It’s just words, Harkkiainen. I would have written ‘Orca pilot’ - but it’s your choice, of course.
Well thankfully I already did move. Some friends picked up the game and asked me to come back, even offering me a 3 month sub since they know I have money problems. So I’m chilling with them in a small alliance at the moment. Cheers for the friendly attitude. Gonna have some fun in nullsec with them and do some simple mining.
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Bless you my brother in arms.
Depends on how it’s made I guess. The most common suggestion I’ve seen is some sort of system where you have to keep your mouse centered on a sweet spot and the game automatically drifts it. If it was something like this, or for instance something where you have to click on colored patterns, then that’s probably simple enough to automate.
But if they could come up with a system that couldn’t be automated then hell, I’d test it.
It’s moot to discuss points with someone who can just “make up” his “points” because we can’t even build on the fact that he knows what he is talking about. It leads to fighting windmills and pushes the burden of proof entirely on others.
Yeah, I can’t really deny that point.
On top comes your own contradictions, first claiming it is hard to find people to mine with (which it isn’t), then suddenly you need an Alt because you are “part of groups that could dislike your opinion”. Thats all fishy.
While some of your stuff does make sense and you have legitimate points, this is dumb logic. Just because I’m in a corp or alliance doesn’t mean any of these people are out here to mine with me.
No one in a bigger mining corp/alliance has any problems getting into boosted fleets with access to at least mediocre resources many times per week.
Strange. I’ve been in TEST (during the glory days) and goons, and when I’d get out there and mine 6-10 hours a day, 7 days a week, I’d never see fleets that could stick with me the entire time. The longest lasting ones were usually the chinese corps when my sleep schedule was reversed. I loved this one dude from this corp that I think was called Cloud (fuzzy memory) who’d always be out in belts and anoms in a 20 man multibox fleet with a rorq, hulks, and even his own on grid carrier alt to kill rats and protect the rorq in case of a hot drop. Him and his corp did get in a lot of trouble for cherry picking though.
I have argued fiercly on the forums against some of the most powerful groups in the most emotional debates (ganking vs. antiganking, nullsec demands vs. smallscale needs, carebears vs PvPers for example).
The only response that I can give is that you are a braver individual than I. And I’ve just been unlucky it would seem.
Oh, hahahaha.
I thought commander was more fitting since it is categorized as an industrial command ship.
No autopsy no foul my friend.
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Bots feeding bots? Part of the downfall of this game.
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Yeah…
- get out there and mine 6-10 hours a day, 7 days a week (thats exactly what bots do)
- don’t want to be dependent on others (who could and over time will probably notice suspicious behaviour - or - running botfleets themselves, usually not inviting other players into)
- argues against complex yield increasing mechanics (because “bots could be scripted to use them!!!”), but rather a simple activatable module (which is way easier to bot by just adapting a mouse macro)
- don’t want effort like scanning, moving or adapting to other resources, even if it’s giving him access to much much higher value options (because that simply can’t be botted)
- don’t want to reveal his main, using all kinds of excuses (to keep flying under the radar of any attention)
- has basic knowledge about how EVE mining bots operate (screen reading, pre-positioned UI mouse/hotkey macros)
- has “financial problems” even while grinding “6-10 hours a day” (which is the common excuse of people being caught botting… “I am soo poor, I had no choice, I couldn’t afford to PLEX!!!”).
It’s pretty obvious what this topic is about.
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Damn. So this went from a discussion about mining to people accusing me of botting. I’m not gonna lie, of all the things that I expected to come from posting here, that was definitely not one of them.
I’m a disabled man living in a remote town in central Louisiana. The town is like 99% dead from an economic standpoint and any little thing that does remain here is slowly falling apart. So because there’s no financial opportunity here, and we’re all so damn far away from a proper city with real infrastructure, most of the citizens here are impoverished and living in bad conditions. Obviously, if you’re too poor to afford simple things you can’t exactly afford to move either.
As to why I spend all of my time on a PC, it’s because I don’t go out. I have severe mental problems stemming from early childhood disabilities and received no treatment over the years due to the abysmal healthcare which comes from poor management of the state. In short: I’m not good at interacting with other people, so I have no one that I interact with like friends. And I can’t afford to go out on social activities either.
I’d get out there and mine so much because that was the closest thing to fulfilling “job” that I could actually get. Go out to the anoms, mine ore, get ore for the corp, and get to see my fake wallet go up. Happy points. Pathetic, I know. But you get what you can get.
The only reason I was able to afford subs at one point for a consistent period was because I held a psuedo job for a number of years. Was paid 7.25 an hour to go in 4 days a week and push a broom and steer an electric floor scrubber for about 2 hours a day. Something I was still only barely able to complete thanks to the severe pain from my failing legs and spine. However that store, despite being open for 99 years, also broke down, as did another one of my spinal discs. So that job ended and my pretty little eve subs did as well.
