Please, not again... here come NPC mining fleets

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
1

Oohh, please… not another one of those.

My arguments may not be compelling to you specifically, maybe for any of the following reasons, ordered by most-likely to least-likely (point of view),

  • you don’t care
  • you know how to cheese them easily like I do, and you ■■■■■■■ (censored) rub your hard nipples (probably not censored), like the kinky capsuleer (let’s be honest, it should be censored) that you are
  • you’re REALLY lucky on item drops off the strongboxes
  • you get quite a bit of ISK for the skins (especially pirate factions)
  • you’re not based in a system with an NPC mining station nearby, and/or have barely noticed the existance of them (my other base has none, and everything is ever blissful)
  • you’re not based in a constellation with multiple NPC mining stations/corporations,
  • you’re not based in a system within reach where NPC mining stations spawn fleets (4+ jumps),
  • you’re not a miner at all
  • my arguments are simply not compelling arguments

Now there’s a constellation of space, that has a few stations spawning fleets, and then another. So a lot of the time there’s two NPC corporations spawning fleets in systems at least 4 jumps away, maybe more? Astral Mining Inc. does 4 jumps. One day, I found a system with 6 belts total, almost completely empty. They’re active in a whole constellation and above. And I mean, they don’t “send” them in any way or form, it’s just a magic spawn out of a Unicorn’s asshole (shouldn’t really be censored because it’s a Unicorn’s, and I’m glad that “Unicorn’s asshole” isn’t censored but straight up ■■■■■■■ is).

Mined out by a fun little thing, that developers toyed around with, without a hint of a thought of the effects it would have on the game world. A game world that we’re told is firmly put in the hands of the players. Yet, NPC mining fleets have a remarkable impact on it now, and even if you slaughter their fleets in a whole constellation, they magically spawn back an hour or 3, and re-populate the area. There’s no reason or meaningful way of fighting them, they can’t be terrorised, they can’t be driven away, they just magically spawn and, as source code is, work tirelessy without any breaks for 23/7, and have a meaningful impact on the game world.

I think that mining NPC have been a cute little exercise, to get to FOB stuff, whatever it is. Apparently though, you can kill an FOB with 4 Dominixes or less (yup, GREAT AI programming, but also mainly because Gallente are awesome, missiles suck, don’t get up close and personal with Gallente. Why? You’ll never know, every time we get to your face to ask you, it just melts).

What do NPC mining fleets provide? Faction specific industrial lingerie… wait… livery skins, yes. Livery. Something that could be done without NPC consuming player content, while largely not being worth to be consumed as content. Some people like getting ore without mining, yet it doesn’t compare to any amount pulled by a single organised player. The amount of time and effort alone, that you have to put into getting NPC mined ore… you’re better off baiting hisec miners, or outright ganking them.

Fact is, a fleet of NPC miners seems to be 4-8 ships (only pulled the 8 out of my ass), Ventures pull 204.9 m3/min (68.3 per laser), Retrievers and Skiffs pull 1229.9 m3/cycle (I checked that with a survey scanner) with different cycle times. They’re ■■■■■■■ (censored) dumb, and Skiffs get you quite a bit of T2 salvage. They don’t have real fittings (or feelings), they don’t have real cargo (evident in some hauler kills having up to 300k m3 of ore, probably a bug where they can’t dock, return, and have unlimited cargo or some ■■■■■■■ (censored) ■■■■ (censored) mechanic not working out as intended and nobody ■■■■■■■ (censored) cares, also ship scanners and cargo scanners). This ■■■■ (censored) is broken and half-assed as ■■■■ (censored), and CCP is doing this: https://i.imgur.com/vMv9Y62.gifv (courtesy of a brave capsuleer on Reddit). Let’s not talk about the perfectly coreographed fleet they’ve got nearby, always, of unknown size… whether it be frigates, cruisers, battleships, carriers, or super-caps… ■■■■ (censored) you, who are you to ask questions?

Now apparently there’s so few player provided content, that we need NPC to provide it for us. Mine our ore for instance, make it feel us. But also attack our outposts or citadels as it were, because players just aren’t doing it enough. Please y’all, re-direct your attention to stupidly predictable NPC instead of against hilariously and deceptively unpredictable dumb humans, who rallied a lot of other dumb humans, trying to take your dumb stuff. Because we’re so dumb, we need NPC to do your dumb stuff for us.

