A New Pilots Guide to Mining Ops

A New Pilots Guide To Mining Ops

A Short Guide By [MFRU]Heinrich Skalder

Assisted by [MFRU]Veleck

Running a mining operation is no easy task. There are many different ways to handle miner placement, system selection, logistics, and a myriad of other issues. Do not let the problems you could have deter you from running a mining op. In this short guide, we will go over all the different methods to handling all of the previously stated issues. I will talk about ways to organize a fleet, from a few guys to dozens of dedicated miners. This guide will only cover high-sec mining ops. Low sec and Null mining ops are ran completely different, due to the increased security issues. I have also written this guide with the belief that the reader has an advanced knowledge of basic mining skills.

Table of Contents

• Fleet Composition
• Miners
• Boosters
• Logistics Ships

• Miner Placement and Ore Handoff

• Cluster
• Extended
• Logistics
• Orca Drop Off
• Freighter
• System Selection
• Payout
• Timeshares
• Loot History
• Third Party Programs
• Final Thoughts

Fleet Composition

The fleet composition you decide or have to run with will dictate how effective your fleet is. If you are in a serious mining corporation, its important to continue working towards maximizing your fleets.

Miners - If your miners are able to pilot barges, the ideal ship for a high-sec for fleet mining is the Covetor. The covetor series ships dominate mining ops because you no longer need to worry about ore hold, your main focus is yield per cycle. Once you have hulks in your fleet, you will immediately notice a huge increase in total fleet yield.

Do not force your pilots to fly a hulk or covetor if they are unwilling or can't afford to, as a majority of payout systems will reward them based on their intake or ship type. Give incentive for pilots to upgrade in the direction of a hulk, but do not turn away pilots. In a large fleet layout as described below, it is recommended that you only have a maximum of 5 mining ships per squad. The more miners you have, the increased chance of laser cross over and decrease in fleet efficiency.

Boosters - There is really only one option for boosters in a high-sec mining operation, and that option is the Orca. The Orca is capable of reducing cycle time, capacitor usage, while simultaneously increasing laser range and yield. Its fleet hanger is extremely useful as well as sort of a drop off point for the miners if you are using a cluster formation for mining. There are two main locations for the boosting orca to be placed. For smaller fleets, generally 10 pilots or less, the Orca will be on site with the miners, giving boosts and providing rat protection. In larger fleets that utilize multiple squads, it is more efficient to have the Orca placed somewhere safe in the system and provides off grid bonuses. This will ensure that the boosting Orca never moves and provides the maximum amount of boosts.

Logistics Ships - These ships are not required, but make life alot easier for the OP Commander. This category includes two main types of ships, the hauler and the collectors for multi-squad fleets. Having a freighter sitting next to the orca to grab ore ensures that the orca never has to move to unload and mining never ceases. Once the freighter is eventually filled, it will unload its ore into a nearby station and return to its Orca before the Orca is full again, creating a seamless mining operation. Freighters can be used in small fleets and large.

The second type of logistics ship is the collector. A well prepared fleet should provide more orcas for each of its fielded squads to fill the role of the collector, however a Miasmos industrial ship can fill this role if additional Orca are unavailable. I can’t stress enough that the Orca is recommended to fill this role as its considerably larger bays can hold the overflow of ore if a freighter takes too long to make its rounds, also its drone bays can provide rat protection for the miners.

Deep Space Transport ships can also be used for collectors or even hauling. They have fleet hangar access, and a base warp strength of 2, meaning at least 3 points of warp disruption are needed. These ships are usually priced 200M+ with marginally smaller holds, so please weigh the options before you decide. They are considerably more resilient to gank, but with the small hold, you may hinder your efficiency.

Diagrams - Below are a few diagrams I’ve made to help visualize the composition of your fleets. Please note that they are not size restricted and can be expanded.

Below is the basic layout for a fleet comp. The Orca provides the boosts while, if available, the freighter hauls the ore out. This is the composition I use for my private fleet and can verify its effectiveness. This layout is utilized if your fleet only has 1 orca and less than 10 total pilots

including support.

The following diagram is for a multi-squad fleet. Please note that the Orca collectors ARE interchangeable as above noted in the Logistics Ships section. This layout also works with multiple squads, and even wings if you have the pilots who can lead their respective element. Freighters are not required for each squad, as one freighter can make trips between each of the collectors. The Boosting Orca can be placed in a safe location in the system.

Now that you know how to build a fleet, we’ll continue on to the next section…

Miner Placement and Ore Handoff

This section has 2 major components, miner placement and ore handoff, with the latter depending on the former. If the width of the belt allows for all of your miners to be within mining laser range of every rock, utilize the “Cluster Formation”. This formation is basically just all of the miners within 2,400 meters of the Orca, so they are able to simply drag and drop ore from their ore hold into the Orcas fleet hanger. Once the Orca is full, the freighter can then remove ore using the fleet hanger. This is considerably faster than the 2nd formation.

