Miners Guide to the Galaxy;

A Guide for Survival and Profit in the Vast Universe of EVE Online.


Written by: Fraszoid, Miners Guide to the Galaxy,
Now hosted on IDGAS Links and Resources  : Zaphod Jones / Brunnis Jetrel


Table of contents


1. Version History
2. Introduction
3. Skills
4. Large Scale Mining Operations
5. Corporations
6. Solo Mining in Risky Territory
7. Even Larger Scale Mining Operations
8. Mining Laser Derivatives
9. Equipping your Ship, and Tactics for the Equipped Ship
10. Group Mining
11. Ores to Mine
12. Ice Mining
13. Mining Barges
14. Other ships to use to mine
14a. Mining upgrades and increasing efficiency of mining
15. Industrial Ships
16. Trading
17. Refining
18. Selling Ore
19. Other Ways to Make Money
20. Manufacturing
21. Research
22. Drones
23. Corporate Management
24. Managing Multiple Corporations
25. Corporate Mining and Incentive Systems
26. War
27. Death
28. Neural Implants
29. Deep Space Complexes
30. Weapons
31. Building your first combat ship
32. Fighting NPC Pirates
33. Elaboration on skills
34. Fighting Players
35. Ethical Issues
36. T2 Ships
37. Flying a Battleship
38. Market Conditions (as of January 3, 2006)
39. FAQ
40. Credits
41. Contact Information



NOTE: This guide was written during Cold War, so I am still in the process of updating for Red Moon Rising. Any feedback, suggestions, questions, comments would be greatly appreciated, and helpful in getting it updated. If I have missed some detail or something changed, let me know and I will correct it. Enjoy.

1. Version History

1.17 02 March 2009 As the domain had expired I grabbed the code for this guide from the Archive to preserve it, the original guide is not being updated but is now preserved.

1.16 April 5, 2006. After many distractions and obstacles, I’ve made my way back to working on this guide in updating and improving upon it. I’ll try to keep it current, and be ready for Kali in a few months.

1.15 February 3, 2006. After a computer failure that left me with out my laptop for over 2 weeks, I've released this update that I was working on. There might be some missing information, or topics I only started and didn't finish. I'll be working on fixing them to have another update ready in the near future. I just added the new topics to the table of contents, but didn't change the numbering yet. I'll be working to get this fixed, and ready for another update as I learn more.

1.14 January 3, 2006. We are up and running, and everything is going well. I created another player corp that I ran and it took off, so now I am opening my permanent corp, Miners Guide to the Galaxy, so come and join while there is space, I only have Corp Management 3 right now, and ethnic relations 3.

1.13 December 17, 2005. After many problems in real life with playing and going to school, I finally got everything organized, so I can work on writing this guide. RMR is released, so there will be more updates as I learn more. I also lost another corp, so if you need to find me, message me anytime, and I’ll do my best to get back to you. 1.12 November 28, 2005. Added more material, and edited some more. 1.11 October 25, 2005. Made some small changes, and formed a new corp with some friends. If you are interested in joining, we are “Crimson Dragons”.

1.10 October 17, 2005. Added a new section on Drones by Amarrian Android of Diamond Dogs. He was kind enough to let me use his guide in mine.

1.09 October 11, 2005. Added info on ninja mining tactics, and added info on Cormorant use for mining.

1.08 October 7, 2005. Added an FAQ section after having a rather productive chat about being a CEO and basic Corp stuff.

1.07 October 5, 2005. Made some adjustments to “Building your first combat ship” layout. I finally got the skills to fly my Ferox, and realized some errors. They have been fixed, and the setup modified accordingly.

1.06 September 28, 2005. Made some revisions, and numbered the headings.

1.05 September 27, 2005. Added Deep Space Complexes, Weapons, and Building your first combat ship. Made other minor changes, and updates.

1.04 September 20, 2005. Did some major reformatting to make the content easier to read and improved the table of contents.

1.03 September 16, 2005. Added cost per unit ratios for ores, how to use clones, neural implants, and my opinion on market conditions.

1.02 September 15, 2005. Made some changes to the ore table to make it fit, and made some minor revisions.

1.01 September 14, 2005. Made some small capitalization and corrections to names of ships, equipment, and skills. Added some words and substituted others to improve sentence structure, and readability.

1.0 September 13, 2005. My first attempt at making a players guide. I started on this working off and on in June, and spent about 2 weeks of concerted work to make this first version.






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2. Introduction



The Miners Guide to the Galaxy, the most comprehensive book I have written on the Subject of mining resources for profit. This book contains information on minerals to mine, where you can find them, dangers in the places you find them, where to sell them, market prices, refining yield, skills for mining, ships for mining, equipment and drones for mining, and more mining related stuff.

This first edition focuses on the Caldari point of view, starting in the system of Amsen. The beginning information is fairly generic and works for all races. For most purposes replace ‘Caldari’ with your race and the tactic should work. When you begin you are in space and have to do the tutorial. After that is done you come out with an Ibis Frigate, Basic Mining Laser, Civilian Rail Gun, and Civilian Shield Booster. That equipment will serve for a while in keeping you safe, and able to run when things get risky.

To start, warp over to any asteroid field, and look for Condensed Scordite, and mine it. If Scordite is not available, Veldspar will work. In case you didn't really pay attention to the tutorial, click on the asteroid, in the top right hand corner there is the information on the currently selected target, click on the cross hairs to lock the asteroid into the targeting system, click the approach button, then click on the Mining Laser at the bottom centre, to the right of the ship shield meter. If at first the Mining Laser does not fire, wait a few seconds and try again, you need to be within 10,000 metres for mine an asteroid. Once the laser fires just sit and wait for your cargo hold to fill up. Once it is full, the laser will automatically deactivate, and you will get a message telling you your cargo hold is full, and excess ore has been ejected. You have just mined your first load of Scordite. Now warp to the station and dock.

Once inside, right click on you ship, and select open cargo hold. On the left side of the screen, there is a bar of different submenus and features, at the bottom there is one that is items, click to open it. Drag your newly mined Scordite into the items box. Now on the right hand side you have the station operation features, in the top row you have Medical, Repair, Refine and Manufacture, click on refine. Now a new menu pops up, and lists all the things you can refine. Click on the Scordite, and select process. This will take 333 units of ore and refine it in to more valuable minerals for sale. Just leave the minerals in the hangar, and go mine a few more loads.

Once you have a good amount of refined minerals in storage, right click on the Tritanium, and select sell. A box will pop up, and give you a selling price this should be around 2 ISK per unit, and around 25% below the regional average. Unfortunately being a small time miner sucks and you just have to live with it until traveling become more feasible. On the upside, Tritanium by virtue of it being so plentiful, is naturally low priced, the price is more of less constant. So unless you have an Industrial Ship, hauling Tritanium is not overly very profitable compared to other minerals so it’s best to sell at the station for now. Do the same to sell the Pyerite.

Once you have enough money, purchase a Bantam Frigate, and 2 Mining Laser I. On the left side second button from the bottom is ships, click on it. In pop up window, there will be your Ibis, and your newly purchased Bantam. Right click on the Bantam, and select assemble. Now your Bantam is ready to use. Click on fittings on the right hand station service options. A window comes down showing all the equipment on your ship. Right click on the fitted items, and select unfit from the bottom of the pop up menu. When your Ibis is stripped of equipment, right click on your Bantam in storage, and select make active. You are now in your shiny new Bantam. Click on fittings, and open your item storage. Right click on the Mining Laser I, and select fit to active ship, repeat with the second Mining Laser I, and the Civilian Shield Booster. If you can't fit the second Mining Laser I due to insufficient CPU or power on the ship, try the Basic Mining Laser. If you can't fit the Civilian Shield Booster, don't worry you are safe mining in Amsen.

With the Bantam equipped, and ready to go, undock, and mine a few loads of ore. Once you have a fair bit of refined minerals, load your ship with some, right click the ore in your ship cargo hold, and select market information. This will give you the market prices for the currently selected item, in this case the ore. In the top left corner, there is a pull down menu that will say either station, solar system or region. Select region, and look at the lower half of the screen, this is the buyer section of the market interface. This is a list of all the people buying a select resource in the selected area. Click the price heading to organize the buyers by price from highest to lowest. When you find a price that looks good, right click on that person, make a note the station, and select set destination. Make sure the jumps required is not 1,000,000 (this may have been fixed, I’m waiting on confirmation for that) that usually is impossible to reach with certain autopilot settings, so keep it around 5 or 6 at most, any farther and it gets a bit dangerous to travel with out Insurance. Also check that the quantity wanted is a good amount, about the amount you are hauling or more, it’s no good to travel 5 systems to sell Tritanium for 50 ISK, if they are only buying 3 units. Once you are sure of your cargo and the destination, undock, and activate the autopilot.

Now just sit back, and wait for the autopilot to arrive in the destination system. Next just warp and dock with the station where the buyer is at. Once there, move the cargo into the hangar storage and select sell. Make sure the deal is the one you wanted, or you may end up selling for less than you planned on. Now being a good distance from Amsen, assuming the security level of the system you are in is .8, you can mine here. Undock from the station, and warp to an asteroid field. With a bit of luck you will now have Pyroxeres and Plagioclase to mine. They are more valuable as they refine into more minerals. Just keep refining the ore, and build up a nice stock pile of money.


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3. Skills



I can't remember if skills are covered in the tutorial, but I’m including the basics on how to make money mining, and I have included a section on skills. In order to make money by mining, you need to be skilled at mining and the related skills. First rule of thumb, always be training a skill. Time is the one thing that makes everyone equal; always try to train something when you are off line, even if it is something you may never use, and takes forever to train. I never thought I would ever use electronics but I trained it and now my ships can hold better equipment. Skills can take as little as 15 minutes to a week to a month (or two) to train.

Being a miner, naturally mining is a very important skill to possess, train your Mining skill to level 5 if possible, but that may take about 2 weeks, so don't think you have to do it all at once. Skills for the most part train fast for the first 2 levels, a bit slower for levels 3 and 4, and 5 will take the longest. For all intensive purposes, unless you need that last level, training your skills to level 3 is a good start, and level 4 for added proficiency. Level 5 takes at least a week, so keeping a few of those to train is good for extended absences. First skill you should get is not mining, but Caldari Frigate Level 2. This will allow you to get the Bantam which is a very good small scale mining ship. Once you have that, the next ships you should get are the Caldari Cruiser Osprey, and Caldari Industrial Ships Badger I and later Badger II. To get the Osprey you need Caldari Frigate Level 4 to get Cruiser 1, and Spaceship Command 3. To get the Industrial Ship Badger you need Caldari Frigate Level 3, to get Caldari Industrial 1, and Caldari Industrial 3 for Badger II. Next get Anchoring 1.

If getting an Osprey is a bit of a jump for you, getting the destroyer Cormorant is another middle step you could take. Once you have Caldari Frigate 3, you can train Destroyer 1, so you can utilize a Cormorant. I know from experience that the Cormorant can be a bit tricky to fit, I had 3 Mining Laser II’s running, and the Capacitor could not keep up, causing one to always shut off after its mining cycle. CPU is another thing to be desired, and can be remedied with many co-processors, and reactor management controls are also useful for generating enough power to run everything. If you can fit some Railguns on it, that would be useful for fighting pirates you may encounter. With the Cormorant, you get a 7.5% bonus to small hybrid turret damage, 50% bonus to hybrid turret optimal range, and -25% firing rate, so exercise a bit of caution when fighting with it.

This combination will set you up for small to medium scale solo mining operations. After you have attained those skills, further study into Mining, Refining, and Trade will increase your profits. Later you will find that skills will begin to take longer to train to the higher levels, this is easily dealt with by training Analytical Memory and Instant Recall Skills. They will increase your Intelligence and Memory Attributes respectively, thus decreasing the required training time for skills. Learning is another skill that will decrease training time by 2% per level. Once you are ready to move onto mining again, work towards Science 4, and Astrogeology 5, so you can get Deep Core Mining Lasers. They will enable you to use Mining Crystals to mine faster and mine the valuable ore, Mercoxcite.

Once you have that, get Caldari Cruiser level 5 with level 5 in Mining, Astrogeology, and Caldari Cruiser, you will mine with a 321.5% bonus to ore yield. When using Mining Laser IIs, that is 187.5 m3 per laser per minute. That will turn an Osprey equipped with 3 Mining Laser IIs into the most effective mining ship, next to the Mining Barge, Covetor. To maximize efficiency, train targeting to level 2, so you can track 4 targets simultaneously.


