The Economics of Ice Mining
Some folks have asked why I'm joining in the Goonswarm gank-fest on ice miners in Gallente space. After all, I'm not profiting personally from Goons takeover of the market, or of their ship-reinbursment program. I'll tell you why: It's fun! Today you can fly into an ice belt in a Velator, lock up an Orca, and the whole belt full of miners will warp away. It's priceless.
Some brave/clueless/stupid miners (and bots) are still trying to collect Blue Ice. Is it worth it? Let's find out!
With perfect skills in a Mackinaw, a miner will collect 44 units of ice per hour. With perfect refining skills, each unit of blue ice yields: 50 Heavy Water, 25 Liquid Ozone, 1 Strontium, 300 Oxygen Isotopes.
Current sell market prices in Jita for these items are:
* Heavy Water: 23/unit
* Liquid Ozone: 398/unit
* Oxy Isotopes: 1218/unit
* Strontium: 520/unit
Punching the numbers, we come up with 50,600 ISK for Heavy Water; 437,800 ISK for Liquid Ozone; 16.07M for Oxy Topes; and 22,880 ISK for Stront. Call it 16.5M/hour. A Mack hull is going for 140M. If you can manage to survive ice mining in Gallente space for 8.5 hours, you'll come out ahead even if you lose your Mack. Of course, I'm not counting the module costs or rig costs either.
I'm not sure any one is surviving more than four or five hours at a time right now. If you're using a Hulk the numbers are even worse; a Hulk only returns 36 units per hour and costs 200M. At that point you'll have to mine for close to 15 hours to survive loss of a Hulk.
Bots don't know what economics are, and neither do idiots. Therefore, even though it's not worth it, there'll still be targets.
You'd think so, but not so; the botters I've killed are docked up now and won't undock.
I believe that you can use a Covetor to mine ice, too. The yield is lower, of course, but the ship costs less than 20M and, as a T1 ship, it should be fully insurable.
A bit 'o research: A Covetor yields up to 33 units of ice per hour, and costs approximately 17.5M, plus 4.5M for insurance. The insurance payoff is approximately 15.5M, for a loss of approximately 6.5M per Covetor. Which means that a miner would only need to survive about 30 minutes to break even.
So, is it worth it?
No, its still mining.
Agreed.
For CCP Loophole Lawyer: Indeed, your math is correct. I have begun to see ice miners using Covetors. Some of them even use logistics for defense.
Which means little loss, but it also means you're making horrible ISK/hour, particularly when you factor in having to use another entire account for logistics!
Actually, with the increase in oxytope prices, the gross ISK/hour, using a Cov, is about the same as it was prior to Goongeddon, using a Mack.
The net ISK/hour, however, as you pointed out, has dropped dramatically, due to the increased (guaranteed - lol) risk of ship loss. Using a Mack or Hulk, therefore, makes no sense; however, the low loss cost of the Cov still allows for a profit.
Another factor is the cost of the ganking ship(s), which is also a guaranteed loss. If the loss cost of the ganking ship(s) is greater than the loss cost of the mining ship, then the gankers are on the losing end - financially speaking. Esp. since the mining ships are actively generating ISK, whereas the ganking ships are not.
And, consider that for each Mack, a miner can buy something like 20 Cov's. Ganking a Mack per hour per miner is doable, but ganking 20 Cov's per hour per miner is somewhat problematic.
Good points. Shit, I'm going to go buy some Covetors.
It makes a great baitship, too, esp. if you want to rack up a few kill rights for future use. lol :)
Just FYI: 20 covs/hour/miner is quite doable in thrashers, if you can move enough of them into a system and enough pilots to deliver alpha. The technique is a bit different than the goon-style doctrine, but its definitely firmly within the possible. Don't forget that a Covetor also tanks significantly less than a T2 miner.