So my long neglected mining alt finally got his Hulk yesterday.
I fitted it and set a course for a nice quiet high sec system to eat some rocks for a while and see if it was really worth my time.
With its single Erin Mining Laser Upgrade (which I bought about 8 months ago and never used), and one T2 Expanded Cargo it pulls in about 1 million ISK of ore every 10 minutes before I have to dock up. Reprocessed, its still about the same.
I see why people complain that mining in high sec is not exactly profitable.
On an hourly rate, mining Veldspar alone, my Hulk pulls in 6 million ISK, give or take. Running missions I can pull in 20 million an hour, sometimes a little more, sometimes less, depending on the mission. Even offsetting the cost of ammo doesn’t decrease it that much.
There are benefits to mining though. Target ‘roids, activate lasers, go and make a coffee or watch some TV or browse the web, check back every now and again.
Now I know some would swear that you can do the same thing for missions in a Domi, but I can’t. What with switching out drones, making sure they don’t shoot triggers, managing them as they get hit and getting aggro from specific groups of rats, missioning in a Domi seems more complex to me than choosing a target, releasing the drones and watching a movie. On top of that, the Domi in itself is really slow to complete the missions, so having my Raven there to tear through the larger ships makes things go that much quicker.
If there’s anything I dislike more than missions, its mining. I always say that missions are repetitive and tedious. But mining takes the biscuit. I really can’t see how people can sit and do this all day every day. This isn’t a game, its a chore. I want to earn my ISK and go back to blowing people up.
So it seems that my shiny new Hulk will remain docked until such time as I have declined too many missions and can’t get more. Four hours of mining here and there won’t completely destroy my sanity I suppose.