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4. Large Scale Mining Operations



Once you have the Osprey, and Badger you can start to really make money by yourself. First you need to get a Giant Secure Container, and load it in the Badger. Next warp to an Asteroid Field, and place it in range of the desired resources. For whatever reason, you can't place is within 5,000m of Veldspar, anchor in .8 and above space, or other containers so you just have to live with that fact. You also cannot anchor a can in .8 and above space due to CONCORD Navigation Hazard Restrictions. Bookmark the location of the container, and warp back to get your Osprey.

Equip the Osprey with the best Mining Lasers you have, and warp to the container. Pull up next to the container and right click to open it, an open your ships cargo hold. Lock on to any asteroid, and begin mining with all the Mining Lasers you have. When some ore appears in the ship cargo hold, drag it into the container. Repeat until the container is full. Right click, anchor the can and assign a password to the container to prevent people from stealing the ore.

Warp back and get the Badger, then warp to the container. Empty the contents into the badger, the back to the station where you can refine and sell everything. This will make lots of money and allow you to quickly recoup the cost of setting this up. Also with the large capacity of the Badger it becomes feasible to travel a bit to sell your refined ores for more than the station is offering.

If you don’t want to be limited to 3,900m3 of ore, you can do Jettisoned Container (Jet Can) Mining instead. Jet Can Mining is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest method, but also fairly risky. Jet Can Mining consists of the container made from jettisoning cargo from your cargo hold. This container has a capacity of 27500m3, which is more than enough for all but a top end barge miner. Jet Cans have no restrictions on where they can be placed, so they are very convinent for getting close to asteroids, don’t cost anything, and can be created every 3 minutes if you want.


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5. Corporations



What better way to make money than have others help you in doing it. The more dangerous the system, the more valuable the ore, and the higher price people will pay. This can be done by yourself, but you need to equip your self with weapons, and be prepared for a bit of a fight.

The lower the security level, the more pirates there will be, and there will also be players hunting. You are relatively safe from hunters in sectors above .5 as CONCORD will attack these players if they try to attack a player or even enter the system in some cases.

Corporations are full of money, expertise and best of all equipment. They have skill books, ship blue prints, ship fittings, weapons, ammo, and much more. If one offers you to join, look at their goals, question them, then join, or message Fraszoid in game, and he will gladly accept you in to his Corporation (I have formed my corp, Miners Guide to the Galaxy, message me if you wish to join). With a Mining Skill as high as this, you become part of the life blood of a corporation, and attain a fairly high importance, as not everyone opts to be a miner.

Many corporations require lots of minerals to build equipment like ships, and maintain player owned stations. Player owned stations are very profitable, but require a lot of resources to build and maintain. If you do not wish to join a corporation, it is always a good idea to make friends with a corporation in the area you operate in. Having a friendly corporation can offer you the opportunity to mine in relative safety.


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6. Solo Mining in Risky Territory



When you leave the safety of .8 space, you will begin to encounter NPC Pirates in the asteroid fields you will be mining. This is the risky territory, as being ill prepared to fight or run could be costly.

To effectively mine in risky territory, you need a fair weapon bank and some shield modifications. The Osprey Cruiser, though mostly used for its mining bonuses, is a fully functional Cruiser, and can be a nice starting combat ship.

When in the Osprey for solo mining in risky territory you need a shield booster, and missile launcher. Always keep the missile launcher equipped and loaded, and some missiles in the cargo hold, just in case a pirate arrives and decides to annoy you.

In more dangerous territory, carry 2 missile launchers more missiles and some shield boosters equipped. On the Badger, also have a missile launcher and good sized rail gun with some charges, or a Civilian Rail Gun for defensive fire, and shield boosters to retrieve the container contents.

If it is really dangerous, like .4 and lower, equip your ship for combat. Take the Osprey with 2 rail guns, 1 missile launcher, 1 mining laser, energy capacitor enhancements, shield boosters and enough ammo to fight for a bit. Fill the ship cargo hold and warp to the nearest station to sell the ore.

If you are going to mine “under the radar’ you should use the tactic of ninja mining. The premise of this is to take a ship, mine, and leave before trouble shows up. This leaves no trace of you being there, other than any cargo leftover from the pirates you may have killed, but that isn’t directly linked to you. When your cargo hold is full, you can either warp to a piece of space in the middle of nowhere, where you can store it in containers, or to a station. If trouble like a player warps in to the system, you then warp to your chosen safe spot or station to hide in safety, warp stabilizers are also very useful for escaping.

If you are in a corporation, then see if you can get one of your friends in a Cruiser to go ahead and secure the area for you, then fill a container and take the Badger to pick up, armed with some weapons of course.


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7. Even Larger Scale Mining Operations



If you are really skilled at mining and want a purpose build ship for that, get the ore mining barge. It can use the strip miner component which is the fastest mining component available at 560 units at a time, although the capacity isn't as large as the badger. In secure areas this is a good choice for chewing up asteroids and getting ore quickly. For efficiency purposes, wait until you have the skills for the Covetor, the largest mining barge of all. I have heard reports that it can fill a 27500m3 can in 25 minutes, or about 1100m3 per minute (I own a Covetor, and can attest to the power and efficiency of the strip miners. With modulated strip miners, and the proper crystals, it can fill a can in 25 minutes, assuming you don't have to change asteroid, and you get the full amount each cycle. Other wise it can take longer, but it is still the fastest ship, after the hulk exhumer.). The down side is the strip miners required operate in 3 minute cycles.


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8. Mining Laser Derivatives



Aside from the regular abilities of mining lasers, there are also ice mining lasers, strip miners, deep core miners, modulated, and the other types. Also a nice side note, these numbers are the base amounts, and will be higher when you actually equip them, because the skills needed also enhance the modules performance.

Mining lasers are the basic, low cost, easy to use laser that is the backbone of mining operations. They may not be the fastest but they work. There are many other basic types, but I have yet to test them to give an objective review of them.

Mining laser I is the first piece of equipment you should get if you can. It mines 40m3 per minute, and is more efficient than the basic mining laser.

Mining laser II is the next step, and faster. It mines 60m3 per minute, and requires Mining 4. Deep Core Mining Lasers are the most advanced lasers, and the most efficient beside the strip miners, if they have Mining Crystals loaded. They mine 120m3 per 3 minutes making them as effective as a Miner I, mining crystals increase the output to 195m3 every 3 minutes with a Tech 1 Crystal (70m3 per minute) or 210m3 every 3 minutes (70m3 per minute) with a Tech 2 Crystal, not taking into account skills. To use Deep Core Miners, you need Mining 5, Astrogeology 5, Science 4, and Deep Core Mining 1. Deep core mining lasers allow you to mine Mercoxcit, which is very valuable and hard to get.

Finally the largest mining laser is the strip miner, they only fit on mining barges, as strip miners use 98% less CPU when equipped on a mining barge. It is possible to fit them in any ship you can get 3000cpu out of. Finally there is the ice miner for mining barges; it is required to mine ice asteroids, which takes a while from what I have heard. Now they have also released a Modulated Deep Core Strip Miner that can use Mercoxit Crystals, and mine Mercoxit. These, like Deep Core Miners, don’t have the most yield, but can be useful with the proper crystals.

In application with an Osprey, your best bet are to stick with Mining Laser II, and train up your Mining, and Astrogeology skills to level 5, and Cruiser to level 4. Next get Refining to level 5, and Refinery Efficiency to level 3. Next train Metallurgy to level 3, and train a specific ore refining skill (eg. Pyroxeres or what you mine) to level 3, now you can use mining crystals. Train Deep Core Mining to level 2, and use the Modulated Deep Core Miners II on your Osprey. That increase will be 28m3 per minute with Tech 1 Crystals, and 84.375m3 per minute with Tech 2 Crystals.


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9. Equipping your Ship, and Tactics for the Equipped Ship



The proper equipment is what makes a ship live or die in the world of EVE. Until you have an Osprey Cruiser, and cruiser weapon skills (medium sized weapons and ammo) you should stay in safe area, and mine with help to keep pirates at bay.

If you have a Frigate like the Bantam, equip 2 Mining Lasers, a shield booster, and anything else you like that fits. You will mostly be mining in safe space with other people, so weapons are not needed. If you have a Badger Industrial Ship, 2 Cargo Expanders, shield boosters, Afterburner or Micro Warp Drive once you have the skills to use them. Any other slots left open fill with what you like, extra capacitor boosters, CPUs, reactor management, etc.

Once you have an Osprey, it becomes feasible to mine in lower security space. For that you need 3 Mining Lasers, the best you can get, 1 Small Shield Booster, 1 Ore Scanner, 1 Afterburner, 1 Assault Missile Launcher and about 300 Light Missiles (I find the Piranha Light Missiles to be very effective) , 1 Capacitor recharger, 1 Cargo expander and 2 CPU enhancers. This setup will allow you to take some fire from low level pirates, and hopefully destroy them. Drones are also very valuable if you can use them, the Osprey can hold 4 light scout drones, 4 mining drones, or a combination of the two.

The tactic when using this is to lock on to the pirates and fire the Light Missiles, and use the shield generator to keep your shields up. If you are not comfortable taking hits, use it to warp out. If you can use drones, equip as many as you can handle of either offensive or mining. If you are solo mining, offensive drones are best for safety. If you fancy some light combat, the Osprey is a nice dual purpose ship, it was after all designed to be a Cruiser. I use 2 150mm Rail Guns, and 2 Light Missile Launchers for combat. This along with the Afterburner, Small Shield booster, Small Hull Repairer, Small Armour Repairer, and 2 Reactor Diagnostics, and the Capacitor Recharger, you have a decent combat ship for going against frigs.

It operates better with Medium Rails as it has a 10% better range with Medium Hybrid Turrets, but the Small Rails have yet to fail me under reasonable circumstances. When combat heats up, use the Shield Booster to keep your shields up, and if your shields fall, also use the Armour Repairer to keep the armour up. If you have to revert to using the Hull Repairer, or think you might while in battle, run.

The Hull Repairer is only there to keep your ship in tip top condition as it repairs 24 hull every 24 seconds. In that time you could be blown up many times over. Even if you are not a big fan of repairing in battle, keep some in you hangar, after all repair bills can add up. The Armour Repairers are worth their weight in Nocxium, they have saved me many times.

One time the enemy took out my shield, and no amount of Shield Boosting could keep them up. The only thing that kept me alive was the Armour Repairer I had. It kept me at 80% armour through the whole battle, and I only took 3 damage to my hull. If you are mining, and the pirates are too much to handle, warp back to your station, and grab your weapons and ammo. Most pirates will fall to this tactic, or as has happened to me, just warp away by time you get back. If you have friends or allies in the system, shout for help, odds are someone will take care of them for you.


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10. Group Mining



Eventually there comes a time where you will make friends or join a corp, or find a group of people to mine with. A properly organized group mining party can be the most efficient and safest way to get rare minerals in very dangerous areas. The more the merrier, and organization is key. It is best to plan in advance, scout out the location, and check for player pirate activity.

Player pirates are the most evil beings in the EVE universe. They have no remorse, no ethics, no morals, and no mercy. Luckily they travel in pairs, so the initial attack will not be able to eliminate everyone. However, reinforcements could be very close behind. This further underscores the need to effective planning and organization.

There must be one leader, and everyone must trust this leader. You will need guards with ships designed for heavy attack, that are well equipped, and mining ships with combat drones. If you are worried about not having enough fire power, have the miners use combat ships with a few mining lasers on them, even an Apocalypse can be quiet the effective mining ship. Haulers are needed to get the ore from the asteroid belt to a station or other collection point. The haulers should be equipped with Cargo Expanders, Afterburners or Micro Warp Drives, and Warp Core Stabilizers. This will make for fast ships to get out with lots of ore, should a problem arise.

There should be a list of minerals to get, and the priority they should be gotten. It wouldn’t be very good spending a week planning a mining trip to come back with tonnes of Veldspar. Usually the 3 most valuable minerals are chosen, and grabbed in order of highest value to lowest value. You should always have someone monitoring the local chat channel to see if anyone warps in. If someone comes, they are to check and alert the leader and others to be aware. Only after the leader of the trip has examined the person, and determined they are a threat or not should the evacuation order be given.

Here is where organization comes in to play, you should have an evacuation procedure established, and make sure that everyone knows it. Varying levels are good, like one for fill your hold and run to a station, just run to a station, or run for safety, all depending on the situation. Proper execution of this can save a lot of ships and money. Also if loss of ship does result, the leader is financially liable, as he is most likely the one who planned it.

