Mining is just outright terrible if you won’t or can’t run multiple accounts. This hasn’t changed much at all in countless years. The expedition frigates were cool concepts, and I really liked the direction they started heading, but they were never expanded upon and there’s a hard limit to what you can do with them if gas huffing isn’t what you’re looking for.
Which is why I’d like to suggest this: Create a self boosting module, similar to an industrial core, with a fast cycle rate that checks for nearby ships in a vast area. If it detects another module of its type active then the module becomes locked with a cooldown timer. This’ll prevent multiboxing. Then design a ship/multiple ships around this module and pack them with everything a solo player might want. EDIT- I suggest this with the intention that this module would be exclusive to these new ships and not attachable to pre-existing ships.
Highsec has some possibility for griefing tactics but I don’t think anyone would want to see such a ship crabbing in highsec anyways.
The amount of people who want to mine but can’t afford to run multiple accounts is not overly high, so if you combine that with a high Skill Point investment there shouldn’t be too much overlapping in allied group space. Especially if you use this ship to visit belts and anomalies by yourself.
And finally if all else fails, one of the main uses of having a capable solo ship is to open up other spaces more. Allowing for better delving into wormholes and hostile null/low sec space without a fleet behind you. Just like what expedition frigates were meant for, but just better.
Hi Angry Bogan, despite the fact that you’ve obviously thought this through, your statement, above, is more than anything else likely to kill the suggestion, from the point of view of CCP.
They will wonder why, if the uptake is unlikely to be ‘overly high’, they should devote expensive developer time and resources to an idea which might be only marginally productive, at best.
Multi-box equals multi-money for the company. Balancing genuinely solo play against group efforts is, I’m sure, constantly under the microscope, but why would they shoot themselves in the financial foot in order to make life easier for solo players? Why should they do that?
Unfortunately, you get what you pay for - harsh as that sounds. There have been times when I’ve been unable to afford to run more than one Omega account, and it never occurred to me that CCP should make mine a special case and introduce a new module or ship-line in response.
Don’t get me wrong - you’ve expressed yourself well and in reasonable fashion. I just don’t think your ideas will gain any traction up at HQ.
That is because CCP is a business. The time to be a solo miner was during the Rorqual era under your supercapital umbrella of choice, but that was a temporary cash grab anyway as players handed over cash to get PLEX for skill injectors and the Rorqual hull.
There are niche ships for numerous different purposes that have extremely small playerbases who regularly use them. Having one that at least somewhat fixes a problem with a system that people have voiced concerns over, for a long period of time at that, is definitely not a pointless investment. But I also fully understand that the concept of telling them to introduce something that potentially takes away revenue would likely fall on deaf ears. And if it does so be it.
One thing I’d like to clarify though is that I’m not in any way saying that they need to add an equalizer for solo players. Unless for some reason you’re labeling a multibox fleet controlled by a single person as a “group”. I’m only referring to pilots who wish to mine but don’t want to or can’t run multiple accounts.
And as for the final argument of it perhaps coming across as entitlement to suggest this, I’d like to state that this would only seem true within the Eve Online circle. In pretty much any other video game the concept of paying for multiple subscriptions to access the bare minimum standards of gameplay is alien. Creating multiple characters on a single account? Sure, plenty of games see that. Some might even charge 1 time fees for a character slot. But to be expected to create an entirely new account and then also pay the full priced subscription fee for both accounts is something a lot of people wouldn’t tolerate.
That isn’t a jab at the game nor its players mind you. I’ve played casually on and off for a good amount of time and I’m accustomed to this game’s culture. However just because people have gotten used to it does not mean that complacency should be the standard.
Thank you for reading though and well as thank you for your polite response. I was (and still am) ready for well seasoned players to bombard me with insults for dare suggesting anything be changed at all.
As a solo player, look for things that are very difficult to master, that is where you will find your money.
Anything easy will be multiboxed to a point that no matter what changes CCP does, the income from it will always be low becuase players are able to abuse it.
Let’s take your idea for example, what stops me from running 10 clients in prospects with the solo link boosts and putting them all in a solo fleet and filamenting them all solo into pochven and they all sit and solo mine astorids in different systems, then dump all the ore in stations. Then once a month doing a hualing circle around poch collecting it all.
