Business Thursday: mission mining at large

Last week I revealed an unused feature, highsec lvl 4 mining missions that provide good income for newbies and OK income while AFK to veterans. The new Odessey changes just make it more important, as ice mining will become competitive and highsec rock mining will be crushed by the low level mineral boom of nullsec. If you want to mine in relative peace for OK-ish income, mining missions are the place for you.

But there is more in mining missions than you've seen: Yes, you see it right, that mission provides 15M income with 1000ISK/LP and 30M income with 2500ISK/LP. Who provides that high ISK/LP? Pirate factions! The following factions have nullsec mining agents:

• Angel Cartel
• Caldari State
• Gallente Federation
• ORE
• Shansa's nation
• Serpentis
• Thukker Tribe

Of course there are agents in lowsec too, for the following factions. Their income is about 10-12M for a mission:

• Amarr Empire
• Ammatar Mandate
• Caldari State
• Gallente Federation
• Minmatar Republic
• Thukker Tribe

How hard are they?This is me, with horrible skills, AFK-orbiting in nullsec in a Venture. While I was at the keyboard, I did not need to press a single key during the mission. Of course AFK-ing in lowsec and nullsec is not the safest thing, but hey, losing a Venture or Retreiver with an empty beta clone won't kill you. It's like the AFK-orbiting of FW-lowsec. Some frigates were killed, but most were not, simply because no one cared to kill them. This is something a few days old newbie can do in lowsec or NPC null: mission-mine. In sov-null the new ores probably provide better income, but those need refining and hauling capacity as the ore needs to be sold.

How to go large? Place a tower, put a Rorqual below the shield and run multiple miners, eating missions at the rate of 3/hour, providing 30-35M/hour/account in lowsec and 80-90M/hour/account in certain pirate-populated nullsec regions, with very small risk (a Retreiver pays for itself in 15 minutes if mining for pirate factions).