Look at the refining skills as well as they are a profit multiplier on your ore in most cases. Get refining to V, refinery efficiency to IV and the ore skills to III (you'll do this anyway for modulated strips) and then get standings of 6.67 or above at your chosen local station with a 50% refinery. These are skills that just keep on giving

Tank your orca, mine in tanked procurers, run a resist Gang Link on the Orca. Your Orca can kill the NPCs, so your Procurer can run Mining Drones.

Tanking the Orca means not using your low slots for cargo expanders. Most Orca's that are ganked only have about 80K EHP. Create a travel fit for the Orca so you can do the fast warp trick when not mining.

Train one of your miners for a miasmos & kryos. Then think about training him to a freighter long term.

A Skiff has a minimal yield increase over a procurer, but the faster travel speed is very nice.

You can keep a mack in the ship hanger on the Orca and have your miner switch ships depending on if you think there is danger around and you need the procurer.

Many people think mining drones are not worth the training time/effort/minimal yield when running a mining fleet.

You only need 1 Hobgoblin to take out the belt rats.

You can fit 1 cargo expander on the orca but put a dcu in the other low. This will give you over 160k ehp. You can put expanders in the rigs but this will hammer your ehp. Before you go to an area look at dotlan and the kills for that area. That way you can put gankers and their corps with a terrible rating. This is the better way to find out who is hostile. Procs and skiffs are great but don't be afraid to use hulks just be very watchful on local. Mining drones do take time to skill up but they do make a small noticable difference . Research siege warfare too. Every bit of shield helps. Two alts mining are better than one. Also get the basics to 5 it still shocks me when I see a mac go down with less than 10k damage taken. Because not all cats have scrams that extra 1 or 2k ehp can make the difference.

Best advice: dont mine in highsec. Join a 0.0 corp and mine better ores with rorqual boosts, buyback programs and intel channels. Then all you need is hulks and patience.

1. why a mack? wouldnt hulk be better?

2. fast warp trick?

thanks alot for the reply.

we just set up a POS in high sec so were not going to null in the near future, thanks for the tip tho :)

One guy I saw had remote shiled drones on his barges protecting each other. Not sure how effective that would be against ganks but could be worth doing some maths on.

So keep it there. Use a jump clone to travel safely between null and hs but keep all your mining stuff in 0.0.

There are groups you can join that mine pretty well 24/7

1) Yes, a hulk starts to outmine a mack at exhumer 4, but it is going to require more micro-management because of the small so you may find it gets tedious quickly trying to run a fleet. And the hulk will be such an easy gank target that many people think you should not tank it at all, so the cost is minimal when you lose one.

2) google "eve online 10 second warp trick" to learn how to do it.

Hello!

1. why a mack? wouldnt hulk be better?

2. fast warp trick?

thanks alot for the reply.