If you have more time and resources to plan, it would be wise to have at least one battle cruiser for coordinating the gang defences. Battle cruisers get a 90% CPU reduction to gang warfare link module so they can further increase bonuses to everyone in the gang. Depending on the situation and risk of the system, 1 well setup battle cruiser will likely be sufficient to watch over a small operation. If you have a larger one, more combat ships could be added, depending on how fancy you want to be. I normally have 2 cruisers on guard with 2 miners and a hauler. If you want to be really decadent, and have a lot of time, set up some frig tacklers, support cruisers, a battlecruiser, and a battleship. Then make it look like an attack force so no one will bother you.


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11. Ores to Mine



There are many ore types to mine, 16 different types, each in 3 different purities, and ice with 12 different types. The most common you will encounter are; Veldspar, Scordite, Plagioclase, and Pyroxeres in sectors .5 and above. Some systems have Kernite or Jaspet (so I’ve heard) in them, but they are usually stripped by other corps leaving only small scraps if anything. They are found everywhere, except ice asteroid fields.

More rare types such as Arkonor, Bistot, Spodumain, Crokite, Dark Ochre, Kernite, Gneiss, Omber, Hedbergite, Hemorphite, Jaspet, and Mercoxit are less common, usually found in sectors .4 and below, and 0.0 space. In the case of Mercoxit, Deep Core Mining Lasers must be used, and a Mercoxit Crystal for optimal performance.

For safe mining, the common ores, and some ice can be found in systems as high as .8, but like most things, the real money is in lower security mining. Each ore refines into different minerals and different amounts of each. The following table outline each ore and the minerals it refines into;


Chart Relocated to Here.

The values for these ores are as follows;

Veldspar 6.01 6.31 6.61
Scordite 15.00 15.75 16.50
Plagioclase 38.44 40.39 42.32
Pyroxeres 5.07 5.20 5.57
Arkonor 15,372.40 16,152.23 16,901.52
Bistot 10,523.22 11,069.36 11,574.50
Spodumain 4,597.60 4,827.48 5,057.36
Crokite 6,207.30 6,517.34 6,825.33
Dark Ochre 1,943.75 2,043.55 2,138.13
Kernite 187.29 196.59 206.13
Gneiss 1,015.21 1,068.30 1,116.10
Omber 81.79 85.78 90.04
Hedbergite 677.12 712.85 743.64
Hemophite 606.00 634.53 666.97
Jaspet 336.89 352.13 371.53
Mercoxit 69,468.16 73,007.10 76,414.98

These values and yields of the ores are based upon the information available from the EVE Item Database. Ore yields are based upon a 100% refinery efficiency of the ore, and high standing with the station so they take 0% of the materials refined, and per the amount needed to refine. The values are based upon the prices in the EVE Item Database for the minerals. They were calculated by dividing the total value of the minerals, by the amount of ore needed to refine it. Values are expressed as ISK/Unit of ore.


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12. Ice Mining



Ice is likely the most valuable thing you can mine in safe space, but the skills, equipment, and time required are the barrier that separate miners from ice miners. To mine Ice you need a mining barge, ice miners, and ice harvesting. The skills are fairly redundant, as you will only need to train ice harvesting once you have a barge. Refining is another story, you need ice refining to refine the ice, and get the valuable isotopes, liquid ozone, heavy water, and Strontium Clathorates. These are all needed to fuel a POS, and Strontium Clathorates are used to put a POS in reinforced mode, and Siege mode for a dreadnaught. To once you have the skills and equipment, you can mine ice. That is just like mining ore, but with a few subtle differences; each piece of ice is 1000m3, and takes 10 minutes to mine one piece. If you train Ice Harvesting you can reduce the mining time by 5% per level. With a Tech 2 ice miner the time is 400 seconds, but with ice harvesting 5 it only takes 5 minutes to mine 1000m3 of ice. There are 12 types of ice, each with different amounts of isotopes and other ice products.


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13. Mining Barges

Mining barges are the largest things that extract ore from asteroids, and they are powerful. But to control their immense power, you need to have a lot of skills. Level 5 Mining, Astrogeology, Industry, Level 4 Science, and Level 3 Mining Barge before they start to be worth the massive investment required.

The first barge in the Procurer, the smallest ships that only mines. It can hold 1 strip miner, which mines 540m3 of ore every 3 minutes. For the investment, you are best to hold off and wait for the retriever. The Retriever is the medium barge, and where the investments start to payoff. With 2 strip miners that is 360m3 per minute, with skills that is 613.125m3 per minute, which is better than a flying a fully trained Osprey with Modulated Deep Core Miner II’s and Tech 1 mining crystals.

The covetor is the largest mining barge with 3 high slots. This can mine 970.3125 m3 per minute, far in excess of the next best Battleship used for mining. Add in a drone bay full of harvester drones, and that is an additional 375m3 per minute for a total of 1345m3 per minute.

To equip these ships to their potential, you need Modulated Strip Miner II’s, these are not cheap by any means and tech 2 mining crystals which take a lot of training to use. In my 3 region search, I found the least expensive strip miner II’s were 15 million each. That means for a Covetor, you will require 30 million for the ship, 45 million for the strip miners, and then other modifications. This means you are a flying 75 million ISK target with neon signs that say “shoot here”. Once equipped you will be able to mine ore at a rate of 1132m3 per minute, if you are using the proper mining crystal.

In unsafe space, you are not at risk of dieing, you are dead, which further underlines the need to be able to regenerate you ship, and utilize lots of combat drones for defence. An Afterburner or Micro Warp Drive will be helpful getting out of tough situations, and making travel more bearable. The downside to using a Mining Barge is it cannot utilize Mercoxit Mining Crystals, as it is not capable of deep core mining, because the required components don’t fit. On the other hand, it is the only ship capable of mining ice, which is used for POS fuel, and is very valuable.

Now there are Tech 2 Barges called Exhumers. These are like their Tech 1 counterparts, but with more abilities, strength, resistances, cargo capacity, and fitting slots. The Exhumers skill requires barge 5 to train.

The T2 Procurer is called Skiff. It is designed to mine mercoxit, and gets a flat bonus of 70% increase to Mercoxit yield, and 20% less chance of a damaging gas cloud forming per exhumer level. It also gets a 3% bonus to strip miner yield per Barge level. It requires exhumers 1.

The T2 Retriever is the Mackinaw. It is primarily an ice miner, as it gets a 100% bonus to ice yield, but a 25% longer ice miner duration. It gets a 3% bonus to strip miner yield per barge level, and a 5% reduction to Ice Harvester cycle time per exhumer level. It requires Exhumers 2.

The T2 Covetor is the Hulk, the largest mining barge in the game. It is an all around ore mining barge, and gets a 3% bonus to strip miner yield and 3% reduction in ice miner duration per Exhumer skill level. It also get a 3% bonus to strip miner yield and 7.5% increase to shield resistance per barge level. It requires Exhumers 3.


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14. Other ships to use to mine



Though nothing compares to the refined skills of an Osprey for mining ore when looking at the cost/ benefit ratio, many others have proven they are worthy to be used for mining. Any ship with a turret slot can use a mining laser, but the investment may not be worth it.

The Moa is a very nice combat ship, but for the investment, you wouldn’t want to use it exclusively for mining. The Apocalypse on the other hand, is a massive battle ship, and just its presence will strike fear into those around you. With its 8 turret slots, it can mine 750m3 per minute. This is a respectable amount, but the investment is prohibitively high for a mining ship.

On the other hand, people will keep their distance if they see an Apocalypse or Megathron, so you won’t be disturbed. A good middle ground for firepower and mining ability is the Ferox Battle Cruiser. It’s the middle ground between Cruisers, and Battleships. They possess more armour, shield, and cargo space than a Cruiser, and are faster than a Battleship. The Ferox has 7 High-Energy Slots for 4 Turrets, and 4 Launchers. Equipped with 2 Mining Lasers, 2 Rail Guns, and 3 Missile Launcher, it can hold up against most NPC Pirates you will encounter outside of missions or complexes. In secure space, a Ferox can be daunting to look at, and with 5 Mining Lasers and 2 Heavy Missile Launchers, make short work of NPC frig spawns.

Using the Osprey is the best for your dollar, if the pirates are weak, or you have support to take care of them. Ferox is a very good choice for limited low-sec mining, or where the rats are too much for an Osprey to take. If you want to tank damage while mining, take the Megathron or Apocalypse, they are also more effective than an Osprey, with their 8 turret slots.


14a. Mining upgrades and increasing efficiency of mining



Once you have maxed out your mining and barge skills, you can still increase your productivity by getting mining upgrade modules, and gang skills to enhance your overall productivity. The mining upgrade modules will increase mining laser yield by 5% per module, and ice mining modules will decrease cycle time for ice miners by 5% per module. The down side to them it they also increase the CPU requirements for mining lasers, so you may need to add some coprocessors or train electronics to have more CPU. For gang skills, there is mining foreman ice, crystal, and drones. Mining foreman ice decreases ice cycle time by 2% per level, crystal increase laser yield by 2% per level, and drones increases mining drone yield by 2% per level. These only apply when in a gang, and the person with the highest skill gives the bonus, so some planning on who will train what can be beneficial. The next step is mining director, which allows use of the gang effect modules. These also affect either ice mining, crystals, or drones. Each level of mining director gives a 100% bonus to the use of gang effect modules, which increase yield by 2% as well, so at mining director level 5, you get another 10% bonus.


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15. Industrial Ships



Being Caldari your best Industrial Ship is the Badger II with 5250m3 of cargo space. With Caldari Industrial Ship 2, and 2 Basic Cargo Expanders, you can get a ship with 6000m3 of cargo out of a Badger I which has a capacity of 4125m3. Add 2 giant secure containers, and you gain an additional 1800m3, for a total of 7800m3.

That is a fair capacity for hauling your own stuff. This can clear a can in less than 4 trips, so it is a nice beginner. The badger II has 3 low power slots, so it can be fitted with 3 basic cargo expanders for 7985m3 with out skills, which makes it 9182m3 with the required Caldari Industrial 3. This configuration with giant cans makes for an additional 2700m3 for a total of 11882m3, a very formidable ore moving machine.

Now if you are really obsessed with efficiency, train Gallente Frigate 3, and Gallente Industrial 5. This will allow you to pilot the Iterion V, it has a capacity of 6000m3. With its 5 low power slots, and the best cargo expanders available it can transport 26534m3 (don’t quote me on that, I ran it 4 times, and that is what came out, confirmation of that would be helpful). Just for thoroughness, assuming my previous calculation was correct with giant secure cans that is 8 giant secure cans for an additional 7200m3. That gives it a total of 33734m3, which is larger than a jettisoned container. With basic cargo expanders it can hold 15085m3, with giant secure cans that is 19585m3. With this ship, just a small upgrade to Cargo Expander I which is 18% increase translates into an additional 2073m3.

Just remember that Cargo Expanders also slow down your ship, so investing in Afterburners or Micro Warp Drives are very useful. The remaining slots can be filled with anything you may deem appropriate, such as Shield Boosters, Capacitor Rechargers, etc.

Once you get Caldari Industrial 5, you can train for the Tech 2 Industrial ships, Transport ships. These are better armoured, shielded, and better able to handle the rigours of low sec space. There are 2 basics designs; small, fast blockade runners, and larger heavy haulers. The Blockade runners possess less armour and cargo space, but are faster, and have 2 warp core stabilizers built in for added safety running through gate camps. The heavy haulers are large, slow, but have lots of cargo space, and can be made in effective shield tanks.

Both have more slots and bonuses than their Tech 1 counterparts, but also cost significantly more.


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16. Trading



First I am a miner, trade is not my area of expertise, but I have picked up a lot of information on the topic in my time as a miner. Trading is fairly straight forward in principle; buy low, sell high, simple right? Wrong.

It is no good if you are carrying a load of frozen food, when the next place to sell for a profit is 10 jumps away through low security space, where the station is only buying 10 units. Conversely, it is annoying when you want to transport 7800m3 of frozen food, and find out that you can’t put them in the 2 Giant Secure Containers in you cargo hold.

When going on a trade run you must consider many factors; price you can buy and sell at, quantity available and demanded, distance to travel, security of systems you must travel though, ship you plan to use. Price is the biggest factor in determine if a trade is worth the risk or not. Higher prices from buyers and, lower prices from sellers make trades viable, and the larger the spread the more profitable. Quantity is another important factor in determine trade viability. The more the buyer wants the better, it may prove overall more profitable if you can sell an entire load in one trip.

