Son of Dominion nullsec mining
Posted: 2009-12-23 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: changes, dominion, Dominion mining changes, eve online, mining, wormhole 12 CommentsLet me just start this with a phrase I’ve always, always wanted to use but could never achieve the correct context:
I effing called it.
As of Dominion, WH mining is no longer the best mining profitable task, having been completely outstripped by nullsec mining. For the chain of logic that lead to this conclusion, look no further than the following paragraphs:
I was sitting in a WH belt, mining and thinking about how much I love mining in WHs, when I saw probes on the directional. Entering a professional state of panic, I told my ship to warp to PoS and waited the agonizing seven seconds before my 200 mil ship was safe, all the while asking if the probes were ours or someone trying to kill us for the fun of it.
The probes weren’t ours, so you can imagine my surprise when I wasn’t trapped in a bubble on my way to the PoS; and the greater surprise I had when the pilot convoed me to say hi and not “Grrr, Grrr, you win this time, but we will have your very expensive ship for our killboards. Arrrrgh” or whatever pirates say. Apparently, through some act forgotten to me and him, our respective corporations had set each other to blue, which was strange, as his corporation was a nullsec habiter and we were a highsec mining corp. He revealed himself as an old WH miner that left the WH for nullsec come Dominion, with good reason, so he said. He invited me for a look around his nullsec, as his alliance and all nearby alliances were NBDS. Immediately suspicious, I took my sister gear off my covops, slapped on a normal scanner and flew after him. After flying past an impressive warp bubble on a gate:
We made it to his alliance’s industry V system, and he excused himself while I scanned out some gravs. The small ones were easy to get too, and contained about 80k of ABC ores, and the large ones were slippery, but similarly had a goodly amount of ABC ores and some BS wrecks, one of which I found a survey scanner on, one of the items we never seem to have in the wormhole.
The dude explained to me that the belts would refresh themselves about every 36 hours, and were able to support thirty hulks with orca and rorqual bonuses happily, aside from some hostile stealth bombers who liked to AFK in system.
The feeling I was experiencing at this moment was akin to beating your head against a brick wall when suddenly someone walks up and points out a Styrofoam wall a few feet to your left. That… dispenses candy or something when you beat your head against it. This nullsec system had cyno jammers up for five systems in any direction, local chat, an intel channel to point out threats five jumps before they came near, and most mortifying of all, a station where the ABCs that in the WH we had been carefully compressing and hauling slowly to Jita, were being refined at a 4% tax w/ a 100% yield.
In Apoc, the WH was king. It seems that the WH has been king for too long, and I have heard from CCP from somewhere that “We never intended to have long-term habilitation in wormholes”, which would probably explain why grav sites stop appearing in our WHs after a week and a half, and why we can’t set up moon miners.
If CCP wants to shift focus from WH mining to nullsec mining, that’s fine. I mean, Apoc made WHs king, now Dominion comes along with vast changes to nullsec, they’re gonna want attention to nullsec more, and better belts seems the best way to do it. It just seems ta me that they overdid it just a tad. Unless a nigh-infinite source of every conceivable ore type next to a perfect refiner seems reasonable to someone out there?
(Actually, the dude told me that they don’t have enough tritanium for their manufacturing, so they’ve been jump freightering it in. I kid you not)
Similarly heard from the dude, CCP made the belts overly rich because they expected the changes in sovereignty to make everyone and his dog start fighting bloodily over every square mile of space-dust. Since in actuality, the big alliances are consolidating their space to conserve cash and there really being no reason to expand, there’s much, much less fighting than expected, the market is going/already has been flooded w/ lowsec minerals, ecetera. I really hope that CCP makes a few small tweaks to these gravs before WH turns into the equivalent of mining veldspar in lowsec with local minimized, one jump from highsec.
