I spent almost all of the ISK I had to buy and insure an Orca. My two characters are now living out of the Orca. The way I use it now is to park the Orca near a planet cloaked while my combat character goes out and finds exploration sites. I then switch and fit ships with the maintenance bay to handle actually going into the sites.
I’m also making a habit of storing stuff instead of selling it or reprocessing it for whatever I can get. When I arrive in a good market, I’ll open a yard sale. I hope I don’t become a pack-rat.
The Orca gives me a lot of flexibility. I can rig my ships and still transport them. The cargo and ore holds are huge, and the corp hangar is available if I ever use the Orca for its intended purpose. Yes, I am training up the skills necessary to get all of the mining bonuses.
What’s bad about the Orca? Some people claim that the ship maintenance bay is not big enough. I can put a HAC, a Hulk, and several frigates in there, so I have no complaints. The orca is slow. It’s slow to align. It’s slow to accelerate. It has a slow warp speed. I hear it’s faster then a freighter though. For the size of the modules it uses, the Orca seems to be a bit short on capacitor. I can’t run the tank for more then a minute. Since it’s for hi-sec, that’s probably fine. If I use it in lo-sec, I’ll probably fit as big a buffer tank as I can. That will probably be more effective then an active tank.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some exploration to do.