Just remember to check the gross income from the sale before going to the destination, simply multiply units by price and what ever has the higher number is the better trade. Distance is more of a measure of time than anything. If you want to make a lot of low profit runs, a shorter trip is better. Conversely longer trips can be more profitable, but you will be able to make fewer trips. Security is mostly a comfort factor. If you are flying a fast shuttle, or armed for combat then you may not have to worry too much, but while flying an industrial ship, it might be better to stay where it is safe, have an escort, or fly when there are no people.

Having alternate routes also help to prevent ambush. Finally the ship you plan to use is the most important. If you are going to use a large industrial ship, a large volume trade is best, where as if you are going to use a speedy cruiser or frigate, a longer haul for a higher price might be your best bet.


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17. Refining



Any good self sufficient miner also can refine his own ore. When setting up shop, it is best to pick a station that gives you the highest refinery efficiency. Normally this is about 50% base efficiency, but can be increased with training. Training Refining is a good start and opens the door to refinery efficiency to further increase the yield from refining. Finally you get to the specialist areas of individual ores. It is best to specialize in the ore you deem most valuable (Kernite, Jaspet, Pyro are good choices), and slowly add more skills as you find use for them. Once you have level 3 in the ore specialization and Metallurgy 2, you can use that kind of mining crystal to increase yield of a particular ore.

Once you have moved in to a place you like and are going to stay a while at, it could be a good idea to run agent missions for the station owner to increase your standing, and reduce the tax taken when you refine. With no standing or neutral, you are taxed at 5% of what you get from what is refined. This can add up when mining rare minerals, or mass refining for corp. to get perfect refine you need a standing of 6.6 with the station you are refining at.


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18. Selling Ore



If you are not in to manufacturing, there is the trade of selling the minerals you refine. There are 4 ways to sell your ore; on the market, escrow, placing a sell order, or on the mineral and manufacturing channel of chat. Selling on the market is the easiest way to make money, and get rid of your ore. Having a large industrial ship for transportation and patience is paramount for making lots of money. In my experience I have never had to go more than about 5 jumps to get top dollar for my minerals. Escrow is just a large list of thing people have up for sale that you can buy for a set price, and pick up. This is good if you want to sell stuff at a bulk rate. This is good if you have a lot of something and want to sell it all at once. This is good if the buyer is looking for a massive amount of ore, but can take a while to sell. Placing a sell order is placing your ore on the market at a price you want to sell it for on a per unit basis. The down side to this is you are competing with other people who also want to sell their ore, usually and .01 ISK less per unit that you. Selling on chat, or directly to another person is another way to sell your ore, but can require a bit of work and negotiation. From what I have seen on the trade channels, it is like an auction, and transportation arrangements. Usually you post what you are selling, the price and quantity, and transportation arrangements and wait for others to reply. You can get better rates, especially if you are charging extra for shipping the ore to the person.


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19. Other Ways to Make Money



If you look on the EVE Online forums under the market thread, there are posts for people requiring the services of miners to get the minerals they require. Being a highly skilled miner with your own barge, fleet of mining ships, and Industrial Ships for transport, you could rent out your services to other corps that need minerals by joining their mining parties.

The advantage of this is you get protection, money, and a cut of the minerals you mine. Plus that warm fuzzy feeling you get from helping others less fortunate than you. Providing transport services is also a viable option, as your Industrial Ship skills will be very refined, and that is one less thing that the hiring group will have to worry about. If you watch the forums, you can occasionally find people who place large orders for minerals, or even better, long term mining contracts. These can be a good way to earn money on a steady basis.


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20. Manufacturing



There comes a time in every miner’s life where mining simply is not enough to keep with all the costs of doing business, and buying better equipment. Some switch from mining to fighting, and hunt NPC pirates; others use their in-depth knowledge of mining to hunt other miners while others take the next logical step, manufacturing.

To be a manufacturer, you need to have Industry, Science, and Refining skills. That is just the basics; to be competitive you must train Mass Production, Manufacturing Efficiency, and other skills to make manufacturing faster, and more efficient. To start manufacturing you need a blueprint. They can be purchased on the market, through escrow, or on the blueprint channel on chat. A good blueprint to obtain is one that you see a need for or can compete with. Ships can make a lot of money, but due to the massive requirements, costs can vary a lot depending on the skills you have.

A good starting item to manufacture would be ammo because it is common to all races, and always in use. If you want to try the competitive market of ships, buy a low cost BPC off of Escrow, and build it. Then either sell on the market, or on Escrow.

It is better to buy a multiple run BPC and build the ships to minimize the cost of the factory per unit. I build my own Ferox, spending 600k on the BPC, 100k on the factory slot and another 20 mil for the zydrine and megacyte plus the market value of the minerals I had lying around. Overall the cost was close to about 30 million ISK. At the time the market was 28 mil for a Ferox, so it may be cheaper to buy than build. I currently have a 5 run BPC for a Caracal Cruiser. To build those the cost is only 10 mil for the zydrine and megabyte, 600k for the BPC, plus 100k factory slot, and other minerals. They sell for 6 mil each, so that is 30 mil less 10.7 mil is 19.3 mil gross profit, before taking in to account the value of other minerals. When taking into account of the minerals, use the value of what you deem valuable, and worth selling. I have several million units of Tritanium, but moving it to sell is a lot of work. However, the isogen, and nocxium are valuable, and worth transporting. Overall, if you mine it, don’t worry about the cost, because ships sell much better.

When selling ships, you must investigate the market you wish to sell in, and the current stock of ships. When researching a region to sell in, always check the following things; security standing of the point you want to sell in, if you are selling battle cruisers in a high sec area, sales will likely be slow because there is not much use for combat ships, frigates and cruisers are better things to sell. General populace and corp. presence, if you are selling in a new player area, you will likely sell frigates and low level cruisers. The empire sovereignty of the region, this is very important because in Caldari Space there will be lots of NPC corps selling Caldari ships, but very few of other races, so you would be best to sell another race’s ships. Ship prices and supply, it is easy to sell ships if there is little competition, or the existing competition is charging very high prices. If you are the only one in the system, set your price to what you like, but keep it reasonable. Supply can be very important in deciding to enter the market, frigates are usually over supplied, and easy to build, so many people will flood the market with large number of them. Overall Cruisers are the best thing to sell, because they are as versatile as a frigate, bigger, and can be lost without significant costs, so they are popular for PVP. The best ones to supply are the sold out ones, or combat oriented Cruisers.

If you see a market where there is room to undercut the competition, do it. There are three likely scenarios that could result;

1. The next lowest person doesn’t care and you start making money by stealing away their sales, or

2. The next lowest enjoyed his monopoly of being the lowest, and the profit margins he made and buys your entire stock and resells it as his own, or the least desirable

3. The next lowest undercuts you thus starting a bidding war. I’m not a manufacturer yet and this is all informed speculation, so use it as such until I am a competent manufacturer and adjust is accordingly.

Still in my experience, doing some research on the market you use pays. I built 15 Omen Cruisers in Gallente Space to sell. The most important thing to do before you put minerals to that blueprint is look at the market demand, and the history of sales for that item. Non-racial (ie. Amarr ships in Gallente Space) Cruisers are not the best things to sell, but under the right circumstances are decently profitable. Battleships are always in demand as people want bigger ships, and constantly lose them due to being unprepared and unskilled with them. A good ship to sell is one that has a decent turnover and room for more competition. The Omen Cruisers in Gallente Space sold about 2 a day on average for the past several weeks. That is a good rate of return, if you are patient. Price is another factor to consider, after you find an acceptable market turnover. You have to look at the cost for you to build that ship, and the price others have put on the market. If you can build a ship for 3.5 million in minerals (at market cost), and sell for 4.5 million, you are making a decent profit. This may not work if someone got in before you and placed their ships at 4.4 million. Volume is important because if its only 1 ship, that will sell fairly quick, leaving you to make your money at 4.5 million.

Checking other regions also helps a lot, as hauling ore is much easier than hauling ships. When I built 15 Omen Cruisers, I didn’t look at other regions I could sell in. after I built them, I found 2 jumps out Omen Cruisers were on the market for 5.5 Million each, giving me more room to sell at higher profit, but moving 15 ships 1 at a time is a lot of work, so I burned on the potential extra income.

Selling battleships on the other hand isn’t too difficult, once you have it built. Battleships are very large and in demand because people believe that a bigger ship is better. While this train of thought has its merits, that does not always hold true, hence the constant demand for battleships. Selling Tier 2 Battleships; Raven, Megathron, Apocalypse, or Tempest are the best for making money, and competitive. These sell for about 100 million, but prices are slowly creeping down as more people are selling them. Last I saw the price of an Apoc in Amarr Space was about 95 million, with most people putting them up 1 at a time. This is recommended to prevent flooding and tieing up a lot of money in inventory. The Megacyte and Zydrine needed to build one is about 40 million ISK, so if you are a small manufacturer, that’s a lot of money to have tied up in ships.


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21. Research



Being a skilled manufacturer will only get you so far in keeping costs down, and being able to deliver your product most efficiently, and in a timely basis. This is where research comes in to play. Research skills allow you to improve your BPOs to use less material and take less time, make copies faster, and later reverse engineer items.


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22. Drones



*NOTE: There is a big change coming to drones in RMR, and I am still working on it*


When mining with an Osprey or barge, Drones are your only line of defence. If you are mining where NPC pirates spawn, have some good Drones can keep you mining uninterrupted.

In secure space, Mining Drones can help you fill that quota that much faster. Training basic Drone Skills are important to both mining and defence. Have control of about 5 drones is good because it confuses the enemy, and deals more damage. Anything you can get a hold of should work, as long as you have the skills to use them.

Mining Drones are not the fastest mining tools available, but they help. They range from Basic Mining Drones gathering 3m3 every minute to Harvester Drones gathering 25m3 per minutes. Alone it’s not much, but when you have 5 that is between 15m3 and 125m3 per minute, before taking into account skills.

To add a bit of correction to Amarrian Android’s guide, here are the skills you need to be an effective drone user for mining purposes.

Drones level 5 so you can command 5 drones at once, the maximum available. Scout Drone Operation level 1 to use light and medium combat drones for defence, gives 2% damage increase per level. Mining Drone Operation level 1 to use mining drones, gives 5% increase in yield per level. Drone Interfacing level 1 to increase combat drone damage, and mining drone yield by 20% per level. Drone Navigation level 1 to increase drone speed by 10% per level. Drone Durability level 1 to increase drone HP so they can take more damage. In short drones are twice as powerful as before, but you get half the number, so having drones 5 and drone5 interfacing is like having 10 drones.

If combat drones are what you need, this table and guide by Amarrian Android should be useful, but is based upon Cold War drones, so the numbers are not fully accurate in RMR.




These principles apply to all drones, and can help you become a better Drone Commander. Ahhh, the joys of commanding your own personal fleet of A.I. fighters!

First off, you must get your drone skills up to be an effective Drone Commander. Train: (At least!!!!!) -Drones: level 5 -Drone Interfacing: level 4 -Scout Drone Operation: level 4 -Heavy Drone Operation: level 4 (Now you can do some damage!)

Secondly, you must remember that your drones are Artificial Intelligences that require your guidance to be most deadly to your enemies. Drones are stupid by themselves. Remember that. Keep track of your targets and pick them off one at a time by commanding your drone minions to attack. ATTACK!!!!! Its vitally essential to boss your drones around!!! Do not be nice to them in this respect, otherwise, they will misbehave and go off attacking things at random. Go after each target individually, and command those drones to attack them!!! When you enter into a combat situation, your goal should be to do as much damage as quickly as possible, while avoiding damage to yourself and your drone legion. From here we must digress into PVE and PVP strategies, because they are different.


PVE – Player Versus Environment (some say Player Versus Enemy)

It does not matter what you call it, its still you versus some NPCs (Non-PlayerCharacters for all the MMO n00bs :P). And remember those NPCs deserve to die!!! Its your job to kill them! So, why not use your drone armada to annihilate them? Good. This is what we trained for, to command our drone hordes to do our bidding :P Ok, lets get down to tactics. When you first warp in to your NPC enemies, do not immediately release your drone army. Target your enemies first, and let them target you. When your enemies have you “Agro'd” and are shooting you with no remorse, then now is the time to release the drone gladiators!!! Your enemies with continue to attack you, and leave your drones alone. Start picking off your enemies one by one. Keep commanding your drone legion to do your bidding after each and every kill, you must guide your army! Also remember that drones are vulnerable to NPC rockets, standard missiles, heavy missiles, and small turrets. Keep that in mind if you decide to launch your drones at long range, or before your enemies have you “Agro'd.” You need to find a suitable armor tank configuration to be an effective Drone Commander. You can sacrifice some other things, like trying to fit on the biggest guns, for a GREAT tank setup. Remember, your drones are very effective once your drone skills are high.


