Orca support guide( Outdated)

This is a guide for those interested in becoming an orca pilot, ill show you how to get the most hp out of your hull and shields and leadership skills for warefare boosts and mining foreman links. i will also show you the coveted mining foreman mindlink.

this guide is no longer as useful with the new boosting changes in eve onliine.

So you want to become an Orca pilot

I support your decision to become an orca pilot, and i hope you are more ambitous about it then i was at first.

Get ready to learn a whole bunch of skills in leadership, cybernetics, drones, shield and hull skills and etc.
i will make a full list of all of the skills; take heed, to become a worthy orca booster requires months of skill point training time and its a very slow grind, i recommend using your nueral remap to best learn the skills as well as using implants will greatly reduce your training time.

Your going to need to train skills to level five, although not required to fly the orca , they are required to maximise your boosts for the fleet, miners are a dime a dozen but orca's make fleets.

ill be using my orca and fitting as an example of a good fit.

The Orca
The Orca is an industrial command ship which can use mining foreman links as well as warefare links, it can use three fleet assistance modules. it also has a 40,000 m3 fleet hanger and a 50,000 m3 ore hold, as well as its cargo hold can hold between 20 to 80k depending on how you fit out your orca, you will have to choose if you want a big cargohold or if you'd rather be a massive tank that can take lots of damage.

the skills required to fly the orca are Leader ship lvl 1 , mining director level 1, mining foreman level 5, ore industrial level 3, spaceship command level 5, and industrial command ships level 1.

(to be a good fleet boss you will need leadership level 5 and wing command with a few levels into it so you can make additional squads. )

The Orca has an enormous amount of hull hitpoints, which can be built up even further by using bulkhead rigs and a bulkhead in the low slot next to a damage controll II. this way i am able to get up to 350,000 effective health.

After learning the skills to fly an Orca, you will be wanting to get as close to maximum boosts % possible.

You need mining director level 5, each level gives a 20% increase to your buffs (boosts) strength.
Then you will learn warefare link specialist to level 5 for an additional 10% bonus per level.
To top it off you need to get the mining foreman mindlink, it further increases your buff strength by 25% as well as an 5% increase in ore yield amount replacing mining foreman's 10% at level 5 to 15% yield bonus. You need Cybernetics level 5 to use the implant mining foreman mindlink.

Its going to take months to learn these skills, but its an invesment well worth it

What Modules should i equip the orca with?

You really have only two or three options here, you can maximize your cargo hold with expanded cargohold II module, and cargo capacity rigs. either that or you can go for max defense and maximize your hull hitpoints. either way you will need to get your shield modules activated with the best you can get your hands on, personally i use faction navy gears when i can get my hands on them.

The third option is a hybrid between hauler and tank; it has a few cargo rig/module but also has some investment into being a tank.

ALWAYS use a damage control tech 2, it will give you the most additional hp than a regular damage control,60% of the orcas hull health is in the damage control II.

Tranverse bulkhead rig I will give you a 20% bonus to hull health, and on my orca i have three of those rigs, and a bulkhead in the low slot will give another 20-30% depending on what kind of bulkhead you use.

For your mid slots, you will want to get a thermal resistance hardener and two adaptive invulnerability fields. in the last slot you can put a sheild extender to buffer your sheilds.

in your High slots i reccomend tech 2 cycle time and laser range mining foreman links.
for your last high powered slot use a seige warefare module to add a % bonus to everyone in fleet's sheild health points.



heres a picture of how i fit my orca.

What else can i do after ive learned all of that?

you can maximise your leadership position and learn warefare skills. Armored, Seige, Skirmish, And information warefare give a 10% bonus to armor, sheild, targeting range, and agility at level 5.

Seige warefare is the best for an orca to learn because of the resistance bonus to sheilds that one of its modules with seige warefare specialist skill. The entire fleet will benefit from having 10% bonus to armor, and 10% bonus to sheilds, as well as sheild buff from your warefare link.

Your on the path to becoming a good fleet boss and orca booster, just maximise your skills and use the best equipments you can get your hands on. Most people will leave an orca alone because its hard to kill an orca before concord comes.

what you can now do is use your orca to haul and organize a mining operation and boost for your freinds and corp mates.

Everyone appreciates getting a buff bonus in eve online, good for you for wanting to help others as well as yourself. I myself have level 5 in alot of leadership skills with 5.8million skill points in Leadership skills, your going to want to get all of these skills.

The Mining Foreman Mindlink and Tech II Mining Foreman Links & Warefare Link Specialist

This is how an orca pilot obtains the maximum % of buff (boosts) strength.


to get perfect boosts you need to get the Tech II versions of the mining foreman links,(this requires level 5 in Mining Director and Mining Foreman) combine it with a Mining Foreman Mindlink (this requires level 5 in cybernetics and mining director level 5 as well as mining foreman level 5)



They both require Mining Director at level 5 as well as mining foreman, So its worth it to train cybernetics to level 5 for a 25% bonus to mining foreman Links and a total of +15% yield.



Mining director at level 5 gives a 100% Bonus to your buff strength, and is required for Tech II mining foreman links AND mining foreman mindlink.

Warefare Link specialist will give an additional 10% Bonus to buff strength, up to 50%
(Warefare link specialist requires leadership level 5)

Mining foreman mindlink gives 25%

And if you train Industrial command ships to level 5 thats 15% bonus to your buff.

Thats a total of 190% Bonus to the total of tech II Mining foreman links.


you will be able to have a list of bonuses you can provide for fleet members that will end up looking like this. (this is not the maximum buffs possible, this is with industrial command ships at level 3 but maxed out in everything else.)

Special features of the Orca

The Orca comes with a few special features.

Ship maintenence bay holds up to 400,000 m3 of assembled ships, you can fit cruisers, battlecruisers, mining barges, exhumers, or any other ship that will fit inside of it.
if you select the open to corp/fleet option other players will be able to board these ships and also store their ship or "swap" ships all while undocked and in space, within range of the orca.

The Orca also offers a fitting service to where anyone within range of the orca ( as long as they are in your fleet) can use while they are undocked to equip their modules and rigs while in space.

[CCP Alpha]

Hi,
Thank you for writing this guide :)

Please update images for ship bonuses and other relevant information.

[Little Anthony]

shield used to be called seige before the new update. this guide is old. when i get a new orca i will take new SS's and make a new guide.

[DragonZephyr]

Its Shield and it would've taken only the effort of opening your skill sheet to know this
But i guess you just didnt think Sheild was weird when you wrote it - sadly that shows that you did not take the time to proof-read your guide.

[TheDude]

Can you update this with the change to the command modules now called command bursts.

[xbox3richie]

What a great Orca guide. This is the go to guide for anyone looking to boost and tank.