Creating an Alt Hauler
Stuck in station, unable to purchase the items you need?
Looking at hauling as a means to running trade routes?
Hauling can be a great way to earn ISK doing profitable trade runs. By reading this guide, you will learn how to create the quickest, most efficient hauler. This guide can be considered a current, text version of the Alt Hauling 101 audio class.
Our goal is to be able to haul the most amount of stuff (measured in m3) in the least amount of time from a new character's perspective. In doing this task, EVEMon is your friend, and this guide basically shows you some career paths that you can then customize. The route you take depends on the race of the character, as all characters now start with minimal skills but those include racial frigate skills.
Note: You cannot train these skills (Racial Industrial) on Trial accounts.
Hauler Table
Here is a simple table of Haulers and their cargohold capacity in m^3 with minimal skills and full Expanded Cargohold IIs (plus 3x T1 Cargo Rigs):
| Ship | Cargo m^3 | Race |
|---|---|---|
| Bestower | 13,319 (20,257) | Amarr |
| Mammoth | 17,838 (27,129) | Minmatar |
| Iteron Mark IV | 13,058 (19,859) | Gallente |
| Iteron Mark V | 25,270 (38,433) | Gallente |
| Badger | 7,041 (10,708) | Caldari |
| Badger Mark II | 12,514 (19,032) | Caldari |
Creating a Bestower Pilot
Create an Amarr Character
The best route to take is to create an Amarr character to fly the Bestower, which can haul over 13,000 m3 with a minimally trained set of skills!
Obviously, since we want to fly the Amarr Bestower most quickly, you will create an Amarr character. This is the only option that makes any difference from a gameplay perspective, as it affects your starting racial skills (namely, your racial Frigate skill).
Next, you'll have the ability to chose your bloodline and ancestry. These do not make any difference to the stats you will start with, but they will change your starting appearance and the location your character starts.
Pause Training
If you are creating an alt on an account with other characters, only one character can be training skills at a time. Attempting to add skills to the training queue will result in an error, so you will need to pause training on your currently training character.
Skill Books
Now, your new avatar will start out flat broke. Therefore, you will need to send the alt some ISK to buy the following skillbooks in the starting station:
- Amarr Industrial (270,000)
- Hull Upgrades (54,000)
- Jury Rigging (54,000) (optional)
- Astronautics Rigging (18,000) (optional)
- Total: 396,000 ISK
Neural Remap
You can decrease the training time required by remapping your attributes. If you choose to remap then remember to do so before you start training to maximize the benefit of the remap.
- Maximize Perception
- Minimize Intelligence, Memory, and Charisma
- Remaining points into Willpower
Training Plan for Bestower
You will be flying the Bestower in under 12 hours (half a day) if you go this route!
- Amarr Frigate III
- Amarr Industrial I
- Hull Upgrades I
- Hull Upgrades II
When it is done, you should be able to pilot a Bestower that can fit Expanded Cargohold IIs.
Creating a Mammoth Pilot
Create an Minmatar Character
Although Bestower is a great hauler with a short training plan, its cargo capacity falls far short of fitting a full jetcan of ore. Meaning that it requires additional trips, therefore wasting time when you could do other things. This is where the Mammoth comes in, with just rigs and Expanded Cargohold IIs, it has around 27,000m3 cargo capacity. Although it is a few hundred m3 fall short of a few jetcan, you can easily exceed that with GSCs.
Similar to creating a Bestower pilot, it is recommended to to create a Minmatar character as it will have Minmatar Frigate II already trained and saves us some time. Yet again the bloodline and ancestry will have minimal impact on the training time, especially if you choose to do a neural remap.
Pause Training
If you are creating an alt on an account with other characters, only one character can be training skills at a time. Attempting to add skills to the training queue will result in an error, so you will need to pause training on your currently training character.
Skill Books
Now, your new avatar will start out flat broke. You will need to send the alt some ISK to buy the following skillbooks in the starting station:
- Learning (31,500)
- Spatial Awareness (45,000)
- Iron Will (45,000)
- Minmatar Industrial (270,000)
- Hull Upgrades (54,000)
- Jury Rigging (54,000) (optional)
- Astronautics Rigging (18,000) (optional)
- Total: 517,500 ISK
Neural Remap
You can decrease the training time required by remapping your attributes. If you choose to remap then remember to do so before you start training to maximize the benefit of the remap.
