New miner progression path

Communications Center General Discussion
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This is basically a copy paste from what I said in the dev blog thread however due to how much that post is blowing up I feel the intent got lost in the morass.

I want to encourage everyone to post what they think a proper progression path for miners would look like because we can all agree that the current path is rather… short. If everyone posts their ideas perhaps CCP can get a clearer idea of what the players are hoping for in their late game mining play and could implement those ideas in the hopefully soon future.

Mining needs a higher progression path. You start with a venture, used to be before ore holds were introduced, everyone then moved to mining in a destroyer, then you pick up barges. From there you either go exhumer or support ships. Support ships have a progression path up to capital class Porp > Orca > Rorq. Miners have no such progression path. once you reach exhumers that’s it. That’s the end game. Which is why everyone went to the Orca/Rorq as the next step in the progression path

I think it’s time for some new miner ship classes. Here’s my progression ideas:

  1. A t3 miner with:
    “Attack” subsystems geared towards ore or ice or gas
    “Defense” subs geared towards tank , resists, or cloaking
    “Core” subs tailored to increasing laser range, ewar defense, or ship PG/CPU/Cap etc
    “Prop” subs for increased warp core stability, better inertia, AB/MWD buffs.

  2. A BC or BS class ship that mines 5-10% more than a hulk but is slower/tankier with high slots for offensive modules. Something to really have a long haul train into so that people can have their end game progression path into mining. You could even call it the Behemoth because it’s bigger than a Hulk.

  3. Perhaps adding an effect to the very underutilized crystal stability boost that decreases your waste chances by some small amount. It would make this boost more utilized and would fit the lore logic because crystals now affect waste and a more stable crystal would make sense to creating less waste.

  4. Perhaps a new hybrid that is intended to be a mining/support ship. Something that mines more than an Porp/Orca/Rorq but less than an exhumer. It has the option for a single boost slot but it boosts less than a Porp to keep it balanced.

Obviously these don’t have a prayer of being included in this update but Mining would be a lot more enjoyable for miners and gankers alike if there was more variety in the ships and paths you could take to get the job done.

I want others to post how they visualize a bigger progression path for the miner so that we can get some productive dialog about what we would all like to see happen

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People tend to ask for new stuff, new ships etc. when they’re bored and not feeling like they’re “progressing” in their given activity. So new ships give them something to ‘progress’ into.

That’s not a good reason for new ships, since basically it requires a new round of ships every time you train into the existing ones and then get bored.

Many things could be done with mining, but it’s likely to stay somewhat boring no matter what you do with it.

There is no real shortage of minerals, miners can get paid a reasonable ISK/hr rate mining currently (that’s my understanding at least, can’t personally verify since I don’t mine). So it doesn’t look like we have a “need more mining tools” gap to fill.

In general, new ships should be made to introduce gaps in needed functionality that aren’t currently covered. Your suggestions seem to be just different variations on existing mining vessels.

Instead of just tossing out “a ship with a little more X and a little less Y than an exhumer”, can you make a case as to what new game scenarios would be filled by these ships, and why that niche is needed?

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I’d mine if CCP gave me a mining titan.

Just swallow an entire moon whole and then digest it for like a month.

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The problem here is that the new ships would be to further flesh out the mining path. The proposed ships wouldn’t even have to necessarily need to mine more m3/hr as much as provide more diversity.

It’s like removing Destroyers and Battlecruisers because no one needs those variety of ships. The arguement could be made that Destroyers and Battlecruisers didn’t need to be added all those years ago because destroyers are just tricked out frigates, ditto BC being amped up cruisers. I remember back then, not everyone was clamoring for those in between ships categories, But they were developed none the less and niches were found for them in the meta of the game. Now most wouldn’t even consider removing them.

Besides which, this thread is to encourage new ideas on how to improve the gameplay of mining, not just to have responses saying why certain ideas are pointless. If you have it in you to criticize, come up to the chalkboard and put forward your own ideas.

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I believe you’ve missed the point, which is not to criticize. I was asking you to clarify what mining roles and tasks you thought new ships were needed for.

