You could see residue as a piece of asteroid that accidentally breaks loose from the rock and shatters into space the moment your mining laser cut loose another block of ore to beam towards your ship.
It’s not space magic, just imperfect mining because of powerful tools that prioritize faster yield over perfect efficiency.
I could justify it any number of ways, I’m sure, but in my eyes a purely random chance to exactly double mine the asteroid and only collect half screams ‘the fiat of space god’, and the arbitrariness of it had me forget that it worked the way that it does even though I had read the correct description before.
Regardless, I screwed up and thought it worked in a way it didn’t. Doesn’t matter whether it makes sense to me or not. A certain amount of suspension of disbelief is to be expected in a space simulation.
It’s your description of ‘mine double but only collect half’ that I find strange.
Regardless of residue you always mine the same amount, which is the yield of your laser.
Residue isn’t taken from your yield and does not reduce your yield. It just reduces the amount of available ore in the asteroid.
Type C crystals would, according to your way of looking at it ‘mine 28 times the regular amount, but only collect one 28th of it’.
While in fact your destructive laser is just mining tiny snippets while destroying large parts of the asteroid in the process.
My headcannon of how lasers operate is that they destroy chunks of rock and then a space vacuum hoovers up the bits. This is how my suspension of disbelief worked from the times when ice belts were still belts. I’m not trying to make any sort of commentary on the implementation per se.
Now, by fiat, a portion of the asteroid is completely eradicated from existence and can’t be collected at all by any means. My description is based on my subjective view having played for X number of years with things working a certain way. Had things worked the way they do today from the beginning of my space career, then it would probably make ‘sense’ because I’d have ingrained an alternate theory of how lasers work like you seem to have.
No, if there were to have ice form on a moon, the selection process to identify which material on potentially formed ice on its surface is to be obtainable only via the current moon chunks.
Also adding that the size of moon should also play a deciding factor into which moon chunks contain ice along with their other normal materials.
The type of ice also fits into the current system of which type of ice becomes available.
Same headcannon for me!
A laser cutting at the rock and a vacuum beam to pull in the broken bits at a constant rate.
Now imagine that more powerful T2 lasers can destroy and pull chunks of rock at a faster rate, but sometimes breaks more rock off than the vacuum beam can manage, which means sometimes not all pieces are picked up by the space vacuum but some pieces that are too small to be relevant for our ship sensors to render fly away in other directions.
That’s residue.
I think instead of residue (which is proper for regular ore mining I guess) in case of ice mining it could be called iceacid, which would be the term used for the contaminated portion of the ice content that is useless.
It could be explained that if a quick or less careful thus simpler but cheaper ice mining method is used, due to the more vague nature of the method more of the content is thrown out (some of which could be useful) while a more thorough method better separates the useless components from the useful ones thus produces less iceacid and more valuable ice ores.
Just remember that you Uriel invited us here.
What we prescribe is for new pilots to gain an advantage over veterans.
May I ask why my subjective viewpoint is worthy of discussion? I’m used to people giving me a hard time, but since you don’t normally do that, it doesn’t matter what I think, and I’ve already conceded to Dark Lord Trump I am not sure what to make of this situation.
My intention is not to give you a hard time, I’m just trying to explain how residue could fit in with your headcannon of mining without feeling like random magic.
But I’ll drop it!
On the topic of Ice Moons I do not think that a new moon where you can mine ice is a good idea.
It’s not interesting from the perspective of mining as you’re still mining the exact same thing as in an ice field, except now the additional availability of ice would drop ice prices and the profits of ice mining.
You would be copying an existing mining mechanic (moons) to mine existing mining resources (ice) with existing ships (barges, frigates) which doesn’t change the mining meta at all.
I don’t think that’s worth implementing.
A mining change in my opinion would be interesting if it creates a new mining meta, adds a new way of mining or does at least something new that doesn’t already exist.
Personally - but I may be a bit biased - I think a mining activity for solo miners could be a good opportunity to bring something new to EVE. An opportunity for new players and solo players to get paid in the mining market without having to multibox at least half a dozen ships to get competitive pay.
This was one of my quibbles, too - though much better put!
For the record, I have an appreciation for what you were trying to do. It was just confusing to me because I’m used to being treated differently.
Perhaps CSM members decide if new meta is required for ice moons.
This will not help anything by much at all…
What might be of more benefit to the entire community…is the return of the 15% ore types on moons, turn 10% of the moon goo rocks back into these ore types for all the moons…in my honest opinion that should be done, not ice on moons.
Even if it wont have a BIG IMPACT on the game play, it will add something to the gameplay which some players may find enjoyable. This will create much needed content for the game like fighting over these moons, mercenaries to attack and protact these moons. Gangers can still go out and find these miners but will have to look around and work on timing. Miners would not have to fight over groups of people wanting to mine the ice up. Lastly if we change how we mine the ice not getting one big block, but ore style like some in this post want to see happen. Which I do think its time it gets overhualed. Also wanted to say by adding Ice moons this won’t break the game.
God forbid the eve universe isn’t static.
Not about being static, its about lazy players wanting to be spoon feed, literally the entirety of what is wrong with eve
Well one thing is for sure people do like the idea of Ice Moons. Not like it will break the game you know and its limit belts like moon ore it. You mine it and wait for the next rock.
Also perhaps we can all agree that if some new technology such as ice harvesting crystals were to also follow a similar path as the Ore Crystal were the type 3 version would allow another engagement opportunity outside of blocking or removing other miners from the ice belt.
Depleting ice chunks quickly to counter control the supply surplus.