- Maximize Perception
- Minimize Intelligence, Memory, and Charisma
- Remaining points into Willpower
Training Plan for Bestower
If you use a remap and follow this plan, you should be able to pilot a Mammoth around 3 days 4 hours 27 minutes.
- Learning I
- Learning II
- Spatial Awareness I
- Spatial Awareness II
- Iron Will I
- Iron Will II
- Hull Upgrades I
- Hull Upgrades II
- Minmatar Frigate III
- Minmatar Industrial I
- Minmatar Industrial II
- Minmatar Industrial III
- Minmatar Industrial IV
When it is done, you should be able to pilot a Mammoth that can fit Expanded Cargohold IIs.
Optional Training: Rigging
You can increase the carrying capacity of your hauler significantly by fitting it with three Medium Cargohold Optimization I rigs.
It is important to note that you do not need rigging skills to use rigs that are already installed in a ship. You only require rigging skills to install rigs on ships. Therefore, you can either train the skills yourself or give the ship and rigs to someone you trust with the required skills to install the rigs for you. If you choose to train the required skills then you will need to train the following skills:
- Jury Rigging III
- Astronautics Rigging I
Fitting Haulers
Haulers are relatively straightforward to fit.For ore hauling, you will want to have maximum cargo capacity, meaning you want to fit Expanded Cargoholds in low slots and Cargohold Optimization in rigs.
For courier missions, you might want to have faster align and warp speed, so you might want to fit Nanofiber Internal Structures and Inertia Stabilizers in low slots and Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer in rigs.
If you wish, you can train skills to equip shield mods such as Shield Extenders and Invulnerability Fields in the mid slots to tank belt rats for a short time.
Optimize with Giant Secure Containers
There are items called Giant Secure Containers (GSC) which take up 3,000 m3 in your cargo hold. The interesting thing is that you can actually put 3,900 m3 of stuff in a GSC - which means you get a 30% space bonus.
With rigs and cargo expanders, that brings a Bestower total close to 25,400 m3 and Mammoth up to 35,100 m3.
Note: To use these, you do not need to train the skill Anchoring, unless you plan to place ("anchor") them in space. This skill has no prerequisites but is a 3x skill, so it will probably take about half an hour to train if you do plan to anchor your GSCs. However not having them anchored (in space) will enable other people to flip the can and even scoop the entire GSC to their cargo hold.
Note : Giant Secure Cans are great but with a minor limitation, they cannot store some goods like frozen food, livestock. So keep this in mind if you are using these containers to haul goods.
Other Racial Haulers
The Bestower is the fastest return for the most space. However, other races (well, except the Caldari like me) have decent hauling capability depending on the training investment. The Mammoth is often considered the best hauler for a week of training, giving almost half again the Bestower's space (with Expanded Cargohold IIs). The Iteron Mark V has the large cargo capacity of all Industrials.
All stats include a maximum number of these Expanded Cargohold IIs.
Iteron Pilot (Gallente)
For the investment of a month training, an Iteron Mark V pilot will haul over 25,000 m3. Here's how to do that.
You'll need these skills:
- Gallente Industrial V (~24 days from IV with a new character)
- Gallente Frigate III
- Hull Upgrades II
If you fully rig the Iteron V with T1 medium cargo rigs, then it will hold 38,500 m3 and have plenty of mid slots to fit some tank modules. Furthermore, from Iteron V you are within a week of training from piloting an Obelisk. All you need to train are:
- Spaceship Command V
- Advanced Spaceship Command I
Badger Pilot (Caldari)
Finally, if you desire to fly a Badger Mark II, capable of hauling just over 12,500 m3, here's how you can do this. This is most useful for Caldari pilots who already have the Frigate and Hull Upgrade skills and want to be flying in under a day.
You'll need these skills:
- Caldari Industrial III
- Caldari Frigate III
- Hull Upgrades II
Advanced Hauling and earning ISK via Hauling
The next step after mastering industrial hauling (especially the Iteron Mark V) are Freighters and Transports. This section will discuss training toward flying these sorts of ships, including how fastest to train toward them.
You can use outside databases, such as EVE-Central, to find profitable trade routes.
To take the first steps in making ISK with your new hauler, you might consider playing the market or running Level 4 Cargo Missions.
References
A note on hauling (Uni Forums)
Credits
Raddick Tseng for suggesting this, and giving some interesting statistics.
