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The Venture, an entry-level dedicated mining frigate. The best option for a new miner is to train into the Venture, a dedicated ORE mining frigate (before the Retribution expansion, each race had its own mining frigate, but this is no longer the case). The Venture and the necessary skillbook (Mining Frigate) are given out for free by the Industrial Career agents, and training the necessary skills takes only a few minutes. The Venture is a mini mining barge with a substantial ore hold (which minimises travel to stations to unload ore), very good mining yield and built-in warp core stabilisation (which makes it easier to escape from hostile ships).

After a week's training, a budding miner should have the necessary skills to fly a mining barge, which have more than double the mining yield of a Venture, as well as even larger ore holds and/or a stronger tank. These ships are also more expensive (15-40M ISK, plus modules), but given that a Venture can mine about 500-700k ISK worth of ore per full cargohold, this money is soon earned. There are three different mining barges, each with a different focus (see table below).

The last word in mining ships are the exhumers (Tech II variants of the mining barges). These ships require many more skills to fly, and are even more expensive, but have even greater mining yield, cargohold space and/or tank than the mining barges. Additionally, miners can train into the Prospect and the Endurance, improved and variants of the Venture which are designed for covert mining in dangerous areas of space and ice mining, respectively.

Before the Retribution expansions, players often used cruisers or battleships as mining ships, but these ships are no longer competitive with mining barges and exhumers.

A hauler's purpose is to take the ore that has been mined from a mining ship and transport it back to a refining station or to the market. Hauling is normally done in an industrial or a freighter.

Finally, a mining support ship can either come in the form of a security detail against rats and players looking to steal ore, or as a ship designed to provide mining efficiency bonuses. The ultimate mining support ships are the Orca and Rorqual, of which only the Orca can enter high-security space and fit through normal stargates.