While I don’t get as much time as I like to play Eve, I was glad I had time last night to log on for a few hours, because I just happened to be online when my corp was doing a weekly mining operation.
This is, as the title suggests, my first cooperative mining op in Eve with my corporation. And I must say it was an impressive little op (well… I don’t know how relatively *little* it was!).
So what happened? Basically, I was told by the mining director where my corp mates were – easy enough – they were only two jumps away so it only took me a few moments and I was there.
When I arrived the director added me to the mining fleet – sort of like the group function in World of Warcraft… but I think there’s a bit more depth and complexity in Eve. For starters, you can only form a fleet of a certain size if you have the requisite skills. On top of that is a level of leadership that determines how many fleets a squadron can have, and then I believe there’s other layers on top of that.
Each fleet or squadron can be given “buffs” or enhancements to their weapons damage, or in this case mining yield if the leader has good skills.
So anyway back to the mining op – here’s the scene that greeted me upon clicking “warp to fleet member”!
Arg! We is arvesting asteroids!
This system was interesting actually, because it took me three jumps in my barge just to reach this asteroid belt, where as the normal system I mine in can be reached all in one jump. The asteroids here were also much, much larger than where I normally mine, which meant less “asteroid depleted” messages after mining a rock for a few minutes… highly irritating!
I’ve actually since bought an ore scanner to get around the problem, but when you have a big op like this munching roids at a rate of knots, asteroids get ripped to shreds fast!
Right in the middle of the group of mining barges (almost everyone has a level 2 barge in the corp, and a few have the elite “hulk” barges) lies the Orca – - a super massive mining freighter and organization ship which oversees the whole operation.
The hold of these epic ships is so large it can quite easily act as a mineral storage mini-station that other freighters then haul back and forth from constantly while the other ships mine ore.
Its an impressively big ship, but quite difficult to get a sense of scale for unless you fly your own huge barge next to, and find it looks like a small spec of space dust in comparison.
Here’s a pic I got during the op anyway.
The Orca from about 30 km away!
Click that image and look closely – you can see the Orca in the middle of the pic – and even at this distance you can make it out EASILY. Lol.
Here’s a shot of it close up, but you lose the sense of scale a bit.
The Massive Orca
Once I arrived within 2,500 meters of the Orca, I was told to start locking and mining any asteroid I wished as we were to be stripping the entire belt of asteroids! Groovy!
As my hold became full of ore, I simply opened up a special Orca/corporation hanger option and dragged the ore I’d been mining direct to ship. As we mined for about an hour, other corp mates flying haulers came and went constantly ferrying the ore from the orca to a nearby station for refining.
The pay out was pretty nice too from the corp leader, 6 odd million isk for an hour’s work!
I sometimes wonder if these kind of payouts are just to motivate members to joining coop mining expeditions, but I wasn’t complaining, and would probably do the same if I was the leader of a corp.
These events are great fun – and if nothing else it gets everyone in the mood for big chin wag (read: gossip) and learning session.
Oh and did I tell you? I’m now training astrogeology to level 5. 16 days worth of training left… but I’ll be happy when I have an elite barge doing mega bucks an hour!
Try Eve Yourself! You’ll Love It!
If you haven’t yet, go to Eve Online’s FREE 14 day trial, and see if Eve Online is for you. There’s good people, great times, and lots of back stabbing, corp wars and political shenanigans.
What’s not to like? 
