Ice Mining with a Hauler

So with the majority of the Corp being noobs, our Corp nights have started out as mining runs.  Lanvarok has been playing for ages with multiple accounts, so he has an Orca pilot with mining bonuses.  The plan has been to Mine stuff and produce our own ships.  Gerond has been playing for a few months longer than me and has spent time learning some Manufacturing.  Most of us have learned the skills for fitting out a mining barge now, so they are the standard mining ship.  All Retrievers at this stage.



Last night, we thought we’d try a run in an Ice belt.  Most of us have learned the required skills.

I have 2 accounts.  Lusky can use the barge, but Luskette cannot yet.

What we did:  I managed to get straight in after DT.  I warped the Luskette in the hauler to the Ice belt and put her in the middle (towards the back) of the ice pack as a warp in point for the retrievers.  (I thought this would save the 5 minute retriever crawl to position). The hauler could carry 46k ore, so I had people dumping cargo at around 10k or so and I flew by (within 2.5k range) and picked it up. My thoughts were that I didn't want people to get full. I also didn't want to have full containers floating around for longer than 10 seconds for others to ninja. I wanted to make sure that I could always pick up the cargo people dumped, so that the retrievers had no downtime and we had no ore floating around because the hauler was full.

I started to get a feel for people's cycles after a few dumps and I think there was only once when a cargo container was left out while I jumped back to the refinery to drop off my load. I was also checking in with the others all the time, which may have been more of an annoyance to Gerond and Lan as I probably over did the chat channel. I didn't even think to check if voice comms was up.

I think I’ll have to re-evaluate my fit and skills as I think I am long way behind. Lan's accounts are badass Ice miners.

Overall I think it worked well, and I don't mind doing that hauling. It was quite a busy job. I don't know if it would be better having our 7 accounts mining last night, or having the 6 and a hauler.

I think for Lan, having to dock every 24k when his mining cycles were so quick would have been at least 2 cycles he would have missed x 3 accounts. I guess it all adds up.

I've had a look at how the hauler usage can be improved.
I grabbed a tractor beam for it, and have put some nanofibers, mwd/ab, shielding and might use a cloak on it. (Ice Ninja anyone?). Maybe a mobile tractor beam unit might work.  My alt doesn't have cloak training yet. (working on other shit like Gallente Industrial first) so using a salvager in the other high slot for the time being. Not having an AB or MWD last night was a stupid mistake. While it was quicker for me to move around (than the Barge), it could have been quicker. Won't make that mistake again.