But what pattern recognition is going to not become utterly frustrating for the real players.
Mining lasers cycle so often that having to reset every cycle would be a nightmare. Not to mention mining drones wouldn’t be impacted (or it would be even crazier) So bots would just use drone miners like orcas. if they aren’t already.
For mining, I would move the rocks farther apart (mining drones are slow) and I would change the composition so there are a few high value rocks that respawn randomly and a lot of low value ones. You need to scan to find the gems and the scans need visual interpretation - not numeric. It might also be interesting if the rocks moved - so you need to orbit them - more realistic but the gems would need to be really valuable to maintain player interest.
This would change the character of mining - small fast ships might be able to out produce big, slow ones - especially if they were getting boosts from one of the big ships. I would consider this an improvement over what we have now. I haven’t undocked my Skiff since Ascension!
Changes to mining itself are an interesting line of development, but this is about Ice Fields.
What makes them so bottable/farmable, is no requirement to probe, set systems, and spawn like clockwork,
Agreed, but ice and ore have some characteristics in common. I actually see no reason why ice and ore need to be separated - mix them in the same field with random spawns of high value deposits scattered among a lot of junk that need a scanner to find. Not probes, but not the simple numeric survey scanners we have now. - visual pattern recognition to interpret the scans. You would need to refit your ship for each resource but Eve shouldn’t have an Easy button.
A rather radical option would be to turn on PvP in HS Ice Belts.
Would certainly create content/opportunities.
Another option is moving Ice deposits into Combat Sigs/Anomalies that have to be cleared to mine the Ice.
You need to decide which you’re going to harvest before undocking - or pack a mobile depot. Ice Harvesting is a rank 1 skill - train to level 5 in 3-4 days. Asteroids shouldn’t be visually distinguishable - scanning should be required to find deposits of ore/ice. No reason why an asteroid couldn’t have deposits of both.
I think it would be interesting if the security status of anomalies spawning in a system was independent of the security status of the system itself - that could result in some interesting gameplay but unrestricted PVP in highsec isn’t likely - unless you want 70% of the player base to quit!
So remind me how mission runners have to refit for every lvl 4 mission they run…
They don’t.
Expecting miners to do so with the current barges and the like is an outright joke
In anycase, Ice Field mechanics are retarded and practically designed for botting.
Atleast elsewhere they can be openly aggressed, but HS NPC Corp Ice Bots are a pain to engage with all that is entailed in a suicide gank.
Speaking of which, suicide gankers have also realized its far more lucrative to pop overstuffed, ill prepared freighters (of which there is no end), than miners.
When even CODE doesnt bother with guaranteed Ice mining targets in a set system, every 4hrs, you know something stinks.
I used to do HS Ice mining (not botting ofc, it barely needs it anyways as passive as it is), and its too damn easy to just set-up operations in Ice systems and farm your heart out in rotation of alts, every 4hrs. Its good isk, as EVEs hunger for Ice is inexhaustible.
There is one area in HS with 3 Ice Fields within 6jumps of each other, iirc.
You’ve always needed to refit when switching between ore and ice - why should having both in the same field change that?
Where I used to mine at the top of Everyshore there are 5 systems in a row with 8 fields. Before the isboxer ban we used to see 50 ship fleets!
Your post made it sound as if you were utterly changing mining. If it’s just ice mixed in ore belts and having to change between those two then that’s not a drama.
Though really Belts should just be deleted in all areas of space and replaced with a few respawning anoms per system.
That way time zone isn’t a massive advantage for miners, and it’s more concentrated mining, which brings miners into contact with each other to either compete or co-operate. As well as being a more findable target for anyone hunting them.
Yeah I Ice mined before CCP finally put its foot down on keycasting (Faaar too late). Ive seen it at its worst, but that didnt change the retarded Ice Field mechanics that still persist.
If the Ice Fields are to remain set in systems, and clockwork spawn, the least CCP can do is make them conflict/cooperation drivers.
With PvP on in Ice Fields, Mercs will be in high demand to protect mining operations, and they will become rare hotspots for HS PvP over a valuable, finite resource.
I started believing anomalies that respawn elsewhere in the same constellation would be best but my current thinking is to have a lot of low value rocks forcing players to scan for the good ones - with anomalies those low value rocks would need to be harvested before it could respawn. I now think that random respawn of high value deposits in a belt will work best. You know where the belts are but need to prospect for the high value resources.
What do you mean by “scan” in this context?
If you mean scanning individual rocks, thats not gonna happen, nor would it harm bots, cos they will just stripmine it all anyways.
Needs to be same system or mining & refining needs to be made a lot more mobile. The need to warp and jump tends to destroy mining profit because it’s a continuous activity, not a snatch and grab like other activities.
Anomalies you could have a timer on them after which the warp in vanishes (obviously you could give people another hour or two if they have it bookmarked to mine the stuff)
There is no problem with warping to anoms as you know where they are, they just aren’t a fixed location but it’s a beacon. So that works. Belts don’t respawn except at downtime which means the first in after downtime gets the best ores and everyone else just gets to suffer.
You aren’t going to get any kind of special visual based scanner though. You might get the ore scanner to work slightly differently but it will still be a text based list. The reason for this is trying to scan 50-100 rocks and interpret visual patterns to identify what is good and what is bad simply isn’t viable. You are asking people to solve 50-100 harder than most captcha problems before they even start mining otherwise. Then remember them all.
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EVE needs Ice, in vast, regular amounts.
This puts a dampener on making Ice harder to find in HS, or elsewhere, as random spawns or occassionally integrated into Asteroid Belts.
HS in particular could use a PvP conflict/cooperation driver. Ice Belts can become that as recurring spawned instance in which PvP is enabled, in Ice systems that needs to be defended by force to harvest it.
Survey scanners that show patterns rather than numbers - similar to PI scans. Give them a limited range so they can scan several rocks at a time but not the entire field. Bots harvesting a lot of low value rocks would be easily detected. As mentioned earlier - you don’t need to kill the bots - just make them unprofitable.
This is a huge hastle and requires a whole new UI.
Wont harm mining bots cos they will stripmine the belt anyways. You cant tell they are a bot from mining low value ores. Perhaps a player needs those. Non-bot players regularly just sit in a belt and harvest all of it. All ore is valuable/necessary, not just rare/expensive ones.
This also does nothing about Ice Field mechanics currently.
If you think this is actually a viable idea lets see the mock up of how this is actually readable without spending 15 minutes first to have to scan the entire field.