Editing Sites (section)

==Ice Belts==

[[File:Ice Site.png|thumb|right]]

Ice Belts are Cosmic Anomalies that contain a bunch of ice asteroids which can be mined in order to harvest ice. These sites are protected by hostile NPCs which spawn in waves every 20 minutes. Similar to other activities it requires special equipment and skills, but, unlike ore mining and gas huffing, players are also required to have Omega subscription in order to train and do it.

There are 3 types of ice asteroids. Faction and Enhanced Faction ice asteroids produce small quantities of Heavy Water, Liquid Ozone, and Strontium Clathrates, but large amounts of the isotopes needed to fuel a particular faction's jump drives and POS's. Faction ice asteroids are always found within that faction's territory, while enhanced faction ice asteroids are located in a specific faction's nullsec systems or in shattered wormhole systems. The third type of ice asteroid, the standard ice asteroid, contains high amounts of Heavy Water, Liquid Ozone, and Strontium Clathrates, but no faction isotopes; these are found in lowsec and nullsec ice belts, and in Shattered Ice Fields.

Ice belts always spawn in the same systems, which can be found using Resource Harvesting / Ice Belts tab of in-game Agency window or by using external tools and websites. Since Ice Belts are Cosmic Anomalies they appear in the Probe Scanner window automatically when capsuleers enter systems containing them and don't require specialized scanning equipment to scan them down. In j-space Ice Belts can only be found in shattered systems.

Ice Belts in k-space are called using the following template: <Ice Type> Belt. For example, Smooth Glacial Mass Belt. Ice Type determines what kind of asteroids (as well as ice) the site contains. Ice Belts in j-space are called Shattered Ice Field.

One system can have 1-3 ice belts. Once all asteroids in a field are depleted it disappears and re-spawns at a different location of the system in 6 hours or directly after the downtime. Due to their comparative rarity, Ice Belt harvesting has a sense of urgency that most mining activities do not, as numerous miners descend on freshly spawned belts and try to harvest as much as possible for themselves before the ice is depleted. This concentration of mining ships makes these sites attractive to PVP hunters as well. These factors make ice mining a very different and potentially hazardous challenge.

See more information here:
* https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Ice_harvesting contains information about ice harvesting
* https://evemaps.dotlan.net maps can be used to locate systems with ice belts (see map legends)
* https://ore.cerlestes.de/ice gives updated data on current ice and refined products prices
* https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Mining has a lot of information about mining