Suggestion: Put bonus Astroid Fields (Anomalies) back ‘under’ the scanning feature, aka. make them hidden again.
Reasons:
Scanning itself has become way less of a hassle (compared to say 8y ago), meaning that finding these fields should also be less time consuming and way less of a hassle;
Currently these fields get ‘stripped’ with little to no effort, giving access to low sec ores in high(er) sec locations. And while i get that under the previous scanning method they were likely not worth the time for most corps. They are now so easily available, without any effort nor risk, that they just get stripped anyways…
The previous means that small time miners and starting players (with a bit of knowledge of the game and) that make other assessments of time vs. reward fish behind the net. Finding mostly empty fields…
If these fields are ‘open to all’ and without any effort, with medium/high rewards, why not just add them as normal astroid fields, aka. add lower sec ores to higher sec area’s. Well clearly because there is a reason why they are in low sec, so then why are they still open to all? (or rather ‘merely hidden’ behind looking at the scanner), which makes for a logical inconsistency.
Another reason could be that they can providing Alpha Clone content for the Scanning ‘profession’. See, as an Alpha i can not make drugs, thus gasfields are off limit; as an Alpha i can not Invent, thus data sites are off limit; I haven’t looked into making Rigging that much, but seeing the limitations to production i doubt ‘Relic’ sites will offer me much reward for my time Scanning. This then leaves the Wurmholes as the only goal, which (to my knowledge) offer mostly active fighting with no small time industrial flavor to it. Though once the Anomalies (astroid fields) are back on the menu for scanning, this then gives Alpha’s a clear choice in their scanning efforts: Go for Wurmholes to the action, go for astroid Fields for mining.
Another benefit of making the Anomalies Hidden again, is that they can be somewhat gated for Alpha’s due to the difficulty settings for their discovery/unlocking, related to the technology available for Alpha’s. Meaning that Scanning for Omegas for high reward fields becomes an option again (esp. with the ease of current scanning methods). Where obviously the restrictions of pinpointing high difficulty fields for Alpha’s becomes another reason to go Omega. F/e the distinction of Ore vs. Ice (not even sure Alpha’s can mine Ice) would be a logical cut off.
One could probably do the math, including possible upgrades and ‘best suited ships’ (for both Alpha and Omega ~ noting that true scanning ships are Omega Restricted), and make a difficulty ladder for Ore as well, which can include the rarity of the ore (common Sec level in which it’s found) and the spawn location of the field (Sec level in which the Anomalie is spawned). Meaning that f/e Omega’s that put in the effort can find rather high reward Ores in high Sec area’s, and Alpha’s willing to take some risk can still find them in lower Sec area’s.
Aka. This was a rather cool bit of content that i greatly enjoyed before the opening of these field to all without any effort (Content that is now gone without any good reason?). The fields, as said, are great for small corps and solo miners seeing they make a different evaluation of the effort vs reward calculation. And big corps should probably migrate to lower sec area’s to just strip mine in the regular field there, or put in that little bit of effort if they want to stay safe, which the system could take into account by spawning more difficult to scan out fields in higher sec. This deviation in difficulty might even cause Omega’s to go for the more difficult fields, thus leaving easier field for starters and Alpha’s to enjoy. Everybody Wins !
Excuse me for asking, but what is an Ihub ? … still rather new to the game, even though i played for a while 8~10y back. A fair amount has changed so i have no clue what you are talking about?
And then you’re gonna get a bunch of whiny miners asking why they need to bother training Exploration skills when all they want to do is mine. Why do they need to sacrifice a high slot to fit a Probe Launcher. Or why do they need to bring along a Scanning ship as well as their Mining ship? And then we’ll be right back to where we are now.
They used to be hidden, and now they’re not. I don’t think they’re going to go back to being hidden any time soon.
The high slot is the whole reason they aren’t hidden. Unless you want to give barges a utility slot the hassle actually lies in having to move two ships around multiple systems and switch between them whenever you find an ore site.
Now there is a good argument in giving them utility slots, really they should have far more slots, even the proc line, and less base stats. The tech now let’s them limit strip miner number to fewer than the number of high slots which it didn’t used to.
And at that point you’ve removed that massive hassle of swapping ships constantly.
