How Much Mining Do I Need To Do?

Sometimes I have moments in EVE when I say to myself, "You're kidding!" Sunday was one of those times. I spent the morning mining in high sec while listening to Wiggles EVE Radio talk show and then his music show afterwards. After three hours or so, my two Skiff pilots with Rosewalker providing boosts in an Orca cleaned out an asteroid belt in a Minmatar 0.8 system. All 414,997.2 m³ of ore in the belt.

Don't hate me for mining so much. I know I can make much more than the estimated 69 million ISK the UI tells me I made over the time. The purpose of my quest is to grind all the loyalty points and mine all the ore required to build a Nestor. I wanted to see if I could learn anything.

Refining in a high sec station with perfect skills

First, reprocessing the ore in a station earns an extra 14% than just selling the ore on the market. I should add I have max reprocessing skills, including a 4% reprocessing implant, plus over 6.67 standings with the NPC corporation that owns the station.

The big surprise, and what had me talking to myself, is when I compared the output of my mining session against my Nestor blueprint.

The objective of my quest

I mined out an entire belt and still fell short 1.9 million tritanium, 500 thousand pyerite, and 100 thousand mexallon for building a Nestor. I did not realize just how big a battleship is until that moment.

I guess the presence of titans in the game skewed my perception of what big is in EVE.

Getting ready to jump

I began playing after the introduction of supercapital ships in New Eden. In my defense, a titan is huge and something one doesn't forget. Compared to an Avatar, a battleship is small. But anything that requires mining over 600 thousand cubic meters of asteroids is not tiny. Then again, the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza is 2.5 million cubic meters. The ancient Egyptians really knew how to move rocks around.

I'm getting close to finally building the Nestor. Accomplishing a goal always leaves a good feeling. Now, I just need to start mining in low sec to get the rest of the minerals.