The second formation, which is known as the “Extended Formation”, is used when there is no one point in which the miners can reach every rock. This will require the miners to spread out within the belt and utilize jet canning. Jet canning is simply a miner filling his ore hold, jettisoning his ore and continuing to fill the produced can until it is completely full. Once the JetCan is full, the pilot renames the JetCan to “Full” and the Orca pilot pulls the JetCan with a tractorbeam, placing the ore in the fleet hanger. Once the fleet hangar is full, the freighter pilot will pull the ore, similar to the Cluster Formation.

Below is a general path for ore to travel in each belt. This will be repeated in each belt that a squad is present in.

Logistics

The logistics behind a mining fleet can make or break the fleets efficiency. If your fleet is using an Orca for boosts, every time you have to dock the Orca to unload the ore, boosts go down and mining grinds to a halt. In order to maximize your fleets efficiency, it is highly recommended to utilize a freighter, or at minimum another Orca to unload your booster.

A freighter can unload the ore from the boosting Orca utilizing its Fleet Hanger until it’s full. Once it’s full it can make a quick run to the nearest station, and return to the boosting Orca before it fills again. This will create a seamless mining op, maximizing laser time and IsK income.

I will discuss some basic Pros and Cons of using Orca drop off, or Freighter logistic techniques.

Orca Drop Off Pros

• Low Cost Start Up
• Minimal Skill Requirements
• Does not require an additional pilot
• Considerably lower IsK risk to suicide gankers

Orca Drop Off Cons

• Frequent boost downtime
• Minimal income
• A less professional mining appearance

Freighter Logistics Pros

• Booster never moves; increased laser uptime
• Much larger ore capacity leading to less movement
• Gives a professional appearance

Freighter Logistics Cons

• Increased Start Up Cost; Freighters can cost upwards of 1.1 Billion IsK
• Increased risk to suicide gankers
• Skills to fly a freighter are high; hard to find pilot dedicated to sitting in belt

As a professional miner, I highly recommend using the Freighter method. Having tried both methods, I can verify that having a freighter on site to move your ore will increase your IsK per hour as a fleet. Additionally having a freighter at your fleets disposal will make your corporation appear to be more organized and better able to support a serious miners needs.

System Selection

To explain system selection, I will be using an excerpt from another guide I have written to explain.

Regional Ore Types

Deciding which region to mine in is the foremost important factor in choosing where to mine. Each major factions space has different ore in each of its security levels. I will post a chart below to help you decide what you are looking for.

Stations

       This is going to be quite a surprise for most reading this, but choosing a system with no stations is generally your best bet. Systems that lack stations tend to have fuller belts, simply because people do not want to have to jump to dump their ores. Most will fly into a system, see no station and leave, simply because they want a station with refining and production. Exploit this laziness, and you will have more time on belt.

Number of Belts

       This is a no brainer. Pick a system with a large amount of belts. Not only does this increase your potential yield, it gives a bit of separation between you and competing miners. If you don’t want to search every system by hand, you can use www.dotlan.net to look at a systems belt quantity and composition.

Width of Belts

       Right off of the bat, this has nothing to do with the amount or size of rocks in a belt. It’s about finding a position at the belt where you can reach every rock with your lasers. For example, my hulks with boost have a range of 32 km. I do not want to have to move them away from their Orca, so I find belts that there is a point where every single rock is within 31km. This is doable, and if you plan on being a full time miner, finding systems and setting up bookmarks can expedite your mining.

Age of the Belt

       If you are looking for a one time mine, you need to take into consideration how long the belt has gone before being mined. This can be determined by looking at the size of the rocks and the distance of their spread. As belts compound after each server downtime, the rocks in a belt get bigger and bigger, and they spread apart. A wide belt with big rocks will tell you that the belt has not been mined in a few days, giving you juicy rocks to sit on. Belts that have been mined clean the day prior will usually have rocks that pop before the first cycle is done, giving you fraction yields and will waste a lot of your time. Utilizing your Survey Scanner and this parser, you can get an exact value of any given ore belt.

Distance from Market

       As you can imagine, systems that are close to major trade hubs will be more crowded. An ideal system is distant from trade hubs, in low activity systems. However there is a caveat to this.  Dead end systems with low activity are no brainers for people looking for secluded activities such as mining. As you are looking on a map, avoid going to systems that immediately stand out to you to be an ideal system. If you thought it, dozens of other miners thought it too.

Take into consideration each of the above criteria when choosing a system to mine in. You will want to set up a base of operations, and if you mine frequently, you will want to pick several nearby systems to establish a sort of crop rotations system. As stated above, hitting the same system day after day leads to fraction cycles which will greatly reduce your isk per hour.

