Like the title says. Mining in the alpha Venture is a-bit slow and inefficient once you start expanding. And if you want to stay alpha it is a bigger pain. So maybe adding more Ore alpha clone mining ships would be very nice. What do you guys think of that idea?
Alphaâs are specifically not meant to be effective miners.
This is a deliberate choice by CCP that Alphaâs get very little access to production type gameplay, only a taster enough to experience the gameplay but not good for making a âlivingâ.
Alphaâs are a consuming account type.
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Oh well, thx
Alpha accounts are very deliberately restricted to avoid an overwhelming impact on the EVE ecosystem by free-to-play accounts at a minimal effort. Mining is tied to a vast portion of the EVE economy, and is already a prime target for botters; adding more ways for free accounts to make mining profitable is a hard no due to the negative downstream impacts.
If you (general) want to access the full game, that is what Omega is for; Alpha accounts are an unlimited âtrialâ offer that has just enough exposure to everything to decide if you like the game or not. Alphas donât even have to spend real money to convert to Omega, since there are players willing to sell their PLEX for ISK, but it will take a fair amount of effort to get to the point where an account initially becomes self-sustaining with regards to PLEXing into Omega status.
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allow me to modify the suggestion letâs remove words alpha an ore from it: more mining ships.
and I can get behind that. let us have racial mining boats, pirate mining boats, navy mining boats all with itâs own flavours.
What gap in the current mining line do you believe exists that these boats could fill, other than âmine more fasterâ
That was the idea.
However, the Venture still is a very common gas mining boat in the depths of unknown space.
Personally - I want a ship that is a little crazy and has a very limited use. Part mining frigate, part blockade runner, and part industrial.
I want a cloaky miner with just enough room to hold one refining load of Mercoxit and allow it to be refined on the ship. Mineral/cargo hold would hold no more than 20M cubed. Mining is by drone and the drone hold has room for 8-12 light drones, bandwidth to operate 3-5 light drones. No turrets in high slots, but 2 or 3 ancillary slots, and other wise the slots for a destroyer class ship with racial destroyer levels of shield, armor, and structure. Destroyer level of other characteristics.
Maybe the ship has to âdeployâ the expandable ore hold and wallows like a whale when it is deployed, so to move about it needs to have refined itâs latest catch.
This ship would allow high risk ninja mining in nulsec, with very limited, but high value results.
Yes, I know there are the mining frigates that can do parts of this. Yes, this ship is nuts, will never happen and with a lot of though, much of it can be done with other ships, but a guy can dream a bit and have fun thinking about things right?
Absolutely but when it comes to making sensible use of peoples time in this forum, itâs best to actually have a realistic idea which fills an actual gap.
Iâm too tipsy tonight to actually think through all the possible holes hence why I asked rather than just said there is no gap, in case theyâve identified something Iâm not going to spot tonight.
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âŚand 55 heavy fighter tubes, 16 doomsday mounts, a jump drive the doesnât require a cyno, can insta-dock in Jita, can cloaked while mining, cannot be targeted, interdiction nullified, immune to all forms of ewar or energy neutralizing, cannot be damaged by smartbombs, has absolute drone immorality and whatever else this boat should have.
No!
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The basic problem is that more effective mining ships, lead to more ore being mined which leads to lower prices. CCP is correcting a problem created by more effective mining ships (Rorqual) over the past several years - hopefully the current war will draw down the stockpiles enough so that the scarcity phase doesnât need to last too much longer but Alpha miners should rejoice that the limited ore they can mine in their Ventures is worth a lot more than it was this time last year!
Racial flavours.
EDIT: for example gallente could have armor hull tanked mining ship that uses drones instead of lasers/strips. Minmatar mining ships could emphasis hull speed and shield booster bonuses.
Amarrian would have armor-tanked laserminingboats, and the only issue are caldari because unless you introduce mining missile (which would be weird) then their flavour (shields) is already in the ORE lineup. except ORE hates caldari state 
Are pointless unless they actually create real flavour.
With combat ships this is created by weapon systems and the different qualities each weapon system has & strengths attached.
With miners they all use mining lasers therefore there is no opportunity for meaningful racial flavours.
I mean, Iâm drunk right now (kids donât drink), and I can understand that.
there is more than weapon systems to racial flavour in combat ships, see edit of my previous post for details 
These do not create meaningful differences. There already exists a line of mining drone bonused ships which are the booster ships.
Speed is near meaningless when mining. etc.
Basically these ships you suggest do not fill any meaningful gap in the line up and there will be a clear king of them.
and which one of them is armor hull tanked?
also drone bonuses to industrial command ships was mistake change my mind.
it has some nichesâŚ
hence the word âflavourâ with same logic you can ask what is the meaningfull gap that all four of attack battlecruisers are filling to require full set of 4 to exist.
PS. I can totally live without my caldari-designed mining ships, I am just saying that this is kind of suggestion I could support instead of just more of alpha ships in ORE layout.
Whichever you want them to.
except none of them has hull bonuses/slot layout to actually support anything other than shield tank? (and thatâs in those cases where any type of tank is supported by the ship in the first place)
Alpha. Expanding�
These words donât go together.
Vexor and arbitrators have a drone mining bonus. Or use a battlecruiser or battleship.
One possibility I could see is a second âflavorâ of mining frigate that isnât based on shield tanking. It is frustrating for new players in a traditionally armor-tanked race to have to also train up shield skills early in in order to tank a mining frigate.
Same general mining capabilities, etc. just a different slot layout and bonuses that favor armor tanking as opposed to shield tanking. (And yes, I realize that more low slots = more mining upgrades, so this would have to be taken into account when balancing it.)
This wouldnât be about increasing yield for alpha clone miners, just a mild quality-of-life improvement for armor-tanking rookies.
Maybe if the idea takes off, it could give rise to a whole line of armor tanked mining ships from a rival corporation, or maybe a faction splintering off from ORE. Again, same general capabilities, just geared more towards armor tanks. Maybe add another source of NPC drama for events and such?
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