It’s still multiboxed while being far away from each other to not deactivate the module, the problem with your idea is that it is still afk-able.
If you want soloboxing to be profitable you would have to do some type of hacking minigame for mining where you search for dense pockets of valuable ore inside the astroid, but now it becomes a solo boxing activity and CCP looses money becuase people wont need multiple accounts anymore which hurts CCP.
Oh, sorry. Let me clarify the misunderstanding. This is not meant to be a module that can be attached to current ships. I’m saying that with the module I proposed, to design an entirely new ship or set of ships that fit it. Something roughly above an exhumer in cost and that ideally borrows their ship skill ontop of a new ship command skill, or derives from industrial command ships + exhumers. Like a T3 mining ship or something.
I don’t know why you consider mining to be unprofitable for 1-account-players, what kind of money do you think should be earned with such an almost stupid-simple activity? Just go to some more dangerous areas and you will get access to a lot more valuable stuff to mine. What prevents you to cooperate with others and greatly increase your access to high income sources?
What do you consider “simple”? Is it mechanical involvement? Skill or ISK investment? Or perhaps required game knowledge?
It’s not like players specifically requested for mining to be mechanically lax, so that’s just unfair to claim that as justification. I’m sure many players would gladly accept more micro intensive mining mechanics for better output if it wasn’t for the fact that some people are just going to cheat the system with macros and software.
The skill investment is surely light, but the ISK investment isn’t. Mining has one of the worst returns in the game for the cost. How many cargo holds of ore do you think you’d need to pay off a fitted hulk? And how long do you think that’ll take without boosts and compression? It’s considered safe depending on how you do it, yes. But so are other options like abyssal running when well practiced, and there’re on an entirely different level.
I’m not trying to not cooperate with others. I’m suggesting a mechanic that offers an alternative to running multiple accounts.
This always gets spouted on the forums and the answer is „no“. People don’t want micro intensive mining minigames. Go to sov nullsec where people multibox 10+ miners and form the backbone of subcapital, capital, and supercapital production and ask them. It is always „no“.
That line wasn’t aimed at the multiboxers. And even if that hypothetically was a solution, there’s nothing saying that we couldn’t have both. We have both normal drone boats and carriers with fighters afterall.
Thanks for clarifying that for us. I think there is an issue in Highsec where there appear to be a large number of miners who pursue their ‘activity’ AFK. I’m sure you know as well as I do that this is the case.
Your suggestion of the introduction of some sort of minigame is unlikely to appeal to these players, for whom passive income generation while doing other things (not just ‘Netflix’) has become standard gameplay.
I dislike minigames, but I can see why a developer might introduce them, as a bulwark against boredom.
While true, you will have to contend with these complaints or be stuck in todays status quo:
If the solo boat got more m3/hr per account than a fleet boosted boat, these large scale industrialists who want to maximize m3/hr per account will change their setup to be a bunch of solo boats scattered around. Then they’ll complain about having to do your minigame on 10+ different windows, plus the scattered logistics of ore scattered around, and once again threaten to unsub.
If the solo boat did not get more m3/hr per account than a fleet boosted boat, no one will use the solo boat as their final end goal and solo miners will continue to complain about how they have to have multiple accounts to improve their mining efficiency. Hence threads like these.
These sorts of mining minigame ideas have been discussed for years if not a decade or more and it’s well-understood why it hasn’t happened in Eve Online‘s 20 years of life.
My original suggestion and the idea of mining mini games are completely separate topics. I did mention the idea of more intensive mechanics, but that was only in response to the idea that mining is simple therefore it should be bad.
As for this though:
If the solo boat got more m3/hr per account than a fleet boosted boat, these large scale industrialists who want to maximize m3/hr per account will change their setup to be a bunch of solo boats scattered around. Then they’ll complain about having to do your minigame on 10+ different windows, plus the scattered logistics of ore scattered around, and once again threaten to unsub.
This is a positive and not a negative. The restrictive system is meant to be as anti multibox friendly as possible so that you can afford to empower a ship to comfortable levels for the single account players. It’s entirely their fault if they then choose to multibox it and have to deal with incredibly annoying micromanagement as a result. That would be like carrier pilots complaining that the ships are not friendly to their multi account PvE grinding.
