Mining In W-Space, EVE’s ‘Deadliest Job’?

or~  A Profitable Way to Die…

I am working w/ Mab to get him up to speed on how HBHI does life in th’ hole. Every wormhole corp has, of course its own culture, style, goals, fits and such. The size and racial makeup of a corp also makes a bit of a difference too. My compadres are Gallente and Caldari, I am the only Matari in our corp ATM and so the majority of our guys are Armor tankers and almost all of my skills have focused on Shields… meh.

I have a Machariel in the hole and while it does quite well when armor tanked, this is unjustified as one of the Machs qualities is speed, and armor nerfs that severely. So I fitted out an Armor Typhoon for fleet ops. Of the Matari ships, the Phoon armor tanks like a stone plated bich and this is does not go against its bonuses as it is a fat slow lumbering BS anyhoo. This can be a liability but Strigon suggested I skill up to Cruise missiles for better range and so I did. The DPS is not as high as say, Heavies or Torps, but I can hit consistently way out past 100km. A Droan Link in the open hi-slot and I can project all DPS way out past my max lock range... I am now pleased that I finally have a good C3 Sleeper fit BS.

Mab has brought in an armor Domi for Sleepers and he is getting the SOPs of life in the hole, living by dscan probing out the daily holes, the ins and outs of life inna POS all down pat. I am well pleased with the progress of my Padawan Learner…  =]

He and I have been working on how to best mine in W-space. With the new upgrades to the mining barges we have decided on the Procurer as the staple mining barge for holes due to its BS class tank and when properly fit it has a very decent, IE short, align and warp out time. Fitting an Inert Stab II and a DCU II in the lows plus fully rigged w/ Med Low Friction Nozzle Joints reduces her align time to 6.25s. Then we use the webwarp trick.

The Webwarp Trick, for them as dunt know is, inna nutshell:

A Sebo, or Dual Sebo Web fit Escort (in Empire must be a corpmate, in W-space anyone and no need for Sebos) working with usually any large slow ship, Freighter, Industrial hauler, Hulk, etc. we’ll call it a BUFF (there are them as will know the reference). So, in Empire after breaking jump cloak (in W-space anytime) the Escort locks the BUFF. He then waits for the BUFF pilot to call out that he has initiated warp, the Escort immediately engages his web on the BUFF.

Now, because the BUFF is such a slow ship... and because he has just initiated a standard warp his systems are working on the basis of the ships std speed to reach ¾ to go to warp, as soon as it is webbed this reduces its top speed almost always to the point where it will then already be traveling at 90% of its ‘new’ top speed... thus warp is induced immediately… (IE insta-warp)

In our case we are doing this with two Procurers. We begin mining ops by creating BMs in working range of several good sites in the Anom... we then:

(1) Fleet Warp in to out chosen BM (engage all Shield Hardeners):

(2) Align to POS & cut speed to 0.0ms;

(3) Target Lock each other & whatever rock we will be working;

(4) Begin mining;

(5) Spam the crap outta Dscan;

OK, once we are setup and running IF we are attacked the hope is we will catch sight, either on dscan or visually on grid, of the attackers and initiate fleet warp and web each other instantaneously in the very very few 10^th of a second required to do a dual web warp. If, I say “IF” we do this just right we both warp off in less than one second.

We practiced this over and over in many variations. The window of opportunity, the time from initiation of warp to warp cutting off targeting is very very short, but… we were able to do it successfully once and even all the times we didn’t get both ships webbed one always did get webbed and basically warped off in less time than we could count… well under a second. So even if only one of us gets the benefit of the webwarp, better to lose only one ship than both, and with a 6.25 second align for the ship that misses the web trick assist, that would still take a fairly fast locking ship to get a scram on the second ship any way. The key is early warning… and in holes that is often extremely hard to get.

I did lose one Procurer in a mining op, but I was soloing and while I was at aligned and at speed, manually set to just over ¾ std speed, and doing the fly-by-mining method, a Helios uncloaked @ 2K from me and pretty much instantly had me scrammed. I feel pretty sure he was Sebo fit and he targeted by engaging his scram and then selecting my icon. This gives you the fastest lock-to-weapon-engagement time as he had me scrammed before I had a chance to react, and I feel I reacted in a fairly decent time… He popped a Hobgob II on me and started in on the new Procurers impressive tank… but as he had me scrammed, well… it was just a matter of time, and as we all know for some reason drones never run out of ammo…  =\

Plus he called in a ‘Cane and that was that… Mab was willing to come to my assist, all kudos to the man’s esprit de corps, but as he is not yet up to snuff on PvP I saw no real value in possibly losing two ships, especially as we can easily afford the Proc loss. I got my pod out and was not overly worried about it… we had made much more in Arkonor and Sleeper L&S over the last few ops in that Grav site than the cost of multiple Porcurers… I had it replaced in a few hours. Loss: (per Battleclinic) 25.6M, damage done: 20,830… not too shabby for the smallest mining barge in EVE.

Wonder if I should send this particular EVE “Deadliest Job” off to Mike Rowe?  =]

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=