Grismar's EVE Wiki : IndyMining

Indy Mining (aka Afk Mining)

Indy (Industrial) Mining is when you take your average industrial ship, install as many cargo expanders and mining lasers as you can fit and then go mining. This pretty much means sitting in a high security status system for hours while your single mining laser drops a few m³ of ore into your 10,000m³ cargo hold. It is a very slow way to mine but despite being among the most boring things you can do in EVE it is actually quite popular. This is probably because it falls into the category of Away From Keyboard (afk) activities. Every indy miner is off doing something else ¹. Have you ever tried to start a conversation in a group of indy miners?!

If you're into the industrial life though, Indy Mining is the handiest way to get all your basic minerals so you can spend your active time in EVE doing something more interesting. Some people have been known to set up an alternate character (alt) with enough skills to indy mine, so when they're going to be afk they just log in with their alt and leave it mining.

Tips

To begin indy mining you'll need the following:

• An Industrial ship and the skills to pilot it. Each race has it's own Industrial ship and it doesn't really matter which one you choose, though it's generally easier to stick with your own racial ship-type. Check out the skillgroup Spaceship Command for information on piloting skills.
• mining laser. As all Industrials can only fit one turret it's a good idea to equip the best mining laser you can fit. You should use a Miner I or one of it's better variants, until you can fit a Miner II.
• A large hold. Using the best cargo expanders available to you.
• A high security system. It would do no good to do a bit of afk mining only to find yourself in a pod when you return, so you'll need a system with no NPC rats. Any system with a security status between 0.9 and 1.0 is pefectly safe², NPC rats only appear in systems with a security status of 0.8 and below. This also means that you are limited in the ores that you can mine, namely Veldspar, Scordite, Plagioclase and Pyroxeres.
• A large asteroid. Asteroids get depleted, albeit very slowly with only one mining laser, so you should choose the largest asteroid you can find of the ore that you want to mine. If you don't have a mineral scanner equipped you can still get a good idea of ore content by checking the radius of the asteroid. Experience will tell you if one asteroid will fill your cargo or if you'll need to come back in a while to select a new asteroid.

For really effective indy mining you'll need:

• A high Industrial skill level. Each Industrial has a 5% bonus to cargohold capacity per level in this skill.
• A high Mining skill level. Each level in this skill will increase your mining laser yield by 5%, very important when you only have one mining laser!
• A high Astrogeology skill level. Each level in this skill will increase your mining laser yield by a further 5%.

Not Indy Mining

Although using a Mining Barge with strip miners might seem like an improved version of Indy Mining (almost as large cargo hold, faster at mining) it lacks the afk aspect because your cargo fillls pretty quick. So even though Indy Mining is boring and is the slowest way to mine, it's probably here to stay.

Related Articles:

¹ Unlike macro mining, afk mining is not prohibited by the EULA.
² With the proper skills, it's doable to afk-mine in 0.8 aswell, if you setup a passive shield-tank. A possible Badger MK II setup could be: High - Miner II's, Med - 4 Shield Rechargers, 1 Survey Scanner, 1 Medium Shield Extender II, Low - 2 Cargo Expanders, 1 Power Diagnostic System. Another good option is an Iteron V, with more or less the same setup.

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CategoryMining CategoryUnfinished
Current EVE version: 2.08.3582 (Exodus)