Moon Mining Series: Update 2

Today I thought I would provide a little insight on shutting down a mining POS.  It turns out it's a little more complicated than you might expect.  First -- terminology -- I will use the term Control Tower to refer to the main tower, Facility Complexes to refer to things other than the Control Tower, like Silos, Moon Harvesting Arrays, Shield Hardeners, etc, and I will use the term POS to refer to the station in it's entirety (Control Tower + any Facility Complexes). 

Having finished my initial mining experiment, I went to shut down my POS.  One of the first things I did was remove all but about 12 hours worth of fuel.  Why?  Because fuel is valuable and it also takes up a lot of space.  It needs it's own cargo trip if you have a lot of fuel left.  I also offlined the Silo and Moon Harvesting Array.  I removed everything from the Silo and unanchored the Silo and Moon Harvesting array.  Once unanchored, I could scoop them back to the cargo bay.  This was all pretty easy.  Unfortunately, at this point, someone had set up a gate camp on my route and I could not proceed with the shutdown process.  I decided to wait until after down time.  However, for whatever reason, the server didn't come back up in the usual timely manner and I had to go to work.  By the time I was online again, my Control Tower was out of fuel.  Well, almost out of fuel.  It was offline but still had 1 fuel block in the fuel bay.  Here's where the first bit of useful info is -- it appears the fuel is removed in hourly increments.  A small station uses 10 fuel blocks per hour.  If you put 5 fuel blocks in it, that doesn't give it an extra half hour.

What do I care if the station is offline, right?  I'm just taking it down.  Well, here's the thing:  You can't unanchor a tower that has other Facility Complexes anchored off of it.  And I still had a couple of shield hardeners anchored off of it.  And you can't unanchor the other Facility Complexes unless the tower is online.  Doh!

So off I went for more fuel, just a couple of hours worth.  I went back to the station, put the fuel in, and onlined it again.  I could then unanchor the shield hardeners.  With the other stuff unanchored, I then offlined the tower and attempted to unanchor it.  But you can't unanchor it unless it is empty.  I still had a bunch of Strontium Clathrates in it.  They aren't of much value, but they do take up a lot of cargo space.  Guess I'll just jettison it, right?  Wrong again.  There is no option to jettison directly from the control tower.  You have to move it into a ship cargo bay first.  Well, at that time, there was another gate camp blocking my route again, so I didn't have a hauler with me.  I figured I would just start the unanchor and then go switch out ships (Note: this is risky, because if you unanchor and leave the tower, someone else can easily scoop it!  But I was willing to risk it at the time).  I didn't have cargo room to remove and jettison the Strontium Clathrates easily.  Doh again!

Later I came back with a bigger hauler, pulled out the Strontium Clathrates, jettisoned them, and then I could unanchor the tower.  Unanchoring the small tower takes 15 minutes.  After that, I loaded up the tower and a shield hardener and was on my way.  I left behind 1 unanchored shield hardener and 1 ECM battery, because frankly, they weren't worth going back for.  You're welcome, whoever finds and takes them. :-)

Takeaways:

• Control tower fuel should be added/removed in hourly increments.
• Towers and facility complexes must be empty before they can be unanchored.
• Towers cannot be unanchored while other facility complexes are still anchored.
• Facility complexes cannot be unanchored while the tower is offline.

Recommended Shutdown Procedure:

1. If the Control Tower is already out of fuel, take some fuel with you when you head out to it -- just an hour or two worth should be enough. 
2. Offline and empty facility complexes.
3. Unanchor facility complexes and remove them.  For facility complexes outside the shield, you may want to move them inside the shield if you won't be immediately removing them from the system.
4. If you have a lot of fuel left, and the tower plus fuel won't fit in your hauler, remove most but not all of the fuel first.
5. Offline the Control Tower.  Remove the remaining fuel and Strontium Clathrates.  Just jettison them from your ship cargo bay after taking them out of the Control Tower if you don't care to keep them.
6. Unanchor and remove the Control Tower.

Invention Calculator

The last few patches have brought about a number of industry changes. This has left a number of legacy online calculators outdated. Therefore, today I bring you an updated Invention Calculator (post Phoebe).

Base	All modules, rigs, ammo, and all intact Ancient Relics (34%) All Frigates, Destroyers and all malfunctioning Ancient Relics (30%) Cruisers, Battlecruisers, Mining Barges, Industrials (26%) Freighters (18%)
Skill Level	Science Skill 1 1 2 3 4 5      Science Skill 2 1 2 3 4 5     Racial Encryption 1 2 3 4 5
Decryptors	Decryptor Probability X Max Runs ME Modifier TE Modifier None Accelerant Decryptor Attainment Decryptor Augmentation Decryptor Optimized Attainment Optimized Augmentation Parity Decryptor Process Decryptor Symmetry Decryptor
Invention Chance

An additional change to be aware of: Since the Crius release in July [2014], invention only consumes one blueprint copy run at a time. As such we are adding the possibility for Phoebe to queue those runs on a similar manner with Manufacturing runs.

