¶ Summary
¶ Skills
To improve tank and survivability:
: Grants a 5% bonus to armor hit points per skill level.
: Grants a 5% bonus to shield hit points per skill level.
: Reduces shield upgrade powergrid needs by 5% reduction, and allows better shield extenders to be attached.
Jury Rigging III: Required for Shield Rigging.
: Reduces shield rig drawback by 10% per skill level.
See also Shield Tanking
To use drones for some self defense against belt rats:
: Required for Light Drone Operation (one drone per level)
: Allows use of light combat drones, 5% bonus to damage of light drones per level.
¶ Tactics
NOTE: It is impolite (and diminishes yield) to mine a rock someone else is already mining: when the rock runs out of ore, the first laser to cycle will get the last ore but the other lasers will continue to cycle (up to 3 minutes) and get nothing.
Due to how vulnerable and cumbersome the mining barges are, it is ill-advised to travel between stargates in lowsec in one, as they make for very juicy targets. Instead, a good idea is to transport your Procurer packaged in a hauler, which raises less (albeit still some) suspicion.
A Badger, even at base skills, has a capacity of 3,900, allowing it to carry a packaged mining frigate, barge, and even an exhumer, and still have enough cargo space for its modules, can perform the cloak trick, and when designed well, can align in under 6 seconds. Beware however, that when packaging a ship, all its rigs are destroyed, so either use cheap Tech I rigs or design your ship around not using them.