I’m not a miner and never will be. Even with these changes I pretty much certainly won’t do it. But I have talked to several miners about this idea I came up with to address the fact that solo mining even on omega is not worthwhile. Whenever I talk to new players I always tell them that mining is generally not worth it unless you’re in nullsec, and not just omega but have multiple omega accounts.
The issue with mining is that it’s a passive/afk activity. Even in nullsec where there’s “danger” (which doesn’t tend to materialize in the largely-secure sovnull blocs these days anyway) it’s a mostly-afk activity. People can get away with multiboxing 10 accounts at once and have no issues controlling them all. Mining is setup right now to scale with the number of accounts and there are no great options for the solo miner. The prospect, which should be that ship, is not. It’s a covops cyno ship which makes it effectively redundant because we have actual covops and recon ships already.
So here’s my solution: exploration mining sites. I would make them findable with an entirely new kind of probe (perhaps called a survey probe) to prevent regular explorers and mining explorers from wasting time finding each other’s sites.
These sites should each only take a few minutes to ten minutes to mine. These should be designed around the prospect (but alphas in ventures can get started with it). Every site should fit into the mining hold on a prospect - buff it if you have to or just make the ores very dense/compressed-like. A prospect should even be able to hit multiple sites generally before having to return about once an hour on average.
For an omega miner in a prospect who is a competent explorer I would say the reward should be around 100-200 million ISK per hour on average from the regular exploration ore sites in nullsec and wormholes.
Beyond this I would include a system of lucky spawns to create both variety and excitement.
I propose at least three tiers of mining site rarity:
-Basic sites: these should still have a number of different kinds offering different product outputs. would be something like 99 percent of what you find. These would be the ones that average out to about 100-200 mil an hour for a guy with optimal skills and a good grasp on exploration. In high and lowsec the range could be from 40-100 instead.
-Rich sites: The equivalent of true sansha, shadow serpentis, and other faction pirate spawns but for ores. They would be a rare spawn, around 1% or less of the total. These should offer a decent chunk in one go, still following the notion that it should all fit into a prospect’s cargo. Somewhere between 150 and 500 million in one go, with some variance and variety in types same as the basic ones.
-Jackpot sites: these are the equivalent of officer spawns but for miners. It could be something like 1/2500 or 1/5000 mining anomalies. These would offer the chance of a very sweet payday which could range between 2.5 and 25 billion worth of ore in one go.
The numbers can be tweaked a little based on how CCP wants to balance it but I think this is a good general outline of the premise of my idea. It’s also balanced by the fact that it will finally be an engaging rather than mostly-passive mining activity. This will finally give solo miners a viable way to make decent ISK without having to rely on being in a fleet. And the lucky and jackpot system will create some genuine excitement for miners when they hear what’s out there for them.
Also, the prospect should lose it’s covops cyno capability. Redundant and it should just be a solo miner IMO lol. Kind of a separate thing but related. The prospect will need a 4th high slot as well to accommodate a scanner while keeping its cloak and miners. It’ll be balanced enough if you just get rid of that blops thing from it which is wholly unnecessary.
Anyway feedback is welcome. Miners who want to see this happen should probably spam here or refer to it on the EVE discord or wherever until CCP notices too lol. This change doesn’t interest me personally but I do have an interest in newbros getting the most out of EVE and I think even people who want to mine should have a way to do it without needing 5+ accounts. A newbro getting into EVE should have a better solo option which also scales reasonably into mid and lategame. Not everyone has a PC to multibox. Some can just handle one client. Let’s give solo miners a real option and make it actually fun while we’re at it!