Video Feeds: Multibox Mining Fleet Example

The following example is meant to show the many possibilities that video feeds offer over regular window layouts.
Please note that in order for all of this to work you need Windows Vista/7 with Aero enabled.

NOTE: Because at the time I have set all of this up I was away from home the following example was achieved on a notebook. Due to performance issues 2 of the 4 clients this setup can handle were closed. The weird lines on the right side come from an allignment issue, normally they should match the thumbnails. Also note that all ingame information about my toons has been removed.

The clients are all loaded in stacked windows on the left side (eve client thinks however that it is running in fullscreen mode). In a 5th window which does not run any game clients video feeds of the clients are displayed as thumbnails to provide a quick overview. Because Eve has an already busy interface, having thumbnails of background clients display in a separate window rather than in the active client window helps keep things neat and organised.



By pressing CTRL+ 1, 2, 3 or 4 a cursor feed into the respective client number can be opened and also closed. In this case I want to controll my Hulk on the 2nd client from my Orca main. Pressing CTRL+2 reveals a part of the second client around the cursor.



Since the UI windows match for all clients I can simply hover towards the overview and select a target asteroid for my Hulk. Cursor feeds can also send mouse clicks and keyboard commands to the clients they are showing.



After picking a target I can go ahead and lock it and activate mining lasers on it.







Moving ore from the Hulks cargo hold to the Orca corporate hangars can be done in the same way. In this picture it is barely even noticeable that the cargo holding the ore belongs to the Hulk, not the Orca.



Ideally there would be 2 more clients displayed in the thumbnails on the right side. This allows to quickly see if the mining lasers are running, if cargo needs to be moved to the Orca and if new asteroids need to be targeted. By using cursor feeds quick commands can be executed without the need of switching.

This setup is a work in progress. Once it is finished and I get a change to test it on a more powerfull machine I will attempt to write a guide for setting it up. Also stay tuned for information about how using ISBoxer changes how npc/mining scales when using multiple accounts.

Awesome job. This might make me start EVE back up again......

[PsyberTech]

Loved your mining fleet post! Glad I am not alone out there.

Having used ISBoxer in WOW for years, I have gone back to EVE and taken ISBoxer with me. Although I have multi-monitors, I have chosen to just put all six on one monitor. Works fantastic for mining. I have also tried placing the 5 alts on either side, but I have chosen to use the bottom of the screen which works much better for me. Feels like there is more room to work in the main screen.


http://vindicator.us/images/arcx6x.jpg

One of these days I will find a Corp that need a power miner/Indy player that used to live for years in 0.0. Nice to be back in Eve after being gone two years.

I'm very new and whatever I think I 've discovered may most likely be old hat to others.

I noticed that you have modules installed in the orca's f1/2/3 positions just as I do because the orca only has three high slots. However, once in flight, I slide those modules to the positions of f4/5/6. That will merely move them on what you see, but they will still be installed in f1/2/3, but now the f1/2/3 keys on the orca with the repeater key on will command the hulks to activate their miners in their f1/2/3 positions. That allows the fleet commander to issue relevant commands without getting screwed up turning off a link while turning on the fleet's mining modules. Bear in mind that being screwed up is still quite possible by issuing a command toggling the f1/2/3 keys when some mining modules are still on and others have mined out their targetted asteroid.

One other thing I do is set each hulk to mine only one ore and in the over view for each hulk, only that type of asteroid will be shown, then I can, using the repeater, target the top asteroid (sorted for distance) then press f1/2/3 and each hulk is mining their brand of ore.

The four on the right is the windows format I use, too with each of the side four being hulks mining the four ore's found in hisec and the orca being in the hot seat. I also have another orca, off grid, doing the hauling to station.

For security in hisec when necessary, I put out ogres from each ship, To be sure the ogres will agress rats promptly, I assign each ship to guard the ship behind them in sequence. That way, every ship is guarded by another ship's drones and they will immediately agress a rat as soon as the rat fires on a supported ship. I use three links in my stationary orca and I have bookmarks (oops, now called "locations" after the Crucible expansion) in the center of each belt we go to. Thus with the training and links, the hulks are mining out to just under 23km, so the horseshoe shaped belts require very little movement of the hulks. In fact, after getting that one distant Veld 'roid on the left no further movement is necessary - I mine with the overview set to sort by distance with most distant at the top. My off grid orca is fitted with two tractor beams and one salvager. And to keep the locals from hating me too much, I only take one belt from a system (in under three hours) and then move to a new system. Systems with more than 10 belts will give me two belts before we jump out.

