I should go back to this, though. Maybe when I don't need my hulk for mining ice for PoS fuel, and can keep it in my mission hub.

Unless their mining bots can be reprogrammed for this, I don't think a significant portion of the highsec mining fleets will participate.

A pair of Hulks and an Orca with average skills can earn more than 2X the LP of an average mission runner no matter how many toons he uses (including mission blitzers) unless he splits his crews.

Unless their mining bots can be reprogrammed for this, I don't think a significant portion of the highsec mining fleets will participate.

Good way too tell if some one is a bot or not. Wait a few minutes to see if they use a survey scanner. These are a must for productive mining.

Did some testing today.
My average reward for these 4 missions are: approx. 9 Mil ISK Rewards (incl. Time Rewards) and approx. 20000 LP per hour.

When I mine with the same setup in belts or grav sites I can do something between 20 and 30 Mil ISK. Even more if I built stuff from the minerals. Now I don't know what the conversion of LP to ISK is, but I don't think that 20000 LP's are worth 10 Mil ISK.

What I do like about Mining missions is, that you can increase standings for your Alts a very easy and quick way.

Last I checked, if you dump your lp into fast selling ammo or implants, you're looking at ~800 isk/lp. If you take your time, you can get ~2,000+ isk/lp for particular items depending on the market. So that's 16M to 40M+ isk from the LP (not counting the isk loss from the time taken to convert the LP to isk.)


You could probably supplement your income by joining or starting a company that sells standings increases.

You mean griefers have to scan me down? Sounds good.

Wait, wait.. I'm solo. I don't fly a Hulk. After LP, will I still make isk/minute above market mineral prices?

Nice. I really need to check out the LP Store.
So if I summ up, it nets both about the same. Except you get lucky with an LP Store item.

My income is good enough.

95% don't read forums so it is unlikely it will affect things any time soon. plus there is a MIMAF crowd who 'like making things'.

good find though (if true).

btw what isk/lp ratio are you using? because 500 was pretty optimistic when I was running missions last time, at least for the corps that do have agents in empire.. best (about 900) was I think SoE but i am not sure it they have mining agents.

Last time I converted mining LPs to ISK I got about 1.3k-1.4k per point off the 5% salvage implant, but I sold about one per day (10k LP's worth), which means it's definitely not a good item for converting mass amounts of LPs that you'd get from doing these missions regularly.

Also, non-barge ships I've thought of using: Apoc or Rokh. Both have 8 highs. The Apoc has a bigger maximum cargohold fully rigged but needs fitting mods to put all 8 miners online. The Rokh has a much smaller cargo capacity, but doesn't need fitting mods, and also has a better buffer with the shield resists.

I also considered using a Hurricane with 7 miners and a mining link in the last slot. The trouble with this is that you'd have to unload the hold every minute as opposed to every 5+ with the BS. The upside is... while not as awesome as an Orca, it's cheaper and orcas can't mine themselves. i ultimately decided that was too much hassle.

...

I have to say, for L2 missions, I have yet to run into any npc rats. None, zip, nada. Not only that, I racked up well over 4,000 LPs in a very short time. Although I think that's about to change once I get home and start on a L3 mission.

I can't really see how this would out preform mining in any way. I've been running L4 in .06 mining missions for the last few weeks and even with adding 3 characters into the mix it would still be more profitable to mine. Maybe if you are running low/nullsec mining missions, but I have never done those and cannot be sure.


From what I figured out it was roughly 8000 lp per mission with mining connections V and roughly 2m isk. This is split between 3 people so you're making around 2665 lp and 67,000 isk per character (if other players are involved).

Most of the L4 missions would take at minimum 10 minutes (ice taking around 15 minutes) using your 3 person team. So figure 5 missions per hour comes to:
40,000 lp or 13,333lp per player.
10,000,000isk or 3,333,333isk per player.
With a set value of say 600 lp to isk:

Total hour isk made:
total: 34,000,000isk
12m isk per player per hour.


Now I know a 2 hulk 1 orca team has to be able to beat these numbers. I am by far not a perfect hulk (at like 70% iirc) and I can make around 20m-22m per hour. Add a second hulk making 22m per hour, orca boots and thats around 50m per hour. Much more than what you would be getting from the missions (and thats not evening counting corp tax).


"and fly T1 cruisers with 5 gas harvesters"
To have 5 gas harvesters you need gas harvesting V. 2 T2 gas harvesters out preform 4 T1 gas harvesters so you know. So 5 T2 gas harvesters on both ships would be as much output as almost 5 of your 5 t1 ships.

I've done mining missions for some time mostly for the standing.
Level 1 through 3 where done solo, level 4 with orca support.
Some things no1 here mentioned:
Some L3 Mining Missions include some serious combat.
I got two of them on a regular basis. One was vs about 10 frigs + 3 cruisers, the other vs 2 missile batteries and 3 or more timed spawns of 1 cruiser + some frigs.
As I did those missions in caldari space I once even had 1 guristas beltrat spawn on top of the rogue drones. And as that rat kept on jamming me for 3 full cycles I had to tank everything for that time.

So to sum up what I want to say:
Do not fly level 3 mining missions if you lack proper drone and tanking skills or are ready to kill the rats with a combat ship first.
For me those missions where incentive to train for shield booster II (yes yes, you never fit boosters in a mining ship, I know the sermon. )

Flying level 4 mining missions I never ever encountered more than 3 rats simultanous. But didn't do many of those.

Are there storyline missions involving mining missions? I was disappointed when I finished my sixteenth mission only to get a full blown combat storyline mission. Maybe poor luck of the draw, but if there are no mining storyline missions, then it seems backwards on CCP's part.

I can't really see how this would out preform mining in any way. I've been running L4 in .06 mining missions for the last few weeks and even with adding 3 characters into the mix it would still be more profitable to mine. Maybe if you are running low/nullsec mining missions, but I have never done those and cannot be sure.


From what I figured out it was roughly 8000 lp per mission with mining connections V and roughly 2m isk. This is split between 3 people so you're making around 2665 lp and 67,000 isk per character (if other players are involved).

Most of the L4 missions would take at minimum 10 minutes (ice taking around 15 minutes) using your 3 person team. So figure 5 missions per hour comes to:
40,000 lp or 13,333lp per player.
10,000,000isk or 3,333,333isk per player.
With a set value of say 600 lp to isk:

Total hour isk made:
total: 34,000,000isk
12m isk per player per hour.


Now I know a 2 hulk 1 orca team has to be able to beat these numbers. I am by far not a perfect hulk (at like 70% iirc) and I can make around 20m-22m per hour. Add a second hulk making 22m per hour, orca boots and thats around 50m per hour. Much more than what you would be getting from the missions (and thats not evening counting corp tax).


"and fly T1 cruisers with 5 gas harvesters"
To have 5 gas harvesters you need gas harvesting V. 2 T2 gas harvesters out preform 4 T1 gas harvesters so you know. So 5 T2 gas harvesters on both ships would be as much output as almost 5 of your 5 t1 ships.

Resurrecting this topic...

I'm not an EVE-Excel major, but I am curious how the recent spike in mineral prices affects the difference in profitability between dedicated mining missions and traditional ore mining. As ore/mineral prices rise, the financial benefits of the proposed plan probably become slimmer and slimmer...