You also didn’t ask for new ideas on how to improve mining gameplay, you specifically asked for a new ship progression path. Hence the request to have you expand on which roles you felt those ships would be needed to fill.

Combat in EVE is a much wider and more varied environment than mining is, with a much more varied set of fits and builds. Calling a destroyer a “tricked out frigate” is being facetious. Regardless, destroyers have been used for varied roles in combat, mining, salvaging, and a number of other uses.

If you can’t define a separate or differentiated role for a new ship to play, then perhaps it would be better to explore other avenues of improving mining gameplay.

A good place to start might be to establish what problems with mining you are trying to fix, for instance. When presenting solutions, it helps to know what the actual problem is.

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Progressing in eve doesn’t necessarily mean having another ship to skill into. You may progress to more dangerous and lucrative areas for mining. You may put down a structure and pull moons. You may dabble in other careers that synergise with mining like industry, hauling and trade.

Try not to think of progression as linear in eve or try to so directly compare one activity to another. PI doesn’t take much SP to max out and has even less ships specialised for it than mining. Trading doesn’t involve ANY ships. But this isn’t a problem because we are comparing apples to oranges.

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People are getting hung up on the ships idea. You all complain that CCP doesn’t listen and I agree. If you have better ideas post them here. I’m also looking for ways to implement non tedious mini games into mining. possible new types of mining, ore filaments that collapse after a period of time and have buckets of good ore but increasingly harder rats that spawn, etc. All ideas welcome.

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EvE Mining: the only job where becoming a Manager is not seen as progression by the krabulons that do it.

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lol @ “krabulons” :smiley:

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…redundant

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If you don’t mine and have no intention of mining…

…stay out of the convo

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Well you see, since it’s an open forum, posted publicly, in fact even removed from the thread already made for it and created to stand out, I was hoping for some education on the issue.

Things like, since mining apparently needs to be “improved”, what are the issues that are wrong with it that need improving? Where are the shortages that need to be addressed?

Sadly it appears you and the OP don’t really have a grasp of these issues, just the ability to say “agree with me or go away”.

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I figure the progression path for a miner would become a fc and run and coordinate mining ops

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I view the progression as: Start in high sec, then go to low sec, and finally to null sec.

Newbros start off in their venture in high sec, and find a corp to boost them while they skill up to their first barges. As they switch to a barge in high sec and keep increasing yield, in the meanwhile they learn how to fit their venture for low sec. Sig tanking, safe bookmarks, d-scan, all of that. The group they join should be teaching this. Progression is not simply “increase yield”. Plus, they now get into basic gas harvesting there.

From there, they can try to splash the skills for a Miasmos and practice extracting ore from low sec to high sec.

So now they’re in high and low sec. As they skill up mining barge higher and higher, it gets comparatively quicker to go for T2 mining frigates and T2 mining lasers instead of exhumers and all the support skills needed for the various mining crystals. While Covert Ops cloaks are nice, their experience in low sec should make them feel OK with T1 cloaks, and taking a prospect out to the anomalies instead.

Lastly, as the miner gets not just mining barge and associated tanking/agility skills up, they’re prepared to enter the world of Deep Core mining. They and the group they play with are prepared to venture into NPC nullsec to get the most valuable ore: Mercoxit.

You’ll notice, I consider ice, and gas harvesting different progressions entirely. Moon is somewhat tangential. Training into the support ships are also entirely situation specific: either you have a great group of people to boost or you have alt accounts that are also miners. In my mind, Porpoise/Orca/Rorqual are an entirely different track and are not “the mining progression” track.

Of course, everyone plays the game differently. The way I played, I was able to acquire every mineral I needed to do T2 production, allowing me to better absorb market costs of T2 reaction materials and still turn a profit (edit: in terms of ISK/hr it is not min/maxed, this progression is optimized for having-fun-being-prey/hr). Sometimes that meant I traded (and still trade) nullsec ore m3-mined-to-m3-mined for other high and low sec ores from folks who are newer on the progression path outlined above.

I think it’s a mental self-deception to treat the ship as the progression, as the progression should instead focus on what you want to get out of an activity. For mining, that’s usually mining the most valuable ores – so planning a path to Mercoxit or R64 moons or nullsec ice.

