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By: [ Editor ] Asked from United States of America

Mining with Alts

I see people mining sometimes that have one mining ship(a hulk) and an Orca. I've talked to a few of them and they say they mine with an alt in the Orca. They dual-box(use two computers) to mine faster. I'm wondering if that's actually profitable. Can you make enough money that way to pay for the extra character with ISK? How much faster is this than jet canning or flying back to the station?

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harlock
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There is no need to have two computers to “dual box”. EvE online is a perfectly multi accounts friendly game : you can launche the client several time with no problem ;)

Provided your computer car handle the strain of course ;)

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6 answers

  • 7

ecaf ersa [ Editor ]

An Orca doesn't compensate in terms of mining yield over a 2nd Hulk but then you'd still need a hauler to ferry the ore to a station so it is a better alternative to a hauler though obviously much more training.

Having said that an Orca, even with cargo rigs and expanders can't fit a whole evenings yield for a single Hulk so will still need to dock but that's not much of a hardship.

Basically an Orca with reasonable (level 4) skills will give you a roughly 11% increase in yield due to the reduced cycle, some extra range on your lasers and a big hold. Maxing the skills will increase that as will the mindlink even further but still not by enough to replace a second Hulk.

You need top skills and 4 or 5 Hulks mining (3 or 4 with mindlinks too) for an Orca to replace a Hulk in terms of ultimate yield - obviously the more Hulks the better.

I expect you could make enough money if you spent enough time mining is the real answer to your question but I expect you could achieve that with a single Hulk as well.

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  • 3

amarrahh [ Editor ]

Dont forget you can run a flight of 5 mining drones from the orca whilst it supports your hulk and the extra range boost to the hulk means you can reach out further thus increasing the overall mining area of the hulk without moving it. If you train the hulk and orca characters up to T2 mining drones the 10 drones give you a substantial improvement over the single hulk mining cycle.

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ecaf ersa
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Yes that is a good bonus to take into consideration. 5 Mining Drone IIs will bring in 312.5m3 of ore per minute (plus drone travel time) with Drone Interfacing V. If you assume a negligible travel time then 10 Mining Drone IIs will bring in slightly more ore than a single Strip Miner II with T2 crystals with average skills.

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  • 2

ral

i think the main reason for using an orca are the following: 1. it's safer to use an orca than a jet can, because did you ever try to canflip an orca? ;) 2. people are lazy, i think the hauling you will have to do if you use 2 hulks instead of 1 hulk + 1 orca can get quite stressful. if you just put it in the orca then it will take very long to fill it :) 3. the orca is a big plus for mining ops. as ecaf said you need only 4 or 5 hulks + orca to get the same amount of ore if you have the orca instead of an hulk. this in bigger mining ops the orca really pays off and i think corps will love people who can fly an orca for them.even small corps will profit hugely from them since you only need 4-5 more people to make profit and in bigger ops it is obvious that one orca will be as good as 2,3 or even more hulks depending on the fleet size :)

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  • 2

drakthon [ Editor ]

I have two characters for the exact situation you asked about. My old method, which has been mentioned here, was to use a standard Industrial ship to haul it. However, since it only had about as much as a can could hold in terms of m3, the Orca along with it's bonuses to mining was a viable option. Additionally, the small rats were easily handled by the drone bay. This allowed me to permanently deploy mining drones rather than having to recall etc etc.

Further, the Orca's rather large hold is enough for most high sec mining ops, no matter the ships. I have standard skills, nothing too shiny. I can hold 50k in the ore hold, 85k(ish) in the cargo hold and another 40k in the Corp. hangar. Obviously you can get quite a bit of ore in there, and simply unloading it at the local station and heading back out is a non issue. This beats the snot out of any hauler, so it pays in efficiency.

If you are a small corporation or just by yourself, there is certainly no reason not to do it. If you find you do better with two hulks rather then the mentioned setup, you can certainly do that. We all know, EVE is a sandbox, so make your castle how you want.

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  • 0

daddy worbucks

Anybody who uses this setup is obviously using it in hi-sec, so it is very unlikely that this type of arrangement will "pay" for itself in terms of isk. It boils down to being easier, but its really makes no economic sense; this goes for folk using an alt to haul in an industrial as well. You will make more isk for your money, so to speak, paying for just one account and fitting your hulk for cargo and warping back and forth to station, if you cannot just jet can. Any alt that can pilot an Orca is just hours away from piloting a T1 fitted hulk which will blow the orca's isk/hour out of the water.

Much of it boils down to a combination of ego and laziness. Managing two hulks at once is a pain, and seeing that perfect yield while you sip your coffee and read another chapter of "War and Peace" is satisfying for some people.

There was a time when I would actually set my orca out by itself with max EHP and 5 mining drones sucking off of 5 huge roids while I went off to work. Only pulled in about 2 mil isk/hour, but that was better than the 0 isk/hour I would have had otherwise. Currently my Internet connection is not stable enough to do this anymore.

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nathan cox
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Good book :) Although I can’t say I do much more than watch movies when I mine

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  • 0

streaml1ne

The Orca isn't just useful for mining, but also missioning. Since you can refit and store ships in the maintenance bay you can save tons of time moving ships/ammo/fittings from system to system as you trawl over missions. Fleet bonuses for combat from the Orca pilot assigned as booster are another plus. I generally also use my Orca pilot to begin salvaging multi-room missions while my main continues the battle in the next room. Most of the time I can complete salvaging a room by the time my main clears the next room. Since combat tends to be more attention intensive than mining, I find it works well with the Orca pilot in this secondary role. You can focus on the combat and when time permits target a few more wrecks, tractor and salvage them in the Orca.

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nathan cox
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Interesting, I never thought of using an Orca for a mission like that

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