Also, the dude explained to me how to use that newfangled sovereignty button for something other than remembering how to spell sovereignty, and it’s pretty detailed on every concivable system, but it is odd that there’s been seven ships and one pod destroyed in my wormhole’s “region”, whatever that is.
k162space 
I’m friggin humbled by this…and your right ya know. The wormhole kingship has faded. And even for nullsec systems it just seems a bit safer in developed space, lol, given intel channels, and all that craze.
I do still love my little niche of unknown space though.
Perhaps in the upcoming new additions to the game, if they add them, WH space will have more stuff like comets and planetary ring mining…im keeping my fingers crossed.
they will have to nerf the nullsec or bump the wh a bit or they may see a mass evac from whspace for many…
personally my corp wud probably love to get into nullsec, but as we’re a mining corp we cant really get in because we dont know any corps/alliances enough to be blue with them… maybe some day i suppose 😦
While everything you say is true, remember that there are downsides to nullsec mining. That station to refine at costs 20b to build; and unlike WH mining opponents will know where your miners are. As impressive as their security is there are ways around it, like the afk cloakers he mentioned; they can sit cloaked for 3 hours and then come back to blow up an undefended hulk or two (or just log off right at the belt and log in in a few hours). And of course, biggest downside of all is the massive effort and expense involved in defending 0.0 space, as even relatively peaceful alliances have to deal with occasional probes and maintain a large cap fleet.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that unlike WH sites, nullsec mining sites have constantly spawning rats, so you’ll either need a deadspace fit hulk capable of tanking them or to warp out every 30 minutes and get someone to clear the belt.
The alliance I mentioned does indeed have a large cap fleet, and while I do admit that stealth bombers AFKing is a hindrance, a dude in a sniper rokh may help or maybe it means you just can’t AFK and have to watch your directional; which IMO is much better than watching your overview not knowing when six dudes can come from nowhere. In nullsec, you see thse guys coming five jumps away and can dock on a whim.
Also, the belts I’m talking about are grav sites, and I admit I may be wrong about this, but in the WH, the rats only spawn once. In nullsec belts pre-dominion, the rats only spawned once. Through pattern recognition I assume that these grav sites have rats that only spawn once.
No, rats spawn constantly in the Dominion Nullsec grav sites. I’ve spent plenty of time mining from them. I was also under the impression they respawned in the pre-dominion grav sites, though I admit I didn’t spend much time mining in those.
As for the direction scanner, a cloaked ship doesn’t show up on it. You can see the probes when they scan down the site, but they only have to do that once. Then they bookmark it and can come shoot you whenever they want, unlike a WH site where they’ll probably be passing through (The grav sites respawn on a 3 day timer unless completely mined out). A sniper rokh might be able to stop them if the miners can tank long enough, but that’s one person not mining who needs a share of the take.
As for seeing them coming five jumps out, that requires that they’re coming that way; a decent hostile ganker will just log out once he’s in the miner’s system, and might even log out in the belt itself; then you only have a few seconds of warning. Or if he sits afk you have to choose whether to suspend mining for hours or you’ll be giving him the initiative; the first you’ll know he’s no longer afk is when he decloaks besides your hulk.
My bad on the rats respawning, but having a delegated BS watching for spawns should clear that up AND provide some defense if the SBs decide to uncloak. Having local chat, knowing when you’re perfectly safe, however seldom that is, is a comfort much missed in WHs. In times when a hostile is in local, I.E. most of the time, having a BC or a well tanked hulk should help somewhat, and anyway, if loss is the problem, a covetor isn’t that big of a step down for an eighth of the cost. While you can’t afk and it isn’t perfectly safe utopia, it’s a hellavalot safer than never knowing if there’s a fleet of stealth bombers 2001 meters away from you. At least w/ local, you know how many dudes are there. Assuming there’s a cyno jammer up. Which most null mining sites have.
who cares about the 20b station, especially if their already built LOL 🙂
come on wh space with no local, and a stealth bomber can just about disable a mining operation completely 24/7
You have to think that to actually claim the space and protection needed for null sec mining, what kind of man power and money you would need as compared to a couple man operation in wormhole space.
cough providence cough.
