Gas in W-space

Gas clouds (found in Ladar sites) are used in T3 Production but can also be very profitable on their own. Please see the page on Gas Harvesting for a full explanation of HOW to gas harvest.

Ladar sites (along with Grav sites) are the most prevalent in W-space so they are never too hard to find as most people leave them alone cos it doesn't make anything go boom. In Class 1+2 W-Space Systems you can find Perimeter sites, in Class 3+4 You can find Frontier AND Perimeter sites and in Class 5+6 you can find Core and Frontier and Perimter sites.

As with Grav sites, the sleepers in Ladar sites do not appear on warp in (with one exception) but rather they appear roughly 20 mins after the site has been activated. If you are out in your scanning ship you can just select "warp to" so you get the pop-up box and then cancel warp. This way you can just go back and grab your site clearing ship first rather than mess around with changing ships and back and forth....

Types of gas

Name    Volume    Found in

C50        1m3       Permieter

C60        1m3       Perimeter

C70        1m3       Perimeter

C72        2m3       Perimeter

C84        2m3       Perimeter

C28        2m3       Frontier

C32        5m3       Frontier

C320      5m3       Core

C540      10m3     Core

Types of sites and enemies you will face

Name                       Gas1 (m3)              Gas2 (m3)              Sleepers

Barren Perimeter       3000 C50 (3000m3) 1500 C60 (1500m3) 5 Frigates

Token Perimeter        3000 C60 (3000m3) 1500 C70 (1500m3) 1 Cruiser, 2 Frigates

Minor Perimeter         3000 C70 (3000m3) 1500 C72 (3000m3) 2 Cruiser

Ordinary Perimeter     3000 C72 (6000m3) 1500 C84 (3000m3) 5 Sentries (present immediatley upon site activation)

Sizeable Perimeter     3000 C84 (6000m3) 1500 C50 (1500m3) 6 Frigates

Bountiful Frontier        5000 C28 (10K m3) 1000 C32 (5000m3) 2 Cruisers, 3 Frigates

Vast Frontier              5000 C32 (25K m3) 1000 C28 (2000m3) 4 Cruisers

Vital Core                  500 C320 (2500m3) 6000 C540(60K m3) 2 Battleships, 2 Frigates

Instrumental Core       500 C540 (5000m3) 6000 C320(30K m3) 2 Battleships

A note on sleeper enemies....

As mentioned above you can find sites below the class of wormhole you are in (i.e. a Barren Perimeter in a C4) but the sleepers you face will have the same stats as if you were in the native class of W-space. So a Barren Perimeter site, even if it is in a C6 Wormhole system can be soloed by a cruiser although why you are taking a cruiser into a C6 is beyond me!

A note on gas...

Gas does not have to be refined in order to use it as Ore and Ice products do but can be used as is in T3 production. Because of the different uses and proliferation of gasses the values can be quite extreme. At time of writing C84 is worth around 180 isk/m3 while C320 is worth around 17,000 isk/m3! However getting to C320 can be very difficult so a tip for beginners is to harvest C50 which at time of writing is the second most valuable gas at around 7000 isk/m3. The sleepers can be cleared very easily and the site can be cleared very quickly due to the small size of the gas.

A note on the more valuable gasses...

When you start getting up to the C320/540 stage you will need several people working together to clear the site due to it's size so you will probably need haulers and also someone acting as a dedicated scout because there is nothing like watching someone clear a site then ganking them and taking all the gas it took them hours to harvest in a matter of minutes.

A note on ships...

A BC works well for this due to it's cargo size and Grid/CPU output. If you have someone with good leadership skills then a Mining Foreman Link - Laser Optimization gang link will affect your harvesters cycle time so it is up to you if you want to fit one.

A note on fitting...

Otherwise a Proto cloak, probe launcher and expanders are the order of the day. Oh yeah a Scanner in a mid slot is useful too so you can see how much gas is remaining (you only need a T1 scanner as you have to be 1500m from the cloud to harvest so you don't need increased range). A bit of tank is handy and cargo expanders in the lows. THERE IS NO EXCUSE NOT TO FIT 2 WARP CORE STABS! I cannot emphasise that enough. If your constant spamming of D-scan is not enough to see someone (and in a lot of cases it won't be) then if one person warps in they would need a faction scram to catch you and if they can afford that then chances are they have a much better ship and more skills than you so you are dead anyway, otherwise a big gang will drop on you with multiple scrams in which case you are dead anyway. Two stabs are just about right for this. You may also want to fit some sort of ECM in the mids but that is up to you.

Gas harvesting IS very dull as you don't even get the "click-drag" every 3 minutes that you get with regular mining, you just sit there and wait for your hold to fill up. which can take as much as 15 minutes or so. That said it is VERY profitable, you can get close to 200M isk/hr from harvesting C320 at time of writing which far negates any boredom you might get. Use it in T3 production and you can make it even more profitable, even turning it into polymers can make it more valuable.

Happy Harvesting.