1. Mining 101 – The Basics

    1.1 Asteroid Belts & Ores – What they are, and what to expect to find

    1.2 Minerals – What is hiding in those chunks of rocks in your cargo

1.2.1 What Should I Mine Then? – The hottest topic in the universe

    1.3 The Beginning of a Miner’s Career – You might be new, but you shouldn’t be clueless

1.3.1 Your First Ship – You know that ship you start with, consider it trash

1.3.2 The Two Basic Mining Techniques – At least the only two that work

1.3.3 Industrial Ships – Huge, slow and full of goodness

1.3.4 Joining a Corporation – The universe is a large place, don’t go in the dark alone

1.3.5 Selling your Ore – The do’s and don’ts of the trade

1.3.6 Your First Cruiser – No, I am not referring to the motorcycle in the garage

    1.4 The Different Mining Lasers – Tools of the trade

2. Refining – Brining the trade into an art form

    2.1 Calculating your Yield – Yes children, I am speaking of math

    2.2 Refining Implants – For those with ISK to spare

    2.3 From Refining Yield to Reality – Knowing what to expect to bring home at the end of the day

3. The Math System – Yes it looks complicated, but look harder, it isn’t so bad

    3.1 The Skill System – That light bulb should be getting brighter

    3.2 Cycles – To be long or to be short, that is the question

3.2.1 Cycles and Yield Interaction – Can’t have one with out the other

3.2.2 From Yield to Ore – Cha’Ching!

4. Mining Barge or Battleship? – Or, serious versus casual play

    4.1 The Battleship Way – The slow, steady and convenient way

4.1.1 The Apocalypse – The Golden Banana

4.1.2 The Rokh – The Intergalactic Swiss Army Knife

    4.2 The Barge Way – Time to go deplete an asteroid belt

4.2.1 The Retriever – Cheap, easy to get into and effective

4.2.2 The Covetor – The Cadillac of Barges

5. Crystals – Ooh Shiny!

    5.1 How do I Read my Yield? – No, you aren’t the only one who gets it confused

6. Achieving perfection – Eureka!

    6 1 The Mindlink Isn’t Broken! – Yay, it finally works

7. The Mighty Hulk – Behold the beast!

    7.1 The Mighty Hulk's Tank – Yes, it can live in 0.0, if you are smart

2. Refining – Brining the trade into an art form

The refining system in  EVE is not  that  complicated, but  is not  so easy  to  understand either. Basically, five criteria will affect your refining yield:

1. Your Refining skill level
2. Your Refinery Efficiency level (requires Refining 5)
3. Your standing toward the corporation owning the station where you want to refine at
4. The refining equipment of the station 

2.1 Calculating your Yield – Yes children, I am speaking of math

The formula to calculate your yield is the following:

[Station Equipment] + 0.375 x (1 + [Refining Skill] x 0.02) x (1 + [Refinery Efficiency Skill] x 0.04) x (1 + [Ore Processing Skill] x 0.05)

Thanks to Tinoga Enterprises Services for figuring this one out.

To know the station equipment, open the refinery of the station and look at the top right, as shown by the following screenshot:

The blue rectangle shows the part where the station equipment is given. In the event your standing isn't high enough or you are in an Outpost (player built), you are subject to taxes, which must be calculated apart from the refining yield. When I talk about the refining yield, I never include the taxes. The yield they give you in the refining window (in this case, 87.5%) is baloney as it doesn t take into account your specialized skills, so ignore it.

You will need a standing of 6.7 or more with the NPC Corporation owning the station you want to refine at to get a 0% tax rate. Player controlled stations or Outposts follows another rule, as the corp owning the station can set the tax rate that they want no matter the standing they have toward you.

All NPC / player controlled stations have a station equipment of 50%, while player built Outposts have an equipment ranging from 35% to 50%. Revelations introduced outpost upgrades, which can enhance the various utilities available at them. This however, is a costly business – the advanced refinery upgrade will cost 100bil to install. Thankfully, as we will see, it is possible to get a 100% refining yield with just a 40% equipment, and even with the 35% with the new implant (more later). 

