NPC miners running amok in lowsec?

Communications Center General Discussion
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Reposted from the old forums- I guess this is where the future lies. Anyhow…

I observed something interesting in lowsec backwoods Molden Heath (where my main char spends a fair amount of time) and am wondering if others have had the same experience.

Lowsec MH is mostly deserted. That’s a big part of the attraction of it. You can go hours without seeing a soul. That largely dampens the normally suicidal risk of mining in lowsec, so I do so from time to time to avoid hauling materials out to build stuff out there.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discovery that NPC miners from two different corps were in the process of mining the very last asteroids in my home system, and had pretty much nuked the adjacent systems completely as well. Belt after belt after belt simply gone without a trace.

If lowsec constantly suffers from low population because the rewards aren’t worth the risk, this seems like it’s in need of a bit of balancing. I’m willing to mine out there and make myself a big, juicy target because almost no one does and, as such, the rocks get really big. When I literally cannot find anything to mine because the belts are hit harder by rat miners than those in highsec, that seems suspect.

I suppose it’s possible that the mother of all player mining corps hangs out here in the time periods when I’m at work, but since the NPCs were still swarming like bees this evening, I suspect it’s them.

I realize I could shoot them, but I made the mistake of setting up shop in territory of my own faction and don’t want to wreck my standings. Sure, I could move, but I like the neighborhood.

Just seems like from a load-balancing perspective, stripping resources from an area which is virtually depopulated already isn’t really wise.

Anyone else seen this elsewhere in lowsec?

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Have you tried shooting them?

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Now that’s just nonsense, especially in lowsec.

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I’ve seen the same in highsec, completely empty belts and then you will find 2 or even 3 npc mining teams clustered around the last remaining rocks in a system.

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Make the NPC miners in Low-Sec drop good amounts of compressed ore?

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Haha

They using a NPC multibox technique btw. Do you noticed their Mammoth or Bestower which are used to deliver ore to a station? Looks like they don’t want to disturb miners from the process.

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They do this in high sec too, since the release of the feature.
It depends on the day of the week, number of belts in system and type of mining ships they use.

A couple NPC Ventures in a system with a lot of belts wont do much.
A fleet of NPC Machinaws in a system with a few belts can easily mine out the entire system on Mondays and Fridays.

You can chase them away by attacking them, but often they come back after ~15min.

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Yeah. I´ve had already a little problem with them in highsec. Just leave them.

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Richer asteroids in low-sec does NOT make low-sec more attractive; 10 years of high-sec carebears refusing to go there pretty much proves this.

So, CCP introduced this new NPC-mining system, and they didn’t foresee all the repercussions. They always do this, by the way, it’s typical CCP coding quality, what you can expect, at this point.

In any case, other than you, I don’t think anyone else cares. Ninja-mining asteroids happened for a short time, when they introduced the Venture years ago, but then disappeared rather fast as the pirates adapted and started getting good at catching the ninja-miners. Also because, if you’re going to ninja-mine, it’s more profitable to mine wormhole gas sites. Even when CCP introduced the cov-ops T2 Ventures, I don’t think anyone cared about mining in low-sec, or asteroids anywhere really.

People go to low-sec to participate in faction warfare or to pirate. Nobody cares about the asteroids, or any PVE rewards there. It’s pretty much impossible for CCP to balance the “risk vs. reward” ratio, when the risk is entirely controlled by PVP’er behavior, and the reward has to be limited by some sort of drop rate percentage or server-side script. CCP’s scripts are really dumb, they have no talent at it; if you don’t want to look at 10 years of “quality” programming, just look at what’s happening with the drone aggro scripting, as recent proof.

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We started seeing this in our Lo-Sec system after the June update. 5 belts in the system and every one has been wiped almost every single day. I submitted 2 bug reports and 3 weeks after the first one, the replay was :

I was unable to reproduce this issue with the information provided. However, we are investigating these mining fleets as they contain the very beginnings of the new AI for NPCs that have been introduced. After checking the system, there are, in fact, 5 asteroid belts. While that is not too many, it is quite possible that these NPC fleets are clearing the belts, although, as I said, I was unable to reproduce this on the test server.

