So, there are many sites that help you do the sums for T2 invention – what your expected cost would be with various skill levels, what the impact on cost-per-unit and ism-per-hour is with decryptors etc.
And yet, I haven’t found anything equivalent for T3 cruisers/subsystems or destroyers.
Did I overlook something, or do they not exist?
After the barge and exhumer posts, I thought I’d post a selection of Orca fits for those who are unfamiliar with fitting them.
The Orca is primarily used for mining support, with additional use as an impromptu hauler for high-value large items (high-value small items go into Blockade Runners).
As a mining support ship, your role is to survey scan for the best/largest rocks and ice, tractor jet cans into your ore bay, and provide mining foreman links. In ideal circumstances, you will also have a hauler to empty your fleet bay for you, but if pushed, you can dump the ore in a nearby station yourself.
As an impromptu hauler, you haul medium amounts of stuff around and hope you’re tough enough not to be a worthwhile target.
It’s important to note that Orcas have a large number of structure hit points, so maximising the benefit from that is important, regardless of role.
One cycle of an MWD (10 seconds) will let an Orca get to warp speed, instead of the ~45 seconds it normally takes, so it’s worth adding some fitting modules to achieve this where possible. Note the transverse bulkheads that make this fit ridiculously durable.
A warfare link for mining yield is a common fit; note that a reactor control unit is now necessary. Faction ones aren’t appreciably better than tech 2, but necessary if you don’t have the skills for t2, and they’re fairly cheap.
After yield, generally the next link to use is a shield resistance link, but mining laser range is also popular. Note the additional fitting module required.
You will need an additional ancillary router for a third link but it’s essentially the same.
Using two cycles of an afterburner will help you get to warp speed, but not as effectively as an MWD. Still, the power grid savings are huge, as can be seen by this fit.
If you need a tanked hauler, then use a standard MWD fit. Fitted ships will fit in the maintenance array; other stuff will fit in the ore or fleet bays.
If you need a hauler with a larger cargo bay (but not ship maintenance bay), then you could fit expanded cargo bays and rigs, but your EHP drops to 85k which is probably not a prudent situation when you’re hauling expensive stuff in an expensive ship. Perhaps try a Bustard instead.
Following from my mining barges post, I thought I’d put a few fits for the Tech 2 versions, and their stats. These fits aren’t the final word, so feel free to change them around (e.g.a small shield extender can be replaced by something more useful, like a survey scanner). However, they provide a good baseline to compare the various exhumers.
Best for: being very difficult to kill. Battleship-class hit points plus a very high top speed mean extreme survivability.
Skiff with a damage control is ridiculously tough. This fit is solidly over tanked.
Even with three mining laser upgrades, there’s more than enough spare hit points to sneak in a survey scanner.
Again, quite over tanked.
A safe choice for ice harvesting, while still 22% faster than a Procurer.
Best for: solo AFK mining. Huge ore bay means you can mine in peace without trips back to the station every ten minutes.
Pretty darn tough. This is a good afk fit.
Still tough, mines a bit faster (29 minutes for a full load). Swap the kinetic hardener for a scanner if you need to.
A lot less EHP, fills in 27 minutes instead. Useful for non-AFK mining.
Tough, 27.5 minutes full.
Decent EHP, 25 minutes.
Marginal EHP, 23 minutes.
Best for: fleet mining. Tiny ore bay but high yield necessitates hauler support, but is the fastest-earning ship if you have that support.
22k ehp, 26.31 yield.
15k ehp, 28.68 yield. Nice. Risky, but nice.
20.5k ehp but a sizeable 29.37 yield.
15k ehp again, but 32.4 yield, wow.
In conclusion, the exhumers are a fair bit better than the normal barges, but just bear in mind that if you don’t tank them, you’re risking almost 200M isk on a ship that could die to two Catalysts…
From Reddit:
tldr; in the majority of cases, 1 x Inertial Stabilizers and 2x Hyperspatial Accelerator is optimal.
So, a while back I made some posts about mining barges. They’ve been tweaked a bit in Kronos so I thought I’d take a look at the fits and see how they now compare.
Still best for surviving ganks or going AFK without caring, but this time with more drones and speed and even less yield than before.