I’m not going to say that I’m an expert on anything nullsec related, but I’m fairly certain that there are NRDS alliances in providence that have mining ops up for neutrals. A friend of mine is actually in there ATM talking about how nice the belts are. And by talking I mean won’t stop talking.
Again, please, please correct me if I’m wrong, I seriously don’t want to stand on a soapbox giving misinformation.
So I roam frequently in Provi a lot and the belts there don’t contain such ABC (or most of the other profitable ores) for everyone to mine. Most of them are just a step up from low sec ores (like Hemorphite, Hedbergite, and Gneiss).
The alliances do not post open invitations to scanned out belts of ABC and Mercoxit sites to neutrals. As well as even though there are nice places, those sites now spawn in systems with the mining upgrade installed instead of randomly, so to get those upgrades include more logistics and the such.
I’m not saying that you are wrong, there is definitely competition between nullsec and WH mining, but WH mining can support a small group of players (with downsides that it pays less and is competing with 0.0 as well as its easier to access and deliver to trade hubs where in 0.0 you have either get freighter alts or get killed by war dec groups such as privateers and etc).
WH
+ Direct/close links to hubs
+ Small group advantage
+ Easy to find/access ores
+ “No persistent” mercenaries
– Only can support so many people
– Unknown intel have to be VERY reliable on the scanner
0.0
+ Established intel to evade losses (they still happen because pilots get LAZZZZY lol)
+ Can support larger populations
+ Upgrades make finding BETTER ore EASIER
– Dependent on a large logistic backbone to have been established
– Neutrals and renter corps are denied good space (they really are)
Those are just some things, I’m not trying to tear you down from your ideals and opinions, and I feel you do give a strong point, but WH space was mainly created as a resource supply for T3 components and the mining is more of an addition/benefit to the WH life.
I enjoy your blog though and giving others a different point of view, enjoy mate!
Gimmie a second to figure out how to make the phrase “I’m right, you’re wrong” sound intelligent and sophisticated.
Nope, not getting anything.
The belts I saw in nullsec had ABC in it, and the dude told me that they had had a 150k crokite a few days ago. I know it’s silly to go on the word of a complete stranger, but he didn’t kill or try to kill me so already he has more respect from me than 50% of the eve population.
Anyway, we’ve been extremely lucky and have had three cores in our WH in a row. Each of these cores has has a 150k units of an ABC ore. I only saw 80k units of ABC in the belts that I went to in the null, which I say again allows neutral dudes in, one of which is my corp leader who has, again, been talking about mining ABC in peace. Anyway, when eve crashed yesterday our core vanished, leaving us with zero gravs. Today, we still have zero gravs while all of the nullsec grav sites have been refreshed. As they will be. Every downtime. While we sit here, waiting for a good new c5 or new grav site.
I seem to be meandering, so let me approach you point by point:
WH
– we’re in a c5 with a static C6, finding a good exit is like pulling teeth compared to going 10jumps through blue nullsec.
– no counter
– comparing grav sites, nullsec gravs and WH gravs are equally hard to scan out, and in nullsec you are always guaranteed a grav, albeit of lower quality.
+ yes.
+yes.
o.o
+yes.
+yes, although everyone mining the same gravs can get annoying, but you may be able to expand to other systems and upgrade the industry there?
+yes, yes they do.
– I’ll take your word for it.
-I’ll take your word for it, but see counterpoint above. the bit about the corp leader and neutral axcess, and the possibility of joining a nullsec alliance.
Anyway, I’m not trying every way I can think of to undermine your argumen- Oh wait, I am.
I’ll just repeat what I said in the post: nullsec mining and WH mining appeal to two different groups, have their own advantages and disadvantages, but the nullsec mining is a bit overpowered considering the sheer amount of ore. For some easily-disputable proof, I point to current megacyte and zydrine prices.