The Rorqual Basics:

• Capital-class ship with jump range of a Jump Freighter and a 90% jump fatigue reduction
• Able to conduit jump all mining barges/frigs/exhumers
• Huge cargo bay, fleet hangar and dedicated Ore Hold
• Able to field the unique Excavator Mining Drones
• Able to fit the unique Pulse Activated Nexus Invulnerability Core (PANIC) module
• Able to compress and allow remote compression of all ore/gas within the game
• Provides significant boosts to subcap mining ships

• Uses Heavy Water as fuel
• Locks you in place for duration (5 minutes)
• Allows activation of the compression module to compress ore whilst active
• Provides a huge boost to local shield tank, whilst preventing you from receiving repairs from others (like Triage and Siege modules)
• Provides a massive drone damage boost (100% at T2), and a batshit-insane boost to mining drone yield (300% for T2 industrial core)
• Using the Excavator Drones in Industrial Core mode, you mine anywhere from 70-80 million ISK worth of ore an hour, depending on skills and rock size
• Immune to ECM, general resistance to sensor damps while sieges. Does not help with energy neutralizers Provides a huge boost to all command burst ranges and a boost to mining burst strength

• One use (goes 100% damaged and needs to be repaired after use) with a 10 minute reactivation timer
• Makes your Rorqual and any fleeted mining ships within 200km (not other Rorqs) invulnerable
• Lasts 4 - 6 minutes depending on skills. Cannot be ended manually.
• Prevents you warping when active
• Must have any ore or ice asteroid locked in order to activate
• The Rorqual is not a cheap throwaway ship. You commit to being in an asteroid field/anomaly for 5 minutes at a time, minimum. The ship will cost you over 2.5 billion for the hull. The Excavator Drones currently sell for ~150m each. This is not a ship to mess around in. In return you're able to have a boosting platform that in return with multiple exhumers allows you to make about as much as a super running CRABs. You also have a huge amount of local tank and the PANIC mod that gives you time to get friendlies to save you if you're attacked.

The meta for a while now has favored using a Rorqual capable of boosting subcaps while being farely cheap for a while, but still being able to hold it's own against decent sized fleets. As for fits, we use the official Rorqual boosting fit for now. You'll be able to use Excavator drones with the fit and have the option of using Drone or Shield Rigs, your choice. If you choose to use the Drone Rigs, your high slots and drone layout is slightly different also.

If you can't use T2 modules for links or the industrial core, that's fine, just swap them out for T1 modules. It's no big deal.

When mining, always drop a Wetu Mobile Depot next to you as soon as you reach ~5m/s in speed. This allows you to refit, and store your drones in case you are attacked. While the depot is anchoring, you should always lock it and cycle your shield repper to help ensure that even if attacked by small ships, it anchors safely without being destroyed. Also, always have an asteroid locked, even when sitting at a ping. If you need to PANIC, having a rock locked is a requirement to activating the PANIC module.

• Running a command or mining foreman burst gives you a weapons timer which prevents you refitting modules, saving drones, and getting tethered safely due to an active weapons timer. Do not run bursts until you are refit to tank/combat and have saved your drones.
• Shield Harmonizing and Energizing links directly boost your tank. Get them running if engaged. Mining links do NOT benefit Rorquals - they're purely for any EVIL bros/your alts in barges nearby. This is an OPTIONAL module. Refit to a Drone Link Augmenters or smartbombs if you like.
• Remote shield boosters are for any friendly barges/exhumers on grid, and can also be used to rep your drones and your cyno ship if they're taking damage from hostiles.
• Tech 1 Industrial core is fine. T2 is best, but has a long train. Train to T2 core ASAP.
• PANIC module should only be used if your tank is breaking completely. Don't use it straight away. Use it only when you're down to 1/4 armor or bleeding into structure. Every second you don't PANIC is a second gained for the response fleet to arrive.
• Using PANIC to save subcaps is fine as long as it's only small gang stuff harassing you. Make sure to call Pankrab and tell them what's going on.
• Use Smartbombs are to clear bubbles and firewall incoming bombs/torpedos.
• Neuts are good if there's subcaps sitting at 0 on you or caps sitting next to you.
• Compression and jump portal modules should only be fit when you're moving to a system and then actively mining on grid. Keep them in your cargohold while travelling/warping around. Unfit the jump portal generator once you've arrived in system.

• Capital Shield Extenders are pointless, don't fit them. - You either tank well with resists + capital shield booster, or you use PANIC when in low armor.
• Drone Navigation Computer II - Refit to these when not under threat - Excavator drones go slow so speed them up. You must be at max tank fit if hostiles show up. Don't have Navigation Computers fit if a hostile fleet is in the area.
• Shield Boost Amplifiers - provides a massive (36%) boost to the amount of shields you're able to repair Multispectrum Shield Hardeners - good to have if you do not know what's going to be dropping on you. Provides more all around EHP than just having T2 EM and Thermal Wards
• CONCORD and Ancillary Capital Shield Booster - Is your lifeline. With Drugs and overheated shield hardeners, you can tank over like 68k ehp worth of damage with shield rigs, 60k with drone rigs.
• Always have your shield boosters fit. CONCORD variant is extremely powerful and you're biggest proponent of staying alive. If you unfit this, you're guaranteed to die.
• EM Ward Field and Thermal Dissipation Fields - If you know something is coming that is damage type locked, it's sometimes worth it to refit to these instead of the Multispectrum Shield Hardeners because they're provide more overall protection against the ships trying to kill you.
• Capital Capacitor Boosters - Cap is your life. Never ever remove any cap boosters in favor of other modules. If you run out of cap, you can't rep and you die.