Do the receipts check out? Or do you think that you might need to come visit my poor little rotting shack of a house in Louisiana to confirm that I’m not an android? I’d offer to name my town but I think mentioning my state is the limit to what I think the mods might allow on a public post.
I am not accusing you. I see a pattern to which you delivered each and every piece. Based on the experience of like 15+ years. If something walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Maybe I am wrong, maybe this story of yours is even true, I don’t know and it’s irrelevant for your problem at all.
What you face is an EVE-Problem, not an RL-Problem and you have been given solid advice in this topic what you can do to improve your ingame financial situation. Which is still, lets say… quite strange. You are not fighting against malicious people here that want to deny you anything, you are fighting against simple math and basic logic.
By your own statement you mine 6-10 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even if we would assume this is not done by a bot running the ship, but a real person, it still means 180-300 hours of mining per month. A PLEX subscription does cost 500 PLEX per month regulary, often lowered to 350 PLEX per month on sales, which are available mutiple times a year. So lets assume you need 425 PLEX/month on average to sub over a longer timeframe. One PLEX currently does cost 5.1M, but if you buy in bulk via the forums or other trade markets you easily get it for 4.9 or 5.0. That means a full month sub does cost between 2.1 and 2.3b ISK, lets take 2.2b here. Now lets check how much money you would need to make per hour to get this amount. When mining 300 hours, you would need to make 7.4M ISK/hour to PLEX your account. Even when “only” mining 180 hours, you would need to make 12.2M ISK/hour to PLEX your account.
Can you tell me what Ore do you mine in these 180 to 300 hours that makes you less than 12M/hour in an Exhumer? Even without boosts, without max refining yield and only mining mediocre Ores you would net at least 30, 40 or 50 million ISK/hour. Easily. We are talking about 5B to 15B ISK each month of ore value even assuming absolutely low effort mining. Please tell me how you cannot PLEX your account from that, it makes absolutely no sense unless you constantly lose Exhumers every second day (in which case you should realize that you are doing something very wrong) or basically give away your ore for free (in which case you are facing a self-made problem).
I don’t want you any harm, but that story you tell us (and no, I don’t mean the real-life one) doesn’t make much sense. The numbers you claim make no sense. The math doesn’t fit, not even closely. I mean, do you realize that you ask for 18-30 BILLION ISK a month for completely solo-mining with one account if you want a return that is comparable to what a T4 Gila can earn? Really? Thirtyfuckin’ BILLION? With one ship mining, without any cooperation or effort? And that doesn’t strike you as completely absurd?
By your own statement you mine 6-10 hours a day, 7 days a week.
To clarify the situation here, this was me talking about the past and not the present. Back then I was… mentally better off and capable of enjoying things more and diving really hard into them. I also had the means to kick start an account as needed before plexing it with ISK.
But some of your points are worth listening to. So I’m going to do this: I’ll take my measly little two accounts, which are active at the moment thanks to some friends, and I’ll go spend the month mining on something closer to a normal amount of hours for players. Maybe this’ll change my perspective on things since it has been a good long time since I’ve actually played the game properly.
Make the boost slightly worse than porpoise boosting and make it mutually exclusive with mining links and it could be a thing tbh. Could also be a mid slot module to make you choose between more tank and more yield.
Alright. I’ve spent the better part of a month mining, and with quite a few hours put into it at that. After time, and consideration, I can confidently say that my overall stance hasn’t changed, but some of my points has, and I can articulate things better after refreshing myself enough.
Mining as a single account is not feasible or worth it. From the ground up this entire system was designed and tuned over the years to accommodate multiboxing and only multiboxing, and it shows.
The main arguing point against me stated that a Hulk is moderately comparable to a Gila, but has none of the risk factors. However based on my observations I’ll stand by my statement when I say: No. From logistical problems to PvP threats, a Hulk will never even reach 70-ish mil an hour by itself in favorable conditions. With fleet support and safe access to good ore it can indeed go very far, but this entire thread is about the necessity of a solo ship, and getting access to good ore is difficult and uncommon.
I will say though that I agree that there’s no inherent risk involved with a mining barge. If you’re playing the game properly, there’s nothing that can threaten you. But just because you aren’t at risk of losing the ship doesn’t mean that there aren’t a number of issues that you have to deal with that hinder your ability to mine, which can be translated into your hourly income.
I’ll also agree that Abyssal running is indeed a difficult affair. It takes a lot of practice to get them down, and the higher the tier the more exponentially complicated everything becomes. And even the most well versed veterans can get unlucky with weather effects and hit a cloud that kills them. Or unfortunately find themselves ganked.
