Suggestion: Add one pip of mining drones to the Alpha Clone Version of the game.
Reasons:
Because it’s rather silly there are civilian mining drones and alphas can not even use those?
Because mining for alpha’s is already restricted by shielding off the mining barges to Omega Status. This means either you stick to the ORE starter or try and squeeze out a Cruiser with all the hassle that comes with that. Both can’t even match Omega mining, even with drones (be it 2 for the Venture or ~4 for a Cruiser)
I will safely assume you are able to shield off Type II mining drones (or medium ones for that matter) to Omega status with a click of a button.
Mining drones are a cool thing to have going on the screen while you mine, which is another plus for Alpha’s to consider going Omega.
Mining Drone Optimization, aka. trying to squeeze out as much as you can out of the Venture (or a Cruiser, if cruiser mining is even still viable) is a cool thing to persue (aka. provides content for Alpha Accounts while not really impacting Omega; and is another thing to entice Alpha’s to go Omega), and teaches a player about the trade-off’s between yield optimization and risk (mining drones vs fighting drones).
Thank you for your understanding, Alpha’s just mainly want to be as equal as any other ‘Civilian’ in Eve
I don’t think this will be a massive problem. You can limit the skill itself to level 1.
The thing to watch for though is infinite scaling of afk mining. It’s perhaps not so much about the yield, but how they’d be able to set it up quite easily and go afk for long periods of time. People already do this with orcas.
There’s a guy out there that claims he runs 20 ventures on 20 different laptops. So he can mine 40 different rocks at once to maximise afk time. Give him mining drones and that doubles to 80. It’s a lot of afk time.
I’m perfectly fine with Alphas not having Mining Drones.
It is ridiculous the number of ships that will AFK mine a belt by just floating idle and letting their drones wander. How do I know they’re AFK mining? Because I’ve seen their Hauler (yes, they’re usually in a Hauler so they can hold all the Ore) get ganked, and the Pod continues to float in place for several more hours.
If you let Alphas run Mining Drones, there will be that many more accounts sitting idle and AFK mining.
So, is that one guy with 20 laptops really a problem, sure he might mine a lot ‘for free’, but can you imagine his IRL power bill? He’s probably better off just running one account on Omega and a good miner
Will there though? If you give them drones they will simply fill up faster, and if they are AFK anyways they will just float there doing nothing.
Plus, the ‘bad’ guys need things to do too? More AFK miners means more targets, which means more content for them.
Lastly, I safely assume the Dev’s can easily set limits where they want. A pip in Mining drones probably opens up the Civilian Mining drones? As you likely need the Light mining drones skill to run those light drones, probably one pip in those wouldn’t hurt much either. Even with a Rig and the Vexor (which btw. has a cargo hold of like 500m^2 that fills up with 2 mining turrets in one cycle, so no real chance to AFK mine with that, active can mining may be viable (?) but that is also a lot of work…
There are no tiers to Mining Drone skills as there are for Combat Drones. There is just the Mining Drone skill. Level 1 gives you access to T1 and Faction Mining Drones. Levels 2-4 just increase the mining yield. And Level 5 allows access to T2 Mining Drones. So no, it’s not “just one pip”. It’s completely giving away the farm.
[Vexor, Mining]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
[Empty Med slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty Rig slot]
Mining Drone I x5
Allowing Mining Drones 1, this fit is perfectly legal for an Alpha. It carries 1,617 m3 in cargo and can let the drones wander all day long. If you really wanted, you could toss some more lasers in the highs, but then you’d actually have to be present at the keyboard to run them.
If that guy is running 20 alphas he’s in breach of the eula/tos and begging for a ban if CCP find out.
It doesn’t matter how you do it the rule is still one alpha.
Mining drones also require targeting per rock just like lasers. There is no aggressive type mode for them. Well unless it’s been added in the last month or two, haven’t used mining drones super recently. So I don’t see how it mines more than the max alpha Battleship miner. Not even sure the Vexor mines more than a venture considering drone travel time drops you below theoretical max yield.
It’s not about yield (i mentioned that in the post). It’s about maximising the amount you get whilst afk.
Splitting a drone for each rock has lower yield, but requires less input than focusing drones on a rock or using mining lasers.
It’s what people are doing with orcas. Less yield than a barge but you don’t have to touch it for hours. Or mining with a hauler and a single mining laser.
I’m not sure if people will do it with vexors or a vent. They may with a nereus though.
Yet all those accounts have to be omega to be multiboxed. Which means they already can do the orca.
Why do we care if a single alpha is getting 2 mil per hour semi afk? That’s a unique player with only one account. They aren’t going to affect the economy in the slightest.
And as soon as you talk about multiboxing alphas then we are talking cheating.
How many exist with a unique player behind them who also doesn’t have an omega account.
How many are logged in to mine afk at any time.
Let’s imagine 100 of them are afk mining at a given time. They are now at 200 mil per hour or 144 Bil a month. That’s equivalent to a single Rorqual.
But People multibox fleets of 10 of them. So now we have 1000 unique players needed to equal what a single Rorqual multiboxer is doing.
So yeah. I really am not seeing the issue here. They need to be unique players to do this without cheating and therefore bannable. And if we are getting it on a large enough scale to actually affect anything, we are talking thousands of them. Probably in high sec only. So suddenly every system has like 20 of them in space at all times for people to interact with however they wish.
If a player is only trying the game, plays Alpha, and is interested in mining, I believe there’s a higher chance they’ll upgrade to Omega if given access to mining drones.
Why? Because they can get a slightly broader game experience, which might make them feel good playing and eventually upgrading to Omega.
This philosophy shouldn’t apply to drones only. The restrictions on usable drone types and Planetary Interaction are the top reasons I stopped playing once my Omega expired.
If I could have had continued using those features (even with reduced competitiveness), I might have wished to upgrade during my playtime. But no playtime occured since.
So would getting out of a Venture and into a Barge or an Expedition Frigate. But if someone wants to expand their gaming experience they have the option to subscribe or use plex to get it. The catch 22 of this argument is that more must be free until everything I want is free and at which point nothing more should be free.
This is why we can have alpha battleships but not T2s or above. You can expand the enjoyment by using a T2 of a ship. While I have no problem with Expedition Frigates reaching level 1 I wouldn’t give ice/deep core mining or cloaking ability to an alpha clone.
PI is basically free income. Mining drones are also. So are Data Cores. Get Omega or don’t use these. If you’re willing to leave because these are not free to you then these are really not enough to get you to subscribe in the first place and you would have left anyway.
Explain how mining drones are free income.
They don’t mine while you are logged off or docked which is the big reason alphas don’t get PI. As the log in restrictions wouldn’t matter with PI
