Hauling Mined Ore - Using Mining Frigate vs. Industrial Ship

A big part of mining is maximizing your income. However, when mining alone, you are very likely to be warping back and forth between the station and the asteroid belt, at least in the beginning stages of your mining career. With that in mind, I decided to calculate just how much income is lost when not using an industrial ship to haul your ore.

Taking just a 4-day old character, flying a Bantam (Caldari Frigate), I calculated the income in ISK/hr. Then I added a Badger to the mix (no equipment fit, Caldari Industrial skill only at level I) and redid the calculations. Here is what I found out.

Mining and hauling using only a Bantam:

- 389.16 m3 cargo capacity (Bantam)
- 76.8 m3/minute mining yield from two mining turrets = 2 x 76.8 m3 = 153.60 m3/min

- Mining ore of choice: Solid Pyroxeres (0.3 m3 volume) sold at 49.59 ISK/unit ore
- Full cargohold of ore (389.10 m3 of solid pyroxeres) took about two and a half cycles to fill
- Time from undocking the station to the next undock after selling the ore was 4 minutes 10 seconds.

389.10 m3 / 0.3 m3 = 1297 units of solid pyroxeres ore

1297 units x 49.59 ISK/unit = 64318.23 ISK

64318.23 ISK - 1% transaction tax = 64318.23 ISK - 643.18 ISK = 63675.05 ISK

63675.05 ISK / 4.17 minutes = 15269.80 ISK/minute * 60 minutes = 916187.77 ISK/hr

Badger at an Asteroid Belt

Mining using Bantam, jetcanning and hauling using a Badger:

- 4331.25 m3 cargo capacity (Badger)

- 76.8 m3/minute mining yield from two mining turrets = 2 x 76.8 m3 = 153.60 m3/min

- Mining ore of choice: Solid Pyroxeres (0.3 m3 volume) sold at 49.59 ISK/unit ore

- Badger cargohold (Industrial) filled to 4300.8 m3 of ore (28 full mining cycles) and Bantam cargohold (Frigate) was filled to 307.2 m3 (2 full cycles) to avoid partial cycles and waste of time and ore.

- The ore was jetcanned.

- The time measured included undocking with the Bantam (Frigate) , mining, docking with the Bantam (Frigate), changing ship to Badger (Industrial), undocking, picking up the ore, docking and selling the ore.

- Total time measured was 33 minutes

(4300.8 m3 + 307.2 m3) / 0.3 m3 = 15360 units of solid pyroxeres ore

15360 units x 49.59 ISK/unit = 761702.40 ISK

761702.40 ISK - 1% transaction tax = 761702.40 ISK - 7617.02 ISK = 754085.38 ISK

754085.38 ISK / 33 minutes = 22851.07 ISK/minute * 60 minutes = 1371064.20 ISK/hr

Mining Using a Jetcan - Full Cargo Load for the Badger (Caldari Industrial)

Looking at these numbers, you can see that warping back and forth adds too much travel time. Jetcanning the ore and hauling it later with an industrial ship provides additional 454876.43 ISK/hr. This difference can be increased further with upgraded mining yield and upgraded cargo capacity of the hauler ship.

Jetcan mining opens up the possibility of ore theft though. Populated systems are crawling with opportunists and dedicated can-flippers. Most often these people are just looking for a way to destroy your ship, they are not interested in the ore. But that still means that your income will be lost if your can is flipped.

As an alternative, you can deploy secure containers, but they have a limited cargo space. That will reduce the ISK/hr to a point below jetcanning, but still above that of warping back and forth. For the differences between using Secure Containers and Jetcans, read here.

As usual, added risk means more reward. If you can find a secluded system without much traffic (and hopefully good prices for selling the ore), then jetcan mining will be much more profitable for you.