or~ (grumble, grumble) Mab stole my title afore I could use it (grumble)...
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| HDF =Petra Canisque= |
ANYONE who has followed my blog for any length of time has to know
I hate mining with a passion. I mean it. It is the most suc thing IMHO that you
can do in EvE. Peroid. I’d rather bash a POCO, I’d rather bash a POS, I’d
rather bash my face in with a solid Tritanium scale model of a Hulk afore I
would “choose” to go mining… until now. =]
Meet the Venture…. ORE’s newest mining ship and
their first foray into dedicated Mining Frigates to boot. Ahhhh now THIS is
moar like it!!! You see pretty much my main issue with mining is its core activity…
IE ‘changing targets’. I have mined in Hisec solo, I have mined in W-space, in
fleet and scary solo, I have mined in null inna BIG fleet… and it is just so
damn sedentary… so… so… PASSIVE… it sux the life outta me. I HATE passivity… BUT,
mining at 420ms, or better yet, at 2600ms… now THAT shit is nothing but
unadulterated fun!!! AND I am making bank too boot! OH Hell Yea!
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| THIS is a piece of Heavy Equipment |
The Venture even looks the part too. A big, scratched up, dirty, YELLOW
(good color that) piece of De-CONSTRUCTION equipment if there ever was one… a
Space Rockcrusher. Close up it gets even better… the details are great. The ORE
logo, stenciled Model Numbers, the damn thing even has work lights. I love every
inch of her, especially the very clear and evident command deck/cockpit.
On many of our ships in EvE we often have to sorta guess at where
we ‘are’ in the ship. Where is the command deck ‘exactly’ on a Drake? on a ‘Cane?
on a Noctis? But with the Venture it is plain as the nose on a Tempest… right
where it should be… out in front of the main hull with a nice, wide widow so
the Captain can oversee mining ops in progress… Ahhh yes.
So, as Mab said, our CEO brought a few in for us all and I fitted
one up off the cuff… no PYFA or EFT theory crafting and fit gaming… just:
HI
x2 – Miner IIs
x1 – Sm YF-12a Smartbomb
MID
x1 – Adapt Invlun II
x1 – Phased Muon Sensor Disrupt I / Scan Res Script
x1 – 1MN MWD I
LO
x1 – Inert Stab II
RIG
x3 – Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Smartbomb is ‘cause there aint no weapon I can put there that will
help with Sleepers… so meh.
ADF II & Damp w/ Inert Stab and rigs is for GTFO hopefulness…
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| Welcome to Ring Mining |
On to the fun… so, Mab fitted one out too and we headed out to a
Grav site… picked a juicy (huh listen to me now willya?) fat ol Arkonor rock
and started in on it… and I discovered…. Ring Mining! Or as I prefer to call
it, Wheel Mining… check out the pix above and below… Ok so you get a few guys
together in Ventures… one guy orbits the rocks at 2000M and each of the others sets
‘keep at range’ to the guy in front of him at say, 1000 or 1500m and go to it!
At 420ms four or five guys wheeling around a rock would be one helluva sight!!!
Now there are them as will read ‘tween the lines there and say, “Damn Tur, you just setup a passive activity.”
“By setting a keep at range you fly hands
off… IE Passively.” Uhh… lemmethinkaboutitno. Passive to me means not ONLY
are your hands off the keyboard… but they have NO reason to get back on it
anytime soon… with the Venture, and keep in mind I mine inna WORMHOLE, I have
PLENTY to keep me focused and to keep my head in the game... spamming Dscan,
watchin the sky, and watchin that lovely little ship whiz around that rock.
I want to do a Venture fleet op where the FC gets everybody into
the wheel, then does a 3, 2, 1 zero! countdown for everyone to fire up the
Miner IIs (or the Modulated Deep Core Miner IIs… yea baby!) and all mine at
approx the same rate (depending on skills…) so hopefully everyone fills their
5000m3 Ore Hold at nearly the same time, then either fleet warp back to POS…
OR… have an Orca (or a Rorqual) cloaked up within a reasonable
distance from the ‘wheel’ (5 or 10km or at a BM just off grid or whatever
floats yer Orca) … everyone tops off then flies to (or warps to) the
Orca/Rorqual and makes one orbit round to drop ores and then right back to it…
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The NASCAR of mining… Pedal down, turn right!?
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So… Tur now enjoys mining because it is no longer a deadly dull
passive activity but a hi-octane, fast paced deadly activity! Now I am gonna
plug my friend, and corpmate, Mabrick’s blog, in his post, "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained" (the above referred to Stolen Title, and probably the most obvious Venture post title imaginable...), in this he posts a really schweet little video clip... if you haven’t already you simply
GOTTA watch it.
It stars he and I in our Ventures with Spiral inna
Mack with 5 mining droans out, all working that selfsame loverly chunk of
Arkonor… The Droans are a' droning, the Mack is a' chewing and the Ventures are a' spiraling
'round and round'… I bet you can’t watch it just once… =]
And I found it most interesting to read Splatusesses blog post, “The Retribution for my sins…”, where he considers attempting
to Stealth Bomb the first Venture he ran into, but, after looking over the
specs, +2 Warp Stab strength, +400ms base speed, 40m sig radius and at a cost
of only a few paltry million ISK to boot? …he sums up his feelings with, “Nah, this is suicide.” LOL
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This makes mining an… AdVenture!
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While Mab and I were spiraling round and round I was reminded of
my very first kill… I was very noob and I was in training in the C1 my old
Alliance had an Amarr POS in. Ferri and I saw a ship on scan, so we fleeted up
and Ferri got him dscanned down and we jumped him… and killed and podded him. A
little later I found out he was a noob inna frigate w/o any weapons… and he was
mining… solo… inna wormhole… <facepalm>
I was reminded of this incident because if… IF that young player
had been inn a Venture… I am pretty sure (if he had been on his toes) we might
not have killed him so easy as we did that day so long ago… I’ll mine inna
wormhole any day inna Venture! This ship makes mining an AdVenture at last!
It really shines at gas mining in the WH as well. You can finish off Ladar sites amazingly quick with 2 or 3 of them. The 100% bonus means even low skilled players get almost full output over a BC miner.
ReplyDeleteWe were looking at that last night afore all-the-trubble started... (but that's for a later post...) and I was sayin as how I needs to skill up for gas harvesters (still sounds sooo wrong to me... pictures of hoses and dropped pants, ewwwww) anyhoo... them and Deep Core Miner II's also for the mycoxit ya know... =]
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I like about gas harvesting is, as Splatus pointed out, the decloaky nature of gas sites, no SB's a sneakin up on ya... =]
"OR… have an Orca (or a Rorqual) cloaked up within a reasonable distance from the ‘wheel’"
ReplyDeleteYes, please do.. we've spent all the isk we got out of selling that cloaked Orca in a grav site already. Wouldn't mind a Rorqual kill either to be frank.