History
I think it's important to start here. Why? because all crazy ideas and massive fleets first have a good grounding in reality.
Idea 1.0
The first iteration of this idea was to get a Refinery and install it in a low sec off the beaten path system in low sec near the AMC. Greagan and I were going to stock this with Procurers and run a shared can every so often, while keeping it mostly shutdown because fuel costs. it was going to be quiet, calm and not very well advertised. sticking with the AMC method of no events in the calendar I think it would have been interesting. We got a refinery from Tal Tracyn and started to camp the system to find out who the locals are. Of note here, there were locals.
Idea 1.1
Eadrom from the NSC then started a spreadsheet of moons at the NSC and there was a lot. Greagan and I were very surprised that refineries were being setup at the NSC but it should have been expected. So we started thinking about maybe just getting one moon and mining that out. We started discussing the movement of this op to the NSC. we also looked at the prizes we had gathered up. we were looking at around 1 to 2 Billion in prizes turns out when Idea 2.0 came around this would grow to epic levels and be something of an entire moth in planning.
Idea 2.0
While this idea was forming and the Refinery was cooking, during one of my shared cans an unnamed Unista dropped into comms and asked when we would do a shared can in NSC for Moon mining. Greagan and I discussed this, at length. We both were aware of NSC's refinery plans, and we concluded that we didn't have the manpower/willpower to defend our own low sec mining facility. So we decided that we would move the op to NSC. I contacted 2 refinery owners. I figured based on my Shared cans we could clear 6 belts in a session. I vastly underestimated the sizes of these moon belts. Both refinery owners agreed to the 3 week notice date and set their refineries to pull up moon chunks specifically for this operation. I had 7 refineries in total and a date that was 3 weeks out. Now the real work began.
I started by stopping my weekly shared can at the AMC. I know this is an enjoyable isk maker but this planning was going take work. Greagan got to work making bubbles and more prizes. We had bubbles to bubble the bubbles with when they were already in bubbles. Funny side note: there is a character named Bubbles that routinely gives the NSC guys a good fight. I really wanted to see Bubbles in a bubble surrounded by more bubbles. I also started to talk to staff about the event and Yuri was recommended as a combat FC to protect the fleet. We had long talks about the best ways to organise this and the best gates to camp and where to setup bubbles and fleet comp including special snowflakes that make the fleet work better. We formed plans for being hot dropped on and how best to handle being camped in station etc. It started as a private slack chat between 4 players in staff slack and grew into a whole slack sub channel and many more voices coming in to give advice.
In the end these Unistas joined in on the planning: Cryptic Sharvas, Greagan Tonathias, Kontxesi Buchanan, Matt Ross, Yuri Levnik, Anna Iwaira, Bora Vyvorant, Crimson Herring, Dominic Altol, Frostdragon Dallocort, Lanik Solette, Maximus Hert, Mongo The Mechanic, Nabs Hawk, Nunnery Michigan, Richard Starwalker, Staberinde, Sturym, and Titus Tallang. We were also supervised by Laura Karpinski, which iss very good indication that things were moving to an epic level.
Speaking of which, whenever Greagan says "Hey Cryptic" from now on I'm going to cower in a corner. That is how we end up in low sec in Bantams on youtube (yes it was recorded by the other side) or in corvettes at the eve gate or mining the most massive moon belts I have ever seen.
The invites to come and join the moon mining extravaganza went out early. I figured I wanted this to be university wide event because moon mining is new and I wanted everyone to have an opportunity to try it out and see what it was all about. After posting the original post to the AMC forums I spammed all the Slack channels I was allowed in. There was no going back 3 weeks out and everyone had time to plan to either be a combat pilot and die protecting the miners or be a miner and die mining rocks. I figured either way we were going to die.
I started moving the prizes to Jita and the supplies for the bubbles, I decided to be smart and use a well known shipping service to get it across the choke points. Turns out I now have a 3 of 6 success rate at having my stuff delivered. However, with isk in my pocket from the collateral I was able to buy more prizes in Jita including a shiny rattlesnake and 2 Gilas. (In total 80 ships would be given away)
A week before the operation I moved to NSC to catch up with all the goods I had shipped in. It is at this point I want to thank the NSC jump freighter service. I had maybe 10 different shippings and most of them were full shippings. I shipped in 25 procurers, 4 battleships for me to be blown up in, plus all the fittings and bubbles. I know a few other people shipped in their own stuff. Without the jump freighter service this would not have happened.
I got procurers ready to go. I scouted Greagan's orca in from Solitude to NSC. I arranged to move Procurers from AK- to PC9 (the AMC super secret stash) I got blown up in an executioner 3 times while joining combat stuff for fun. It was a great time spent at NSC. I also organized mad dashes to get stuff that I had forgotten like ventures. I lit cynos, multiple times. Thing left to do at NSC. light a cyno during combat. For the 2 or 3 days before the event the local roamers turned up the heat and it did disrupt the logistics somewhat in this process. for example we had to put reships in T22 for the combat pilots.
