Stripping rocks of ore
15th June 2009 – 5.31 pmI am still working for my Core Complexion, Inc. agent, still with the aim of raising my standings with that corporation. It has been so long since I started doing this I had better remind myself that it is for the purpose of Tech II production, where getting access to high quality level four Core Complexion, Inc. R&D agents will provide me with a good source of the datacores required for invention. Tech II production has been my overall aim, but working for the agents has given me lots of smaller goals out of necessity, as well as my own industrial efforts motivating me to expand my production output.
The agent gives me another mining mission to complete, luckily not ice this time but it is yet another mineral that only agents seem to have any need for. If it improves my standings to mine some useless rocks then I will persevere. I may have looked at mining missions unfavourably in the past, although I have hidden it well, but I have to admit I am a little bit excited about this one. My vigour doesn't come from the mission itself but rather as a side-effect of having to train for and buy a Retriever mining barge to mine ice on a previous mission.
Mining barges are not only for fitting CPU-intensive ice harvesters, they can also use strip miner modules. As their name suggests, strip miners are rather more efficient at ripping ore from asteroids than standard mining lasers, which is probably why they need to be fitted to a specially configured ship and definitely explains why I am a little eager to get on this mission. I get to pilot my new ship and play with new toys. I pull up the market interface and find a cheap pair of strip miners, along with a mining upgrade module. I hit vacuum with Fido, my Retriever, to pick up my new purchases before heading to the mission deadspace pocket to test out my new mining capabilities.
In deadspace I am happy to see that although there are a handful of rocks, which no doubt must all be mined to oblivion to complete my agent's demands for worthless rocks, they all look to be arranged in a volume where I can sit my ship to be within mining range of all of them, instead of having to reposition myself a few times. I also notice a few lurking drones, but the Retriever's bay is big enough to hold five light drones of my own, which when launched quickly reduce the hostile drones to minerals. With just me and the rocks left I lock-on and fire up my strip miners.
The strip miner modules have a longer cycle time than normal lasers, three minutes instead of one, which might make them sound rather more tedious to use, but the amount of ore mined per cycle is around twelve times as much as for a mining laser. Even though the White Cat, my Osprey, has three mining lasers of a high meta-quality Fido's two basic strip miner modules are pulling in a significant amount of extra ore over an equivalent amount of time. Each floating rock doesn't slowly dissolve in to the inky blackness of space as much as blink out of existence, and that's not referring to geological time either. The strip miners make short work of my mission, just as I had excitedly hoped.
I just can't work out if am I tingling because I am simply saving myself time when mining, and thus not having to do it for as long, or because I quite enjoy the much increased efficiency I am accomplishing in ripping apart the rocks. It is quite possible that I can tolerate, if not actually enjoy, mining ore if I can do it well. With Fido and its strip miners I might actually end up taking advantage of the next mission deadspace pocket I find full of veldspar, which could turn out to be more lucrative to harvest than receiving the early mission completion bonus.
2 Responses to “Stripping rocks of ore”
Retriever is a nice little ship, showing what what is possible mining. If the bug really catches, you'll find yourself skilling for a hulk :)
As for mission mining, that's something I rarely do. When I mission its usually to get standing, and mission mining slows that down.
Yes, clearing up deadspace certainly slows down whatever else you have planned, especially working towards faction increases. But EVE Online is forever finding new ways to distract me from my task at hand, whether it's a mission or skill training, so I tend not to worry about it any more.