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??

Was ist das?

–Confused Gadget

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Exactly so in order to make more ship types for mining they would have to introduce more “problems” with mining to solve with those ships.

Then people would complain how it’s more tedium to switch ships for different types of mining or more useless complexity compared to the old way etc.

Heck CCP isn’t even forcing more ship diversity with the current changes and look at the whining. Imagine if on top of it you had to train and acquire several more specialized mining ships lol.

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Thank you, that’s a very good overview, and sort of what I had as an outsider’s perspective on what mining involves.

I’m more of a numbers person, so from the October MER it appears that quantity of minerals mined has rapidly increased in the past 3 months, as have the “mineral price index” amounts. So that would show that overall, miners are bringing in more minerals and getting paid more for them, even while our player count is going down (fewer miners, presumably).

Note that is aggregate of all mining everywhere, it doesn’t imply that every miner is pulling more ore and getting paid more for it. Also, this is before “scarcity ending”.

So the 2015 chart on player activity (the only breakdown we have), shows that more players mine than mission, industry, or PvP. MER shows they’re pulling in more ore and getting paid more for it. PCU shows there are likely fewer miners creating these results, therefore less competition for belts.

Apparently most miners over the past few months already are progressing.

So while I’m happy to learn more about various aspects of the game or consider how to improve it, I’m still somewhat at a loss as to which aspects of mining the OP feels needs improving here.

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I don’t think you have the numbers available to make that claim, for “progressing” in the sense of “high to low to null sec” progress that I outlined. For that, you would need the breakdown of m3 mined per security space, and see its distribution shift over time. Otherwise, the “more ore pulled” could be from any security space. And the “increased prices” are at the mercy of the market – we’re only talking about one tiny part of the supply side at the moment, which is an incomplete picture. We’re missing the obvious demand side, but subtly on the supply side, the “amount of ore mined” is not the amounts hitting the market – in their raw, reprocessed, or produced forms – as “rebuilding stockpiles” is a reasonable alternative interpretation that would see an increase of mining amounts and decrease supply on the market.

I’m not disputing the facts, I just don’t agree that they rule out other contrarian conclusions to yours.

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Right now, we have a mining frigate that is bonused for ore yield, and the most powerful gas huffer in the game: the Prospect. But what it’s used for is neither mining nor huffing. For mining, it’s outperformed by barges so hard that it disqualifies itself. For huffing, it’s too expensive over a Venture for the little bonus it has over it, and lacks the warp core stability bonus, so people prefer using Ventures to huff.

What a Prospect is instead used for is hunting prey for blops fleets

If we had a mining battleship, what offensive bonuses would it have? It’s primary enemies are fast tackles, t3d, interdictors, and assault frigates, after all. Energy Neutralizer Range Bonus to shoo the interceptors away, and smartbomb bonuses because battleship sized turrets or launchers are almost completely useless against closely orbiting small ships, while the oribiting tackle will always have enough capacitor left to re-engage it’s scram and interrupt a microjump before it finished spooling up.

What people would do with a smartbomb bonused battleship that had more tank then a Skiff was obviously not to go mining, but instead to sit on a lowsec stargate and smartbomb incoming ships.

Technically, the battleship can also shoo the brawly frigates to warp off by instructing it’s drones to attack them. Chances are, however, that the brawly frigates just wreck all the drones, unless the battleship had Gila-like drone bonuses. But if it had a Gila-like drone bonus, combined with better-then-skiff tank, it would become the new deploy-and-forget-boat for lvl5 nullsec ratting anomalities, replacing the Gila/Vexor/Dominix/Ishtar at being forgotten in combat anomalities.

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Yes, we have that. It’s called the MER, although it’s based on ISK value and not m3. It does break it down by region, and since it’s monthly you can track it over time if you care to.

What the recent MERs show is a reduction in mining value in some large areas of empire space, and a major increase of value in null sov space.

You also seem to be limiting your idea of ‘progression’ here to going from Hi → Low → Null, while at the same time making this statement:

To me it seems that if a miner is getting more of what they want out of an activity (yield, profit or both) then they’re progressing. Whether they headed to null to do it or not isn’t a limiting factor there.