Mining Ships in EVE Online: Frigates

Starting out in EVE, you are pretty much limited to using frigates for some time before you can train up to cruisers and the rest of the ship classes. Nor should you really rush into using more advanced (and considerably more expensive) ships before training up all of the other supplementary support skills, but that's besides the point. When starting out in mining, all of the four races have a frigate that's more suitable for job.

You can only equip mining lasers on frigates, but there are several variations available, with Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream being the Tech I variation that brings in the most yield (49 m3/cycle) and the Tech II Miner II laser being the best mining laser (60 m3/cycle). Of course, both of these don't come cheap, especially for someone who just started out, so you're likely to be using the the most basic Miner I, which will do the job just fine.

With regards to the skills that you will need to fly a frigate for mining, the race-specific Frigate at level II and at the very least Mining level I will let you start chipping those rocks. Of course the better those skills are, the more ore you can mine faster. The four frigates of the corresponding races are very similar to each other, just varying in terms of the number of medium and low power slots as well as the cargo capacity.

All of these frigates have a bonus of -60% capacitor use by the mining laser and additionally give 5% more cargo capacity and 20% more mining yield per each level of the Frigate skill.

Bantam (Caldari)

Fitting slots:
High 2 | Medium 2 | Low 2

Cargo capacity:
235 m3

- can fit 1 light drone

Tormentor (Amarr)

Fitting slots:

High 2 | Medium 1 | Low 2

Cargo capacity:

235 m3

- can fit 1 light drone

Navitas (Gallente)

Fitting slots:

High 2 | Medium 2 | Low 2

Cargo capacity:

215 m3

- can fit 1 light drone

Burst (Minmatar)

Fitting slots:

High 2 | Medium 3 | Low 1

Cargo capacity:

225 m3

- can't fit any drones