The idea is to make 3 types of mining barge (max yield/max cargo/max tank) that will make things alot more attractive to carebears, especially now that Orca fleets are so common for max yield.
- The greedy industrialists will do what they've always done - max out mining upgrades for the fastest gatherer of ice/ore around. It was the pitifully tankable mack and now it will be the more expensive hulk with the same pitiful tank (because they believe they can gain more in profit than the gankers can grief)...and the hulk hasn't been boosted except to make it more attractive to the greed factor (hulk/covetor)
- They've made solo account holders who like to mine very happy with
this patch too. imagine: it's like a hauler with lazorz.
(mack/retriever)
- CCP made it so that people willing to be less greedy can actually 'tank' the average lazy solo catalyst pilot out for shits and giggles. (skiff/procurer)
That's all the test server mining ships set for (what i believe) is jester's recommended tank fit. They are all ice mining geared, btw. I've added notations as to m3/sec (although do note that the exhumers aren't set to exhumer 5 but only 4)...please note that all pics above do not include any fleet boosting.
The thing is mining ice lends itself very well to orca fleet ops. have a bunch of platinum insured covetors and you can pretty much go to town once the patch comes out.
my current maximum mining yield is the implants (sans rig of course) on a mack with orca support with 212.66s harvester duration.
This outputs 4 icicles every 212.66s for a cubic meter per second equivalent of 18.81m3/s.
My current maximum tank is the hulk with orca support and it only gives 3 icicles every 225.99s or 13.28m3/s
Squad commander: lvl4 orca, lvl4 warfare link, lvl4 info warfare, lvl4 armored/siege/info specialist; lvl5 skirmish specialist) - laser opt tech2, passive armorlink tech1, and shield harmony tech1. Plus mining foreman mindlink.
max ice mining rate for the new patch would be....for mining upgrades, rig, implant, + lvl5 exhumer/barge (assuming above orca skills):
hulk=19.3m3/s
mack=18.0m3/s
skiff=16.4m3/s
covetor=18.3m3/s
retriever=17.3m3/s
procurer=15.6m3/s
although the covetor would be highly advisable for n00bs during fleet ops with orca support, for the bittervets the skiff looks to be mighty fine indeed at just 18% less efficient than the best hulk you can field (and at lvl5 exhumer mind you for the hulk)
neither the skiff nor the procurer lose much tank in the mid slots when going from full tank to max mining.
25.75m isk covetor (costs 7.7m)
6.30m isk retriever (costs 1.9m)
1.84m isk procurer (costs 0.6m)
market value (current; domain; lowest sell)
covetor costs 33.4m
retriever costs 15.3m (price spike)
procurer costs 17.8m (massive spike, btw)
my assumption is that smart money goes to fully insured untanked covetors raking more value than griefers could impact. It's just the way i look at it currently with mackinaws (why are people using macks? for yield. period)
The attitude of carebears is: "fuck you, i'm going to mine way more than griefers can impact me"
Of course, this attitude lends itself too easily to "i'm greedy so it's the hulk maxed for yield" which will mean business as usual for hulkageddon. The risk averse carebears are going to be screaming like the trolls they are on the forums that they want CCP to make it inherently tanked so they can fit all the yield boosting modules they can possibly fit. lol. oh, the TEARS the glorious tears.
How about ORE?
current Amarrian index ; Scordite @ 212.91 isk/m3 vs Clear Ice @ 270.09 isk/m3
All things being equal, ice seems the best bargain since it's over 25% more isk per cubic meter. All things are not equal though, since ore strip miners output more than ice harvesters per second.
So i decided to time how long a retriever fills it hold with scordite, then match that time with how many icicles would be mined in the same time. It's about 32.8 minutes assuming a 13% loss in efficiency for the ore miner due to depleted asteroids giving partial loads and the logistics of managing new targets. That's how long it takes me to get a full load of ore on a decent day.
So in just under thirty two minutes the retriever mined 28,125m3 of scordite worth 6.0m isk selling to buy orders.
In the same time period the covetor mined 36,000m3 of clear ice worth 9.7m isk selling to buy orders
Obviously it seems like i'm cheating with the fleet bonus, but i'm being pragmatic.
to be absolutely fair, to remove the fleet bonus on the orca and go with a retriever for mining ice the results are less than spectacular i'm assuming. here's the result: In 32.8 minutes you'd get almost 24 units or about 6.4m isk worth of ice products. fitting used was this
So what they've effectively done with the ice mining rig was to make the ore vs ice isk/m3/sec ratio roughly even (+/- 5% which of course you can make up by mining the denser roids)