PVP – Player Versus Player

This changes things a bit. AT ALL COSTS STAY AWAY FROM SMARTBOMB USERS. I cannot emphasize this point enough. The good thing, is that smartbombs are relatively rare in most PVP situations, although they can appear in fleet battles with more regularity. This section will help you primarily in smaller engagements and 1 versus 1 battles. The drone user has a major advantage over non-drone users at this point. With 13-15 drones at your command, you have the advantage of multiple targets. Your enemy has to decide either to go after your drones, or just outright ignore the drones and try to kill you. Either option for your opponent is not very good. If he starts killing your drones he is probably better off, especially if he can kill them quickly. But remember it takes time to kill 13-15 different targets, time that you must use to your advantage. Nosferatu your opponent, get in close, web him, disrupt his tracking, and do whatever you can to make his job harder. If you notice he is having success at killing off your drones and your right up on him, call your drones back into your dronebay briefly. Keep scrambling him and killing him. Launch your drones again, and attack!!!! This will completely annoy your opponent to no end, because now he must reacquire his drone targets. A warp scrambler on your opponent is a must, if you wish to be victorious. If, on the other hand, your enemy decides to ignore your drones, and go after you, you must quickly analyze his strengths and weaknesses, and exploit them!!!! And keep track of your armor tank. Nosferatu him constantly, and disrupt his targeting or tracking if possible. Your drones, going unchallenged will make quick work of your opponent if your 'nos' is draining him and making shield boosting/ armor repairing difficult. Exploit, Exploit Exploit!!!! KILL HIM FAST!!! This is the aggressive mentality you must acquire should you want to be successful at PVP.

Lastly, get to know your drones' statistics well, and experiment often with new drone damage types. Once you feel you have a good mix of drones, ORGANIZE THEM WITHIN YOUR DRONEBAY. Yes, you can create folders inside your dronebay to organize your different types. For example, if you use 'hammerheads' and 'valkyries,' separate them into folders titled 'hammerheads' and 'valkyries' to keep them neat and orderly. To make dronebay folders, you must first put your drones in your dronebay and launch into space, you cannot do this inside a station. In your overview section to the righthand side of your screen, find “drones in bay” and “drones in space” at the bottom. Expand the “drones in bay” tab. You will know see your drones. Right click on a drone or drone group, and choose “move drone.” Create a new group and name it (Valkyrie for example). Repeat for as many folders as you want. Now your drones will stay orderly, and you can launch each folder individually, or just launch all drones by right clicking on the “drones in bay” tab and selecting “launch drones.” Believe me this is very useful.


Being I have been unable to get in touch with Amarrian Android, or find an updated guide by him, I have done my best to update the chart of drones to be more accurate for RMR.


Light Drones Name Base DMG DMG shield/ orbit speed damage DMG X Type armour vel Hobgoblin 1 4 1.6 thermal 35/75 550m/s 2800m/s 6.40 Hornet 1 4 1.45 kinetic 65/55 600m/s 3200m/s 5.80 Warrior 1 4 1.3 explosive 40/60 750m/s 4200m/s 5.20 Acolyte 1 4 1.15 EM 25/75 650m/s 3800m/s 4.60 Hobgoblin 2 4 1.92 thermal 42/90 660m/s 3360m/s 7.68 Hornet 2 4 1.74 kinetic 78/66 720m/s 3820m/s 6.96 Warrior 2 4 1.56 explosive 48/72 900m/s 5040m/s 6.24 Acolyte 2 4 1.38 EM 30/90 780m/s 4560m/s 5.52 Medium Drones Hammerhead 1 9 1.6 thermal 70/150 400m/s 1400m/s 14.40 Vespa 1 9 1.45 kinetic 130/110 425m/s 1600m/s 13.05 Valkyrie 1 9 1.3 explosive 80/120 500m/s 2100m/s 11.70 Infiltrator 1 9 1.15 EM 50/150 450m/s 1900m/s 10.35 Hammerhead 2 9 1.92 thermal 84/180 480m/s 1680m/s 17.28 Vespa 2 9 1.74 kinetic 156/132 510m/s 1920m/s 15.66 Valkyrie 2 9 1.56 explosive 96/144 600m/s 2520m/s 14.04 Infiltrator 2 9 1.38 EM 60/180 450m/s 2280m/s 12.42 Heavy Drones Ogre 1 22 1.6 thermal 140/300 250m/s 700m/s 35.20 Wasp 1 22 1.45 kinetic 260/220 275m/s 800m/s 31.90 Berserker 1 22 1.3 explosive1 60/240 350m/s 1050m/s 28.60 Praetor 1 22 1.15 EM 100/300 300m/s 950m/s 25.30 Ogre 2 22 1.92 thermal 168/360 300m/s 840m/s 42.24 Wasp 2 22 1.74 kinetic 312/264 330m/s 960m/s 38.28 Berserker 2 22 1.56 explosive 192/288 420m/s 1260m/s 34.32 Praetor 2 22 1.38 EM 120/360 360m/s 1140m/s 30.36


Once again thank you Amarrian Android for allowing me use of this guide. If you like it, send him a message saying so, or see the full guide at Battleclinic.com


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23. Corporate Management



If you get lonely mining by yourself, and haven’t joined a corp., join one. Corporations always want dedicated and proficient miners because minerals make the galactic economy function. If you want to form your own corporation, train corporate management to at least level 3, then form your own corp.

Here is where your connections come into play, if you are in a corp. and liked it, be kind and give them some notice that you are leaving, and you may get an opportunity to become a “spin-off” corp. where you get some equipment and money to start up and get your self organized and work closely, but independent from your original corporation. This is a very desirable situation to be in because you are still friends, and get to do your own thing.

If you want some power, ask your CEO and you may be given a director post, hopefully in charge of Mining, or other privileges above being a regular member. If you don’t like your corp, just leave them a message and leave.

If you really don’t like your corp, or are a non-ethical person, stick with it until you have access to the good corp stuff, then hire a freighter to move all the stuff to another base while no one else in the corp is on line. Just remember, if you do decide to take all the corp assets, be sure you can do the job of the corp you are leaving better, it’s easier on the conscience.

Now on to the details of running a corp. You need to find a station to setup your office in; this will be your base of operations, where all your corp assets will be stored, and corp business taking place. You can open up other offices to make it easier for others to apply to join you corporation.

The main considerations for choosing a location is station services, traffic, access to resources, other corporations, security, and distance to low security space just to name a few.

Station services are among the most important thing to consider, being you will be spending most of your time there. A good refinery is a must, factories are helpful, research labs are nice, but not necessary, and medical facilities are an asset to have.

High traffic areas may be good for trade because there are lots of people coming and going, but that could also be a bad thing as people could be mining your asteroid belts of the valuable minerals. Too little traffic and you will not have a large influx of new members.

Access to resources is simple, more asteroid belts are better, and some ice belts make it better still. You don’t want to share a system with a big pirate corp, there will be too much fighting, and it won’t be safe. Conversely a very large mining corp that can completely clear an asteroid field in a few hours is not a good neighbour either. Smaller corps make good neighbours as they are normally easy to get along with and don’t feel threatened with you mining the same belt as them.

Security is a big one if you are small, staying where the security status of the system is high, you are safer from players from hunting you, and pirates from spawning in asteroid belts. Distance to low security systems is good for grabbing rare and valuable minerals, but also may lead to increases in traffic.

Once you have the basics in place, you go to the corp button on the left side of the screen, and create your corp, it should cost around 1 million ISK to incorporate. Once you have a corporation, you are automatically appointed as the CEO with full access to all corporate assets and functions. You should have some friends to join your corp and make it look semi-reputable, and spread out the responsibilities like security and recruitment.

Next comes recruiting more members into your corporation. The best place to recruit is in systems surrounding high security systems and training stations, like where you first started out. This is a large pool of pure, blank slates you can imprint your ideals on to create you ideal army of miners and fighters.

With Corporate Management level 3, you can have a 30 member corporation, which is a good size for a while. Recruiting people is easy; keeping them is the hard part. Most corporations offer free Frigate replacements, a Cruiser when you can use it, and the rare minerals for Battle Cruisers and Battleships. To grow big, you need to be well organized in your operations, such as mining, fighting, manufacturing, researching, commerce, and many other areas.

If read this, leading a mining wing should not be a problem for you. The fighting wing should be lead by a friend of someone you trust who has focused on combat skills, and is good at leading combat operations. Manufacturing should be done by a few skilled people in close conjunction with research, and commerce.

Manufacturing is the major lifeblood of the corporation, as they make the minerals you mine in to more valuable items, and useful ships to use. Research makes the blueprints more efficient and faster building so manufacturing can work better.

Commerce is responsible for moving product out, and bringing in materials to build more advanced items. Though the jobs of commerce, manufacturing, and research can be done by the same people, ensure the people know that their main job is only one of the areas, and as much as you appreciate their effort in the other two, you won’t think less of them if they can’t do the other two with out compromising the first jobs quality.

Commerce is further broken down in to 3 areas for more efficient operation. The areas are; trade, purchasing, and hauling. Trade is responsible for selling materials and finished product and filling sell orders. Purchasing is responsible for acquiring the materials that manufacturing need to operate. Hauling is responsible for transporting bulk material from one place to another, mostly working with the mining wing to keep the minerals flowing.

The mining wing is the most basic area of operations, and is fairly easy to manage. Just get a bunch of people, warp into an asteroid field and start mining everything while someone from commerce hauls out the ore. The fighting wing is the second most important wing, as it keeps your members safe, and can allow you to operate in low security areas to get more valuable ores.


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24. Managing Multiple Corporations



If you are running a large corporation, and are having trouble keeping everything running efficiently, spread out the members by forming another corp. this is a good way to keep those aspiring CEOs in your corp, and rewarding others with director posts. All you need is a group of like minded people, someone you trust who has the required skills, and a plan.

One good use for a spin-off corp is to satisfy mineral or industrial requirements. Being composed of mostly miners, haulers, and maybe a guard or two, they will be much more mobile and able to adapt to changing conditions. This will free up others to do agent missions, fight a war, setup a POS, or other activities. If you are a very large corp, making a recruitment division is always helpful to find, train, and screen potential members before they join the main corp.

If you are going to have multiple corporations, make sure the CEOs are people you can trust, and that will listen to you. Corp Mail will also be important as you must use it to communicate plans, and other ideas.


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25. Corporate Mining and Incentive Systems



Getting ore for the corporation and running all the operative divisions sounds all well and good, but people want to get something out of it, and freedom to do other things. To encourage people to do their designated jobs, they want to be paid. For mining it is easiest to institute a payment system per container of ore, or a mandatory quota of 1 can and payment for anything over and above the quota.

If they do not meet the quota with out a good reason, you assess them a penalty, but that makes you look and sound like a dictator. Manufacturing, research, and commerce can be paid in ISK as a percentage of sales and production, or a flat rate.

For running a corp mining in secure space you need only miners, and haulers. As you get to less secure areas, it is an asset to have at least one guard, depending on the threat of NPC pirates in the area. This is a good exercise for some of the less experienced members of the fighter wing, while they are supervised by a more experienced member. When going into low security areas, you need more fighters, and someone who has gang warfare skills, and modules to improve everyone’s ship stats. Tactics are very important, and should be practiced to maximize safety of all ships.

Finally there is the ship and equipment incentive you may have promised your members when they joined you corporation. Going back to the fact this is written in the perspective of a Caldari, and you don’t have racial relations, you are composed of other Caldari and use Caldari ships. Ideally you should provide all people with a free Osprey when they can use it, and have the capacity to produce other ships as they may be requested. Having a few Moa or Caracal Blueprint Copies or an original would be handy, and also a Ferox Battle cruiser BPC. Anything beyond that is getting into large scale combat equipment, and should be saved for later.

