(And there are other uses for the Procurer/Skiff hull that have nothing to do with busting rocks -- they actually make pretty good drone boats!)

It's better to mine in a retriever full stop. The mild yield increase of the hulk is not worth the extra hastle of having a small ore hold.

Bad answer is bad.

What kills me is that these are the same people who complain that mining isn't paying the bills. Mining income ultimately boils down to max yield per unit of time, but there's more to yield than just the amount going into your hold from the lasers. Yield is the amount of ore or minerals you can actually deliver to the market or manufacturing slot -- it encompasses everything from administration to logistics to transport to trade.

People who say "9% yield difference doesn't matter much" are idiots. 9% is huge. Even a 5% yield difference can mean the difference between profit and loss in many situations. Too many miners approach the trade with the attitude that "minerals are free", without thinking about the startup and opportunity costs. Solo mining has always been a lousy ISK/hr activity, but it's doubly so when you don't use every trick and strategy to max your yield-to-market.

If pilots are just going to leave ISK on the table because they can't be bothered to use the correct logistics for their mining ops, they shouldn't complain when the income falls short.

To paraphrase Louis Pasteur: "Luck favors the well-prepared."

In order to keep any other exhumer pulling as much as a Hulk does you need to have an asteroid scanner and be VERY attentive to what you are doing. Or you are AFK'ing and not giving a ****. But letting a laser run once a rock is empty is wasted time, and lost ore. When you have 2 highly buffed lasers you better keep them fed versus 3 nicely buffed lasers. Small mistakes will add up fast.

Someone should probably tell you that the Hulk mines about 21% more than the Retriever (assuming both ships are fitted for max yield). However, it is now impossible to mine AFK in a Covetor/Hulk.

Also, the Retriever/Mackinaw is now the undisputed king of Ice Harvesting.

I just re-subbed and noticed that the mining ships got a over haul. I used to belt mine in my Hulk but I notice a lot of people mining with a Retriever now. Is it better to solo belt mine with a Retriever or a Hulk now after the update?

Mack is king as a multiboxer.

I can run more miners savely, just because the mack does not require that much effort. At the end of the Day, i can handle x hulks, or two more macks than i could with hulks. This makes macks superior.

You'd make more ISK/hr if you ran both alts in Hulks filling up cans, and then took 10 minutes every hour for one alt to grab the cans in a hauler and truck it all back to station (takes several trips).

I tried this last night. The only limitation is that both barges have to be in the same belt for this approach to work efficiently (so the cans aren't dispersed in different belts). Each Hulk can fill a bit under three cans per hour each at my skills, so that's five cans (since the alt must sacrifice some yield to drive the hauler once an hour).

With two Macks going full time and running back to station every 20 minutes or so to dump ore, I get about 15% less yield overall.

A Mack with 3 MLU II's in the lows will be outmined by a Hulk with 2 MLU II's in the lows, and way outmined if the Hulk has three MLU II's in the lows (which my Hulks do). In short, Hulks will get me another 10-15M ISK/hr over Macks. And that's just some back of the envelope testing I did last night; I didn't actually run all the relevant numbers. I just tallied up the ISK at the end of the session for both approaches.

You'd make more ISK/hr if you ran both alts in Hulks filling up cans, and then took 10 minutes every hour for one alt to grab the cans in a hauler and truck it all back to station (takes several trips).

I tried this last night. The only limitation is that both barges have to be in the same belt for this approach to work efficiently (so the cans aren't dispersed in different belts). Each Hulk can fill a bit under three cans per hour each at my skills, so that's five cans (since the alt must sacrifice some yield to drive the hauler once an hour).

With two Macks going full time and running back to station every 20 minutes or so to dump ore, I get about 15% less yield overall.

A Mack with 3 MLU II's in the lows will be outmined by a Hulk with 2 MLU II's in the lows, and way outmined if the Hulk has three MLU II's in the lows (which my Hulks do). In short, Hulks will get me another 10-15M ISK/hr over Macks. And that's just some back of the envelope testing I did last night; I didn't actually run all the relevant numbers. I just tallied up the ISK at the end of the session for both approaches.

Oh, and the difference between hulk (with 2 Lowslots - because it doesn't have 3) and a Mack with 3 lowslots fitted for yield is 6 blocks per hour on Ice - that's roughly 2.5 mil isk. ;), and thats something I'm definately going to pay for saving all the hassle.

CCP executed a "tiericide" on the mining barges -- rather than having tiered ships where the Hulk was the end-all, be-all mining vessel, each T1 and T2 hull now is role-based.

All of the mining vessels now produce yield roughly equivalent to three strip miners, so even the lowly Procurer hull gets x3 yield bonus over the 1 strip miner it can mount.

All barges now have split cargo/ore holds. The cargo holds are much smaller than they used to be (400m3 or so). This has caused some heartburn among people who carried a lot of T2 mining crystals in their holds (even though the volume of the crystals has been reduced to 15m3 each). The ore holds can *only* hold ore, so the need for a hauler hasn't gone away. If you refine into minerals for transport to a hub, you're still going to need an industrial hauler.

Procurer/Skiff: a battleship-sized tank (even before fitting), decent-sized cargo hold. Meant for high-risk and ninja mining ops.

Retriever/Mackinaw: A ginormous ore hold and an ice mining bonus. The Mack is pretty much the default solo miner now, mainly due to the huge 35K m3 ore hold. Even the Retriever can hold a full jetcan worth of ore in its hold. Pretty good tank, especially on the Mack with its four mid slots.

Covetor/Hulk: Still the king of yield, but with a smaller ore old than the other hulls. It has middling tanking ability, and meant to be a fleet mining vessel working in concert with other industrial ships.

You're seeing tons of Macks in EVE now because most miners simply did an old Hulk = new Mack equation, but that's not really true. If you're using a Mack rather than a Hulk, you're getting a way bigger ore hold but less yield, and if you were running a jetcan operation before the patch, you'll still be better off using the Hulk unless you're going for ice.

And there's actually a reason to buy a Procurer now! It's got a battleship-sized tank even before rigging/fitting, and as a T1 hull it's a dirt-cheap way to do ninja mining out in lowsec or null. (And there are other uses for the Procurer/Skiff hull that have nothing to do with busting rocks -- they actually make pretty good drone boats!)

Few numbers to chew upon for ice miners.

Using level 5 skills, +3% ice harvester cycle implant and rorqual in deployed mode you get the following production mining ice on an hourly basis.

Hulk - 81 units, 8500 ore hold
Mackinaw - 75 units, 35000 ore hold
Retriever - 72 units, 27500 ore hold

I honestly do not understand why they decided to allow the retriever to be so close in overall production to the T2 variants. Retriever, Covetor and Procurer all should be at least 30% below where they are in terms of output.

One important factor the Retriever detractors tend to overlook - it's so damn easy to AFK a truckload of Rets (and cheap to lose in case you do end up losing them), but running even a handful of Hulks can be a pain in the posterior (and significantly more expensive to replace).
Also, if you consider solo mining, the prefer-to-AFK-types might not be mining much at all in a solo Hulk, but will gladly keep a solo Retriever in the background giving it minimal occasional attention, thus more than surpassing the overall yield per day, all things considered.

Question ?

from everything i have been reading so far,

its better to be in 2/3 hulks and one orca instead of Macks and one orca

Yes or No ?

no, it's not better to use the fleet ship in a fleet.

Question ?

from everything i have been reading so far,

its better to be in 2/3 hulks and one orca instead of Macks and one orca

Yes or No ?