Back when I first started playing Eve Online I also played EverQuest 2. I found I could make some money in Eve while playing EQ2 by parking a Mammoth in a belt fit with a Mining Laser II and letting the cargo hold fill up. I wasn't AFK because I use one keyboard to control two computers so I could just glace up and check on my mining industrial from time to time. Of course as I started playing more and made Eve my main game I got out of the habit of doing so because I was too busy playing on my main accounts.
When I read Sugar Kyle's post about her new Orca I thought "why aren't I doing that?". Sugar Kyle has an alt account that she uses for just mining. Now, I just can't do that while playing Eve because I can't multi-task that well, but I could put the industrial alt I created on a third account in an old Retriever in a belt while I play Guild Wars 2. Or maybe even a Mackinaw. With the new improved ore bays those ships actually can carry more ore than my old Mammoth. I just need to make sure my strip miners don't go silent, but I should be able to do that easily.
Perhaps I'll start tonight, if I get home at a decent time. The only problem I have is that Wandering Rose is the only pilot I have with both the skills and the standings with various NPC corporations to have perfect refining anywhere. Time to outfit a new clone with suitable implants so I don't lose training time when I clone jump? Oh good, another project to keep me busy.
Mining, market, building and hauling. :). But she spends most of her time idly chewing rocks in a belt and occasionally selling my high end shiny items with perfect market skills.
ReplyDeleteAnd from this I gather minerals for my projects. Don't forget to ward off the ISK per hour arguments. :P
Oh yeah. Befriend some gankers too! :D
DeleteI tend to kick my second account alt off on this when I'm doing things on the main or reading blogs. The alt is still very young - only T1 mining barges. Even in a tanked barge 20 minutes mining will get me enough to convert into cash for a days POS fuel, a ton of skillbooks for the alt, etc, etc. The Retriever itself was obviously the first thing I paid off.
ReplyDeleteIn fact the alt was doing this the other day while the main was talking to Sugar Kyle! Aha!
You don't need nor want to use a Mack for AFK mining. AFK Macks are prime targets for gankers. Use a Retriever instead - it is much cheaper and nearly as productive as the Mack, esp. for the casual miner. Also, the skill training required to fly the Retriever is much lower than the Mack. You should be able to skill up an alt fairly quickly.
ReplyDeleteIf you do find yourself in a gank-popular system, then try switching to the Procurer. It doesn't hold as much, so you'll need to make more trips to the station, but it is pretty much immune to ganking, since it tanks well and is not the most cost-effective target of opportunity (pre-patch, Procs cost around 2M ISK each and there are still a lot of pre-patch Procs for sale at sub-10M prices). The fact that you only lose a single strip miner when ganked, unlike the Retriever where you lose two, also figures into the lower cost.
Don't forget that a single strip miner on a Proc is equal to two strip miners on a Retriever, and only slightly less than equivalent to three strip miners on a Covetor, due to the weird bonuses that CCP decided to add to the mining ships.
DeleteBTW - this applies to ice harvesters, as well.
If you want to AFK mine, consider ice rather than minerals.
DeleteAFAIK, ice asteroids don't deplete, so you don't need to worry about your ice harvesters going silent until your cargohold is full.