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.