awakened rats wont catch me at full speed.. if they catch me though, my prospects will be toast. Ill also get toasted by another player that scanned me down… Its why i dont perch in WH space. (uncloaked)

'In High Sec. often solo players with perched ships mining ice are afk/ or semi afk mining. They know that if the rock completes, they will shoot out in to space since they are not orbiting anything now. ( they could orbit a bookmark, but thats a bit more advanced i guess)

As for multiboxing fleets of exhumers. you have a few things at play

-Distance is an issue and orca sieging for compression locks it into a spot, so keeping max distance to the farthest rock is key. to minimize multitasking… in an ice patch hulks can get the whole thing from a specific point in the patch. thye might be static holding at 1000 or orbiting using fletet regroup command.

Multitasking - its a thing especially when running hulks (unless you are cheating with bots) I can tell you from experience, running 10 hulks, an orca, and a hauler has it moments and requires concentration and coffee. not moving around that much helps that process. If I want a break, i pull out the macks… its light duty compared…

Transfering load - keeping close to the orca maintains a connection to the fleet hold of the command ship allowing seamless transfer of product off the ship to the orca. its more crucial when operating multiple hulks

Alternate mechanics - Some gankers like to bump orcas. Some multiboxers just get irritated and leave, but theres another way. a maxed sp orca pilot can command boost from far away, and fast drift the ship while running compression which makes bumping that ship a bit more irrelevant because its stil providing the benefit…. meanwhile, if you are running macks or skiffs, you simply 500 orbit and collect.. bumping is much more difficult and the ships suck backk in like a magnet. compression now can be hot-keyed under general.. so you spam ( i use “C”) until the ship is chock full… then warp to pos drop and return.

Ganking - There are a lot of factors here that hurt or mitigate circumstances but theres a ton of threads here on that topic. Simple answer is that running hulks is like rolling a muliplasmid.. results vary.. macks are similar… Skiffs are fairly safe with the right fit and fleet support boosting shields armor etc but they can still die to motivated gank fleets. even the orca can go.

My Suggestion, if you solo mine, orbit. Make a book mark and orbit that. movement creates transverse velocity to help mitigate an attack, also helps deter cloaked gank spotter from fleet warping death on top of you. If you have a fast endurance, make a “safe bookmark” 200km away then return to mine… keep location open and spam S or D to that spot if the bad man comes. ( minimum warp is 150km, but you may push closer to that as you migrate to different rocks, to warp safe you have to stay outside of 150km from the bookmark ) warping to safe and not to dock, helps you observe the situation on grid. my .02

If you run fleets, you know the dangers.. use intel, use local, bring the right ships to areas considered dangerous.

14

I’m still wondering where miners in High Sec are getting their infinite sized mining holds. A mining hold fills up way before an ice rock gets depleted. If you see mining lasers, the miner is not afk.

1 Like
15

So, i run a fleet of 10 exhumers and 1 sometimes 2 orcas… The straight mechanics are pretty straight forward.

Centralize the fleet to reach the entire patch ( migrating skiffs or macks)

fleet regroup to the orca, fleet hold access to all exhumers.

monitor and compress in the exhumer holds for about 1 or 2 cycles at a time.

stack and move to fleet hold of orca.

rest of micro spent on replenishing pretargeted ice blocks and and opsec

at around 450units of compressed, you move out the miasmos and pick up a load… Note, a fast fit miasmos can efficiently go 10 warps round trip and a drop and keep up with your production of 10 boosted hulks

The micro is comfortable the way i have my GUI layed out IRL and i have full visability , no layering or hidden windows.

As far as fleet make up…. If i want to take it easy, ill dorp an exhumer and pick up a second orca… i can either A: daisy chain the orcas so orca 2 is essentially my hauler with command armor reps for a bonus. OR B: a split between exhumers, so that 5 boats deliver to 1 orca, 4 to the other, thus keeping the miasmos on extended union breaks.

My personal goal will be to run a max of 16hulks, a very doable option ( without bots) provided i either run a total of 3 orcas, or 2 a few macks mixed in on 2 orcas to slwo things down…. But ill be seeking a more agressive approach , running 2 fleets at the same time in different parts of new eden. The point of diminishing returns comes when the errors and cycle loss burns down the productivity past a point that i predetermine.

a bit winded , but there is a solid mechanics behind fleet mining… as for solos, they just run back to base and return to bookmarked ice and repeat.

1 Like
16

The AFKer’s could be bots.

17

Every miner is a bot or he dreams of automizating the whole unfun process of staring at the rocks for 15 minutes, dock, umload, return, repeat. Hence we call them bot aspirants.

If they wouldn’t be afk, they can’t get ganked. It is simply as that.

18

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Most of us are never afk, certainly nobody around where I am.

Personally I wish they’d either ban or at least limit multi accounting because maybe then nobody would need an outside programme to run their 20/30/40 dual Orca mining fleets.

I saw some stripping all the ice fields in systems in Winter Nexus, it was pathetic.

2 Likes
19

Actually, simplest would be to not allow Orcas, Porpoises, etc, into the event ice fields.

I have no problem with them in normal mining, but events should be different.

Second suggestion would be to ban all the more morons who constantly assert their knowledge that people are AFK. Nobody - not CCP, certainly not simpleton “elite PVPers” - other than the player themselves can know, truly know, that someone is AFK.

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20

You don’t know anything about mining.

1 Like