Moon Mining Series: Update 1

A few weeks ago I made a post and provided links to a Clandestine Moon Mining guide. As I continue forward with my own moon mining experiment, I will post periodic updates with things I've learned; things that either aren't covered in the common guides and things that have changed since some guides were written (the one I linked to is good, but rather old). This will be the first update in the series.

Included in today's update:

1. SOV null vs NPC null
2. Mining limitations
3. Station location
4. Anchoring notes
5. The dangers of travel

SOV Null vs NPC Null

First, a note about SOV null space versus NPC null space.  You may already be aware of this.  But for those of you that aren't, it's very important.  SOV null space is null space where corporations and alliances can claim sovereignty.  That includes most of null space, but not all of it.  You do not want to mine in SOV null space!  All of SOV null space has been claimed (or at least, very close to all of it).  More importantly, sovereignty holders are sent a notification if a control tower is erected in their space!  This makes setting up in SOV held space very much not clandestine, and it's likely the SOV holders will quickly show up to destroy your tower. 

So if you can't set up in SOV null space, where do you go?  NPC null space.  NPC null space is space that sovereignty cannot be claimed on.  Usually because it's considered as held by one of the NPC factions.  If you look at some of the Eve sovereignty maps, you can spot most of the NPC null space areas as they are out in the null space perimeter of the galaxy and don't show any sovereignty.  However, some of them neighbor low and high sec, so it's not entirely obvious.  Some example regions include Syndicate, Outer Ring, and Great Wildlands.

Mining Limitations

As you are investigating moons, you need to be aware that each moon can only have one control tower.  So if someone else already has a control tower there, even if they aren't taking advantage of the moon materials you are after, you cannot set up shop next to them on the same moon. 

As you are considering moons, note that abundance values greater that 1 have no significance currently.  If a moon has Atmospheric Gases with an abundance of 2, that does not mean you can have 2 Moon Harvesting Arrays mining Atmospheric Gases.  You can still only have 1, and you will still only get 100 units per hour.  For moons that have more than 1 different kind of resource, you can set up multiple Moon Harvesting Arrays.  However, to run multiple Moon Harvesting Arrays, you will likely need a medium sized control tower instead of a small, likely offsetting any advantage to mining multiple resources.  One of the reasons for this, and another important note, is that you need a separate Silo for every Moon Harvesting Array.  Both Silos and Moon Harvesting Arrays have high CPU requirements (what the heck is that silo using all that CPU for??), and you can't fit 2 Moon Harvesting Arrays and 2 Silos on a small tower.

Station Location

Don't bother spending a lot of time fine tuning where you plop down your control tower.  It doesn't matter.  You have to be within 100 km of the warp in point to anchor it, and when you do anchor it, it will get moved to a standard location.  Remember, there can only be 1 control tower per moon, and it just so happens there is a fixed location for it.  Once you start anchoring it, it will likely reappear a good 100 km from where you are, and you'll have to fly over to it to continue with onlining it. 

Anchoring Notes

A quick note about anchoring, as some older guides have outdated information. A small station takes 7.5 minutes to anchor, and another 7.5 minutes to online.  This is consistent with what old guides will tell you.  However, of all the structure types I've checked, including the Moon Harvesting Array, Silo, and Shield Hardeners, the anchor time is actually very short, usually just 5 seconds.  Once the tower is up, is very quick to set up other structures.

Dangers of Travel

It should be noted that travel dangers can more than offset any profits if you start losing transport ships.  Low and null space is dangerous.  Some folks will say things like "null is safer than high security space".  That's simply untrue.  I know from experience that low security space and null space can in fact be much more dangerous.  In high security, you are usually safe unless you have kill rights on you or run into CODE gankers with a poorly fit ship at a bad time.  However, in low and null space, pretty much everyone you see is out to kill you.  It's extremely annoying if you are just trying to go about your own business.

For ships, you pretty much always want to be in either a covert ops cloaking ship or an Interceptor with an align time of under 2 seconds.  The biggest dangers come from gate camps. 