If you are too lazy, you can find several good refining yield calculators online. The following tables are also a good reference which you can print and quickly have on hand:

As you can see, in most NPC stations (Empire / 0.0), once you get Refining 5, Refinery Efficiency 4 and [Mineral] Ore Processing 1 you can already start getting a 100% yield return! So if you live in Empire, there is really no reason to train Refinery Efficiency 5, because it will pretty much just be a waste of two weeks of training!

2.2 Refining Implants – For those with ISK to spare

The Revelations 2.2 patch introduced a new mining implant, the Hardwiring – Zainou Beancounter H60, which reduces recycling waste by 4%. It requires Cybernetic V and can be found on contracts or on the market.

This implant will allow you to get a refining yield of 100% in 0.0 with all necessary skills trained to level 5, even with at most basic outpost (35%). Needless to say it is on the pricey side, on average between 100 - 150 million isk. But if you do a lot of solo 0.0 mining or plan to try, then this is almost considered a must have implant. It fits in your eight implant slot which is generally used for weapon skills so it won't be a sacrifice for a miner in any way.

2.3 From Refining Yield to Reality – Knowing what to expect to bring home at the end of the day

Ok so you know your yield, and now you want to calculate how much of the minerals you would actually get per batch after refining. If you know you will have a 100% refining yield and won't pay any taxes, then simply use the table in section 1.2.1 and you re ready to go! Chances are you won't, so I'll explain how it works, using a concrete example helps, so let's do it again. Let's stay consistant and keep using our Omber example from earlier.

For every 500 units of Omber, you will get 307 units of Tritanium, 123 units of Pyerite and 307 units of Isogen for a perfect refine. But you determined your yield isn't perfect, and instead it's 88% (hypothetically). To know how much mineral you would get, you simply take 88% of each number. So in our case:

0.88 * 307 = 270.16 = 270 units of Tritanium 

0.88 * 123 = 108.24 = 108 units of Pyerite 

0.88 * 307 = 270.16 = 270 units of Isogen

EVE for some reason truncates all values dealing with mineral and ore. This means if you would end up with 270.98 units according to your calculations, you would still only get 270 units and not 271 as your mathematical instinct might believe. 

If you need to pay any taxes on top of that, you need to take it off now. Using our screenshot from above with a tax of 1.97%, we are left with:

(100%-1.97%) * 270 = 264.681 = 264 units of Tritanium

(100%-1.97%) * 108 = 105.8724 = 105 units of Pyerite

(100%-1.97%) * 270 = 264.681 = 264 units of Isogen

So, we would end up with 264 units of Tritanium, 105 units of Pyerite and 264 units of Isogen from our original batch of 500 in our hangar with a refining yield of 88% and a 1.97% tax. 

If you mine named variations (+5%/+10%) of an ore, you have to factor that at the beginning of your calculations. So in our first calculation, if we are refining Silvery Omber (+5%) instead of regular Omber, we would calculate 88% of 307 * 1.05 = 322.35 = 322 units of Tritanium and not 88% of 307.  

Of course there is an excellent ore calculator available online for those not so good with Excel or who are simply lazy!

That s all there is to it really. See I told you it wasn’t that bad!

3. The Math System – Yes it looks complicated, but look harder, it isn’t so bad

The previous sections weren't very heavy with mathematical equations. This was my attempt to start softly, but now it s time to get down to business. The only way to compare ships is to compare their actual yield and what they are capable of, and this can only be done with math, lots of math (although nothing complicated for those of you that bombed algebra). If you can understand the system, then you will be able to apply it to every ship in the game.

3.1 The Skill System – That light bulb should be getting brighter

The skill levels in EVE, no matter which skill it is, stack. Just so that you aren’t confused by the terminology it simply means the following: using the skill Mining as an example, which gives a 5%  bonus to the yield of your mining laser per level, if you trained Mining to level 4, it means you get: 5% * 4 = 20% bonus from the skill Mining at level 4.

The effect of the different skills you trained have to be multiplied together. Say you have Astrogeology at level 4 (which also gives a 5% bonus per level to your yield) and Mining at level 4, then your net yield would be: Base laser yield * 1.20 * 1.20 = XXX

Using Tech 2 Miners, which has a 60 m3/cycle base yield, you would get: 60 * 1.20 * 1.20 = 86.4 m3/cycle (note that the yield is not truncated nor rounded)

Ok, that wasn’t too complicated. Let’s keep going!