As far as I can say for myself, I’ve slaughtered upwards of 60 NPC mining fleets (I know, what an achievement to be proud of, killed some NPC… … … +1, PvP elite, I thought I’ll let that poor thing settle for a while), but there’s no point, because they just respawn and be back in no time. Funnily enough, a friend of mine sarcastically replied, “Oh, just like real miners!”. ■■■■ (censored) him. You hear me? ■■■■ (censored) you! It’s not funny if NPC relentlessly consume your game content! :stuck_out_tongue: … okay, it’s kinda funny (until they start consuming YOUR game content, so fuck off!).

I’m not asking to remove them, because they are a form of consumable content that some people enjoy. But when have big companies, who’re looking for the money, ever considered minorities like that? Yes, that’s right… I’m violently waving around the salt shaker, CCP! BUT… there are better ways to provide the rewards, that were meant to come with that poorly implemented and not at all thought about (seemingly) feature!

Give them their own special sites for example. Places they don’t interfeces (pun intended, because it’s SHIT right now) with the damn daily chores of asteroid belt mining, because you couldn’t settle on an overhaul at all, and the compromise was cosmic anomalies. You nerfed it with the “Need For Speed” thing. No more grooming of belts, no more meaningful respawn mechanics. As a matter of fact… please consider bringing that back? Respawning static snapshots of belts sucks dick (perhaps censored, but you get the idea of an errect penis).

Yes, I shamefully admit that sometimes, I’m a miner and I do mine a lot, and it’s a strange feeling of accomplishment to put together a capital ship from those virtual minerals, and the simulated activity of “mining” them, that I spent some time living irl to get. And having this unstoppable enemy, like… truly unstoppable, no matter how much you throw at it, because it’s just code, and I don’t mean CODE. (code dot), you can’t do anything about it. In a world you put so much into the players’ hands. How could you put a ■■■■■■■ (censored) NPC ■■■■ (sigh censored) mining corp into the game like that?

Every day I wake up, I have to think that I enjoy playing EVE just so much less, because I know that when I login, I’m going to see NPC miners in the belts, having already completely cleared half of the system. If I don’t be around after DT, wait until they spawn to disable their fleet, I’m just not going to enjoy my time playing. What a great idea to implement NPC mining fleets that was… wasn’t it?

Have your cheeky comments about miners and industrials, if some dev feels funky enough, they’ll create NPC to come for your content too.

Best Regards,
Ulvi~ (because you don’t want to pronounce the rest of the name anyway)

  • Might contain typos because I’m drunk.
  • Might contain salt.
10 Likes
2

Good post.

You did miss one expletive though.

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3

I’ll be honest, I had to look up the word “expletive”. I thought it was a typo or an elaborate pun, naturally. No pun intended.

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4

I was going to dismiss your post as the drunken ramblings of an obsessive-compulsive highsec miner, but you probably have some point in there. A concerted, dedicated war against the NPCs should change their behaviour. If you zealously defend your asteroid belts, the NPCs should eventually get the hint and move on to easier pickings. That, or escalate things and drop a FOB or equivalent on your ass. It would be part of making the universe feel more alive and responsive to player actions.

It’s in the wrong forum section, but +1 to the general notion and would read the OP again!

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5

Here is the easiest fix ever, where ever you are in the game the devs have given every opportunity for you to mine happily away, the anomalies that are nearly in every system at any time, many systems offer multiple sites, most of all of them have nothing but Veldspar but hey, this is high sec, however keep in mind that it’s not always what you mine, Veldspar is always in demand, mine it, sell it, buy the minerals you want from the proceeds.

The devs also have added compression to easily move it to a market system, they also added a cheap t-1 to haul it, at level 5 Gallente industrial it gets 60,000m3.

Honestly, who needs the belts, that is the lazy man’s place to mine, with a little effort you can always have asteroids to mine, the expedition frigates offer better maneuvering and speed so distances is not an issue, the expedition frigates get 10,000m3 and 15,000m3 respectively.

Then the devs also added random spawns all around the verse, with nice stuff like Hedbergite, Hemorphite, and Jaspet, Omber, etc, I mean why sweat about belts, let the npc’s have them.

6

[quote=“Black_Pedro, post:4, topic:50952”]
A concerted, dedicated war against the NPCs should change their behaviour. If you zealously defend your asteroid belts, the NPCs should eventually get the hint and move on to easier pickings.[/quote]

I’d have to agree, something as simple as an ever increasing respawn cooldown on their fleets would be an easy to realise alleviation.

