Dear CCP, I want to be a miner as a solo player, but it feels like the system is designed to punish me

Industry Gameplay Center Mining & Extraction
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HS mining is utterly pointless given the low ISK for skillpoint & time investment as a solo account. Many other PvE activities are much more rewarding. Fine.

Lowsec & Nullsec mining in a Prospect/Endurance with covert cloak would be the perfect mining playstyle for a solo player, except all the ore anomalies, including the new hidden ones requiring probing, have random NPC rats that spawn. How are solo players supposed to deal with that in a covert frigate? So we are forced to warp out, stop mining.

This is already on top of constant D-scan and eyes on local for player threats.

These ore anomaly NPCs are irrelevant for multi-boxers who have ships to kill the rats, it really only punishes solo players. Why?

Now, I can do other solo activities for higher income than even NS mining, but I do also want to mine once in awhile but everytime I try it, I run into this same broken design that disproportionately punishes solo players like me.

Please, just remove NPC rats from the new hidden probed ore sites, give us solo miners a bone.

Edit: I can solo as an explorer in LS & NS, ninja’ing relic or sleeper sites and there’s high reward for the activity. These new hidden ore anomalies are perfect for ninja miners, except for the NPC rats.

4

As a miner, you should have some defense like drones to take out belt rats

2 Likes
5

An Endurance should not have much trouble with belt rats.

While it may not be able to clear entire anomalies full of NPCs it should be able to survive rats that arrive while mining.

Orbit the asteroid, turn on your afterburner and you will sig tank the bigger enemies indefinitely. And your drones take out the smaller enemies that do pose a threat.

4 Likes
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An Endurance is going to get wrecked by the NS spawns at these new ore sites. BSes + elite frigs.

Essentially, when the rats spawn, I am forced to leave. For a hidden site I scanned down, this is a punishment unless I multi-box and have the other account to kill those rats. Because its random, it could be 30 seconds as soon as I mine, or 5 minutes. Either way, it really shuts down expedition frig mining.

Have to bring something like a Procurer tanked, but then that’s a sitting duck vs players in NS.

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Does it?

In my experience tanking rats solo in NS ice belts my Endurance could stay alive easily. The battleships and battlecruisers are easily ignored as they cannot track your nimble fast frigate, while your three light drones can kill any smaller ships. Just make sure you’ve got a nice shield tank and afterburner fit in the mids.

I admit I haven’t tried this strategy in the new anomalies yet, but it’s worth a try.

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Yeah its the elite frigs that are a threat, regular frigs 3 Lt drones are a non issue.

Endurance also sucks for mining ores, with modulated t2 crystals it pulls in around 15m3/s, at which point the earning is so low, its not worth me risking ninja’ing NS hidden ore sites. Prospect gas huffing is far more lucrative.

It would be nice for solo miners if these hidden sites don’t have the rat spawns, so a Prospect with ~20m3/s can at least pull in ok income vs other solo activities. But mining.

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@Kana_Kito

I was thinking of sending you to a mining school ran by @Lusty_Lucy_Cybaritic, but I contacted her family, she is off for the holidays, on the west coast, and incommunicado. Maybe get in touch with her after the new year?

There are some basic rules to follow mining in Eve.

This here is your first huge mistake, from where I sit. I make billions mining using a cheap disposable venture. Yes, I am an alpha and make billions of ISK gas mining in low security. It still puzzles me, why players here spend cash on omega just to mine. Omega for PvP is almost a must, however after a while making billions, losing a few ships in alpha PvP is really isn’t that bad.

I never use it. Early on, I was told to use it. It never saved me from a covert ops attack. Seems like a waste of time.

I don’t get those rats in lowsec gas, only players in there. Kernite fields they show up 3 times per hour like clockwork. Which means, I can and have taken in some other tasks, while I gas mine in a disposable venture. One time my sister showed up, took me shopping at the mall, and when I returned my cargo was full of gas and still adrift in the system. :open_mouth:

For kernite mining in lowsec, I keep a destroyer or ten in the local hangar. When the rats appear, I scoot back to base, jump into the destroyer, kill rats, and return to mining. They can slow down operations but never stop it.

Where would be the fun in that?

Find a nice quiet lowsec system and scan down gas clouds, mine in a disposable venture, and transport with care. Set a few miners at different systems so you can switch, when you get swamped in another. I have found events are a great distraction for the gankers not to bother you. NPC rats are never my top concern.

Have fun!

1 Like
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Thank you for the response. I agree with you, gas huffing in a venture (I do it with prospect) is far more lucrative than trying to ninja mine and running away vs NPC rats randomly spawning. Would be nice if for once, a hidden probed ore site would cater to the solo miner. Regular multiboxed miners already have their moon goos and mercoxit and the new prismaticite.

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2 Likes
14

Sounds like mining balance issues. Gas mining without rats in Low Sec on an Alpha account using ships that are so cheap to be pretty much free and making billions of ISK. Winning. The rest of Eve doesn’t even matter. I may start doing that. Pure profit and zero risk.