On the rare occasion you get a bunch of people who have a Socialist mentality (these are good people, provided you can mesh with them) you will have to use an alternate incentive system because blindly taking money is not their goal. These types of people are motivated by the end product they are working to build. This can make a big difference in member retention, several players in my former corp left because they didn’t like mining all this ore, and not having anything to look at, or a tangible product, or a goal. One player defied what I though possible when I told him that we needed to build a battleship every 2 weeks. In 3 days we had mined more than the entire corp in the past 2 weeks of the ore needed to build the battleship. He also turned down the 8 million ISK reward for other equipment for his ship. To deal with a Socialist-type player, assign specific goals for them to do for a specific project. Building a battleship is always a good one, because seeing a battleship you helped to build fly, is a warm feeling. Take that and see the fleet of battleships fly; it’s a much bigger feeling. At some point these players will want some form of compensation, in the form of a ship of equipment. Depending how much they have done for the corp, you should give them it, or work out a deal with them. Eg. If you have a person who mined enough common ore to build you 10 large battleships, and they want a Covetor Mining barge, 3 Modulated Strip Miner IIs, 2 Cargo Expander II’s, hold of Harvester Mining Drones, and 6 of each Tech II mining crystal, you would be wise to give them it, because that setup will make battleship like crazy. If the person wants a battleship to do fighting, and they have helped with 3, you could have them mine more ore to build there own battleship, which usually results in people being very careful with the ships they build.

Then there is the freeloading person. They do their own thing, and expect compensation when they suffer any loss or damage to their ships. One person in my corp came to help me fight off some rats that arrived while I was mining. This was fine and dandy, but then he expected me to pay his repair bill, and give him 2 new drones to replace the ones he lost. You should cover them to an extent, because they do fight and receive bounties from hunting rats they can use to pay for other things. Another player wanted a Ferox Battle Cruiser, this is not a problem, I can mine a Ferox in a couple days. He also wanted corp to supply the skill book for him, and build it for no cost to him. This is a big issue with me. I worked to build my Ferox, bought my own skill books, and cut deals with others to get it equipped. Then I lost is to my own bad judgement in a 4/10 complex with another friend. 40 million ISK gone in 30 seconds of heavy fire that my ship couldn’t handle. This is an important life lesson for people to learn, and so I stand on my requirement that everyone needs to contribute a large amount of work to their Battle Cruisers and Battleships so they don’t take stupid risks with out thinking about the hard work that went into their ships. Mining is my preferred method of building stuff for people, I simply take the minerals, push a few buttons and a ships comes out, simple, and easy for me. Not everyone will mine the minerals for their ships, so you have to have an alternate method for others to get their ships. I find internal pricing on ships for corp members works well, or protection agreements. Not all fighters want to sit in an asteroid belt mining their minerals; they would rather fight to get money and loot. Having some pre built ships is a good plan to increase the corp wallet, by selling a Ferox to members for 20 million ISK, rather than the 28-30 million on the market. Protection is another good one, as both the miner and guard benefit, as the guard gets some of the rare minerals needed for their ships. If the guard is a person that always wants compensation for the damage they suffer, just take it out of their cut of the minerals.


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26. War



Unless you have expert diplomacy skills (you personally, not the trained skill) you will eventually come across another corp that wants to see you completely destroyed for some trivial reason like; you stole there system, blew up their POS, ran over their dogs, etc. The list is long and endless. When war is declared, you have 24 hours before you can start fighting freely with out CONCORD interference.

In this time you must gather information, rally the troops, make plans, get in to position and get the miners to safety. Gathering information is an ongoing process of seeing where they are, where their base is, ships, skills, etc. The more you know the better off you are.

Getting in to position is moving to a base closer to the area where combat will take place, and prevent you enemy from directly attacking your base of operations. Making plans is left to the expert combat planners and fighter wing.

Finally the most important group of people to evacuate, the miners. To minimize the risk of being found, and killed, send them to random systems without corp offices and keep a low profile while mining to build more ships to replace lost ships or mine to sell minerals to buy more ships. In my opinion running a long distance across the galaxy to mine in relative safety and sending the money to corp to use to purchase ships, is a safer and better idea.

If a miner is found, it is best for them to wait and run farther away until it is inhibitive to follow any farther. If you don’t want to fight, pack up the entire corp, and move away.


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27. Death



So you got your ship blown up, your pod breached, and you are now floating dead in space. Lucky for you, technology has found a way to keep your from dieing, cloning. I am not going into the technicalities of the system (it is rather interesting though), so we will start with the basics of the clone.

When you first start the game, you have a basic clone worth a few skill points. If you are training skills, you should be upgrading your clone to keep it current. Always upgrade your clone when you are getting near the skill point limit.

When you are killed your clone awakens with your mind in it. You loose all your implants, ship, equipment that was on the ship, cargo you were carrying.

Once you are revived, you should immediately buy a new clone in case you get killed again. If you don’t have enough for a new clone; sell something, borrow, steal, beg, and/or use an alt to get the money needed. There is no faster way to loose motivation than to have all your hard work go up in smoke. If your clone is not up to date, you lose 5% of the difference between your clones SP limit and your SP at death. This could be spread across your skills, or be just 1 skill that drops a level. Contrary to what you may think, buying the best clone up front is not the best thing to do, unless you plan on living a very sheltered life, far form any risk.

Buying 2 or 3 levels better clone than you need is a good plan. Once you reach about 1 million skill points, just buy the next level, as needing to upgrade will be far less often, and there are better ways to use your ISK.


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28. Neural Implants



These are handy little things to have. They provide instants boosts to a stat, or improve your abilities instantly. The only problem is they can be expensive, hard to get, and you loose them when you are killed. You can get implants in a number of ways, but the most common are doing lots of agent missions, or killing high level pirates.

Once you have an implant, it is a good idea to plug it in and get the benefits of it. There are 10 different types, divided in to 2 categories; attribute enhancers, and skill enhancers.

Attribute enhancers are the most common I have found on the market, and from killing pirates. They boost one of your stats like; intelligence, charisma, memory, willpower, or perception. They range from 1 to 4 points. Other pirate implants offer much more benefit, but are more difficult to obtain. They offer a bonus to ship stats, like signature radius, turret tracking, speed, damage, armour, shields, and many more. The bigger bonus with pirate implants is they get a bonus 10% to the stats modified by the implants if you have all of the same type.

The skill modifying implants are like pirate implants, but they only modify certain skills, but there are pirate versions available that are more effective. You only have 10 spaces in your head for implants, one for each type. To use an implant, stop training your skill, and select plug in on the implant. Then continue training, and you may notice the time has decreased a bit. I was training Mining 4, and stopped to train my intelligence to another level to speed training along.

It was going to take me about 5 days, 14 hours to train. In the 20 minutes to train my intelligence, I dropped the training time by about 2 hours. Just imagine the time savings with a +4 Intelligence Implant, where it only takes 30 seconds to plug in.

On the down side, to upgrade to a better implant you must unplug the current one, causing you to lose it. My advice for pirate implants you want to use is wait, and just collect them until you have asset you like. Its no good plugging in some Gurista Implants just you find you have attained a complete set of Sansha a few weeks later. Pirate implants can easily fetch several million ISK on the market.

I have seen on the Forums, an implant that increases Mining Output by 5%. This is a rare level 4 agent reward, and is quite expensive on the market. Any information about this would be appreciated.


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29. Deep Space Complexes


At various points in the universe there are little beacons that will take you to a complex or other area that is off the beaten path. These are deep space complexes that house other unique challenges for those daring enough to attempt them. They range from simple 1/10 which are easily done with a basic Frigate, to 5/10 which I assume would be a corp effort with battleships, to 10/10, which I have never seen, but I would assume would be lots of dreadnaughts, and would be an alliance wide effort.

These are good fun for fighters, or those looking for some good items. Once you warp to the beacon, you must activate the acceleration gate to get to the complex. Once there you have the area to fight with what is inside. The 2 major types I have encountered are rogue drone infestations, or pirate outposts. Rogue drones are annoying, and next to impossible to hit. You will need lots of ammo, and shield boosters to survive them. Pirate outposts are death traps, once you warp in, start shooting, and make sure you have lots of ammo, firepower, and shields. There are several pirates in there, and they managed to shred my Osprey in 30 seconds, so be prepared with a combat effective Ferox, or at least a combat effective Moa.

There are also restrictions on the sizes of ships allowed in the deep space complexes: for 1/10 only shuttles, frigates, and elite frigates (assault ships); 2/10 destroyers are also allowed; 3/10 cruisers and elite cruisers (heavy assault ships); 4/10 battle cruisers are allowed, and 5/10 I assume allows battleships, beyond that I don’t know. Once again, input is welcome.


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30. Weapons



There are 4 basic types of weapons; Laser, Hybrid, Projectile, and Missile. Laser is the basic focused energy type weapons, they come in 2 subtypes, Beam, and Pulse. Beam Lasers fire a constant beam of energy at the target causing damage to it, and are effective at short to medium range. Pulse lasers fire a single blast of energy at the target, causing damage, they are effective at short to medium range. They are affected by the type of frequency crystal equipped to modify range and damage. Hybrid is in the form of either a Railgun or Blaster. Railguns fire chunks of matter at hypersonic speeds, hitting their target to cause damage. They are good weapons for most situations, but have very rapid accuracy falloff at extreme ranges. They are useful for medium range, and use hybrid ammo to modify damage, and range. Blasters fire magnetically charged balls of matter at their target. This causes lots of damage, but has the lowest range of all weapons, being effective at close range. On the upside they have one of the fastest turret tracking speed, so if you are close, you are likely to get a hit. Projectiles are available in autocannon and artillery. Autocannons are fast tracking close combat weapons. They have a very short range, but track their targets very rapidly, making them very accurate. Artillery is the longest range weapon available. It is a very slow firing, high damage, long range weapon. They are useful if you want to attack outside your enemy’s range. Projectile weapons use projectile ammo to effect range and damage.

Missiles are the most diverse weapons in the game. There are 8 types of missiles; Rockets, Light Missiles, Heavy Missiles, Defender Missiles, FoF Missiles, Torpedoes, Citadel Torpedoes, and Cruise Missiles. Rockets are the basic short range missile, small damage, but fast and accurate. Light Missiles are the Frigate sized missile, fast and effective against small targets. Heavy Missiles are for Cruisers, also fast but not very manoeuvrable. Cruise Missiles, the battleship missile. They are large, slow, and high damage for use against other battleships. Defenders are light missiles for use against other incoming missiles to prevent them from hitting you. FoF are seeking missiles, they don’t require a target lock, but they are erratic, and not very powerful compared to their counterparts. Torpedoes are high damage non-seeking missiles, they pack a lot of damage. Citadel torpedoes, are only fired from dreadnaughts and stations. They are massive, weapons used to attack stations and other large slow moving or stationary objects.

Now that you know how to use the weapons, you need to know how to engage an opponent utilizing these weapons safely and effectively. First with lasers, you are best to out range them if possible. They are only effective to about 10km, and tracking isn’t the greatest, so sit out side of their range and chip away at their ship. Artillery is slow firing, slow tracking, and long range. Unless you are in a Scorpion firing cruise missiles, you are unlikely to out range it. It is slow and hard hitting, but the ammo capacity is small, and the rate of fire is slow. Having never used artillery, I don’t know the effective range, but I’ll say any closer that 15km and they can’t track you. Autocannons are the opposite of Artillery, they are fast firing, fast tracking, short range, and not overly powerful. Still they pack a punch and can hurt. The effective range is between 3- 10km. inside that they will have some trouble tracking you, outside you are not in optimal range. Hybrid turrets are where my experience lies, it use them on everything, except my Caracal because that’s my missile boat. Railguns are long range, decent fire rate, decent damage, good capacity. they are effective to about 35km, and lose tracking ability at 12km. the closer you are the less likely the enemy will hit you. Blasters are short range, high damage weapons. They are also fast tracking, and can quickly shred a ship to bits. On the upside, they are very short range, 3-5km range, these really hurt if they hit you, so stay out of their range and you’ll do fine. Missiles are the worst thing to be targeted by, because they are seeking. If you are engaging a Kestrel, Griffin, Caracal, or Raven, run as fast as you can. These are the Caldari Missile boats, and take this job to heart. Missile launchers do not take any capacitor energy to use, so they are a perfect tank. They will take a punishment while dishing it out. Missiles do not require tracking, and seek out your ship no matter what the range. To avoid them, stay out of range or have a setup that can take the punishment. The weak point of missiles is the rate of fire.