Payout Systems

There are 3 ways to do payouts for your OP that I will discuss in this section. Most people have a different preference as to how they get paid and what their share of the OPs income. It is best to use a system that pays based on a pilots ore yields.

When deciding a payout system, it is important to decide what price you are willing to pay the miners for their ore. You have to realize that a miner on his own can yield X amount of ore per hour which will yield Y amount of isk per hour. If your payment plan dips below those two, then pilots will be unlikely to attend your operations. You should always have a plan to ensure that pilots will make more with your operations then they could on their own. Always include the additional revenue from freighting and orca boosts, and the exchange from Ore to Minerals. Remember that miners are providing you with minerals, so the difference in refining will dictate your operations profit.

Timeshares

Timeshares measure a pilots attendance based on how long they were there. The unit of measure is generally an Orcas fleet hanger, as this amount will never change from Orca to Orca. For this equation, you will also need to set a standard “share rate” for the types of ships people are bringing. It’s generally best to use a hulk as a perfect 1, and any of the other mining ships follow below it based on their yield vs a hulks yield. For example, a covetor usually only has about 85% of the efficiency of a hulk, so it would have .85 shares compared to a hulks 1. I will post the MFRU share chart below for reference.

Ship Ratios Based on Hulk as 100% efficient
Ship	% ratio	Enter under ship
Hulk	100%	1
Covetor	85%	0.85
Mackinaw	76%	0.76
Skiff	76%	0.76
Retriever	67%	0.67
Procurer	63%	0.63
Prospect	48%	0.48
Venture	30%	0.3
Other w/ 8	29%	0.29
Other w/ 4	15%	0.15
Other w/ 2	7%	7.00E-02
Orcas	100%	1
Freighters	75%	0.75

Using the time weights and the ships ratio, you can determine how much of the total op yield was mined by each person. This system is more complex than others, but if kept updated, it will be the most accurate and controlled. It is imperative that you annotate when a pilot goes AFK or leaves the op. You can give them a percentage of the time they were there by a simple calculation of how much ore is currently in the fleet hanger divided by the size of the fleet hanger. For example, if a pilot leaves when there is 22,000 m3 of ore in the 40,000 m3 fleet hanger:

2200040000=0.55

This would mean that if a pilot left at that precise time, and was present for 7 full fleet hangers before, he would be entitled to 7.55 fleet hangers worth.

Essentially with this system, you are using a ships yield to dictate how much of the 40,000 fleet hanger it filled. With this ratio, each pilot earns his “share” of the fleet hanger each time it is filled. This system is preferred because it takes into consideration boosts and freighted loads, which lead to more filled fleet hangers per OP. It is HIGHLY advised that you establish a spreadsheet. I will link a quick sample spreadsheet HERE that can be used to until you devise one of your own that fits your specific needs.

With this spreadsheet, simply plug in the pilot names, input their correct “shares”. Each time an Orca is filled, add +1 to the time weights for each present miner. The Time Weights column will allow for decimal points so if someone leaves exactly half way through an Orca, only give them .5.

Loot History

Using loot history is one of the most accurate ways to gauge how much a pilot actually mined, however it has a crippling downside. Loot history does NOT transfer with the FC, and if the FC is disconnected, then all of the data is lost. If you are comfortable with your internet connection and know that you will be present for the entire op, by all means use loot history. This also includes the servers going down. All of the information required for your payouts could be lost in an instant. Good luck doing payouts with that.

Once you have finished your OP, you can review the loot history to pull exact numbers from each pilot and each ore. Compile these numbers into your spreadsheet, input how much you are paying each miner for, and you are golden. You can always use a loot history parser such as Sister of Eve. A simple copy and paste will give you all of the information you need.

Third Party Programs

When it comes to third party programs for EVE Mining, Mining Buddy is pretty much one of the only options. I do not have much experience using it, so I will be unable to give an accurate description of the program.This program will require a decent knowledge of using computer software. I will link the program so you can make your own assessment on its applicability.

Mining Buddy

Mining Buddy Introductory Guide

Due to its third party nature, and its experience required, I would suggest against this as a means of payout.

Final Thoughts

There are many ways that you can decide to run your Mining Operations, many of which probably were not covered in this guide. You may even possibly pioneer a new way that will set the standard for fair mining operations.

In my best experience with running a Mining Corporation, I have discovered that the best way to keep your operations going and lively, is to ensure that the miners WANT to attend. Forcing a weekly or monthly OP will eventually push away even the most dedicated of miners. It is important that you find the balance between miner profit and corp profit within your own organization, a delicate balance that will help keep activity alive in your corporation.

Remember first and foremost, miners are the backbone of any operation or corporation, and taking care of them and their needs, will ensure your corporation/operation will succeed.