f13.net

Title says it all.  Two things come to mind: survey scanner, of course, and possibly a MWD.  I figure I will need a 100MN MWD, but it is really not a high priority what with warp-to-zero likely coming to TQ before the end of the month.  Most everything else I can think of is useless for an exhumer.

The two highs have ice harvesters and the two lows have ice harvester upgrades.  Naturally.

What about some jammers? In case a pirate jumps you - might give you time to warp away.

Aren't there modules (not sure if they are mid or not) to improve mining laser mining rate?

I have an AB and some extraneous shield stuff on my Skiff. I can tank pretty much any spawn in high sec while my drones take out the rats with just a bit of shielding help.

A MWD would probably be a bad idea - it kills your max cap, which may impact your ability to run lasers continuously.

I don't plan on going into lowsec just yet, but when I do I agree that ECM is probably a good idea.  Maybe some shield boosting mods too, but the problem there is that I'm Gallente and therefore have concentrated my few defense skills on armor tanking.  These mids will become more useful in lowsec but I'd like to put them to better use while working in highsec.

The ice harvester upgrades are what reduce the cycle time, 5% each.  In the Retriever, I only had enough CPU for one harvester upgrade and one CPU upgrade; the Mack does not have that problem so I can fit two IHU.


This is actually not a concern with ice lasers.  They use very little cap.  10 vs 90, IIRC.

As far as tanking, not an issue.  I have halfass drone skills, including Drone Interf lv 2.  I find that I was perfectly fine in .7 with a single Berserker.  The Mack will float a Praetor and a Berserker, aside from having better shield/armor.  Or course, lowsec is a different ball of wax.

I have been drinking so watch for typos.

I would imagine that you'd be better served with a cadre of small or medium drones than one or two heavies. As for the shield booster in midslot, sounds like a good idea, even without much of any skills as it's mostly just to keep you topped off while your drones skewer the wimpy high-sec frigate belt rats. Maybe ECM drones when you move into low-sec to compliment your mid-slot ECM module.

To "solo" mine in 0.0 you generally need to two-box.  Either a BS for tanking the rats and a mining barge, or a tanked BS fitted with mining lasers and carrying mining drones, and a hauler with maximum cargo expanders.  You generally want a POS in the same system with a refinery, unless there's a station refinery within a jump or two.

--Dave

Yego, remember my lowsec miner? I could mine with no probs against rats, but 1 yes, 1 pie rat could blow me up and quick. Now my drone skills sucked hard and it was a drone boat. That is I lacked offence and my defence while adequate against rats was lacking against a skilled PVPer.

About the drones... I am leaning toward five scouts being better than two heavies but I am just testing it out in highsec.  So far it seeems that five scouts (mixed Hob, Aco, Hornet) work better than one heavy when running missions in the thorax, but 5 vs 1 is not quite the same as 5 vs 2, especially when the 2 consists of a praetor (EM) and a berserker (explosive).  Now that I have the Mack, I will go back to working the drone skills.

If I was going to mine in 0.0, yeah, I'd probably go with a BS in most cases.  I won't be trying that until I get better 0.0 access, and lowsec mining just seems too risky for the rocks in there.  No, the current plan is to mine ice with as little effort as possible (RL is kicking my ass) and see if I can get the budget into the black.

Anybody ever use sentry drones for this sort of thing?

It only takes 4 or 5 days to get the skill to use tech 2 small and medium drones. If the 5 smalls aren't cutting it you might do that.

Yeah, I'm about to go into Serious Drone Mode.  Will finish Drone Interf 5 before I get into anything new.  For great justice.