Instead, people opt in for wholly unimmersive solutions like killing just the hauler, so the ships idle in the belt forever, once their cargo holds are full. Or kill all but one ship, so they idle at their safe spot forever. If by a more alive world you meant immersive that is.

Since just ranting on the forums will surely get me nowhere, I created a Gameplay support ticket, and was further encouraged to bring it to the attention of the CSM. Which, I expect will get me nowhere. Along with the forwarding to the respective devs, which probably will get this topic nowhere at all either.

But at least I can say I put in some effort to make reasonable points, hopefully.

7

The topic is also not about mining profits, it’s about how crude, pointless and not at all immersive that whole NPC mining fleet mechanic is, in hi-sec as in low. I’d wager to say it’s the same in null, where they magically (presumably, haven’t been in null in a long time) “spawn” Yolos, or whatever the large engineering complex is… Sotiyos. Because fighting players deploying structures in “your” space isn’t enough.

8

NPC mining operation can reach 0.0 space ? I learned something here.

But I think they aren’t big troubles in NullSec : I guess they can’t go very deep inside dangerous space, and even if they do, players tend to use stronger ships there, largely capable to take the defense fleet, and even get some ores from the haulers if the Alpha output is big enough, or if they carry Expanded Probes Launchers.

By the way, is it safer to bring a solo exhumer to mine in 0.0 or an Expedition Frigate ?

9

I’m not sure how crude fits in but if you mean no effort to do something with little to no value that’s how I’m reading it, pointless, not really, it provides content for some and provides a decent drop at times for those willing to try.

Immersive, only the eve background is immersive, in black rise the drop is really nice, but the rest of the environment, not so immersive.

10

I’m sure if you spend enough time with them and learn their behaviour, beyond their always on point response fleet with remote reps, you’d conclude that it’s artificial, rather than intelligent, a very rudimentary AI. Like the behaviour I’ve already described, where they sit idle forever until downtime for one of several reasons.

As for pointless, they can still be content in their own sites instead, as suggested. That is, if nothing else would be done to their mechanic instead. Much like the empire mining expedition complexes. But I get the feeling you didn’t catch any of this, if you even skimmed through, and I’m just repeating myself.

12

Yeah I personally think that CCP need to remove the mining fleets it’s annoying as hell but you know they’re not that smart they’re Economist once again I’m from the 1970s that was the worst thing they ever did put in the mining fleeting everywhere it’s annoying as hell when you pull up and there’s like 15 in the f thiing taking the rocks that you want

13

Consider the possibility that CCP is trying to influence player behavior. That NPC miners clearing belts is actually intended. I undocked from a highsec structure and did a quick scan:
image

Why would you want to mine Veldspar when there is a Jaspet site available! As @Piugattuk pointed out - you’re starving amidst plenty.

These don’t seem to show up in the agency - not sure if that is a bug or intentional.

14

Because someone else mined all the jaspet and left the 2 pebbles of scordite in them.

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There are over 1000 systems in highsec and, once you get a few jumps away from the major trade hubs you won’t find a lot of competition from other players.

Get yourself a fast frigate like the Endurance and scan backwater systems for mining anomalies.

If you want a private mining anomaly all to yourself, run mining missions. They aren’t the best paying career choice in Eve but they probably pay as well as belt mining.

16

Yes, everytime there’s one of these anom someone will go there with a little fleet and mine everything but one veld/scordite/omber rock to make you waste your time.

WIth a fast frigate you’d be better directly going to mine in lowsec and get all the jaspet you want, and no for having done dozen of mining missions both solo and with 3 characters, the rewards for L4 basically consists of throwing pebbles at your face compared to belt mining or L4 security.

NPC miners are not okay cause they mine too much => cause too much hassle for the possiblity to have skins for mining ships.

17

You need a lot of Tritanium to build stuff, you gonna have to blow up a moon to get it or haul it from a long way away. This so called balance of the market price is just going to hit the little guy that doesn’t have a logi wing handy to defend structures and kill NPC mining fleets.

18

The more more I learned about the diversity of Eve online the more more I agree that they have to balance the economy and that’s just one way they do it I don’t know do I think it’s right for the little guy it also may be pushing the little guy out of the NPC Corporation into a bigger Corporation I never thought that I would leave hi security but I’ll tell you what it’s a totally different world in null

19

Yeah either that or boost sales of skill extractors

20

both maybe

21

Personally I found it too territorial not that low sec is much better everywhere but some of it is. That might sound a bit hypocritical coming from someone in factional warfare but even in the war zone very few places that the militias actually prevent other people from living in the same way as it happens in Null