Mining yield
This article or section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring. You are welcome to assist in its construction by editing it as well.
If this article or section has not been edited in several days, please remove this template.
The basic principle behind mining yield is that miners mine a given volume of ore/ice/gas in a given time. How much is mined therefore depends on this mining rate (often quoted in m3 per minute) and on the volume of the ore/ice/gas (m3) being mined.
Mineable materials
Ore
- Main article: Asteroids and Ore
There are sixteen types of ore in New Eden (each with two further subtypes, but which are functionally identical to their parent ore), and, as a general rule, the rarer the ore, the higher its volume. So Veldspar (the most common type of ore) has a volume of 0.1 m3 per unit, while Scordite (the second most common type or ore) has a volume of 0.15 m3 per unit. Therefore, a miner can mine 50% more Veldspar than Scordite in any given period of tiem. Rarer ores have ever higher volumes (up to 40 m3 for Mercoxit, the rarest ore type). Ore mining modules (mining lasers and strip miners) mine between 40 and 180 m3 of ore per minute by default; improving ore mining efficiency therefore involves increasing this mining rate.
For example: a beginning miner fits her Venture with two Miner I modules, giving her a total yield of (say) 200 m3/min with a cycle time of 60 seconds. She flies to the nearest asteroid field, and begins mining Veldspar (0.1 m3 per unit). After every cycle of 60 seconds, her Miner Is will deposit 200 / 0.1 = 2000 units of Veldspar in her ore hold. After a few weeks of mining and training skills, she upgrades to a Retriever with two Strip Miner I modules, giving her a total yield of (say) 800 m3/min. Since Strip Miner Is have a cycle time of 180 seconds (3 minutes), they will mine 800 * (180/60) = 2400 m3 of ore per cycle. If she uses her Retriever to mine Veldspar, her Strip Miners will deposit 2400 / 0.1 = 24,000 units of Veldspar in her ore hold every 3 minutes. If (tired of mining Veldspar all day) she switches to mining Omber (0.6 m3 per unit) with her Retriever, she will mine 2400 / 0.6 = 4000 units of Omber every three minutes instead.
You can check the volume of the ore you're interested in through the in-game "Show Info" window.
Ice
- Main article: Ice Mining
There are twelve different types of ice in New Eden, but unlike ore, all types of ice have a volume of 1000 m3 per unit - and all ice harvesting modules mine 1000 m3 (i.e. one unit of ice) per cycle. Therefore, increasing ice mining efficiency involves reducing the cycle time (which, by default, is around five minutes) of ice mining modules, in order to mine more ice in a given period of time.
Gas
- Main article: Gas Cloud Mining
There are 27 different types of mineable gas in New Eden, grouped into three categories. Mykoserocin and Cytoserocin gases (found in known space) all have a volume of 10 m3, while Fullerite gases (found in wormhole space) have volumes varying between 1 and 10 m3. Like ore miners, gas mining modules mine a certain volume of gas per time (around 20-30 m3/min by default), improving gas mining efficiency therefore involves increasing this mining rate.
Improving mining yield
Mining yield can be improved in four ways:
- Training mining skills
- Fitting different modules to your mining ship
- Installing implants in your character
- Be part of a mining fleet and receive fleet boosts
Skills
- See also: Mining skills
Mining and Astrogeology both give a +5% bonus to ore mining yield per skill level, while Ice Harvesting reduces the cycle time of ice harvesters by 5% per skill level. Additionally, all the mining ships gain bonuses from their respective Spaceship Command skills; for example, if you're flying a Venture, Mining Frigate improves your ore mining yield by an additional 5% per skill level (or the cycle time of your gas harvesters by 5% per skill level). This last method is also the only way to improve gas harvesting through skills - Gas Cloud Harvesting allows you to fit an additional gas harvesting module on your ship per skill level, but doesn't improve the efficiency of those modules.
Mining modules
- Main article: Mining modules
Each category of mining module (basic ore miners, deep core ore miners, ore strip miners, deep core ore strip miners, ice harvesters, and gas cloud harvesters) includes a number of different modules which fulfill the same purpose, but some have better performance than others. In other words, mining yield can be increased by using higher-quality mining modules (i.e. modules with a higher yield). The downside is that higher-performance modules may have higher fitting requirements, may require additional skills to be trained, and are usually (but not always) more expensive.
For example, an average-skilled pilot in a Venture fitted with two Miner I modules can mine about 250 m3 of ore per minute. If the pilot uses (Tech 2) Miner II modules instead, his yield increases to about 360 m3 of ore per minute.
Ore miners, in particular, have a large selection of mining modules to choose from.
Mine for a whole cycle.
Improve yield (note: ice decreases cycle time, but effect is similar):
Where to see your actual yield
High-volume ores: get to the next whole number
Like other parts of Eve, mining has some math in it. The basic reasons why you want to do the math when your mining is if you're away from keyboard (AFK) mining you will know the exact time down to the second that you need to be back to handle things. The math you will do will tell you how long it will take for your ship to fill up or how long will it take until what your mining will deplete. To do the math correctly you will need a survey scanner. Once your ship has a survey scanner on it, you will need to scan the near by gas, ice, asteroids, and anything else you can harvest. As soon as you find what you're looking for write down how many units you have before you start mining, and if you want to start mining now then write down your own local time at the time you hit the button to mine. Then right click on what you want to mine and press show info. Now go to the attributes' tab and write down the volume. This volume is how much volume one unit of what your mining will take on your ship. Next you will need the algebraic equation below.
