Just put moonrocks in lowsec belts.
Boom. There’s your special mineral.
Low sec is the most dangerous space in the game --> Why? WH space has no local so Intel is way Harder, 0.0 has way more losses and the Chance to be ganked is in highsec also higher.
Lowsec is currently mostly for PvP, why should this be changed ? The only reason i can think of is to have some defenseless mining barges sitting in belts so you can easily farm them.
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The moon reseeding will give lowsec its share of high value moons and the Tatara will be able to launch fighter squadrons in defense of mining fleets.
Between the refinery defenses and the drones of the mining fleet, attacking a moon mining operation isn’t going to be easy for roaming small gangs.
Do you have a link handy to where CCP last said the belts would form in relation to the Refinery? I vaguely recall it being outside the direct protection of the Citadel’s defenses but I may be misremembering. It was either that or it was at a distance where you have to bounce to warp into tethering range.
In either case just having one Citadel’s worth of Fighters on grid isn’t going to save you against a prepared enemy if that’s all you’ve got, and Drones can be cleared with smart bombs.
I don’t have a link handy but recall reading that the asteroid field will be 100Km from the structure. Within range of the structure defenses but you will need to bounce off a bookmark to warp from the belt to the refinery or vice versa.
Okay, that matches one of the numbers I had in my head so I’m inclined to say that’s accurate.
Still I wouldn’t say the Fighters or the Structure are going to be a huge impediment to anything other than a small and disorganized gang, especially on a Medium.
The fighter squadrons would not be working alone. A Skiff has 189.5 dps offence with medium drones. An Orca produces 391 dps with medium drones. Both ships also mount substantial tanks and the Orca is bonused for shield boosts and remote shield repair. Not invulnerable by any means but not pushovers either.
One lesson I learned in business is: you don’t need to be good, you just need to be better than the competition!
True, and I definitely thing that will stop casual and unprepared harassment, but it’s not going to deter anyone with any amount of preparation or intelligence. Smartbombs will deal with the drones nicely, and a few dedicated Frigates can deal with a wing of Fighters.
The real support for any Refinery mining op is going to come from capital support and probably a Rorqual.
What distills out from “be better than the competition” over time is “be good because the competition left and good is all that’s left”
If moon mining isn’t profitable, people won’t do it and there are only a handful of organizations in New Eden who are big enough to have PVP response fleets standing by. If the mining fleet. supported by the refinery can’t defend itself from a roaming gang there is a balance problem.
I agree that they aren’t going to fare well against a planned attack but those will be rare and aimed at high value targets. With thousands of mineable moons in New Eden, most will simply be another piece of straw in the haystack.
Last fall the community consensus was that taking Rorqual on grid would be suicide. While a lot of Rorquals are dying, the risk reward balance encourages people to keep using them. I expect the same will be true for moon mining fleets.
Low sec ore mining was viable years ago. Hedbergite and hermophite were worth twice as much as high sec ore. I remember because I had a barge that I’d take out during quiet hours when no-one else was in system. It made a nice change to the usual stuff in low sec, and yes, I lost a few barges to pirates during that time. 
Then CCP introduced low sec ore anomalies into high sec, the price of low sec ores plummeted, and the rest is history.
edit: to OP, ice fields are still viable in low sec. A solo Endurance pilot can make 30m-40m per hour mining glare crust. There are 5-6 ice fields within a few jumps from Stacmon in Placid if you’re desperate to gank miners.
I’ve not seen that variation of “you don’t have to outrun the lion/bear, you just have to outrun the other guy” before. I’m nicking that for future use.
On topic: I get that your aim isn’t more targets, but to make lowsec less of a barren wasteland with more people around.
Many hisec miners wouldn’t go for it, they don’t like explosions, the possibility of others interfering in their gameplay etc; or even being at the keyboard in some cases.
Ninja miners would go for it, just as they do now.
If profitable enough nullsec folks would set up mining enclaves, complete with available firepower support.
From the latest CSM minutes:
Suitonia brought up the Asteroid Belt
remnants that are in rookie systems, and how it would be nice to have similar sites in
lowsec with more valuable ore. Steve brought up that it would be nice to have that site
have the warp in location be further away from the asteroids, and having the asteroids
spread out to give players some time to react and make them less useful for rorquals.
They phrased it as “outside of tether range, but within range of defenses”
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That’s still not gonna do exactly what you want, at least if I’m reading your request correctly, because mining in Low Sec is still more dangerous than High or Null, and will therefore remain niche.
doesn’t low sec have the gas required for boosters? Or can you get all of those in null as well?
That gas is only available in Low Sec, but gas harvesting is mostly done in small and fairly fast ships and it’s not super valuable even with the increase in Booster use after their decriminalization.
Basically Booster Gas isn’t bringing in the sort of people these guys want, and not in much quantity. Of course nothing proposed here is going to change that soo…
Nothing ever will. Unless you make it more valuable than null sec. Null sec has less risk and low sec should not have better reward so good luck with this lol
It’s not just that, it’s that if you do make something more valuable than Null then someone will set up a null-esque safety system to exploit it and defend that exploitation of the new resource.
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Low and null, but only in very specific constellations. I think there’s about a dozen of these across the entirety of the cluster.