Harvesting Laser Secondary Damage - Trouble's comin', grab yer shovels!

[Zeokran]

I’m sure there have been plenty of suggestions regarding this over the years, but here’s mine.

Secondary damage effect for all mining lasers, strip miners, ice mining lasers, ice harvesters, and salvagers.
Gas scoops and gas harvesters are not included because… it’s a hoover.

• Asteroid and Ice mining lasers now deal continuous thermal damage per second equal to their modified mining yield divided by their cycle time. This damage is dealt during the cycle and not at the end of the cycle, unlike mining yields, and cancels the mining laser’s current cycle if the target leaves optimal range.
  example: A miner II on a venture reads that it yields 150 m3 of ore every 60 seconds. 150/60 = 2.5 Thermal damage per second.
  Since asteroids are immune to damage, this won’t change anything for mining.
• Modulated mining lasers and modulated strip miners now have access to “D type” mining crystals (D for damage!) which reduce all mining yields by 90% but increase damage dealt by 10 times (or 100 times if we need to account for the yield reduction).
  example: A venture with a modulated deep core miner II would have an empty charge yield of 290 m3 per 180 seconds. While empty this would be a damage per second value of 1.6 Thermal DPS, but when socketing a D(amage) type mining crystal, it now has a yield of 29 m3 per 180 seconds and 16 Thermal DPS.
• Salvagers now deal EM damage per second equal to 50% of their modified access difficulty % attribute.
  example: baseline salvager I access difficulty without skills is 5%. This becomes 2.5 EM DPS while active, and with salvaging 3 increasing the access difficulty to 15%, it would become 7.5 EM DPS. Even if we stack tech 2 salvagers on a noctis with tech 2 salvage tackles, we would only see upwards of 50 EM DPS per salvager, which still requires the target to stay within 5,000 meters to deal damage.
• Wrecks may need to receive a slight resistance to EM damage so that they’re not broken too quickly while being salvaged. On the other hand, this may also be an interesting addition by limiting the number of attempts that a player has to salvage a wreck before the salvager destroys it.
• Mining drones and salvage drones will not deal any damage, as swapping drones is far simpler than refitting weapons and should remain as an encouraged mechanic.
• All mining laser and salvager dps accuracy mechanics will be based off of entropic disintegrator accuracy mechanics. All salvagers and mining lasers will need to have a baseline turret tracking speed added to them, with likely much lower values than entropic disintegrators since they typically aren’t used against moving targets.

By no means will this save a solo miner from being ganked by a loki, but they can at least put up a better fight and fend off belt rats a bit more effectively. The supplemental mining laser dps while in a mining fleet that is being attacked a small group of pirates will also go a long way.

[Ax_l_Thorne]

Sure. But to balance things out, mining yields should be halved.

[Zeokran]

Like I said, for modulated D type crystals the mining yield would be reduced by 90%. In all cases you can’t mine while fighting, so you’re getting 0 yield while fighting with your lasers.

If you meant half yield at all times on all lasers because lasers can now do a small amount of damage, then you’re just trolling.

[Max_Deveron]

and for what reason do we need this…or better yet wasting Dev time on?

[Zeokran]

Because it makes sense and it would give miners less excuses to demand 100% safe areas, since they could technically defend themselves with their lasers. In terms of dev time, adding these values to mining lasers and balancing them wouldn’t take very much time at all. Even the crystals would just be copies of other crystal entries where you change the values for how they modify the laser attributes.

[Terak_Romaller]

Of course, you could always use a flight of combat drones.
Delightfully, most mining barges, have the capacity for both a flight of mining drones and a flight of combat drones.

In a Venture you have to choose (I normally go with a couple of light drones to deal with rats). For the T2 frigates it’s a different game - they’re more for stealthy mining.

If you want a combat ship then get a combat ship.