X=How much one unit volume takes U=Amount in units V=Overall volume that all the units add up to
X*U=V
So hypothetically if I was mining 33,215 units of Scordite, which takes .15m3 per unit. The 33,215 units would be 4982.25m3. So the equation will look like this.
33215 * 0.15 = 4982.25
______________________________
Now you need to know how long it will take you to fill up your ship, and how long it will take you to deplete what your mining. To do this you will need to know how much cargo space you have, how much your device takes in, and how much volume your mining. To get this information you will need to do the equation above and then open up your cargo tab and see how much space you have been open. After you write this information down, right click on what your mining with and go to the attributes' tab. Write down the mining amount. This tells you how much volume the device brings in your ship per cycle. Most cycles are about 60 seconds. Next you will need the equation below.
X=Ship cargo hull or whatever your mining
L=How much your mining laser/s or device will pull per cycle.
T=How many cycles your device will have to do before the your ship is full or before what your mining is depleted. Most cycles last for 60 seconds so if this is true you can make T equal one minute.
H=Hour (this is ONLY true if one cycle equals, or you can convert it to one minute)
S=Seconds (this is ONLY true if one cycle equals, or you can convert it to one minute)
Y=The whole number before the decimal place (this is ONLY true if one cycle equals, or you can convert it to one minute)
M=Minute (this is ONLY true if one cycle equals, or you can convert it to one minute)
N=Thousand of a second (this is ONLY true if one cycle equals, or you can convert it to one minute)
X/L=T/60=(H-Y)*60=(M-Y)*60=S
If you get a decimal place when you find your hours just remove the numbers before the decimal place and times the decimal place into 60, and you will find the how many minutes and seconds are excluded from the hours. There will be an example of this in the examples, below since there is a high likely you will run into this. Furthermore, the equation is below.
(S-Y)*60=N
To find how many seconds you will need T=60 seconds to be true. If it is then doing this equation.
T*60=S
For this example, we will use the same hypothetically situation as above but hypothetically if you were flying a ship that had 17,672. 4m3 of free space and you were using a Miner 1 laser which takes 46m3 every 60 seconds. You will first want to know how long it will take to fill your ship. You find out it will take six hours and 24 minutes. Your equation would look like this below.
17672.4 / 46 = 384.1826086956522 / 60 = 6.4030434782609
So it will take 6.4 hours to fill your ship. Since most people don't know what a .4 of an hour is you subtract the 6 and times the rest by 60 and that will give you 24 minutes. You can see this in the equation below.
(6.4030434782609 - 6) * 60 = 24.18260869565217
You can do this down as far as needed. Next you will need to know how long it will take your ship to deplete 4982.25m3 from the situation above. You would use the same X/L=T equation. The answer to the equation above is, if you were really AFK mining you would need to be back in one hour 48 minutes 18 seconds 35 thousand of second, 13 milliseconds and two nanoseconds from when you first press the button to start mining. At this point, you would need to find a new object to harvest. The equation would look like this below, and I went down to the nanoseconds to show you can get to go as far as you want with this equation.
4982.25 / 46 = 108.3097826086957 / 60 = 1.805163043478261
(1.805163043478261 - 1) * 60 = 48.30978260869565
(48.30978260869565 - 48) * 60 = 18.58695652173913
(18.58695652173913 - 18) * 60 = 35.21739130434783
(35.21739130434783 - 35) * 60 = 13.04347826086957
(13.04347826086957 - 13) * 60 = 2.60869562173913
(REMEMBER: To find the exact time you need to make it true by converting the cycles into one minute)
____________________________________________
If your cycles arent true that one cycle equals 60 seconds then the equation below can convert your cycles into minutes. The only thing you need to write down ontop of what you already wrote down is how many seconds does one cycle last. Lets just say your cycle last 45 seconds for this example. You would use this equation below.
X=Ship cargo hull or whatever your mining
L=How much your mining laser/s or device will pull per cycle.
T=How many cycles your device will have to do before the your ship is full or before what your mining is depleted. Most cycles last for 60 seconds so if this is true you can make T equal one minute.
M=Minutes
H=Hour
C=The amount of time it takes to use 1 cycle
X/L=T*C/60=M
So if your were mining the same thing as above with a laser that took in every 45 seconds the answer would be to find out how many minute it will take is 81 minute. the equation for this is below.
4982.25 / 46 = 108.3097826086957 *45 / 60 = 81.23233695652174
From there if you want to find out how many hours that is then just divide that into 60. Then you can just start using the same equation as above from this example (S-Y)*60=N. The equation to get the hours is below.
M / 60 = H
81.23233695652174 / 60 = 1.353872282608696