For fun, and to break the tedium of mining, I sometimes do a "Hoover" by starting on one end of the horseshoe belt, set the speed of the orca at 2/3 M/s, have the hulks keep 50 off the orca and munch my way all around the belt. The 'roids don't always cooperate by being positioned to keep all the miners lit, but it works fine when you only have Veld and Scord with two hulks on each ore type, but set the speed to 4 m/s for that. oh yeah, when I do the Hoover, I start at one end and aim the orca at the center 'roid and when arriving there, I then point at the last 'roid in the distance.

In combat, I group the weapons with some grouped in f1 and other grouped in f2 with the difference being the effective range of each weapons system. It is sort of like grouping all the weps on each ship and then grouping the ships based on each ships effective range. On the overviews of each group of ships, the long shooters have their overview sorted by distance - longest on top and the short range ships are sorted by distance short on top - so I can get them all to target their best target with fewer commands. Also, if possible I jump in the short range guys at a default I set at 50km and I set the long range guys to a default of 70km. I've found that keeps the rats in the effecitve ranges of both groups for longer peroids of time and will often concentrate the fires of all ships on the same target. Once they close in - if any are left, I change the crystal on the lang range guys to a shorter range crystal - I mostly use just scorch and any navy multi-freq for the long range guys and a conflagration for the short range guys. The conflagration is pretty useless closer than 10k or so, but those rats who "in and amongst us" start getting webbed by the short range guys and picked off by the long range guys. Every ship has at least one fed navy webber to help pop those fast frigs even quicker.

The above is all done on the repeater key. Lax has used his influence on me to branch out and start using key maps. And I will, especially for logis doing incursion missions. Using the above method would make two high slots on the logis ineffective. And because the logis (with multitasking at L5 and fitted right) can target 10 ships, they need to target every friendly ship to provide more timely support - so you can see how targetting could get screwed up and end up supporting the enemy and shooting at the friendlies - and friendlies don't like that... Oh yeah - set your auto-target to zero or your fighters will not be targetting back your logis.

Maybe we could use the eve channel Lax has provided as our (multi-boxed Eve players) local chat.

Quick question for you "Power Miners" running 5accounts.


Why mining? I used to be a hardcore miner "back in the day" (talking the first 2yrs of EvE's existance). However, I've found that running lvl 4 missions is around 5x more profitable per hour than mining.

So, why mining? Is boxing 5 combat toons for lvl 4's too "active" for you guys? 5mill per hour per toon is nothing compared to 120mill per hour with 5 combat toons melting lvl 4 missions, or have I not mined in EvE for so long that i'm "out of touch" with how profitable mining is?


ps: IF mining is even more profitable than lvl 4 mission running. What mining are you doing? Empire (0.5+), or are you doing ice/0.0 mining?

Cheers,
-Mojo

Mojo.. try flying 4 incursion machariels through a bunch of OTAs.. income gets silly then. 40m at least per run and only takes a few mins per site.

I used to ISbox miners in eve. I ran 18 hulks, 1 orca and 1 rorqual sitting in a bubble with a tengu tanking the rats. It was decent income I made about 350 million isk per hour which is "ok". I was doing it a lot so it plexed everything and I used to build supers which had a nice profit margin when I used to play. Building the supers made it worth mining, other wise mining is a waste of time and too risky.

But eventually you'll want to grow out of mining like I did. I ended up using 15 domi's in basically my own sanctum/haven sites tanking with a T3 or a carrier, got comfortable with that and upgraded to 15 carriers all pantheon setup in case of hot drops and went 10/10 farming basically. 99/100 times I could pretty much ignore any red activity with that many carriers setup the way they were. I had a small alliance with 44 battleships mixed try to take my carriers down and failed miserably. I didn't actually kill any of them but the two Corp titans and 3 mom's had some fun . Went from making 350m isk an hour to over 700 million an hour as a rough estimate with basically 1/10th the work of mining. For the 10/10's I would cut down to 5 domi's, 1 tengu hero tanked roughly cost me about 6 billion isk and depending on the 10/10 I would bring a logi (some regions i can solo 10/10's in just a tengu).

I'm yet to try running 7 mach's in an incursion if I come back to EVE that is most likely what I would do next. All my toons are trained to fly basically everything .

If you ever get bored in 0.0 and Intel has a moderate red spike try setting up your own carrier blob with 150 mixed drones assisted on a fast tackle and a heavy dic at the ready. I used to do my own blob on the pipe I used to farm and kill the strays coming through, fun times... Talking about it makes me want to reactivate .