Low-Sec Mining : A continuation...

To find decent ore in low security space, one has to go look for them. Each system has a number of known, stable belts. Whose location remain constant and each marked by a beacon, easily found by any interested pilot or pirate alike.

However, these belts have poor quality ore and for solo operators like myself, I need more exotic rocks to make it worth while. Most pilots are now aware that there are many 'hidden' belts - either shrouded in temporarily visible deadspace bubbles or rock fields that have a long and fast orbit, taking them out of a system and into the depths of space. It is these hidden belts that make me isk. Since they have not been found and exploited - the make up of the ore is usually rarer than the more stable belts. As an example, a 0.2 system in Minnie space usually has omber as it's rarest and most valuable ore. Omber is a great ore but it can be found in quantity and in far safer Empire space. No, within the 0.2 systems, hidden belts yields ochre and gneiss belts to name two.

Knowing this, I had been working hard on prospecting around a number of 0.1 and 0.2 systems; avoiding pirates of all types and fanatical capsuleers now embroiled in faction warfare - an Empire war by proxy in regions of low security space. The process for prospecting is quite simple:

1. I move from low-sec system to low-sec system, dropping exploration probes until I get a hit for a hidden field. It comes up as a deadspace signature oscillating on a certain frequency. All ore bearing asteroid fields, regardless of the ore type has the same, unique frequency. Usually, the hit is very, very faint. The more faint the signal return, the more hidden and therefore more valuable the ore will be. The last positive return was wafer thin in terms of signal strength - but it was there and so tantalising.

2. Once I have confirmed that the system has a hidden belt and it's available, I drop more accurate probes around each planet and scan away. Most asteroid fields, whether hidden or not, feel the gravitational pull of celestial bodies and therefore they have a varying orbit around the planets. The system I was in possessed seven planets but four were clustered close to the central star so one probe, dropped near the sun, covered all four planets. The three remaining planets, each got one probe. A total of four probes were deployed.

3. Once you find the belt (after many attempts) - warp to it in a combat ship and kill off any rats and come back in a mining barge. Rats occasionally wander back so make sure you have things bookmarked for a quick exit.

Simple huh?

So, in some detail: when I am sure that I have found a hidden belt and seeded the planets with probes, I proceeded to scan through the results.

I waited.

The first five hours yielded cosmic anomalies and other space debris but no deadspace signature. It's possible that the belt may have become 'lost' - the deadspace bubble it's in collapsing completely. To check, I dropped a new system-wide probe and yes, it confirmed that there was a hidden belt here and I reseeded the probes around the selected planets. I adjusted their placement slightly, emphasising the probes to concentrate towards the fourth planet. I just had a gut feeling that the hidden belt was sprawling out towards it.

Prospecting like this takes a lot of time and patience but being cloaked in a covert-ops I had plenty of time with little danger of being spotted.

After almost a day of patiently sifting through tera-bytes of data, there was small beep from the scanning array. I had a special rig built to scan for ores and it was a custom job, cost me an arm and a leg. Am hoping the isk I get from the mining will allow me to purchase one of those Sisters Of EVE exploration probe launchers. They are the dogs nuts, so to speak.

I examined the results and it was a creditable hit but it's accuracy was still about 0.75 AU. I warped there and dropped a more accurate but shorter ranged probe and concentrated on this area. Another an hour later, I managed to get within 7000km of the belt and dropped the most accurate probe I could find. It was close now and I knew that I would get it.

My covert-ops was whipping it's way towards the signature - the distance to it counting down and in a flash, I found myself inside a huge belt. Gneiss and Ochre in huge quantities all slowly rotating around their own axis. I couldn't possibly be able to mine all this before the belt disappeared once more: either due to it's own orbit taking the rocks out of the system or the deadspace bubble collapsing. Until then, I had time to mine and mine.

I can actually see this forming into a service: I go out and prospect and find these hidden fields and sell the location to larger, more established mining operations. Then the risk and reward of low-sec mining is borne by these organisations and not me.

Anyway, I have a 'low-sec mining op in a barge' setup already in place and hauled an industrial class ship and a repackaged mining barge to the station nearest to the hidden field and started the operations.

Mining in low-sec requires all hands and eyes on the job. None of this going to sleep and waking up to a hold full of ore. In low-sec, I need to keep an eye on local for unfriendlies, keep an eye for other scan probes (who's looking for me?) and the ever present Angel Cartel sniffing around. No afk here otherwise I would most certainly, lose my ship or worse.

