Recently, our corp has run some mining ops and we had an overwhelming turnout. Now, when I say overwhelming, I mean that we had way more than expected, especially for a smaller corp. I was not able to attend, but our mining director, Zel, handled it with ease. I believe we had around or over 25 members participate. That is excellent for any high sec mining op. Due to the size of the asteroid belts and the high level or participation, the flaws start to show. In order to fully and efficiently utilize the time mining, it is apparent that we need to do things a little differently. That is where this post comes in.
If you read my previous post, Mining Op Basic Management, I put out some ideas and wrote about my experiences with mining ops. In this post, I will throw out a few more ideas in hopes that it may help you run a more efficient mining op for your own corp.
Let's start with participation and the pitfalls that it brings. If you a large mining op and (especially) running it in high sec, the asteroids are not as big so they are quickly popped. What generally happens is that often, multiple people are mining the same asteroid. This wastes a lot of time because it can happen very often. If jet can mining, people don't want to move too far from their can and this can cause some issues with fleet members being to close to each other when the asteroids get close to popping. The time wasted on cycles where the asteroid was popped prior to your cycle ending can add up quickly, With small to medium ops with Orca and hauler support, I would scout out asteroid belts and bookmark asteroids in the belt. I would usually go from left to right and tag 1 on each end and one or two in the middle, trying to keep at least 5-10km between bookmarks. I would then jump in my ship and have specific people in the fleet warp to the corp bookmarks I had placed. This would keep everyone relatively separate and reduce the chance of tag teaming the same asteroid. You can also have specific people mine certain asteroids. That could lead to people moving around a lot more to reach the asteroids they were tasked with mining. Moving around in a mining barge or exhumer is not exactly the way to go. Having an Orca tractor full cans to take or to hand over to a nearby freighter makes whole-belt mining tolerable.
If the op is larger, splitting belts is the way to go. This does open up a fleet to defensive weakness. If you don't have combat air patrol (CAP), it is a bit easier for gankers/can flippers to mess with you. If you only have one freigter or one Orca, logistics will suck. The best way to do this is to have one Orca in each belt and one freighter jumping back and forth. It is pretty demanding (and boring) for the freighter pilot so remember to pay him/her well. Having an Orca in each belt being mined is pretty critical. They can tractor the ore to their holds and then dump it to the freighter when he warps back into the belt. It is not a good idea to keep cans scattered across the belt, so having multiple Orcas is the key to a successful mining op.
I cover the high sec ops because it is the most likely place for large mining ops with barges and exhumers to happen. Low / null / wh locations are way more of a challenge. If you are lucky enough to be in an alliance that holds a large area of space, secure from outsiders, it can be a whole different animal.
In the future, I (or a collaborator) will expand on mining operations in more detail. This will give you another method of running a large mining op. Multiple belts is a must when you have a lot of hungry miners on your hands.
Have fun and as always, fly safe-ish
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