Each races ships have bonuses to certain weapons, and are known for a speciality in others. The Caldari are known for their Missile Technology, and have ships designed specifically to be missile boats. The Gallente excel at Hybrid weapons, and have ships that reflect that. Minmatar utilize projectile weapons, and they have a battle ship to back that up. The Amarr use laser weapons for their advantage. Some ships also have other bonuses, like many Caldari Ships have a Hybrid Turret bonus, or Electronic Warfare bonuses.


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31. Building your first combat ship



There will come a time where you will not be able to deal with pirates while mining, and will need to fight on you own to keep your valuable minerals flowing. This will require either a second ship, or combat layout for your current ship. Assuming you are flying an Osprey, you have already read how to make a decent combat ship out of it. This will focus on the Battle Cruiser Ferox.

To make a ship combat effective, it should have the appropriate sized weapons and modules, and the skills to make it capable of decent performance. You wouldn’t want to pay upwards of 35 million ISK for a ship, and top of the line equipment to be blown up because you didn’t have the skills to utilize them. Conversely, flying a Frigate with perfect weapon skills might not be the best either. You must find the happy medium between the two. There are 5 basic ship types that can be made to fight with varying degrees of success; Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battle Cruisers, and Battleships. They range from the smallest to the largest in size. Frigates are small fast ships with light armour, and small weapons, they are useful for fast attacks. Destroyers are anti-frigate gunboats, they are not as fast, but have a bit more armour, and lots of guns. Cruisers are the middle ground and the most versatile type of ship; they are powerful, decent speed, well rounded ships. Battle Cruisers are the Anti-Cruiser ships; they are more heavily armed, and shielded. Battleships are the biggest feasible combat ship. They utilize the largest weapons, have the most armour, shields, but are slow.

If you are planning on pursuing a larger stake in hunting NPC pirates, it is important to train the gun skills you will utilize the most, and the support skills that will be useful in protecting your investment. Training gunnery skills will increase the turret tracking rate, and hybrid turret will increase damage. Missile launcher skills decrease firing time, and individual missile skills will let you use that type of missile, and increase the damage. Having Repair skills will allow you to use armour repairers so you can stay alive longer, and shield boosters to keep your shield up.

Assuming you have obtained lots of money and resources by this time, I will go straight to the Ferox. The Ferox Battle Cruiser is, in my opinion, a very powerful ship that could handle NPC pirate battleships, if properly equipped. To use the Ferox you will need; Battle Cruiser 1, Spaceship Command 4, Caldari Cruiser 4, and Caldari Frigate 3. That will get you in the ship so you can fly around space. To make it combat effective, you need the proper skills to equip the right weapons. You could fly with Frigate equipment, but that is not effective for the ship. You can get in to a battleship with only another week of training, but you will be one of those 1 million SP battleship pilots; you have the ship, but anyone with a decent Cruiser could take you out, and you don’t look very threatening when you unleash your 150mm Railguns on something.

Once you have the ship, you should train Medium sized weapons, and components. These are designed for Cruiser use, which makes them the ideal choice. To use Medium Railguns, you need Gunnery 3, and Small Hybrid Turret 3. Medium Armour Repairers, and Shield boosters are musts for a combat ship to keep you alive and in good condition. If you have the space, a small hull repairer just to fix the hull after battle. I designed a rather good long range assault layout for the Ferox, that theoretically works (it works with my skills, if my spreadsheet is accurate). It utilizes 3 250mm ‘Scout’ Railgun, 3 Heavy Missile launchers, and 1 auto targeting module in the high slots. In the Medium Power Slots 1 Medium Shield Booster II, 1 10MN Afterburner II, 1 Tracking Computer to increase range and accuracy of the Railguns, and 2 Shield Resistance Enhancers (recommended by Amarrian Android of Diamond Dogs). In the Low Power Slots 1 Medium Armour Repairer II, 1 Magnetic Field Stabilizer to increase Railgun damage and rate of fire, 1 Ballistic Enhancer to increase missile rate and damage, and 1 Reactor Diagnostic II.

This provides combat effectiveness up to 43km with the Railguns, locking range of 60km, and the ability to automatically lock any target within 50km. With the shield boosters, you will be able to take some hits as well and when the enemy is in missile range of 38500m, blow them in to space dust. If that is not enough killing power, you can invest in higher skills, weapon specialization, and improvement skills to get the Tech II version of the weapons. The Tech II variants are more expensive, but also utilize many other skills, thus increasing their damage dealing abilities.

I tested this setup against Sansha Pirates in .2 Space, and found this is a very effective setup against Laser weapons, as you are outside their range. The only drawback I noted, was not having the EM Resistance Modifier Equipped.


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32. Fighting NPC Pirates



For those who are smart enough to know that they don’t stand a chance against anything larger than a frigate piloted by a player, there is hunting NPC pirates. They are what keep the hunters busy and allow me to kill stuff to supplement my income from mining. These pirates come in various sizes, shapes, and values. I have encountered 3 factions of NPC pirates, and made the following observation base on combat tactics used. Guristas are found around Caldari Space, and use Caldari Ships as they were founded by 2 former Navy Officers. They primarily use Railguns and Missiles. To best counter them, see what ship they are flying, and use the advantages against them. Being they use Railguns, their effective range in medium to long, so being close will prevent them from tracking you, and hitting you. The missiles are more difficult to evade, but unless they are flying a Kestrel, shouldn’t be too much trouble. They will drop railguns and hybrid ammo, along with many other common items (shield boosters, repairers, etc.). Sansha are primarily laser users, and I suspect use Amarr ships. They rely on laser damage, so increasing your EM and thermal resistance will negate any damage they can inflict upon you. Since they have lasers, staying about 10km away will make it very hard for them to hit you, because lasers are short range weapons. A rail gun will make very short work of them. They drop lasers and frequency crystals. Serpentis fly Gallente ships, and use blasters. You though lasers were short range, the Dreadnaught sized blaster has a range of about 10km, mind you it packs enough force to completely obliterate a cruiser, but that’s not the point. They are effective between 3 and 5km, any father and they can’t hit, any closer and they can’t track as well. Out range them, and you will be fine. When they blow up you get blasters and hybrid ammo. Where ever you settle, learn about the pirates in the area, and the best way to defeat them.


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33. Elaboration on skills



The skill build that will allow you to advance the fastest in your select area of skill are very wide and diverse. When you first create your character, in theory it pays to look in to the attributes needed to advance your skills the fastest, but as has been made adequately clear by many experienced players, no matter the build you make, it is always the wrong one. I have experience with the industrial skill, and learning skill attributes. Intelligence and Memory are needed for learning skills and industrial skills. Weapons and ships need perception and willpower. Leadership and social skills need charisma and willpower. Drones need perception and memory. There are many more classes of skills that rely different attributes for determining training times.

I blindly front loaded my character with lots of intelligence and memory because they sounded good, and I thought the limit was 10 in every stat, that is clearly not the case, there is no cap I can find. The ideal start is getting your intelligence and memory skills increased, then learning, and finally the other learning skills. That will boost your attributes by 5 points in each stat, and decrease training time by 10%. I recommend training mining while trying to earn the money to buy the skill books to train. This will take about 50 days of straight training to get the 6 basic learning skills to level 5. Then get Eidetic Memory and Analytical Mind to level 5 to max out your memory and intelligence to minimize the time required to train the other learning skills. Alternating between memory and intelligence will further shorten the time needed to train. Being industrial focused; you can skip the other skill training, and just focus on intelligence and memory.

When starting if you follow this guide, you will be flying a cruiser very quickly, and will be ill prepared for any major combat as combat is not the focus until later. This is completely intentional as mining is the major focus, and cruisers are not overly expensive to replace if you are careful not to lose them too often. Battle cruisers are the largest thing I would fly without advance training for it. I lost my battle cruiser and that was a huge hit to my pride and the corp fleet. If you want to fly a battleship, you could do it in about 2 months or less. This is highly warned against by many of the experienced players, including agent runners, hunters, pirates, PVPers just to name a few. They all recommend you train the supporting skills and anything that will help you survive and lay waste to your target before flying your battleship. A battleship on its own can absorb lots of damage, but it would be a shame if my Ferox took you out because you couldn’t use the proper equipment, and you didn’t have enough HP. From my research training Engineering, Hull Upgrades, Electronics and shield upgrades to name a few. Engineering will increase your power grid, hull upgrades increases hull HP, electronics increases CPU, shield upgrades increases shield HP. Have a plan for what you want to do with your ship first, then build it accordingly. That bit of planning can be very helpful in getting yourself ready to fly and begin on your path of destruction.

Training your skills with the idea of general proficiency with all turrets is simply accomplished by training Gunnery, weapon upgrades, advanced weapon upgrades, sharpshooter, zero-g physics, and the weapon you wish to use. Gunnery increases turret tracking speed, weapon upgrades decreases CPU requirements, advanced weapon upgrades decreases power grid requirements, sharpshooter increases optimal range, zero-g physics increases falloff, weapon skills increase damage.


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34. Fighting Players



This is only here because I have to learn to deal with PVP since my new corp joined an alliance and we operate heavily in .4 space where pirates sometime come. First know your enemy and their ship. Check their race, ship, and age. A 3 month old Gallente flying a Megathron, would make a dangerous player to engage without thinking. Always look at the ship description and the bonuses it has. It’s a good rule of thumb to assume your target is level 5 in the bonus granting skills, in this case Gallente Battleship 5, until you can disprove this. It would be logical to assume he is packing 8 railguns, or 8 blasters or a mixture, and drones. This makes this ship a lethal close combat ship. With this, it is a hard nut to crack. The drones could have a range of up to 35km, where the railguns could probably hit at 15km, that makes a 20km thick belt of death, that only an interceptor tackler tank could penetrate. To break this, you need to take out the drones so you only have the railguns to deal with. The railguns are effective to about 50km on a battleship, but are slow tracking to keep moving to avoid the fire. Missiles are the best to use to counter the ship, as they hit and do lots of damage. Once the drones are down, attempt to get in close where the rails will be useless and continue to pound the ship with missile fire.


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35. Ethical Issues



There is no doubt in my mind that someone reading this will use this information for the purposes of evil, to that I say; go ahead, and do tell me your successes and failures. That way I can find a better way to protect against any unethical things people do, and build a better unethical person. After all, as much as I don’t like getting my ship blown up or damaged, that is what keeps the market going, and me making money.

This section stems from the knowledge that a criminal flagging system will be coming into place that will flag ore thieves so they can be destroyed by the owner and/or gang and/or corp members. I highly deplore ore thieves, because they cut into my money making, and hard work. I respect the skills it takes to do it, as I tried it once, and failed miserably (damn code of ethics that says you have to give it back if you are discovered). I will divide ore thievery into 2 major groups; barges, and others. Those who sneak up and take ore from the jet can of a fully loaded Covetor mining barge mining a common ore. They are very annoying, and there is not much that can be done, because you are in a mining barge, and can’t really fight back, but you could fill a can in 25 minutes, so it is not that much lost productivity. The worst are the ones that steal if you are flying any other ships for mining, those ships can take a long time to mine with. Just be warned that when this new system comes in, I will fly a combat ship designed to destroy your hauler (most likely have a friend with me, and mine with my barge, its faster that way).

Another unethical area is hunting defenceless miners, and weak ships. You have a big powerful ship that can lock, jam, and drain my ship before I know what happened. Not that difficult with a barge, but what do you hope to accomplish podding miners? Miners usually have money, and lots of ore, so why not tap into this. Lock, jam and drain their ship so they can’t go anywhere, then demand a ransom from them. This way you profit rather than the ship builder. Don’t demand too much, or they are liable to smarten up and move so you lose income or mine with friends, and that just escalates to more losses. If you have some considerable power, and friends, offer protection services in low sec areas. Then you have miners working for you, which makes both parties happy. I would pay for safety so I could safely gather megacyte and morphite.

Another extortion tactic is to blow up their jet cans of secure cans that hold their ore. You thought ore thieves were bad stealing a good chunk of your ore, try having someone blow up you can with all your ore in it. Not only is that counter productive, but the person is already in a combat ship, so you have no chance to retaliate. This works by targeting the can, then private messaging the person, and making your demands. Just a million ISK is enough, to start, if the person agrees unlock the can, and watch their can for them to be nice. If they don’t agree, fire 1 shot, and increase your price, they will likely pay it. Repeat until the person pays, or the can is destroyed.

Remember this very important fact; pirates also have a reputation to keep, and honour and standards to maintain. If you make a deal with a player, keep it, don’t kill the person after they pay you, there are other pirates with more experience than you that will hunt you down for tarnishing the reputation of pirates everywhere.


