Mining Barges

The Retriever

Becoming a profesional Miner is a time intensive prosess, and your first goal should be to get youself into a Retreiver Mining Barge.

Skill Requirements

• Mining IV
• Astrogeology IV
• Science IV
• Science IV
• Industry V
• Mining Barge III

Now why exactly do you want this ship, that to be honest can be blown up by a couple of rats if you dont dispatch some drones to take care of them. Well there are many reasons, and here are the top few.

Cargo Bay The retriver has a very respectable 2000m3 cargo bay, which is significantly more then the mining frigate or crusier that you have been using so far. It may not be the size of an industrial ship, but then the industrial doesnt exactly having the mining capability either. And don't forget that with two low slots, you can use 2 cargo expander II's to boost that cargo hold by 55%

Strip Miners The strip miner is the miners best friend in the whole universe of Eve, and dont forget it! They can only be fitted to Mining Barges and Exhumers so if you want to be hitting the highest yield numbers, this is the equipment you need.

The First Step It is youre first step towards owning yourself the allmighty Hulk which will be covered later, and trust me you want the Hulk you really really do.

But What about the Covetor?

The Covetor is the best in the Mining Barge Range, and many would argue that it is redundent, however there are many who can throw a few counter arguments back.

Why dont I get a Covetor instead of the Retriever

You will, and all in good time, however and its a fairly big however, you dont have the skills, and wont, for about anther month. The skills are the same as the Retriever, except for;

Skill Requirements

• Astrogeology V (level 3 skill)
• Mining Barge V (Level 4 skill)

And now you can see the problem, to fly a Covetor, you need to skills to be trained to Level V and the skills themselves, have skill training multipliers. As an approximate answer, and this does depend greatly on your learning skills, but you can get yourself into a Covetor with about a months training.

So is it worth it? And the answer is an easy yes, not only will you have gained an additional 11% bonus to your yield through skills, but now you can fit a 3rd strip miner. Thats a huge increase to your yield!

But ive been told i can fly a Hulk now? Sort of, yes the hulk is less then a day of skill training away, you have to take into account that the covetor is in the price range of 20million isk, where as the hulk, at its lowest would cost 100million isk and post dominon the price is now in the 200million region. If you have that sort of isk lying around then by all means, forget about the covetor and head to our section on Exhumers, otherwise enjoy this next step to being the perfect miner.