In low security, you can generally breeze through by activating cloak immediately after engaging warp or leaving gate cloak.  But you need to be good at it.  Many folks out there have ships with very quick targeting times, and if you are too slow engaging cloak, they can get you.  At the same time, if you are too fast engaging cloak, sometimes the cloak will fail to activate (claiming you are still under gate cloak) and you will have to try to activate it again, possibly causing a delay in cloaking that gets you killed.  In an interceptor with an align time of under 2 seconds, it shouldn't matter.  Attackers shouldn't be able to lock you before you get into warp.

In null security, things become more complicated due to the use of warp disruption bubbles.  You can use strategic bookmarks to help, but if you jump into a gate camp with a bubble right on the gate, you might be screwed.  I don't have a good suggestion for handling this situation in a covert ops cloaking ship.  You can either try to burn back to the gate or try to get outside the warp bubbles.  You can leave gate cloak, immediately activate your cloak, and also activate your MWD to get one burst of speed, all the while trying to avoid getting decloaked by whatever they are trying to decloak you with.  Any way you look at it, it's not a safe procedure.  On the bright side, the Interceptor should work just as easily in null space as it does in low space, as they have warp bubble immunity.  So you can scout your route ahead with an Interceptor first before taking your covert ops hauler through.  However, it comes at the expense of added time to scout your route in advance and it isn't guaranteed to always work as someone could set up after you scout but before you take your hauler through.

Remote Repair Options: What Is The Burst Osprey?

First, what you probably already know, but I will include it here for completeness. A typical fleet repair ship, often called a "logi" in Eve, would normally be close to cap stable to be able to provide sustained repairs to the fleet. But when it comes to Anti-ganking, combat events come in intense 20 second events that occur typically 15 or more minutes apart. To combat this with a logi, sustained repairs are not needed. Only 20 to 25 seconds worth of repairs are needed, and if you stay at range, you don't really need any extra tank either. This allows the logi pilot the option of increasing their repair amount at the expense of tank and/or cap stability. Such a ship -- a common one being the Osprey -- will be able to provide a brief "burst" of repairs. Thus the name "Burst Osprey". Below we will look at some burst repair options, and how the compare to more "normal" fits.

To keep things simple further down, lets look at what the hit points repaired per second is for the various equipment and ship bonuses, and use that in our tables. We will keep things limited to characters with all skills level 5 initially for a reference comparison. Pilots with lower skills can use this as a base and adjust the fits down as needed to work for their skill set.

Overloaded numbers shown in parenthesis. All values take character skills into account.

Equipment	Duration (seconds)	Base Repair Amount	Base Repair / sec	Possible Ship Bonus	Bonused Repair Amount	Bonused Repair / sec
Medium 'Solace' Remote Armor Repairer	5.0 (4.25)	192.0	38.4 (45.2)	12.5%/Level	312.0	62.4 (73.4)
Medium Remote Armor Repairer II	4.5 (3.825)	192.0	42.7 (50.2)	12.5%/Level	312.0	69.3 (81.6)
Medium S95a Remote Shield Booster	5.0 (4.25)	192.0	38.4 (45.2)	12.5%/Level	312.0	62.4 (73.4)
Medium Remote Shield Booster II	4.5 (3.825)	192.0	42.7 (50.2)	12.5%/Level	312.0	69.3 (81.6)
Large 'Solace' Remote Armor Reparier	5.0 (4.25)	384.0	76.8 (90.3)	12.5%/Level	624.0	124.8 (146.8)
Large Remote Armor Repairer II	4.5 (3.825)	384.0	85.3 (100.4)	12.5%/Level	624.0	138.7 (163.1)
Large S95a Remote Shield Booster	5.0 (4.25)	384.0	76.8 (90.3)	12.5%/Level	624.0	124.8 (146.8)
Large Remote Shield Booster II	4.5 (3.825)	384.0	85.3 (100.4)	12.5%/Level	624.0	138.7 (163.1)
Light Armor Maintenance Bot I	5.0	15.0	3.0	100% Transfer	30.0	6.0
Light Armor Maintenance Bot II	5.0	17.5	3.5	100% Transfer	35.0	7.0
Light Shield Maintenance Bot I	5.0	15.0	3.0	100% Transfer	30.0	6.0
Light Shield Maintenance Bot II	5.0	18.0	3.6	100% Transfer	36.0	7.2
Medium Armor Maintenance Bot I	5.0	30.0	6.0	100% Transfer	60.0	12.0
Medium Armor Maintenance Bot II	5.0	35.0	7.0	100% Transfer	70.0	14.0
Medium Shield Maintenance Bot I	5.0	30.0	6.0	100% Transfer	60.0	12.0
Medium Shield Maintenance Bot II	5.0	36.0	7.2	100% Transfer	72.0	14.4
Heavy Armor Maintenance Bot I	5.0	75.0	15.0	100% Transfer	150.0	30.0
Heavy Armor Maintenance Bot II	5.0	90.0	18.0	100% Transfer	180.0	36.0
Heavy Shield Maintenance Bot I	5.0	75.0	15.0	100% Transfer	150.0	30.0
Heavy Shield Maintenance Bot II	5.0	90.0	18.0	100% Transfer	180.0	36.0

