The Complete Miner's Guide by Halada
22Version 2.2
4. Mining Barge or Battleship?
This is one of the most popular question. Should you head for a battleship or a mining
barge? What's the difference ? Which is better? All those questions will be answered in
this section.
The first thing you need to ask yourself is the following: do you want to PvP sometimes
as well, or are you aiming at a professional mining career and want to concentrate your
character only on improving its equipment and yield until you achieve perfection (yes,
there is such a thing !) ?
If you are unsure for now, then aiming at a battleship isn't a bad idea. A battleship will
mine as well as the medium mining barge (Retriever) if not outmine it depending of the
BS you fly (more on that later), and the training for both at this point is more or less
equal... if you know however that you will want to be very serious about it, then heading
directly for the Retriever is a better idea. Now is the time to use the math explained in
section 3 ... Let's see if you really got it !
4.1 The Battleship Way
The the two most popular battleships for mining are, since Revelation, the Apocalypse
(Amarr, tier 2) and the Rokh (Caldari, tier 3). Although the golden banana has held first
place in best mining battleship for a long time, the Rokh is now the master in this class.
Both have 8 turret slots, however the Rokh has much more CPU, allowing him to fit one
more MLU than the Apoc, and still enough to fit a tank as well. In the last version of this
guide, the Dominix was covered here, as it was a better contender for 0.0 mining. The
Rokh however now fits this bill as well, so the Dominix will no longer be covered.
No battleships in existence have a bonus to your mining yield, so it really comes down to
the turret slots and the CPU at this point. Since the Rokh and the Apoc really are
preferred, this section will concentrate on those two ships.
I'll assume you have the skills I suggested you train in the first section already trained,
which would be Mining 4, Astrogeology 4. If you have no intention in getting a barge,
then you will need Mining Upgrades 4 to fit as many Mining Laser Upgrades (MLU) as
possible on your battleship (it will however not help you on a barge). I will also assume
you have Electronics 5 already. Mining setups are very heavy on CPU, so if you don't
already, get it ASAP.
Take note that MLU is the only factor allowing a battleship to compete with the
Retriever. Without them, the Retriever will actually be superior in all cases.