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36.Tech 2 ships



With the release of RMR, almost all ships have an improved Tech 2 variant, so I am going to elaborate on them, in general terms and how they apply to Caldari, and what they are best used for.

Tech 2 Battle cruisers are command ships, and are designed as such. They have increased shields, armour, hull, cap and resistances. They are tanks in every sense of the word, but lack much in firepower improvements. They have field command types, and fleet command types. Field command ships are designed to get in to the battle and provide some firepower along with support, micromanaging the battle. They are more heavily armoured and stronger, but can only use 1 gang warfare module. Fleet command ships are designed to stay back and macro manage the situation. They are not as heavily armoured, or pack as much firepower, but can use 3 gang warfare modules to provide extra support where needed.

Tech 2 Frigates are available as covert ops, interceptors, and assault ships. Covert ops come in 3 types; recon, attack, and stealth bomber. Recon ships are designed to penetrate undetected to a hostile area and gather information about that area. They have a fast recloak time, and short scanner recalibration delay, but lack much ability to fit weapons. Attack ships covert op ships are designed to cloak, and launch quick small hit-and-run type of attacks, then escape. They are fast, but suffer long sensor recalibration times, and lock on times so caution must be used when attacking. Stealth bombers are the heavy hit-and-run ships. They use cruise missiles to attack their target. They can’t use the covert ops cloaking device, but they gain a speed bonus when cloaked so they go faster when cloaked. They also don’t have a sensor recalibration time, so you can uncloak, lock, fire and hide again. Interceptors are the fastest ships available, and typically serve the role as first strike craft, or tacklers in head on assaults. They are very fast, have a small signature radius, and are suited to electronic warfare. They also make nice transports for very valuable items. The downside is they don’t have a lot of CPU or powergrid for fitting weapons. Assault ships are the most popular Tech 2 Frigate as they are like their base model, with more fitting room, and better stats. For Caldari they have the Harpy and Hawk.

Tech 2 Cruisers come in 2 types; Heavy Assault Ships, Recon ships. Heavy Assault Ships, AKA HAC, are bigger, more powerful cruisers with various upgrades. For Caldari there is Eagle, and Cerberus. Eagle is a very powerful long-range rail gun platform, designed for support fire and sniping. Cerberus is the missile platform; it is also fairly long range, and deals lots of damage. Recon ships are like Covert ops, but serve slightly different roles. There are 2 types; support and infiltration. Support ships are electronic warfare based ships that uncloak, and lock down enemy ships to they are easier to take out with the fleet. Infiltration ships are designed to create cynosureal fields so you can bring in the big guns like titans, dreadnaughts, and motherships.

Tech 2 Destroyers have been released to serve a completely new role that has yet to be done, truly mobile warp disruptor, also called an interdictor. They are designed to launch warp scramble drones to create a large trap for ships. They also possess some weapons, but are not the strongest ships. The warp scramble they generate is 20km in radius, and so powerful that only motherships and titans can escape, the downside is you are scrambled with everyone in the ‘bubble’, so you are a sitting duck.




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37.Flying a Battleship



Eventually you will have all the mining skills at level 5, be rolling in lots of money and want to fly a battleship. My advice is don’t just jump in to one or you’ll lose a lot of money when you get blown up. As I mentioned earlier, anyone can just jump into a battleship and look threatening, but those that take their time can be threatening. Aside from the required skills, and the skills for the guns you want, you need the support skills.


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38. Market Conditions



January 3, 2006
Soon they will be releasing the new bloodlines, and hopefully fixing the mining upgrade modules. There have been reports that the ice mining upgrade increases the cycle time of the ice mining lasers, and the mining upgrade skill does not reduce the CPU used by mining upgrade modules.

December 17, 2005
It has been a long wait, but RMR has been released, and there are still problems with stability and lag, but this is only 2 days after the launch so the people at CCP are working very hard to get this working again. They have launched all the new ships, and skills but they are not fully available yet. Skills are very expensive for the new ships, so unless you have to have one ASAP, or you have money, it would be wise to wait on it for a little while. Rumour has it that in a month, the new ships will begin to appear for sale.

November 18, 2005 I have been looking over the forums more, and now it is only 2 weeks or so to the next content update “Red Moon Rising”. This is where they will be releasing Titans, Carriers, and a whole bunch of other ships and improvements. As I have been so excited for, they will be adding more mining related improvements, and equipment. Tech 2 Barges, implants, and modules to enhance mining performance, named mining lasers, hopefully new skills, and much more. It is also speculated they may release new implants to help with manufacturing, and hopefully refining, modules for ships that give a bonus to performing research in space, and the biggest hit to market monopolies, reverse engineering skills. During the Cold War update, they released Tech II implants, and modules. This was met with extreme prices and demand for these items, I think the market will have a similar reaction to named mining equipment, ships, and implants. This will increase the amount of hunting taking place, and in theory demand for ammo. If you are eager to attain these new toys, I recommend hopping into your combat ship, and hitting the belts to hunt down NPCs to see if you can get some good drops. Hold off on purchasing the new items for a few weeks until the market attains some volume, and prices fall. If you are very rich, or don’t care about the cost, go ahead. If you do get some, you can sell them, or a gift of a new piece of equipment for me is always appreciated. I have heard that they are going to release some new science skills, including reverse engineering. I am not sure, but to the best of my understanding, reverse engineering will allow you to take something like a module, and attempt to disassemble it and make a BPC for it. I don’t know how it works beyond it needs a research lab slot, and I believe there will be a chance that you will destroy the item and get nothing. This will be a big thing for scientists, as they will be in more demand than before. Also on the ship modification front, they may also be releasing the ability to make specific modifications for ships to further customize them, and improve their abilities, at the expense of others, like modules but more permanent. Theses modifications can be sold on escrow, but the ships you modify cannot be sold. Also in RMR they are releasing Jet can flagging for ore thieves and people who steal from pirate drops. This is meeting mixed reactions, as many miners fear ore thieves will use alts to transfer ore to another jet can so they miner cannot get at it without being flagged. This new system will require some testing and adapting to it to find the best way to stop ore thieves. Also on the drawing board is the ability to lease moons from the empires for building a POS in safe space. This will increase the supply of moon materials and other POS commodities, and increase the demand for ice products and other POS fuel requirements. I haven’t heard much on the topic of the POS industry, so I would be cautious about proceeding with building a POS as I don’t know if the market has stabilized yet. Named POS parts may be dropped from Elite NPCs in the future as well. They are also optimizing drones to help reduce server load on the EVE servers to improve performance for everyone. This seems good, but alas there is a down side. They are reducing the drones by 2/3, and increasing the power of drones by 3x so you don’t lose the DPS. New drone types are being released, such as Electronic warfare and sentry drones. Skills will be changed to increase the drones abilities, and damage. This will result in a decrease in the demand for drones, as fewer will be lost.

October 28, 2005
I have been following the Dev Blogs, reading the forums, and my copy of EON (the Official EVE Online Magazine) and found some rather interesting things that will affect the way business is done in EVE. First, they are going to release 2 new capital ships; Titans and Carriers. These are the last of the big ships for a while, as they are speculating it will be 2 years before anyone has the resources to build a Titan. Carriers will likely be available in about 3 months after their introduction, based on the first Dreadnaughts showing up about 2 months after being introduced. To fuel the economy and growing need for resources, many new mining things will be released. These include Tech 2 Mining barges, new mining skills, Mining Implants, mining gang bonuses, and more mining ships. Titans will serve the role of rapid fleet deployment, and support role. Titans will eventually get a ‘super weapon’, which they elude to being very powerful, like the “Deathstar”, but you won’t see that for a long time.

October 11, 2005
I have been reading the “In Testing” section of the Developer Blogs, and they are some interesting things coming. Tech 2 Mining ships, battle cruisers, cruisers, destroyers, and I think battleships coming in the future. This will increase demand for minerals, and possibly combat. The battle cruisers are going to take more of a command role in fleet battles, heavy assault ships with electronic warfare, and a few more specialities. Destroyers may be a long range frig killer, but have diminished short range abilities. To balance out this large influx of new ships and demand, they are looking to introduce tech 2 Mining barges, and hopefully more mining bonus ships. They are also looking to introduce new mining equipment, skills, gang bonuses, and implants.

September 16, 2005
I am a business student, and the economy in the game is very interesting and dynamic. So I though it would make a good subject to write about. I don’t have a lot of connections in the game, but I have found interesting tid bits of information, that combined with my general observations and my 90% in Economics, make for some interesting interpretations of market conditions, and predictions. This will be updated as I note changes in the economy. First of all, in the last patch, Cold War, many star gates were removed, making trade more difficult, and causing prices to increase for certain commodities. Capital ships were introduced which caused a massive increase in the demand for minerals and other resources. People are commenting that a more efficient method of mining needs to be implemented to meet the demands of the people building Dreadnaughts and Freighters. The Player Owned Station Industry is over supplied and very unprofitable. This has caused a large drop in the price of commodities produced by a POS due to overproduction and low demand. There is speculation that with out some large improvements on the programmers end, the industry will collapse in a few months, and only a few stations will remain. Due to the low number of Original Blue Prints for Tech Level 2 Ships, and Equipment there is a high demand for the products, causing prices to sky rocket. Morphite, an important part of Tech 2 items, so the price is not very high yet, but will explode by November when the next expansion Kali, is released. Outposts are now available to be constructed in 0.0 space, opening up new markets, and resources. This will cause a large amount of materials to hit the market once more are up and running. In the Kali Expansion, there is rumour that they will release the Titan, the largest ship ever built. This is said to be a mobile station, and will cost around 20-30 Billion ISK to build. A few weeks ago there was an article in the news that one Alliance built an Outpost in 0.0 space. They quoted the price at upwards of 30 Billion ISK, and took the collected efforts of 30 corporations to construct. Prices for Capital ships has dropped to around 800 Million ISK for a Dreadnaught, and 750 Million ISK for a Freighter. My overall recommendation is stock up on minerals, and watch the markets to see what is in demand. A new market will open up in a few weeks, and the demand for resources will increase many fold.


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39. Frequently Asked Questions



Q: Can I recruit members of another race with out having the Ethnic Relations Skill?

A: No, you must have Ethnic Relations to recruit members of another race. Also, you can only have 20% of you members from other races per level. IE. If you are Caldari, in a 20 member corp, you can only have 5 non-Caldari members total, not 5 of each race.

Q: Is there anyway to see who is taking what from the Corp Hangars?

A: Not at this time. Currently Corp Hangars and Audit Containers only record who put things in to them, not who took anything out. The best way to prevent theft, is limit access to what you deem valuable.

Q: What are Corp Shares used for?

A: Corp Shares are used for making vote on internal matters in the corp, like removing a CEO, or appointing a director. They are also used for paying out dividends to shareholders.

Q: What does “Query” mean in hangar access?

A: “Query” in that sense means the person is allowed to look at the items in the hangar or container.

Q: Can I charge Corp Taxes on certain people and not others?

A: No, taxes are collected on all bounties and agent rewards corp members receive that are 35,000 ISK or more.

Q: Does it bother you being asked newbie-type questions?

A: No, I am writing this to help others become better at the game, and function more efficiently and safely. I will answer any question I am asked to the best of my ability, provided it is relevant to the game (no matter how basic), or you can convince me it has some importance. It is by asking questions, I learn more, you learn more, and I can write a better guide to help others.

Q: What is an Insta?

A: Instas are bookmarks that take you directly to a point of interest. These are mostly used to minimize the risk and travel time of moving a long distance, but having books marks that will take you into range of an object that you must use, eg. Warp gate or stations. To make one, for a station, simply fly to over the top of the station, and make a bookmark.


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41. Credits



Douglas Adams for his series of books, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for the ideas for the title.

Nukes for showing my EVE and helping me to get started.

Diamond Dogs for accepting me in to their corporation, and supplying me with much of the knowledge I have obtained, ships and equipment for me to test and much more.

Crimson Dragons for giving me the position of Director, and all the resources needed to further my skills and help others.

Amarrian Android for letting my use his drone guide.

Thor007 for helping me to edit my guide and prove that it works.

JaBBa666 for helping me to devise an effective combat ship setup, and misc corrections regarding combat


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41. Contact information



If you have a suggestion, something to add, a correction, or questions regarding this guide, you may contact me via e-mail at;

fraszoid@yahoo.com

In-game channel
MGTTGPublic

or in-game message;
Fraszoid

Thanks you reading, more updates to come.




Copyright 2005 Fraser Sulatycki


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