Now lets consider the following fits:

Ship	Fitting	Purpose
Cap Trans Osprey	3 Medium Repairers, 4 Light Drones	Infinitely sustained repairs
Solo Osprey	5 Medium Repairers, 4 Light Drones	Medium duration repairs
Burst Osprey	4 Large Repairers, 1 Medium Repairer, 4 Light Drones	Short duration burst repairs
Cap Trans Basilisk	4 Large Repairers, 5 Light Drones	Infinitely sustained repairs
Solo Basilisk	6 Large Repairers, 5 Light Drones	Medium duration repairs
Solo Exequror	3 Medium Repairers, 5 Medium Drones	Medium duration repairs
Burst Exequror	2 Large Repairers, 1 Medium Repairer, 5 Medium Drones	Short duration burst repairs
Oneiros	4 Large Repairers, 5 Medium Drones	Medium duration repairs
Armor Repair Armageddon	7 Large Repairers, 5 Heavy Drones	Short duration, short range burst repairs; a rather goofy fit I've been playing around with

Now lets look at the repair potential of each of those fits:

	Remote Repairers					Repair Drones
Ship	Lrg T2	Lrg M4	Med T2	Med M4	HP/sec	Light	Medium	Heavy	HP/sec	Total HP/sec
Cap Trans Osprey	0	0	3	0	207.9 (244.8)	4	0	0	28.8	236.7 (273.6)
Solo Osprey	0	0	5	0	346.5 (408.0)	4	0	0	28.8	375.3 (436.8)
Burst Osprey	0	4	1	0	568.5 (668.8)	4	0	0	28.8	597.3 (697.6)
Cap Trans Basilisk	4	0	0	0	341.2 (401.6)	5	0	0	36.0	377.2 (437.6)
Solo Basilisk	6	0	0	0	511.8 (602.4)	5	0	0	36.0	547.8 (638.4)
Solo Exequror	0	0	3	0	207.9 (244.8)	0	5	0	70	277.9 (314.8)
Burst Exequror	0	2	1	0	318.9 (375.2)	0	5	0	70	388.9 (445.2)
Oneiros	4	0	0	0	341.2 (401.6)	0	5	0	70	411.2 (471.6)
Armor Repair Armageddon	7	0	0	0	597.1 (702.8)	0	0	5	90	687.1 (792.8)

Looking at the table above, you can see that the Burst Osprey actually has a better repair rate than a max repair fit Basilisk! Of course, the Burst Osprey capacitor will run out in a matter of seconds, so make sure whatever burst repair fit you use will last the 20 to 25 seconds needed to counter a high-security gank attempt. The only thing with a better repair rate is the rather awkward Armor Repair Armageddon, but it comes with some serious down sides like very short repair range, slow speed, and the need for some serious tank.

I did leave out consideration of rigs. But the only rig that makes a difference in repair rate is the Drone Repair Augmentor. It can't be used on most of the Burst fits because the Burst fits typically need engineering rigs to boost power grid and CPU. But it can be used on the other fits. However, the drone repair amount is not that much, and the bonus is only 10% for the T1 rig. The boost you would end up getting from using one would probably only be on the order of an additional 10 hp/s.

If you have looked at the Burst Osprey fit information in the Anti-ganking MOTD or on Astral Services, you may notice the claim that the Burst Osprey can rep up to 902 hp/sec. I believe the reason for the descrepancy between that value and what I have calculated here is that the 902 hp/sec is using an EHP value, where my values are not taking EHP into consideration. Also, I did not give any consideration to bonuses from warfare links, which could also play a part.

From running all the numbers, it looks like shield repair might be the better way to go. However, I left out the Augoror, the Scythe, and their T2 counterparts, which is making the results look biased. For Anti-gank purposes, the Scythe would end up looking a lot like the Exequror but for shields, and the Augoror would end up looking a lot like the Osprey but for armor. So shields vs armor repair may actually end up being close to even. The real takeaway should probably be that, for AG purposes, the better drones on the Exequror are not offsetting the loss from having fewer high slots to fit remote repairers in. However, in favor of shield repair, shield repairs can take effect almost immediately, whereas armor repair won't help until the target shields are down. Regardless of what you go with, should a gank fail and the target not be able to escape, remember that you still need some people who can do every kind of repairs -- shield, armor, and hull -- to fully repair the target.