Pyerite. I'm really starting to hate that mineral.
One of the benefits of mining in low sec, apart from the obvious one of having frigates (and the occasional Brutix) drop in for visits is the variety of ore I can shoot. Hedbergite is a nice reliable ore when I can't find a good ore site to exploit. But lately I've run into a bottleneck in my production. I'm always running short on pyerite. And what's the best source of pyerite? Unless my math is off, scordite. That's right, most of the time I spend mining in low sec I'm mining scordite. Pretty silly, right?
Part of my problem is that I can really only mine with one ship, a Procurer. Procurers are great for low sec. Cheap ships with enough toughness to outlast the belt rats combined with the ability to leave quickly when unexpected visitors drop by. But the Procurer doesn't exactly possess the greatest mining output, even when fleeted with a cloaky ship so I can get the fleet bonus (and possibly kill a Tags4Sec rat). I figure I fill my ore hold every 11 minutes or so. I could bring in a Skiff, but bringing in a tech 2 ship would draw more attention. A lot of people don't bother trying to kill mining barges.
Now, some will call me foolish. I expect someone in the comments to tell me I should purchase minerals off the market instead. But I'm not a real serious industrialist. I'm more of a tinkerer. The problem is that I'm tired of tinkering with that damn scordite and want something different. The other problem is that I want to build a wider selection of products. I sell in a low sec system, so making money involves selling a wider selection of goods. Which means I need more pyerite.
I've resisted the option for a long time, but I think I'll have to do it. I'm moving my ships around so I can do some high sec mining. I have 2 characters that can use tech 2 crystals plus a third with good command, defense, and navigation skills to pilot an Orca to make the mining go even faster. I've only triple-boxed 2-3 times, but I think a high sec belt in a .8 or .9 system needs to die. Then I can stop worrying about pyerite for awhile and concentrate on fun things like exploration, distribution missions, and puttering around making things.
So if anyone sees me mining in high sec, I'm not moving there. I just need to speed up the mining so I can do more entertaining stuff.
