Mining strategies

Types of Mining

Solo

Basic

• Mine asteroids until your cargohold is full
• Dock at station and unload your ore
• Warp back to asteroid field and repeat

Jet Canning

• Mine asteroids until your carghohold is full
• Jettison your ore into space
• Open up jettisoned canister and continue to move ore from your cargohold into the canister
• Once the canister is full, dock at station and get in a hauler
• Warp to your canister and begin moving all the ore back to the station

Warning: Jettisoned canisters are NOT secure. At any point someone else can come along and scoop up your ore, so you must take proper precautions.

Please note: Jettisoned canisters only last for 2 hours in space until they disintegrate and you will lose anything in the canister at that time. An easy way to track how old your canister is, is to right-click on the canister in your overview right after jettisoning it, and select 'Rename'. Give it a name that is the EVE time at that moment. This will help you to keep track of when you will need to replace that canister.

Giant Secure Container

This is a variation of jet canning, using a more secure method

• Anchor several Giant Secure Containers in an asteroid belt at key positions.
• As you mine ore, move the ore into the secure containers
• When they are full, switch to your hauling ship and go and collect your ore

Co-op

Stranger

This is a variation on #Jet Canning. Follow all of the steps for Jet Canning, but enlist the help of another person to do your hauling for you. This will decrease the risk of leaving so much ore in an insecure container.

Warning: Make sure you trust the person that is hauling for you, because you don't want them to just steal your ore.

Corporation

This is a variation on #Stranger. Instead of letting a stranger haul your ore, join a corporation that you trust and let a fellow corp member do your hauling. There is still a chance for theft, but it is greatly reduced.

Alt

This is a variation on either of the co-op strategies above. Follow all the steps for #Jet Canning, but instead of relying on yourself or another player to do your hauling for you, start a second EVE account, and follow the instructions to run Multiple clients on a single computer. Use your second account to do the hauling for you. This strategy removes the threat of the hauler stealing your ore.

Fleet

Basic Fleet (fleet booster + miners)

This uses the same basic strategy of #Co-op

• Form a fleet
• Have the pilot that's going to be the fleet booster fly an Orca (high-sec) or a Rorqual (low-sec)
• Split the different types of ore up between the different miners. If there are more miners than major ore types, begin splitting it up between minor ore types. This will help to keep the mining organized and efficient.

Example: Have one miner focus on Veldspar, one on Scordite, another on Pyroxeres.

• Have the miners deposit their ore into one of the corporate hangars in the Orca (right-click on Orca and select Open Corporate Hangars)
• The Orca pilot can then shuffle the ore to other areas of the ship like the cargohold and the ore hold in order to be filled completely
• When full, the Orca will dock at the station to unload ore

Advanced (fleet booster + miners + hauler)

This is a slight variation on #Basic Fleet (fleet booster + miners) where you use other haulers (either a maxed out Iteron Mark V or another Orca) to haul ore from the Orca in the Asteroid belt back to the station. This eliminates the need for the Orca pilot doing the boosting from having to dock and having the boosting modules go offline all the time.

Low-Sec (fleet booster + miners + protection)

This is a variation on the above Fleet strategies however it requires a security detail to protect you from strong NPCs and other players.

Please note:

• It depends on the size of your fleet, how it needs to be structured. Typically in a smaller fleet you will need to have the Orca pilot be the squad commander, and then all the miners be squad members.
• The boosts from the warfare modules will stop once the Orca enters warp, so miners should be aware of this
• The Orca pilot needs to right-click on their ship and select Configure Ship, then make sure that Allow Fleet Member Use is checked. This must be done every time the ship docks and undocks, or jumps to another system.

Hint:

• The miners can set their ships to keep the Orca at a distance of 500m, that way if the Orca needs to reposition itself to reach more ore, the mining ships will automatically follow it to stay in range.