I asked CCP rise specifically about this at Eve Vegas. He said that CCP does not have immediate plans to allow for Pilots to fly mining barges. I asked him if it was a matter of balance. He said it was a few things. First of all, yes there’s obviously potential balance issues. But he said the larger concerns were that mining is a very singular activity. He said they didn’t want to encourage Alpha Pilots to train into a field where most of your time and skills are focused on a single thing that don’t transfer anywhere else. Just like station Trading, or planetary interaction, Etc. He also said that a huge number of subscribe pilots in the game our characters that are trained into these kinds of activities. And that basically unlike generic PVE or PVP characters, making these skill sets available to Alpha Pilots would result in an enormous loss of subscription Revenue. So basically there are three major reasons why CCP is not intending to give Alpha Pilots access to mining barges. He smirked at the thought of Alphas Mining inside battle Cruisers and battleships. But like I’m saying, I think CCP would rather have that happen so that people train up battleship skills that are more transferable to other parts of the game in PVE and PVP.