What is Gas Harvesting?
Gas harvesting is a form of mining, the others being ore mining and ice harvesting. Gas harvesting is used to collect special gases that are used for booster production and if harvested in wormholes, T3 manufacturing. The value of these gases can vary and the price difference between the forms of gases can be enormous, with some gases being worth pennies and others fetching tens of millions for a single Venture haul.
What ship is best for Gas Harvesting?
The Venture is a great ship to use when harvesting gas. As you can see from the traits below it gets a huge role bonus on gas harvesting yields, it has a 5.000 m3 cargo hold, it can fit two gas harvesters and has an extra high slot for a scanner or a cloak, depending on your needs. And since you need to train the skills for this ship whatever you intend to mine, it is the default beginner gas harvesting ship.
How to fit a Gas Harvesting Venture
The way I see it if you get caught in low sec in a Venture, you are dead. So there’s almost no reason to fit any tanking modules. How I would hit a Venture for low sec gas harvesting is the following:
- High slot: 2x Gas Harvesters, Prototype cloaking device.
- Mid-Slot: 5MN Microwarpdrive + 2 optional
- Low Slot: Damage Control
The cloak and the Microwarpdrive will increase your chance of escaping from a hostile if you get jumped in a gas site.
Where to find Gas Sites
Unlike ore and ice, gas can only be harvested from gas sites which must be scanned down using scanning probes. Gas sites can be found in both in known space and wormholes. Mykoserocin and cytoserocin gases can be found in known space, while fullerines are found in wormholes.
Mykoserocin and Cytoserocin
Mykoserocin and cytoserocin are the two forms of gas which are only found in gas sites in known space. Mykoserocin can be found in high-security and low-security space and is used to make Synth boosters which have a mild effect and are less profitable to synthesize. Cytoserocin is found in low and null security space and is used to make more effective and more profitable forms of boosters. Mykoserocin tends not to be very profitable to harvest while Cytoserocin is fairly profitable.
Gas sites are rare in high sec, more common in low and somewhat common in null sec, they are also restricted to certain regions of space. Below is a table which shows what form of gas can be found in which region of space and what it can be used to synthesize. Within each region, there is also a hot-spot constellation where gas sites are always present.
Fullerides
There are nine different types of fullerides, which are gases that can only be found in wormhole space. Fullerides are used in T3 manufacturing and research and certain types of that gas are highly valuable. Being located only in wormhole space there is a high risk associated with harvesting it unless you belong to a corporation that controls the wormhole.
Nevertheless, there is a way to harvest the most valuable gas without belonging to a wormhole corporation by using what is called ninja mining, meaning you jump into a wormhole, scan the location of a gas site, jump in and harvest the gas and jump out again before the Sleepers arrive.
Wormhole Ninja Mining
There is a ship that is good for gas harvesting but excels in harvesting gas in treacherous terrain. That ship is the Prospect, which was clearly designed to harvest gas in null sec and in wormhole space. It can be fitted for two purposes, either as part of a group mining expedition or a solo expedition. The ships traits are:
Not too shabby, particularly the fact that it can fit a covert op cloaking device. This means that you can have a Prospect with a gas harvester, a covert ops cloak and a core probe launcher, add to that a survey scanner, an afterburner and a damage control module and you have a ship that can enter wormholes solo, scan down gas sites, check for sleepers, mine the gas located there if it’s worth it and jump out, possibly without anyone noticing.
Just remember that after you warp into a fresh gas site you have roughly 20 minutes before the sleepers show up unless someone has already triggered the site beforehand.
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