Today, I bought myself a mining cruiser, the Minmatar Scythe. I tossed around the idea of buying the Scythe Fleet Issue, but decided against it after realizing that it had no mining bonus. I bought the cheapest Scythe and modules that I could find, then spent much of the afternoon wandering around high-sec space collecting them.
I also did something rather stupid. One of the modules I had bought was in low-sec space, though I didn't know it at the time. I grabbed a shuttle and scouted ahead through the two gates I would have to jump through to make sure there were no camps going on, then simply took my new, shiny Scythe and came on through. In retrospect, this was a pretty dumb decision. Even though I hadn't encountered anything in my shuttle, that didn't mean there couldn't be a cloaked covert ops vessel waiting for me to come back in something more expensive and call in a few gun-toting buddies. Luckily, I came through all right, but I was risking quite a bit just to avoid spending another 24,000 ISK.
Anyways, here's the fit I've mounted on my Scythe. And a picture, because pictures are yummy.
Cash Cow [Scythe, Mining]
High Slots:
Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream I
Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream I
Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream I
Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher I [Nova Light Missile]
Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher I [Nova Light Missile]
Mid Slots:
Residual Survey Scanner I
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Upgraded EM Ward Amplifier I
Low Slots:
Co-Processor I
Co-Processor I
Expanded Cargohold I
The Scythe is a surprisingly agile ship that has no trouble tanking the frigate rats that show up occasionally in the system that I mine in. I still use the missile launcher because I'd like the bounty, but it's really on the ship only for show. If a ganker shows up, it probably won't really help me, and my passive shield tank is good enough to stop the damage I'm getting. Still, it's nice to know I have teeth on my ship, however small they might be.
My Mining "Adventures"
I think you'll agree with me that mining is hardly the most interesting of professions, except when a ganker shows up, of course. Needless to say, I kept a sharp lookout for gankers, being sure to check out local whenever someone new showed up. At one point, a whole gang of people who were red to my corp jumped into the system, and I got out of dodge very quickly. After an alliance member ran a D-Scan on them, he discovered that they were just running a mining operation in a different belt. Still, I stayed on my toes until they left. I didn't really have much of a tactic for dealing with them if one of them happened to show up at my belt, but I made sure to align to the station and watch my overview carefully. Eventually, the reds left, and I breathed easier.
As the evening progressed, things got more fun. I was whining in corp chat over the fact that it would take about 6 trips for my completely unfitted Hoarder to carry all of the minerals I had refined over to Hek, the nearest market hub. A very nice corpmate offered to not only carry everything for me, but also to refine everything I had mined with his refining alt. I got about 4.5 million ISK from the first haul, which was much more than I had expected.
Another corp member who owned an Orca fleeted up with me so
I would get the bonuses that came with that ship. Although he was afraid to leave our PoS’s
protective shield and come to the asteroid field due to Hulkageddon, he was
more than happy to have his Orca alt sit around and help me out. Meanwhile, his main came along and orbited me
in a Tech III cruiser, making me the safest miner in the system by a long
shot. With the Orca’s base bonus and his
mining foreman link, I was picking up about half again as much ore as I would
have normally.
Typically, I would have faced the problem of hauling the
stuff back to the station in my Hoarder’s meager 5.600 m3 cargo hold, but my
corpmate with the industrial offered to use his Mastodon to drop by and take my
ore to be refined for me. So I just got
to sit there, mining away, while my two corpmates did half of the work for me
and gave me all the profits. And
everyone thinks EVE is a dog-eat-dog game.
It can be, but there are plenty of wonderful people around too.
Meanwhile, I was learning quite a bit about large nullsec
operations from my friend with the industrial.
Having spent a while there and caused almost 150 billion ISK worth of
damages to enemy ships in fleet fights, he knew his way around PvP. I learned about all sorts of cloaky
shenanigans from him, like how to use a black ops battleship to jump in a fleet
of covert ops frigates, force recon cruisers, and other cloaked ships. Although this information probably won’t be
of use to me in the immediate future, it’s certainly interesting to know.
The second haul earned me more than 6 million ISK, putting my day's earning at over 10 million and ending the day with 55 million ISK to my name. My Scythe has already payed itself back, and I've learned a lot about the value of friendly, willing-to-help people. If either of the two I'm talking about ever read this, thanks!
Random Question of the Day: How many Titans exist in EVE at
the moment? I asked my PvPer corpmate,
and he wasn’t sure.
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