Idris Helion
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
18
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Posted - 2012.08.10 15:59:00 -
[1] - Quote
I've posted this basic rant elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here: in EVE as in RL, time is money. Mining is the game mechanic most sensitive to efficiency -- any time you spend not sitting in a roid belt running your lasers on roids is less ISK in your pocket. That's why it drives me bonkers to see Hulk pilots fit for cargo rather than yield: all those trips back to station kill whatever efficiency gain you might have had by going with a Hulk. Ditto carrying tons of crystals in your hold -- have a hauler or Orca carry them instead. And when your paper-tank Hulk gets ganked during Hulkageddon, you're out a very expensive ship that will take weeks if not months to recoup the cost for, thus killing your profit for a long, long time.
Mining is all about yield...but "yield" is about more than just how much ore you can suck into your bay with your lasers.
If you mine to sell your ore, then you have ask which you you should be mining (in hisec: veld, almost always). Then you have to ask if you should refine or just sell the ore. With high skills you should refine, otherwise sell the ore, unless you're limited on your hauler capacity, in which case the smaller footprint of minerals offsets the refining hit. If you're mining to manufacture stuff, this is probably always a FAIL -- it's almost always cheaper in the long run to just buy your minerals. The opportunity cost of mining offsets the fact that the minerals are "free" in an ISK sense.
It's tough to make ISK as a miner, even with perfect skills. It's really only profitable to do it in fleets -- solo mining can pay, but almost never as much as missioning or trading (if you're smart). With perfect skills and a good market-sense you can maybe do 20M ISK/hr in hisec as a solo miner -- not bad, but you can make more money running level 3/4 missions instead. And it costs a lot of time (and time is money, remember) to train your mining skills even to that level. Figure at least a few months (Industry V, Mining V, Astrogeology V, Mining Barge V and the various refining skills if you plan to refine rather than sell the raw ore).
It's easy to mine badly, but it's quite hard to mine and still make a profit.
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