Sorry for the text wall. I tried to make it fun but it may look like a stupid wall.
What’s wrong at present time
Why I don’t like present mining :
- our turrets don’t deal damage. No feeling of the asteroid going to hull, no need to OL the guns for that last part of damage, it’s all or nothing either the roid is finished at the end of the cycle or nothing. The ■■■■ ? I’ve been shooting it, it SHOULD take DMG !!!
- no tracking involved. The asteroid has no way to escape the laser, even if asteroid is über tiny and I am orbiting it with 500mn venture (assuming I have the range, the pwr and the cap ^^ ). THIS IS BLASPHEMY. You should have to consider positioning when mining, reducing angular, adjusting to your optimal. I assume this is the main reason people keep mining in HS, because they don’t take the time to learn about tracking.
- the ore magically disappear from the asteroid into our cargo WTF ?? That and asset safety are the only occurrences of items being magically moved by game mechanics. OKAY the damsel appearing in our cargo is another one, like the SOE mission that make people appear in my cargo without even knocking at the door first. But I guess Alitura had sent invitations first.
What I propose
First thing is : roids have a visible health bar. they also have an invisible “yield” bar. When they are destroyed (by SHOOTING THEM UNTIL THEY DIE) , they fragment in the proportion of their yield bar to max HP. yield bar is increased when a “mining” stuff damages it, at a rate of one per HP damaged. So If I DD a rock, it will produce 0 ore unless it was a mining DD. If a rock has lost 10% of its hp to mining tools, then the DD (assuming it one shots the roid) will produce 10% of what the rock could have dropped.
Then, mining lasers deal damage. Let’s say as much as their present yield. They also have tracking and thus a possibility to miss or crit. Tracking is They can be overheated to increase their DPS. Of course they have the flag “mining_yield” that makes it worth shootin a roid with it.
This also means that roids have sig, speed and hp. for the “belt” usual roid, sig is 400 and speed is 0. HP is HALF the volume of the max possible yield. This means that destroying a roid takes half as long as it did before . Why this “half as long” ? Because next :
Roids that are destroyed EXPLODE into “chunks” (maybe “aggregate” )of the ore that have a small speed (100 m/s), are already damaged up to the missing yield (eg if the veldspar mined to 90% hp then one shot by DD explodes, it creates chucks that are already damage to 10% hp because 90% is removed by the DD ) and are 40-90m sig. They yield bar is set to 0 si when mined they can’t go higher than their parent roid.
Each chunk as up to 4000 m³ or ore inside, ie a roid with 10 000 m³ will explode in 2 chunks of 4000 m³ (so 2k ehp)+ one of 2 000 m³ (1k ehp).
chunks are short-lived, they lose 10hp/s so at most one can go up to 200s = 0:3:20 to mine it. This is to avoid server memory issues.
If they are pointed their decaying stops. I’m not kidding. Get something fast to point them and web them will increase your mining yield. If you are alone, leave the big rocks or get enough points to keep the chunks you are not mining alive.
When a chunk is killed (or decays) it drops a small can containing the ore in proportion to its own yield bar. The ore belongs to noone. first loot - or tractor - first serve. Then porpoise tractor + sig amp becomes interesting.
What will it change ?
For a small alone venture, just mine one small roid to its death. Then follow the chunk and point it, mine it, then open the cargo and loot it. If you attack a too big chunk, there will be wastage as you can’t mine all the chunks before they disappear.
For a lone barge, same as venture ; however it will take longer to mine the chunks as their sig is small enough to have reduced damage. So a web may help.
For a small team, you should have someone webbing+painting the target chunk, and/or someone pointing the moving chunks if you mine big roids. IMO mining drones should have same tracking as barge lasers (modulated ) so people in ventures with points would be more efficient as drones for chunks, while people in barges/orca/porpoise/exhumer would be focusing on the biggest roids.
For gankers/ assholes / whatever : now you can shoot the asteroid / chunk to reduce it’s worth, steal the can (I guess you should become suspect if you did not participate in the extraction but it’s already complex enough)
I know it looks like a overly complex stupid idea. It just think it would be cool. And more consistent with Eve mechanics.