1. Yes. You can earn 400mill per hour mining in an Orca (bearing in mind this will be reduced in the next patch) if your definition of 'solo' would be on your own in a belt, with triage on standby and a response fleet on call.

Wait; Can an orca field excavator drones aswell?

EDIT: I've been slightly inactive lately, but just noticed Orca has massive mining drone upgrades. Still, 400m/hour?

Whoops meant to say Rorqual - my bad . The Orca can only field normal mining drones.

I wouldn't solo mine in a Rorq without a Cap fleet somewhere near by that can rescue you if needed.
Also, the Orca can use Harvester Drone which mine a lot more than the other mining drones (not inc Excavators)

Keep in mind there is an incoming Rorqual nerf of 32%.

This is the nerf I was referring to. Now the income is a measly 300 mill per hour.

Thanks CCP.

Keep in mind there is an incoming Rorqual nerf of 32%.

Hey everyone. We've been keeping a close eye on how people are using the newly rebalanced Rorquals and it's been really exciting watching how well people have taken to the new gameplay.

We have decided that we need to make a tweak in our December release next Tuesday to adjust the balance of mining Rorquals and keep the mining economy in a healthy place.

We are planning two connected changes in this release:

• Reducing the mining yield of 'Excavator' Mining Drones by 32%
• Increasing the drop rates of the Elite Drone AI and Drone Coronary Unit rogue drone components

We are continuing to keep an eye on all aspects of gameplay around the mining foreman ships. I know some players are hoping that we would make adjustments to other areas of Rorqual gameplay (such as ewar use while the PANIC module is running) but we feel comfortable leaving those aspects alone for now and continuing to observe how the metagame evolves. We of course reserve the right to make more changes to this or any other aspects of the Rorqual in upcoming patches to keep the ecosystem in balance.

Thanks!

This is the nerf I was referring to. Now the income is a measly 300 mill per hour.

Thanks CCP.

Well that is still pretty good. Seem weird to me that they would want to nerf the this when it seems like it is finally a way for miners to make as much money as Carrier ratting or even more than highsec incursions. I currently run highsec incursions and have found a good community to do it with. But it would be nice to have a more passive way of making isk that doesn't require me having to wait on a waitlist or for fleets to be up.

Do keep in mind that you'd be flying a 7/8b ISK target through nullsec. You'll want there to be fleets up, or atleast ready on the go whenever they get the drop on you. Besides that, you'll need to compress ore continuously, so while it is passive ISK, you do need to actually make it work.
And while the 300m isk/hour rate is a technical truth, more realistic numbers (transporting the goods, etc) would put you at 200m ISK/hr. So that's atleast 40 hours of mining to earn back the initial investment. And thats 40 hours in which you really want everything going for you :-)

So yes, the rorq is good. It's also a real juicy target for basically everyone that isn't you.

2. Would the Orca and Porpoise be worth taking out before I am skilled to fly the Rorqual? (I'll probably take at least a Porpoise out to get the feel of mining as I have never done it lol)

3. What security space and what specific sites allow you the greatest yield and ability to be "afk"?

4. Can anyone recommend good Corporations or Alliances that I should look into to help with the logistics and safety while mining?

5. Besides the ship skills I assume I need mining drone and command burst skills, anything else I am missing?

This is the nerf I was referring to. Now the income is a measly 300 mill per hour.

Thanks CCP.

You sound like a summer child. 300M per hours is still good enough reason to use rorq for mining. You can pay for your hull by mining for 10 hours. How can that be not fair? Try mining in Skiff or a Hulk and see how long it takes to reach 300M.

I wouldn't be surprised if they got hit harder in the future. Mineral prices nuked hard after they got introduced and it's likely going to get worse given that it takes a year and a half to skill into one and it actually makes sense to skill into them now.

Which would be a shame as null sec finally has an effective means to end its reliance on high sec ores. I don't agree with the logic that a drop in high sec mineral prices must mean a nerf to low or null sec mining just so that high sec miners can retain their income. In fact I would think that CCP would want the opposite to happen, forcing high sec industry out to null.