Ice harvesting
Ice Mining is the process of mining in Ice Fields commonly refered to as "Ice Belts", and then selling the cubes for others to refine or refining it into fuel yourself for selling or useing on Player Owned Structures and Capital Ship Jump Drives.
Special modules are required for ice mining, which produce exactly one unit of raw ice each cycle - Each piece takes up 1,000m3 of cargo space. Cause of the inability of Increasing mining yield, upgradeing for more efficiency of the mining process is done by reducing the cycle times of the modules.
Advantages of Ice Mining
- Reduced work for the miner.
- Ability be self-sufficient in terms of POS fuels.
- Lower penalty for working without a hauler - longer cycle times mean fewer trips to the station.
- Ice asteroids are huge - very small chance of actually having one pop.
Disadvantages of Ice Mining
- Reduced ISK yield compared to normal mining.
- Smaller demand for ice products
- Increased chances of suicide ganks.
Contents
Ice Asteroids
In empire space, there are a few systems in each region that have an ice belt. The nearest one to Aldrat is in Eygfe, and more can be found on maps such as dotlan.
Ice belts are very visually distinctive. Hundreds of kilometers long, each huge asteroid can contain well over 100,000 pieces of ice.
Ice Ore
There are 4 basic types of ice asteroid that match the faction that controls the local space. With perfect ice refine, each type will always produce:
- 50 Heavy Water
- 25 Liquid Ozone
- 1 Strontium Clathrates
as well as one faction-specific isotope:
| Amarr - Clear Icicle | Caldari - White Glaze | Gallente - Blue Ice | Minmatar - Glacial Mass | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isotope | Helium | Nitrogen | Oxygen | Hydrogen |
Basic Ice Mining Requirements
Ice Harvesting modules can only be fit on Mining Barges or Exhumers. As usual, the Retriever is the recommended starting point:
Retriever
Ice Harvester
The minimum additional skill requirement to use a basic Ice Harvester is;
This skill set will result in 1 Piece of Ice per Ice Harvester with a base cycle time of 600 seconds or 10 minutes.
Improving Cycle Times
Skills
Continuing to learn the Ice Harvesting skill will decrease the cycle time by 5% per level for a grand total of 25% reduced cycle time which will give us a improved cycle time of 7.5 minutes.
Tech 2 Modules
The Ice Harvester II is available once Ice Harvesting 5 has been trained, which has a base cycle time of 500 seconds, and 375 seconds after the skill bonus is applied. Then the ship bonus depending on what barge/exhumer you are using. (bonuses are noted further down)
Ice Harvesting Upgrades
(Using the Retriever as the example)
We can reduce the cycle time even further by using Ice Harvesting Upgrades. These basically work the same as Mining Laser Upgrades,but the bonus reduces cycle time instead of increasing yield. A T1 upgrade gives a 5% bonus with a 10% CPU penalty, and a T2 upgrade gives a 9% bonus with 12.5% penalty. Obviously our ultimate aim is two fill all of the low power slots with these modules for a combined cycle reduction of 27%. [Note: Training up your Skills:Industry#Mining Upgrades|Mining Upgrades skill will reduce the penalty rate as well as allowing you to use the tech 2 at a higher level.]
As I found when fitting my ship with the Ice Harvester Upgrade II's (IHU II's) I ran out of CPU when i had 3 active and wasn't able to fit the two tech 2 Ice harvesters. I was able to fix this issue with a simple cpu upgrade rig useing the leftover 150 calibration points and training skill points in electronics.
Rigs
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I results in a 12% reduction to the duration of ice harvester cycles. Calibration cost: 250
Ice Output
Due to the changes:
Skiff 66% reduction in cycle time + 1% for every level of Exhumer
Mackinaw 33% reduction in cycle time + 1% for every level of Exhumer
Hulk 0% reduction in cycle time but + 4% for every level of Exhumer
[NOTE: mining barges have the same ship bonuses minus the Exhumer bonus]
Cargo Space
The Mackinaw its the elite in cargo hold followed by the skiff leaving the Hulk trailing behind at last place.
Survivability
While most ice mining is done in hisec, suicide gankers often see the AFK nature of ice miners as an advantage.
The skiff takes the far lead due to its bonuses in shield tank abilitys.
Price
Most dedicated miners will own a Hulk for high-yield mining, so frequently the Mackinaw is bought as a second ship dedicated to solo mining due to the large Ore hold.
The market for both change depending on the demand or availablity, due to this reason the price cant be set as a guide to what ship is the cheapest and most cost effective.
looking at you local market and comparing the price with your needs will have to be taken into account to see what is the best for you.