It is also quite possible that someone else is clearing the system before you are able to log in each day.

Regardless of what the real issue may be, we are looking into the behavior of these NPC miners. "

Really, 5 full belts every day…except the day CCP responded. We were able to mine on that day. Next day, all belts clear. I don’t know for sure, but I probably would have noticed a fleet of Orca showing up every day.

I think the new AI has figured out that 12-cruiser support fleets that do a couple thousand DPS allows them to clear whatever they want.

Can anyone say, " SKYNET"?

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And now I am unable to log into any of my characters. SKYNET it watching.

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Looks like CODE did a fine job at driving out all the ‘real’ miners. This is what they have to gank now. Lucky for them concord wont even get involved.

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We’ve seen the same over the last few days, in our corner of lowsec too.

We’ve grown used to seeing the NPC mining fleets doing their thing, but all of a sudden they’ve been stripping a few neighbouring systems almost bare.

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Maybe you should mine in the ore Anoms.

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There is an interesting question, do the npc fleets have CODE mining permits?:thinking:

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[quote=“Chan_aar, post:15, topic:11073”][quote=“StonerPhReaK, post:12, topic:11073, full:true”]
Looks like CODE did a fine job at driving out all the ‘real’ miners. This is what they have to gank now. Lucky for them concord wont even get involved.[/quote]
There is an interesting question, do the npc fleets have CODE mining permits?:thinking:
[/quote]If I had the authority, and they were actually human, I’d make these NPCs honourary Agents of the New Order of Highsec. Anything that pries highsec miners out of their self-inflicted single-player cocoons is a good thing. Forcing them to deal with the unexpected, and interact with a changing universe around them, rather than doing everything to avoid playing the game in slavish devotion to watching their wallet balance get ever-larger is a good thing.

As to the OP complaining about a dynamic universe in lowsec, well if you can handle the changes to your local environment from the other players in such a free sandbox environment, you can deal with a few dumb NPCs. Find friends to shoot them, pay the consequences and do it yourself, or just move somewhere else. I agree Eve is best when other players are your opponents, but I am tired of people coming to the forums to complain about anything they have to deal with that impacts their ISK/h or forces them to make a choice.

This mechanic is now part of the game, and players have be asking forever for CCP to give them a more dynamic and interactive environment. Well, these mining NPCs are that and you have to find a way to react to them and accomplish your goals.

Like for many problems in Eve, I suggest you try antimatter if you can’t think of anything else.

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OK,
5 belts,
Lo-Sec,
3 hours after down-time,
all empty,
every day but 3 in the last month,

Please explain to me how this is not a bug?

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Very simple: it’s a bug if CCP says so, and they haven’t said so.

They usually don’t say so. You submit bug report and they fix (quietly) or not.

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went there to see for myself … 5 npc retrievers warping between the 5 stripped belts . seems pointless and poorly thought-out , made me think of : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doomsday_Machine_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)

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These NPC miners are getting annoying. They seem to be much more active recently.

2 days in a row they mined out the entire system. Today they are doing it again …
Once they start, they wont stop until the system is empty. They dont sleep, they mine 23.5h a day.
You can attack them to chase them off, but they come back after ~15min …
You can destroy them, but they still come back after ~15min.

You need to destroy all their mining ships if you want to stop them, but that is a lot of work because all of them warp off after being attacked, which means you have to point and destroy them one by one. Of course you also have to deal with the response fleet everytime (escape, fight or suicide). You have to repeat this 6-7 times until all or most of their mining ships gone. Its like wack a mole. So its like 1h of work to get rid of them. You could engage them with a fleet to destroy them all at once, but since they drop no rewards (only a bit of ore), most people will not join.

I dont see the benefits of this feature. Its an annoyance. Just another nerf to mining in asteroid belts (and indirect buff to ore anomalies).

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