However, I’m not going to agree that mining ships are fine as is just because it doesn’t have the same gameplay. What mining barges lack in risk/input they sacrifice in practicality and efficiency. Obviously there should be a difference, that’s not in question. But the difference is too large compared to other gameplay choices, and there aren’t more options for players to sink investments into to acquire more power. Putting a limitation on how much a player can do, and then saying that it’s balanced for them to receive less when they aren’t given the means to do more, is unfair logic. That’s why giving players the ability to invest more was the whole focus point of the thread. Alternative mining ships with more SP investment, more ISK investment, and opening up different avenues of gameplay to introduce more risk.
Though how exactly that’s done is a difficult topic. My suggestion is flawed to an extent, though I do still think that it could work.
I’m also completely disregarding this notion that it’s viable to solo boat a barge/exhumer out into null/WH space by yourself and mine as you please. There’s so much wrong with that concept, and even in an ideal scenario it’s still not nearly as good as you think it is.
That’s because the efficiency of sitting around mining is deliberately designed by CCP to progress further by spending more $ to multibox.
You and I don’t have to like it, but that is why there won’t be and will never be things like mining minigames nor solo ship modules that are competitive with a multiboxed fleet.
The former will get nullbloc powerhouses to cancel tons of mining barge account subscriptions (I’m fairly certain this feedback has been passed on to CCP by previous CSM) and the latter loses CCP revenue potential.
People have lamented for a while now about the whole „get more accounts to scale“ as it was made brazenly transparent during the Rorqual spam era, which is why the meta-game of Eve is also heavily monetized with skill injectors and once-time-account packs and the like as people decide to scale up by creating more accounts.
Of all the lamentations, there have yet to be any good ideas that both benefit CCP‘s financial interest and provide a positive impact exclusively to non-multiboxers. Ideas are usually losing CCP money, are abusable by multiboxers anyway, or both.
While I apprecate your considerations, you still make one or two dire mistakes, which unfortunately leads to an inevitable discontent. First, you seem to believe that different activities somehow should have comparable income-peaks. And second, yo switch between “mining as it currently is” and “mining as it could be if it would be somehow changed/upgraded” in your calculations.
To the first point: Since different activities have very different requirements in investment, activity rating, risk, skill floor and skill ceiling, the need to cooperate or not - this simply can’t be balanced in a way everybody is happy with. Mining (currently) is simply way too “easy” to justify higher payments. They payments you get with a mining ship are already very nice for an activity with that low skill-, activity- and investment-requirement. It is so simple that most people can do it afk or with 10+ accounts at the same time. So any “buff” you ask for would have to completely shake that up, mining would have to be “upgraded” to a point where you would have to learn as much, risk as much, invest as much and act as quickly and constantly as an, for example, Abyssalrunner right now has to do it. There are ways to increase mining profits to really really huge amoints, even with one ship - that is achieved by a) cooperation and b) venturing into very risky space. Both ways you simply don’t want to chose because they aren’t your “gameplay style”. Okay… nothing CCP has to fix.
Which leads directly to the second point: It is simply not enough to ask for “please CCP make something that somehow benefits the true-solo 1-account mining pilot!”. Come up with a concept that don’t benefit multiboxers, don’t make CCP lose lots of money from cancelled mining-subscriptions and offer a benefit for a number of players large enough to justify the development time. There is a subsection here for such suggestions and if you come up with a very good one and can rally some support behind it from other players, maybe it is considered in some, probably years away, expansion.
No, it was designed around player cooperation. Literally the more the merrier if you’re all working together. A lot of this game is designed that way, once you leave the newbie area. Only in highsec are multiboxing miners considered an issue. They’re pretty much a necessity in nullsec if you want to clear some of the bigger moon pulls. Any suggestion you make to benefit you would potentially penalize hundreds who don’t mine anywhere near you.
Again, your issue stems from location. Highsec mining was repeatedly and intentionally made less profitable over the years. Join a nullsec group and an unboosted Hulk will make more than the Gila farming 6/10s.
This all applies to almost every form of PvE this game has to offer. Once you’ve figured it out, there’s little inherent risk to any of it. EvE is a game of risk management.
You. Are. Not. Supposed. To. Play. EvE. Alone.
Yes, it’s an option, but it’s not designed to be played that way at the most fundamental level. Yes, there are a small number of people who use this to our advantage. But do tell us, in a game very much about risk vs reward, why should your unwillingness to risk joining the people who live where the money is justify your receiving a larger reward? Also, even if you’re part of a nullsec group, you don’t solo mine in a Hulk. Rats are a lot tougher out there.
Any and all suggestions to boost solo play styles are flawed at their very core. There’s no way to boost any play style that won’t also be used by the multiboxers unless you also limit legit fleets from using it. Here’s how it works.