Max yield drops from 16.4 to 15.2 but is 15% tougher. Ore hold fills in 13.2 minutes.
Procurer fit for yield is still tough as a brick, but still 18 cubic metres yield, down from 19.2, but still tougher than in Odyssey even when fitting a survey scanner. Ore hold fills in 11.1 minutes.
For ice harvesting, the max tank Procurer is still stupidly tough, but IMO it’s definitely worth using the ice harvesting rig because you do have EHP to spare. (fills in 13.5 minutes)
The Procurer can easily sacrifice the suitcase and a rig slot for max yield, yet still be quite difficult to gank. (fills in 9.8 minutes)
The Retriever was too popular, so its yield has been nerfed to counteract its effortless AFK isk.
Retriever fit for max tank is the same yield as a Procurer. At least the transverse bulkheads are a massive improvement. 19k EHP is pretty decent against a solo ganker. Ore hold fills in 30.1 minutes.
The Retriever yield has had a haircut so it makes sense to tank it up a bit since you’re obviously not in it for the yield so much as the AFKness. Fills in 25.4 minutes.
The max tank Retriever aims to maximise survival against a single ganker while getting some sort of ice while AFK. Fills 26 blocks in 25.7 minutes.
The ice yield Retriever aims to not be uber-tanked, but just less desirable than the Retriever next to it. Fills 26 blocks in 21.2 minutes. (Feel free to swap the survey scanner with a small shield extender II or meta thermic shield resistance amplifier)
Now boosted for even more yield at the expense of everything else.
Covetor yield is now 22.35 even with a damage control (this is for solo usage). In a mining fleet situation, you won’t need the scanner, and you’re probably better off with shield rigs because you’re likely to be receiving shield gang link support. Ore hold fills in 5.2 minutes.
Max yield Coveter is 4 or 5% better than in Odyssey and hasn’t changed much. Note the shield fit, to take advantage of fleet bonuses. Ore hold fills in 4.8 minutes.
A minimally-tanked Covetor is still squishy. I don’t like it. Six blocks takes four minutes.
The max ice Covetor is short on CPU so a processor over-clocking rig may be needed. Six blocks takes 3.64 minutes.
So, there you have it. The transverse bulkheads are great for solo use, especially on the Retriever and Covetor,
but aren’t as good as shield rigs if you have fleet boosts. The Procurer is a lot tankier and useful in High sec,
the Retriever is slightly nerfed but still the king of afk for 30 minutes play, and the Covetor gets a slight yield buff
to make it even more attractive for alert miners who are after maximum yield.
Edit: Updated on May 13th thanks to your feedback :edit:
Another small change in our Summer 2014 release that we’re ready to collect feedback on:
We’re planning on adding a series of Hull HP rigs, known as Transverse Bulkheads. These rigs will use the Armor Rigging skill, with a penalty to cargo capacity. They will be available in all sizes.
- The T1 rigs would increase hull hitpoints by 20%, at the cost of 50 calibration.
- The T2 rigs would increase hull hitpoints by 25%, at the cost of 75 calibration.
We don’t expect these to replace trimarks and CDFEs for most players, but having the option should be interesting in several cases.
We are also going to swap the speed penalty on all reinforced bulkhead modules to an equal percentage cargo capacity penalty. The agility penalty will remain intact at this time.
Let us know what you think!
-Fozzie
These changes will boost the effective hit points of Orcas and Rorquals by up to 65%, depending on fit, at the expense of cargo (which may not be such a problem, given the specialised ore and fleet holds it has). Similarly for industrial ships (and presumably freighters?), although the trade-off is a more difficult choice when there’s more cargo hold to lose. It probably also has a niche in mining barge fits, aside from the Procurer hulls which will probably still bias towards shields.
The rigs will probably also see some use on Taranis and other hull-biased combat ships, since there’s no speed penalty to them, so while it’s not the most universally-applicable rig, it’s a lot less niche than e.g. hacking rigs.
Verdict: two thumbs up.
So, Burn Jita started a few hours early for me. I was urgently called away from the PC and thought ‘hey I’ll just autopilot the next couple of jumps’
No regrets; RL > Eve etc
Serpentine's Eve 