• Power Diagnostic Systems - Provides a big boost in capacitor capacity bonus and cap recharge rate. You also get an additional 6% shield hit-point bonus and 9% shield recharge rate.
• Reactor Control Units - Basically mandatory since the compression modules and Capital Industrial Core sucks so much PG
• Drone Damage Amplifiers - If you don't have a 2nd remote shield repper fit in your high slots, you're able to remove 2 Caldari Navy Power Diagnostic Systems in your low slots and refit to 2 Drone Damage Amplifier IIs which will increase your drone damage output by about 200 dps.

• Carry 3 Wetu Mobile Depots - always deploy one when on grid. If attacked, you can drop your Excavator drones into the depot meaning even if your Rorqual dies, you can collect your drones later on. You can only fit your drones into a Wetu or Yurt depot.
• Carry a LOT of spare cap boosters (I carry about 200 Navy Cap Booster 3200).
• Carry full refits for tank - 2 of each type of shield hardener
• Smartbombs and Neuts are good defensive refits to carry, along with extra drone links and drone navs for extra drone speed and range
• Mobile Micro Jump Units - Deploy this to immediately GTFO of nearby hostiles so you can cyno away.
• Ship Scanner - Easy to help spot low effort AWOX attempts.
• Survey Scanner - Help determine rock sizes and how many cycles you have left in siege
• Agency 'Hardshell' TB9 Dose IV & Strong Blue Pill Booster - Increases your tank substantially. Never not have drugs.

• Carry enough Oxygen Isotopes for several jumps (I carry 60k Isotopes at any one time). Fill rest of fuel bay with Heavy Water.
• Carry spare Heavy Water in fleet hangar - carry a full 100k Heavy Water.

• Use Excavator drones for mining.
• Carry Miner IIs with you so that if people begin trying to bomb or boosh your drones away from you, you can simply deploy your Miner IIs to keep on mining with baddies in system until they get bored.
• For combat, have a healthy selection of light, medium, heavy and sentry drones for various targets. Carry spares. T1 spares if needed.

• Be in PandaKrab comms on Mumble. Watch the proper intel channels.
• If you're boosting a subcap fleet/your own subs, stay out of PandaKrab and instead use the regular EVIL Standing fleet. Keep your on grid cyno in PandaKrab though.
• Rorquals can mine in any EVIL system that's within supercap range of BKG-Q2.
• Warp to the center of the mining anom with a Force Recon alt. Burn above or below the anom until the closes rock (sorted by distance) is 160-190km away. Create a BM in the PandaKrab Bookmark folder titled [Anom] [3 letter code] [todays date] and set the expiration for 2 days. This lets you rewarp to other asteroids by bouncing to this perch while also being able to lock a rock and PANIC after significant mining in the anom and allows backup cynos to warp directly to your anom and not get drag bubbled if you need help.
• If you're mining in an anom, just warp everything to the center of the anom. If you're at a moon, make sure your “warp to” distance is set to 2500m and warp to a rock that is in the center of the moon asteroid field at 2500m. If you're solo rorq mining, do the same thing but just warp to your rock of choice.
• You can set this by left clicking on a rock, and in the selected item box at the top of your screen, you can right click the warp to button and set the default distance to 2500m. You can then warp to the rock, and then slow boat to the rock so you’re within 1000m of the rock (the closer the better). Once you've warped to your rock, CTRL + Space to stop your ship.
• If you want to stop your ship faster than CTRL + Space, while looking at the front of your Rorq, double click directly behind your Rorq and your ship will rapidly decelerate as it tries to stop and turn around. This is called handbraking.
• Once your ship drops to at least 5m/s or below (some prefer even 3m/s), activate your siege (siege green) and deploy your WETU depot (some prefer the depot to anchor first before you siege). Once the depot is deployed, lock the rock and the depot, start repping the depot, deploy your drones, and start mining. Once the depot is anchored, you can stop repping your depot.
• It's your choice what to mine. It generally goes Mercoxit > Crokite > Arkonor > Bistot > Kernite > Omber > Pyroxeres. For Ice it generally goes Kystallos > Dark Glitter > Gelidus > Glare Crust > Thick Blue Ice. Compress Ore as you go in your ore hangar to save space.
• Make sure to rewarp your Force Recon to the center of the anom and then burn in a random direction until your cyno is at a perch once again 160-190km away, this time from your Rorqual itself.

• Make sure you're always watching wc.Branch intel or w/e intel channel you need to watch
• Immediately desiege and head to safety. Notify PK FC of the situation. Ensure your on-grid cyno is ready to go.