I’m not sure if anyone else has this problem, I can’t typically play until really late Central Standard Time, or Mid Morning Central Standard Time.
And I’m finding it to be quite difficult to find Ice to mine, I set myself up in the Tash-Murkon and Domain Regions with Mining barges at all the known Ice Field systems and use a interceptor to fly around quickly to check which systems have ice and I would say a good 90% of the time I can’t find any ice because it’s been mined out.
I’m not against people mining out ice, with multiple characters. I personally do it on two characters, I know others who use 5-10 maybe 15 or more to mine it out and they are quickly exhausted.
It is a sandbox and unfortunately that means some time zones are favored over others, Europeans have a huge advantage over Americans when it comes to events taking place after down time.
I wish there was a way to fix this issue with out disrupting the market. One such idea that I thought of, that isn’t very sandbox in nature is that each system that holds ice spawns it twice, once after DT and then 12 hours later.
However by entering 1 ice field you will be prompted with a concord police policy that states due to permit restrictions on Ice mining in empire space, you’re not allowed to enter another Ice field in the same system for 12 hours. This essentially would allow two completely different Ice Fields to spawn in the system but only allowing you to pick 1 or the other for that entire day.
This would prevent massive mining fleets from coming in and gobbling up both Ice fields, the only way around this would be to completely make another massive mining fleet which would be costly to the user in terms of plex or subscription costs to take advantage of it, and it would likely never happen.
There’s no issue to fix. Having a bad real life schedule doesn’t entitle you to having the game changed to better fit your schedule. Find something else to mine. For example, I can make just as much, if not more, moon mining to the point I rarely touch ice any more despite ice being my main source of mining income for a long time. Or perhaps find another game with activities that fit your schedule. It’s the players responsibility to make sure their schedule can accommodate the game ( and activities they wish to partake of in said game ) they wish to play, not the devs responsibility to adapt the game or its activities to fit a players schedule. This is nothing but a “you” problem. Only you can decide how to fix it, either by adapting or moving on.
At the top of Everyshore there are 5 systems with 8 ice belts. The belts respawn at downtime and 4 hours after they are cleared. I ran a small ice mining fleet there several years ago and there was almost always ice.
Downtime is the middle of the workday in Europe so it doesn’t give them much advantage. In North America, if you get up a little early, you can have the field to yourself.
Non-issue. Ice anomalies respawn every 4 hours after the last ice roid is popped. I have 8 or so systems with ice within 5 jumps of me. There’s always ice somewhere, no matter how many players are mining it. Just be thankful that CCP hasn’t allowed NPC miners in the ice anomalies. Yet…
NPC miners are actually the reason why so much moon mining is done high sec by anyone - including 1 man mining corps. Cause they don’t want to fight against npc 20 skiff bot fleet.
pro-tip. low-sec is the best place to get ice BY FAR (and yes i’m including null in this) as long as you are smart and paying half an ounce of attention you won’t get caught. there are massive areas of low that are practically abandoned, and almost no one ever bothers to mine the ice in them.
if you insist on staying in HS though, amarr space is the second most heavily mined area after the forge, so competition is high. try checking out gallente or minmatar space, you will still have competition, but it won’t be quite as fierce.
pretty much all of HS is heavily mined, but in general heimatar is fairly quiet. but its kinda relative… honestly mining anywhere in HS, especially a limited resource like ice there is going to be rough unless you are willing to alarm clock the spawns.
low-sec and shattered wormholes are usually your best bets (although shattered are slightly riskier). null is good, and fairly safe, but you need to find just the right size of group in order to have free reign of the ice belts. otherwise you will have too much competition for them, or not enough protection.
There’s always someone who gets the shaft in every online game, that’s part of the nature of the beast of being a global product/service. WoW, EQ,ESO,etc,etc, you pick one at random and you will find threads on their forums exactly like yours. And the answer in those games is the same as here. Tough luck. Not everyone can have equal access to all content at all times in any game, period. Once again, it’s a “you” problem. YOU have a shitty schedule, YOU live in an non-optimal timezone, YOU have the problem, not CCP. You’re no different than those in every mmo who cry because downtime is “always in their timezone”. Or whine because “I work all day and then have to sleep, I’ll miss the special timed event, fix this RAWR!!” You have access to everything the rest of us have access to. If YOUR schedule does not permit you to access something, that is entirely YOUR problem.
So yes, whining for changes to match your specific needs is the very definition of entitlement. Also, thinking you can tell me to shut up like it will actually make me is also entitlement, mixed with an audacious amount of laughable stupidity.
Anyone that was playing 6 hours before DT or less was at disadvantage compared with people from say Europe - npc fleets would just clear out most belts by that time and players would just finish the job.
Unless CONCORD gains the ability to levy this restriction account wide, each account has 3 characters. As you need one account per simultaneous log in, that would leave the potential to enter 3 ice belts per day without running afoul of the restriction and without paying any additional plex or subscription money to do so.
I’m fairly certain it would stop someone, but I don’t think the change would be very effective in stopping many, even if it were to be implemented and, like you said yourself, the arbitrary restriction is rather anti-sandbox.
Competition for the ice in my system is sometimes an issue for me as well. Sometimes i get it, sometimes not. If it’s not available, then I turn my attention elsewhere. The isk I get from other activities can get me ice when I need it, and if everyone else is mining the bejesus out of it, at least the price I pay for it will be relatively low.
No, we are not going to turn EVE into a socialist utopia where the government (in this case Concord) determines when and how much you can mine in order to make it “fair” for everyone…
You have to have balance in a game where all the time zones of the world play, this is a unique game. It has nothing to do with socialism. Providing another outlet for people on different time zones to do something useful is called balancing the game.
Why anyone would be against the idea of other people from different time zones having the same opportunity as other time zones, is really mind boggling.