The Operation
I signed on about an hour before the op and Yuri was getting things setup. I jumped in and setup the mining wing and added some stuff to the MOTD. I was as ready as I was every going to be. I started handing out procurers to those that needed mining ships and ventures. I had a donation that added 25 procurers to the AMC NSC stock pile and 12 procurers from our original stock pile. I gave out 26 and we had other miners with their own ships.
And so it began with 135 in fleet, including the combat wing. This fleet was big. I called right away for a 2nd Orca pilot and 3 Miasmos pilots. Turns out 3 Miasmos pilots couldn't keep up and we needed 1 or 2 more. Also turns out that Moon belts are huge and 2 Orcas isn't enough. At the height of everything We ended up fielding 5 Orcas and 4 Miasmos pilots just to keep up with the miners. 155 pilots joined us for this event in total.
The other effect of the massive fleet was I wasn't going to be able to keep up with laser on/off times as well as combat pilot in/out times. I decided to scrap attempting to do that and either go with an equal weighted share or figure out how to use the logs. Turns out logs are easy to use to see when people joined and left fleet and this is what is being used to compile in and out times. if you were docked up and remained in fleet please contact me with your approximate dock up time.
We started in T22 and mined only the best ore from the 3 refineries located there. after the combat fleet opened a door for us we went to 5-D and started on the first 2 belts. I kept an evepraisal link going through the operation. I figured this would give everyone a sense of how much this moon goo was worth. Turns out when you get widely differing values 14.92 Billion sell value and 5.93 Billion Buy value. please do not expect the high end of this value.
That said I later found out someone mined Dense Veldspar and Golden Omber. I suspect an AMCer trolling me.
This operation lasted 7 hours and was one of the longest continual times I've been signed into eve.
The Ore is all collected in 2 stations and I am in the process of selling it off. As the price of the ore on the Jita market is non-existent, I am stuck trying to do this in a different way. Here's how I'm handling it. I know what all the rocks refine too at 100% refining (does not actually exist) I also know the mineral/moon goo prices in Jita, which is a more stable market. I have taken into account refinery losses and how much of each mineral I would get from the refinery process. This is used to calculate how much each unit of ore is worth. I do have some adjustment to make on the refinery losses but I can give a rough estimate of 6 Billion in ore mined.
The good:
I successfully answered the question I've been given for 3 months "When is the AMC going to mine moons?" Well we just did
I gained a whole new perspective into the logistics behind setting up a university wide event
Not a single miner blew up.
The whole University came out - We practically declared sovereignty over the PC9 pocket. (I know it's not sov-null but for 7 hours it was completely and totally owned by E-UNI) I'm sure Yuri's combat AAR will have a list of "nopes" that happened.
I can see a big event through to the end (it's not finished)
I had an alt in a Battleship one shotting the battlecruiser rats it was lots of fun.
The bad:
I feel like I froze up and was in the wrong ship (I did miasmos work) I should have been more in belt watching what everyone was mining. at the size of our operation I don't think I needed more then a frigate so much was happening.
I should have delegated prize draws to another person.
I should have better assigned jobs to mining teams so that each Orca would have a team of miners that would keep close and dump into the fleet hanger and they would be responsible for moving around the belt an mining out 1 type of ore each. or take an area of effect and mining out everything in that area.
I needed to better communicate to the miners how to setup their overview for the moon rocks. I really should have put together a tutorial on how to do this and I did have an opportunity to check out my own settings before hand.
I picked too many moons. Why is this a minus? Because I could have halved the number of moons and still had plenty of ore to mine. Also because I tied up moon mining operations for 2 refinery owners they couldn't do their normal industry. I have learnt about how much to bite off next time.
I have procurers in the fleet, with how well we had the defense setup we could have been mining in covetors.
The crazy:
155 pilots in fleet?????? I will take that as confirmation that everyone really did want to mine moons
Survey scan of the first belt showed 3 billion in ore. This was when I knew we weren't getting everything.
Thanks
Greagan - crazy doesn't happen without you
Yuri - no pretty mining ship explosions
Anna - Logistics fun, I enjoyed working with you at getting everything in place. Cyno for lyfe yo!
Frostdragon and Nabs - Thanks for the rocks!
Everyone else - thanks for coming out.
Remaining work to be done
1. I am in the process of selling everything off - payments will not go out until I have sold it all
2. I am contracting to everyone their prizes please accept the prize as soon as you get the contract so that I can move on. not accepting the contract delays others from getting their ships.
3. Pay everyone
The spreadsheet can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 2023756036
If you are interested in buying moon goo. please comment here:
https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 2&t=107334
Regards,
Cryptic Sharvas
Mining FC 2nd class