Solo Boost > Fleet Boost - Multiboxers use solo boost and bookmark folders, Porpoise pilot switches to DST
Solo Boost locking out nearby Solo Boost - Only the first person to turn it on in a belt will be able to use it, screwing over everyone else.
Solo Boost < Fleet Boost - Make friends and fly with boosts.
The suggestion that I started this thread with isn’t to compete with normal multibox fleets in terms of income. My idea was more to make a solo ship that can cover multiple rolls without the need for multiple accounts. Take the boosts, compression, and PvE capabilities and then jam them into 1 ship, and then add some restrictions to deter multibox spamming.
This ship doesn’t need to have a better yield than 1 hulk for instance, but rather be able to do things that the hulk can not. And require a high ISK and SP cost to compensate.
To the first point: Since different activities have very different requirements in investment, activity rating, risk, skill floor and skill ceiling, the need to cooperate or not - this simply can’t be balanced in a way everybody is happy with. Mining (currently) is simply way too “easy” to justify higher payments. They payments you get with a mining ship are already very nice for an activity with that low skill-, activity- and investment-requirement. It is so simple that most people can do it afk or with 10+ accounts at the same time. So any “buff” you ask for would have to completely shake that up, mining would have to be “upgraded” to a point where you would have to learn as much, risk as much, invest as much and act as quickly and constantly as an, for example, Abyssalrunner right now has to do it. There are ways to increase mining profits to really really huge amoints, even with one ship - that is achieved by a) cooperation and b) venturing into very risky space. Both ways you simply don’t want to chose because they aren’t your “gameplay style”. Okay… nothing CCP has to fix.
We’ve been through this talking point several times IIRC, and you keep ignoring my rebuttal. My argument is to add in a ship with a higher investment. To design a limited system and then restrict the players because they can’t overcome those limitations is terrible design.
Which leads directly to the second point: It is simply not enough to ask for “please CCP make something that somehow benefits the true-solo 1-account mining pilot!”. Come up with a concept that don’t benefit multiboxers, don’t make CCP lose lots of money from cancelled mining-subscriptions and offer a benefit for a number of players large enough to justify the development time. There is a subsection here for such suggestions and if you come up with a very good one and can rally some support behind it from other players, maybe it is considered in some, probably years away, expansion.
I did. The concept that I’d suggested aims to create an all in 1 ship that lacks the need for fleet support, but is not meant to be stronger than 1 mining ship in yield. Boosts, Compression, and PvE jammed into 1 expensive and high SP investment that shuts itself down if another ship of the same type is on grid. The multiboxers remain superior, and the solo player has a ship that can do whatever they need without the need to have multiple accounts.
There are 2 holes in the idea that I can think of. The first is that you could potentially grief these ships in highsec by running your own and then going to belts with them and activating your module to cancel each other. I see this as a non issue though since this ship isn’t made for highsec, and this ship wouldn’t be much tankier than a porpoise, while ideally having a higher price tag than an Orca, so at that point you could just gank it if you were a griefer. Much easier and more effective plan than spending months training into a ship, and billions of ISK, just to cost someone else a couple minutes of their time repositioning/leaving.
Second issue is you could hypothetically multibox it if you spread them out amongst multiple anoms and belts. However this is going to take up a lot of real estate which means you’ll be likely to clash with your own allies. If you’re a solo in non allied space then that means you’ll have to micro manage a bunch of highly expensive ships in dangerous space and risk losing an insane amount of ISK. All when you could’ve just multiboxed normally and gotten the same result.
You already have a ship exactly what you’re looking for based on the criteria you’ve shared, and it’s called a Rorqual.
Only in highsec are multiboxing miners considered an issue.
Again, your issue stems from location.
Where are you getting this idea that I’m in highsec? I’ve been in coalition nullsec space for a month. A hulk does not compete with a Gila, much less without boosts.
You’re coming into a late conversation and missing a lot of the topics that were already discussed. The whole concept that I’ve put forth is for players who don’t always have consistent access to fleets, boosts, rat support, ect. and don’t wish to commit multiple accounts to mining to gain semi viable gameplay.
Any and all suggestions to boost solo play styles are flawed at their very core. There’s no way to boost any play style that won’t also be used by the multiboxers unless you also limit legit fleets from using it.
This is why I’ve suggested a fix. A specialized ship, running a specialized module specifically made for said ship, which grants bonuses that they need to not require fleet support. But the cost is that the specialized module will deactivate and lock itself if it detects another module of the same type within the same grid as the ship. So there’s no way to run it as long as 2 or more ships using it are in the same belt/anom.
There are some potential problems with it, but I also talked about that in the above comment where I replied to Syzygium.