Cancel my two Omegas perhaps.

1 Like
15

“HS mining is utterly pointless given the low ISK“
Why do you need more ISK? Does the ISK amount really matter to you?
Mining is mining and does not change with the payout, or does it?
Just mine in HS if that matches your play style.

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This is a discussion about balance, risk v reward and viable solo playstyles. If you want to question my personal preference in Eve, you can do it in private messages.

1 Like
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Gas huffing is indeed super profitable and one of the lowest risk activity, it also can be done by solo players, including alpha.

I am just disappointed that CCP in a mining focused expansion once again not offering anything decent for solo miners. It’s all catered to large groups (Phased Rifts) and multiboxers.

1 Like
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What’s the best gas you mine (actual market name please)?

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I didn’t write the game. I just play here. What you do with the billions you make mining is up to you. I sometimes give it away to MSB program, silly contests, or buy ships just to see how far I can go.

You can do that, but “zero risk”? No. There is the risk you will lose a load in transport or lose a new 10 million ISK venture before you get one load out of it. My point, you won’t lose to NPC rats, other players will be looking for you.

It is my opinion, HS (high sec) is about learning to mine. I don’t need ISK, Plex, or LP, it is just something that happens as a byproduct of selling what I mine. I read rookie chat and see new players complain they are not making ISK and they seem to think buying omega is the solution. Maybe it is for PvPers. but omega is not a solution for mining, when others claim PI (planetary industry) makes a lot more, with even less risk. I really don’t know, I never did any PI.

Another way to look at this, does it matter Mario punches a brick and coins fly out? I punch the bricks because it make me feel good.

Have fun!

1 Like
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I’m trying to determine a profit level on this…

I found a list of low sec gas, found out how much gas can fit into a Venture, and saw a post stating how long it takes to get a full load of gas. I then checked the market.

If nothing goes wrong, you’re looking at 50m an hour huffing gas. To make billions of ISK, you’re looking at a minimum of 20 hours of gas huffing for each billion which can’t be done on one site- that has to be spread over a great many sites across low sec. If someone has enough Athanors in one system in High Sec, that much money can be made moon mining. Simply set up 3 Athanors and mine moon ore all week. You’ll make the same amount of ISK. In one system in HS.

This is based off of a full Venture hold of 500 gas mined over 50 minutes.

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Lime & Mala gas goes for around 60-85M per venture hold. For alpha that’s really good income, relatively low risk in a venture.

It’s actually superior to ore mining in a barge as a solo Omega player, slightly below just the top moon ores in NS.

Basically, ore mining is really awful for solo players, its designed to be multi-boxed which is a shame really. I would ore mine in these hidden anomalies in my Prospect if it weren’t such a hassle with the NPC rats.

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Omega players can take out rats in low sec and high with drones. No multibox needed. It’s not rats that are dangerous.

It’s slightly higher than moon ore in high sec, but keep in mind that with the right setup and skills, one player can moon mine nonstop. It’s a really tough setup, but it’s possible.

But for Alpha? Yeah gas mining is stupid profitable. No risk since it’s just a 10m Venture.

1 Like
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Ore mining isn’t designed with multiboxing in mind, but it might as well be.

Easily accessible, easily scalable and with little input from each individual miner it is very multibox-friendly.

As result because it is possible the players who mine such ores will for a large part consist of multiboxers. This massive increase in characters in the activity causes the supply to rise and price of such ores to drop to the point that only multiboxers really can justify spending time on such ores, because while multiboxers get a lot more ISK per person because their high rate of characters per person, a single account miner does not have that and the ore simply isn’t worth their time.

So while CCP did not design asteroid and ice for multiboxers, by not designing it to be interactive they’ve essentially made it multibox-only content.

This is also the reason gas huffing still is single-character friendly. The clouds are small, require time and effort to find so you usually cannot easily undock your dozen Hulks to suck it all up.

Small rocks in inconvenient places is single-account friendly. But it’s hard to find such rocks when the same rocks are available to multiboxers. Even Mercoxit, which previously was a good ‘rare small inconvenient rock’ got multibox-friendly updates.

And worse is that CCP does their best to make mining less and less interactive to cater to multiboxers.

When in-space compression was added to give using Industrial Cores an extra incentive this was needlessly also added remotely to all miners which reduced interaction and cooperation. And last patch they went a step further and added that players can now do so with a single key stroke.

Useful? Certainly!

But it also solidifies mining as a “multibox-only” activity that is incredibly low effort and low-paying for single accounts.

3 Likes
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I agree with all the points you made, and CCP knows exactly what they are doing by making these changes to mining. Multiboxers are better for their bottom line.

But it irritates solo players like me who want to also do mining, but feel like we’re actively being punished.

A good middle ground would have been these new hidden ore anomalies of rich gneiss & dark oc, would have been perfect for solo miners if they removed the random NPC spawns. Make it like the low-sec gas sites without NPCs! Throw us solo players a bone please.