A quick count told me that I have discovered a hidden belt with about 48 very large asteroids and a 50/50 split between Gneiss and Ochre and all varieties too. I started to cherry pick the best ore: the obsidian ochre and prismatic gneiss.

Back to mining

Mining is fun, very serene and relaxing. The recent copy of E-ON had a nice article about mining and while New Eden is a PvP game, there is still much room to work on the coal face, so to speak. For one thing, the corp ore hoppers are in danger of running low once more after the last batch of ammunition was stamped out and sold for a tidy profit. So I worked solo for two nights in the retriever and managed to get a respectable amount of ore (mainly Omber) back into the mining hangar.

During my trip, I had also neglected some of my R & D agents for too long and they were clamouring to get back to some real work as many of their research had reached significant milestones and needed me to sign them off before the next tranche of work could be started. Project management indeed. I checked the data cores and I was very pleased to see the amount of work they had put in. In light of this, I made some enquiries and obtained a data interface, at 65% of market price; thanks to a friend. Am going over there later tonight to see what's up.

Salvage and deep space probes

It sometimes pay to have a salvager or two in place and a hauler close by. I was in a system running a low-sec mission with my corporation mate TFAce who was in a zealot and causing merry hell in the last mission. I left 'T' blasting these recently discovered Angels, hiding in a forward observation station, that I probed out (accidentally) using some exploration probes.

The mission with TFAce was a lot of fun, I was scanning for exploration sites and after a few attempts I found the weak deadspace signature that required a few sift probes to pin-point the Angel site. TFAce is devastating in his zealot and was dishing out damage and destruction on a wide-scale. He's suffering from an isk crunch at the moment, after falling foul to Concord and I offered a loan to him but he was ok.

TFAce has been a stalwart pilot and friend and it was good working with him. My intention is to do more low-sec work with him and prepare ourselves for the faction warfare madness that will be coming.

I was getting very weak hits on the gravimetric wavelength and it was entirely possible that I had discovered what might be a hidden asteroid field. However, unlucky for the Angels, my probes found their hiding place instead. Stubbornly, the gravimetric signal return was still too weak for me to get a lock on. I moved off from the discovered Angel site and had to head back to pick up more probes.

As I was powering back to the gate, there was a pinging sound as my ship flew through a shower of shrapnel and flash-frozen fluids.

A quick scan and there were three wrecks all within range of a gate. I slowed down and scanned the wrecks and was delighted to scavenge some lovely goods; a screen shot is above. One of the wrecks was a hauler and dropped three secure cans, packed full with ore.

Lovely.

Anyway, once that was done, I continued to my hangar and picked up more probes. The difficulty of finding this hidden belt probably meant that it contained quite valuable ore. I was not going to give up. I had a close approximation on where the gravimetric signature was and started to seed probes around this area, I used sift probes with a range of less than 0.4 AU but super sensitive. TFAce by this time had left for the night, leaving me alone in the system.

After almost six hours of scanning, I still had no results but was not going to give up. It was faint, very faint and so tantalising. Twenty-six hours later and half way through a novel, I got a hit. Small, faint and almost lost in the background noise. I double-checked the result and then warped to the search result, the scanner through luck managed to get a result with zero deviation and after a short jump, was spat out into a small asteroid field complete with the remains of some space cathedral. Interested, I hit the scanner and found about seven large pieces scattered about. The rocks were all of the Gneiss variety and very nice they were.



I then arranged for a mining barge and hauler to be made available and will be mining there soon. Unfortunately, there are pirates about. Need to be careful I think.

Mining Haul

A quick two-hour mining sprint with Hal and TFAce and we got the above rocks. Actually, there's a bit more lurking around the inside of the iteron but not bad and time well-spent. Considering no-one in the corp is maxed out on the mining front; I think we did quite well.

The corp has been busy stamping out ammunition and drones for sale, the order books are full and the isk is coming in - not billions mind but a steady income stream. Some of us are looking at invention and the with the stack of BPCs we have; I can afford the time to see if we can pop out a marauder or two. They are nice looking ships but so expensive; almost the same price as a carrier. They will continue to be at this premium price until more producers come online to either invent them or competitively build them to order.

Anyway, back to more mining!

Mining Haul

Tonight's haul with me, Eryrin and Max mining for a few hours. I clone jumped to our mining office in high-sec and went into the belts with gusto. After all the low-sec wanderings it's quite nice to switch down the pace a little and chat with corp mates. We had some peeps sniffing around the cans but we were watching him.

A few hours later and we had a healthy chunk of minerals.

Getting ready to JC back to low-sec tonight.