My original topic had nothing to do with minigames and I wasn’t particularly trying to debate whether or not they should exist. I think they actually can’t anyways because someone can and will create and then spread scripts that allow players to automate it.
However in the context of both my original suggestion and this hypothetical I’m not really suggesting that anything be replaced. There’s no need for it when you can just add additional options for the niche players that would like to use them.
A mining Mini game will work but only if its on the side, like lets say for example there is double density astroid that can only be mined using the mini game, afkers will mine the other ■■■■ and solo active miners will mine the super dense astroids, both win.
My comment was aimed at the current mining mechanics. These are neither demanding much knowledge nor much attention or investment. Compared with other activities of course. And if you don’t do it afk, it is indeed almost risk-free.
In addition you seem to mix up two different things, namely “one-account players” and “solo players”. One-account players don’t have a problem currently because they can use the benefits of cooperating with others, get free boosts, get compression, get corporate infrastrucure for maximum refining yields and highly efficient production/reaction facilities. All that generates quite a good income even for the one-acciount-miner, if he is willing to “fleet up”. Again, compared to the effort of doing the activity (things you need to learn, risk involved, investment needed) it is absolutely adequate. And I don’t see a need to “buff single-account players” here.
Now for the “complete solo miner” this is a different thing. Without boosts, compression and additional benefits of “upgrading your grabbed resouces through corp infrastructure”, the income is indeed pretty low. But the question remains: Why shall CCP invest resources to make mining attractive for “true solo” players that refuse all the cooperation-benefits the game offers? It is a mass-multiplayer game after all and cooperation should always be rewarded. If you can make equally or even more money mining true-solo with your suggested module, why should people team up? Why risk bringing a 3B Orca to the belt for supporting their team? They could just scatter and each mine on their own and make the same ISK? I have yet to see what would be the great benefit for the game as a whole.
Regarding the details of the suggestion: Making it a module that blocks the activiation of the same module in it’s vicinity is problematic because people would surely find ways to abuse it. For example by “blocking” a lucrative belt with this module for other solo-miners with just another alt. In HighSec you can’t even remove that alt without ganking him or having an active war. In general I like the idea of some sort of “minigame” that can increase yield, but not to boost true-solo mining. I like it because I think mass-multiboxing is bad for the game and since mining is so stupid-simple, many many people do it. But you can’t just take it away as they would release a shitstorm without comparison. So I think the game would benefit from a mechanic that would allow a team of active players to outperform a passive mass-multiboxer by playing highly active and master this new “advanced mining mechanic”. Of course it would have to be so complex, a bot should hardly be able to solve it, which means there must be a decision-making process under time pressure and the right solution shouldn’t be always the same or always the obivous one to prevent automation. It could be done, but would be a bit complex.
So, in general I like the idea of an advanced mining mechanic that yields more but requires high level of attention, knowledge and quick decision making. But I am also convinced that has little to do with “one-account-players having a bad income today” - because they haven’t if they play their cards well.
The issue with this entire argument is that you’re using double standards. Lets use a Gila running abyssals as a comparison.
The miner can’t even think about breaking good numbers until boosts and compression is involved. And for some reason you assume that this is just expected of him, as if he just always have access to command ships. But then this increases the total ISK investment on the miners side as mining ships are expensive relative to their income and command ships don’t even earn their own keep.
The Gila fields a single ship. This ranges from 450-ish mil to much more if bling fit. The gila, with knowledge, can basically make back the cost of his ship in just a couple of hours depending on the pilot’s performance and RNG. Then it’s nothing but profit from there.
The mining fleet however badly beats him out in ISK investment alone just by fielding 3 ships, and they won’t make that back for a much longer time.
You also have this strange assumption that mining is “safe”. Not everyone lives under an umbrella or has a particularly strong defense over their sovereignty. The mining fleets are slow turtles that are only as safe as long as the gankers and droppers aren’t around.
The Gila can just easily find a quiet highsec system and farm to his hearts content, as his content isn’t even restricted by region.