~or "I Mine the Rocks to Make the ISK to Fit The Ships to Survive the Rats to Mine the Rocks to Make the ISK to Fit The Ships to Survive the Rats to Mine the Rocks to Make the ISK to Fit The Ships to Survive the Rats to ..."
Me: "Hi, I'm Tur, I'm a miner... I mine."
Crowd: "Hello Tur."
<sigh>
You know, 9 years, 2 months and 1 day ago (as of this writing)... well, ok, a few months after that really, once I had learned the basics of the Viam EVE, the Way of EVE... I had decided, quite thoroughly, that I was absolutely NOT interested in mining. At all. Ever. Period.
Ok so why have my last incredibly sporadic and random EVE posts all been about how I am mining and liking it and shit? Well, it's like this...
I am still a member of NOMEX, and sadly we did get evicted from our home hole and all... and our Keepstar was all assploded and all...
Ouch... taking with it a HUGE amount of my ships and mods and such... and I am still dealing with a much more interesting and busy Real Life which of course is the True Death of EVE as our infamous game requires a really deep time investment, and I just haven't had the time to give... this last being the biggest issue.
So what changed? Well A.I., my RL son and EVElife-long mate, co-Director/CEO and corpmate in several other corps and alliances over my entire virtualife contacted me and said he had logged back in after a 5 year hiatus... Oh really now?
So we hooked back up and discussed matters EVE and Real Life related and we both decided to give it a go and see if we can scrounge up some hours in the evenings to fly together again.
NOMEX has regrouped and has relocated to a C6 and we want to get in the hole and start makin' some Anoikis grade ISKies and seek out that much desired wormhole PVP. So A.I. decided to request membership in NOMEX and while we are waiting out some RL issues the Directors are dealing with, we decided that some leisurely Hisec mining could generate some ISK and give A.I. some time to get up to speed on the changes 5 years have wrought on the game.
So we are mining inna .5 syste a few hops out of Amarr. It allows us both to fly and make a little money and, as mining is a somewhat passive activity, it allowing us time to play with fits and discuss changes and in general get re-acquainted with EVE and it's intricacies.
Some of the fun for me has been discovering the O.R.E. Industrial Command ship, Porpoise. This is, to quote EVE Uni, "...a smaller, more mobile and more affordable mining foreman platform that is perfect for supporting mining operations in dangerous space. It is capable of providing support to its allies through mining foreman bursts, remote shield boosters and survey scanners." AND it is based on my very most fav hull... the O.R.E. Bulk Salvaging Ship, Noctis. The Noctis has always held a very speshul place in ma' skeevy wormholer Lootin' and Salvagin' heart.
Flying a Porpoise in Hisec in today's New Eden, is interesting as you do not have to focus on GTFO or Defense nearly as much as you used to in the bad old days... the PCU just doesn't warrant it. When I started playing back in 2010, the PCU (graphporn below) was 46k avg. In the past year, it has dropped to 29k avg. and it shows in space...
I see far less people around than ever before in my time in EVE. In the past few weeks I have yet to see what I would call a real gate camp or anything that would get my spidey senses tingling... The scariest thing I have seen or had to deal with have been NPCs FFS! The damn Trigs now put on better gate camps than us Empyreans! When I login nowadays I usually see less than 20k logged on... it just aint scary at all in Hisuc no more I tells you.
OK so it's said... I AM NOT SAYING EVE IS DYING. OK?
It's not... but it has changed. To me, this is like climate change... Everyone wants to throw a fit and blame humanity for the weather. Do we have an effect on the planet we live on? Of course we do, ALL of life does. I can guarantee you if everything alive at the time of the Great Oxidation Event or any of the Massive Climate Extinction Events over geologic time could have recorded their feelings at the time, it would all sound a lot like what we are hearing all over commercial and social media today.
My point is, change is the ONLY constant. Things change, shit happens, adapt or die... I wonder how may of you reading this remember HTFU?
CCP used to understood that shit... back in the bad ol' good days...
MMO's of EVE's scope and size, and there are few if any that can claim to equal EVE in either category, are still a new thing in the world, we don't know how long they can last, what is to be 'expected' as there is no history, there are no prior MMO's of it's size and type to go by. EVE is a year and a half older than WOW even. EVE release date, May 6th, 2003... WOW, Nov. 23, 2004.
Anyhoo... (WARNING: Boring stats and tech shit follows)
My point being, I sorta balance fit my Porpoise. Best "possible" Yield plus Boosting and Salvaging all the rats L&S balanced against Defense and GTFO. Yeild-wise you can't mount lasers or strip miners on a Porpoise so all you get is the output from 5 mining drones, however...
Mining Drone IIs [my skills]:
-Mining Drone Op L5
-Mining Drone Spec L4 training to 5
Porpoise Bonuses:
Industrial Command Ships bonuses [my skills - L4]:
-10% bonus to Drone hitpoints, damage and ore mining yield
Hull Role Bonus:
-50% bonus to Drone ore mining yield
All in all not too terribly shabby:
-185.59 m3 per 60 sec. cycle [x5 = 927.95 m3] = 55,677 m3 per hr.
AND boosting AI in his Procurer AND killing looting and salvaging all the rats that land on grid...
I open the Fleet Hangar and A.I. drops his ore in as he mines.
The Porpoise carries:
-60k m3 in the Ore Bay
-5k m3 in the Fleet Hangar
-for 65k m3 per trip.
The Orca (with my skills etc.) carries:
-180k m3 in the Ore Bay
-40k m3 in the Fleet Hangar
-25k m3 of ore in the Cargo Hold (leaving some room for MTU, MD and a few cans for Loot, Salvage and Spare Mods)
-Total: 245k m3 for a full Orca.
Which takes 3.75 trips to the belts with the Porpoise and with A.I. nomming away with his Porcurer and drones, we can make several trips an evening easy.
As we are in Amarrian space we mine only Kernite ores (Kernite, Fiery Kern and Luminous Kern), when the Orca is full in every nook and cranny and off I go to Amarr to melt and sell all of it... we are averaging 23m ISK per trip which aint Wormhole ISK, but it's good enough while we knock the rust off our skills and ships.
Oh, and Defense and GTFO?
Reinforced Bulkheads II and a DCU II in the lows plus a Med Transverse Bulkhead II rig gives 62,349 hp total AND a 50MN MWD II gets me shufflin along at a respectable 1332.89 m/s!! You should SEE this fat assed girl FLY!!!
Not too shabby for hard core Anoikis PVPers who don't know how to mine properly to begin with! Oh I know that any true industrialists who read this will be apoplectic over how shabby and shitty we are going about it but... we are freakin weirdo wormholers baby! We do it our way!
It's got us undocked and flyin again and having fun and that's all good to me for now. =]
Fly smart and with good friends... it's the only way.
=/|)=