3.2 Cycles – To be long or to be short, that is the question

Cycles determine how many seconds your lasers need to complete a full mining cycle. The ore you have mined will appear in your cargo at the end of that cycle. Named, Tech 1 and Tech 2 mining lasers have a cycle of 60 seconds (1 minute) and strip mining lasers (T1 and T2) as well as the Modulated Deep Core Mining Lasers II (MDCM2) have a cycle of 180 seconds (3 minutes). Ice harvesters will be covered in another section, as the whole ice mining system is quite different from the asteroid mining system. 

Before we go any further, you should know that strip miners can only be fitted on Mining Barges or Exhumers. People are often confused with the cycle time and wonder what the actual benefit of having a longer cycle is. The biggest advantage is actually much more practical than it is beneficial simply put, most of the time, the cargo of your ship will be filled after every cycle, which means if you re using the jettison can mining technique (which you should), you will be emptying your cargo every minute which means you'll be doing it 60 times per hour instead of 20 if you are using strip miners. It might not look like a lot now, but it does make a difference at the end, believe me.

3.2.1 Cycles and Yield Interaction – Can’t have one with out the other

Cycles and yield are directly linked. Because of the cycle time difference between strips and mining lasers, it makes it difficult to directly compare the yield of a barge with the yield of a battleship. We could divide the barge's yield by three to bring it to 60 seconds, or bring both of them on a per hour ratio, but this is not precise because of the way EVE truncates the number of units of ore you get per cycle. 

Since we know strip miners do 20 cycles per hour and mining lasers 60 cycles per hour, to make the comparisons as accurate as possible, we will use Omber as our basic ore comparison unit throughout the guide, and compare how many Omber units a ship would mine per hour compared to another. This will increase accuracy by a small but still important factor.

If the cycle of your mining laser (again, ice harvesters act differently, this will be covered later) is interrupted for whatever reason (the asteroid pops or you stop the laser prematurely), you will still get ore for the duration of the cycle you mined. For example, if the cycle stops after 30 seconds, you will get 50% of what you normally get for a full cycle. 

Here is a table to summarize the different base yields of each laser and their cycle times:

Laser ……… Base yield (in m3) …… Cycle time (in seconds) …… Notes

Miner I …….. 40 …………………….. 60 …………………………………

Miner II ……. 60 …………………….. 60 …………………………………

Strip Miner … 540 …………………… 180 …………………… For barges and exhumers only

MSM2 ……... 360 …………………… 180 …………………… Uses crystals, for barges and exhumers only

MDCM2 …… 120 …………………… 180 …………………… Uses crystals, can fit to all ships

MDCSM2 ….. 250 …………………… 180 …………………… Uses crystals, used to mine Mercoxit, only for barges

…………………………………………………………………… And exhumers

For now don't be alarmed about the crystals, they will be covered in another section. It is a nice reference to have for those who are confused about how to calculate your actual ISK / hour rate (more on that in another section).

3.2.2 From Yield to Ore – Cha’Ching!

Some people tend to get very confused as to the amount of ore they will get when doing a show info on their strip or mining laser. It is in fact very simple to find out, you just have to know how. You simply have to divide your yield per cycle by the volume of the ore you re mining, and truncate the result.

Here is a table that will show you each ore and its volume:

Ore ……………… Volume in m3

Veldspar ………… 0.1

Scordite …………. 0.15

Pyroxeres ………... 0.3

Plagioclase ………. 0.35

Omber …………… 0.6

Kernite …………... 1.2

Jaspet ……………. 2

Hemorphite ……… 3

Hedbergite ………. 3

Gneiss …………… 5

Dark Ochre ……… 8

Spodumain ……… 16

Crokite ………….. 16

Bistot …………… 16

Arkonor ………… 16

Mercoxit ………... 40

Again, here s an example with Omber Using a hypothetical yield of 1789.67m3 / cycle, the amount of Omber you would get per cycle is: 1789.67 / 0.6 = 2982.78 units = 2982 units / cycle 

So you would end up with 2982 units of Omber in your cargo after every cycle simple enough, isn't it? And you thought I would kill your brains! 

This ends the third section. Hopefully I haven't melted too many neurons. If so feel free to get drunk and come back later!

Forumlink

Discuss about this article by following the address below :
http://www.skryer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=3207


Print Article
Send to a friend
Save as PDF