Ah, that brings back some memories! When I got into mining, I used to run “mining expeditions”, scanning remote Highsec areas for juicy gravimetric sites and then packing a barge and some supplies into my Iteron, hauling it all to a station near the anomaly, and starting to mine. Unlike today, some of those anomalies were fairly big, with enough ore to mine for days (with the low skills I had). Good times!
In 2013, gravimetric sites were converted to make “finding hidden belts much less difficult for both miners and for those who would prey on them” (devblog). It certainly levels the playing field and invites random action, and seeing that most of the value (in mining ships and yield) is probably in moon (and ice) belts these days, hiding the ore sites could “disconnect” them again (not much incentive for gankers to scan them down when there’s a juicy mining fleet in that other belt nearby). Perhaps if they were to spawn a beacon after being scanned down for the first time?
Jim knows ^^ … Guess a beacon could work, maybe on a timer to give the first person time? 8h or so, like a workday to get ahead, then your activity makes the site known to the system. Would make sense…
@Marcus Gideon , they should train and put in the effort for the reduced risk/reward factor ? … and tbh. if you truly want to mine a lot of lower sec ores, you should just join a big corp and go to lower sec.
@Nevyn Auscent , they should just run the two ships ? … doing it solo used to involve 4 ships actually, 1 to scan to find it, go back get your hauler with tins, drop the tins store the hauler at nearby station, get in a shuttle, go get your miner, mine in tins, haul, mine in tins, haul… and then the whole thing back in reverse to get back into your scanner. I never saw a problem ? great content, great reward, fairly low risk, big time sink. Clearly for small time miners or small corp, gets your appetite up for actually going to low sec and mining entire belts without all the hassle.
Because it wasn’t great rewards. Once you took the time into account even Omber was better.
Not arguing against them going back to sigs. Just saying that to do it in a reasonable way you have to dramatically alter barges otherwise you go back to massive busywork.
See, but then you reduce the whole thing to ISK/Time … this is also a game right? you are this scanner/miner that uses his skill to find hidden fields of riches, and goes through the trouble to get them, spurring on a beginning industry, or just glad to see a high sale at the end of it… I am fairly sure the Time/ISK was actually balanced in such a way that it was indeed equal (marginally over) to large scale Omber Mining. But that involves way less gameplay…
Uhhhhh. my point was that Omber is the worst ore and it was still normally worth mining over sig hunting. Because of all that mess to go through to get at them if you travelled.
Sigs were a great extra bonus in your system though.
No. Sorry. Just no. Let’s look at how this affects the game everywhere except hisec: ATM if you want to catch miners, as a PVPer the best bet when you enter system is to warp straight to the ore anomalies.
If you wait even 30 seconds, or you are in something slower than a frigate, the miners are guaranteed to escape. If you had to probe them they would never get caught. Miners don’t want to have to probe, and PVPers don’t want to have to probe to find the miners - so who exactly does this change serve other than hisec alphas?
Secondly, this:
Excuse me for asking, but what is an Ihub ?
If you have to ask this question you are too new to this game to be suggesting how it should be changed.
Jim knows… that Mining Sigs used to be a thing you had to scan down. And then people whined and cried, and they changed it to what it is today. Now you’re asking that they change it back again. In which case, given enough time, people will whine and cry to have it changed yet again.
I didn’t say anything about mining low sec ores. Because if I were going to talk about that, I would have suggested that you go travel to Low Sec, where they grow in abundance. Besides, why should they join a big corp, when you yourself tried to peddle this idea as a way for solo miners to profit. Which is it? Are you trying to get big corps to go back to the old ways, or are you trying to make the solo miners go back? Either way, it’s backward thinking.
If you’re using a hauler to “drop your tins” and then expecting to fill them up with your miner… Then you’re doing it wrong. Train for a Retriever or especially a Mackinaw, and you can hold a ton more than you’d fit in a GSC. And I’m going to assume your “tins” were supposed to be GSC. Because if you aren’t using Secure Containers, then someone is just going to swoop in and scoop your entire collection of “tins” without recourse. Emptying the contents would get them Flagged, but scooping the whole thing is “legal”.
You mean the Ice and Ore mining Frigate, which has the honor, nay the privilege, of fitting a Cloaking Device. Not a CovOps Cloaking Device. Just a regular Cloaking Device. The same kind that the redheaded stepchild of the Covert community, the Black Ops Battleship, gets to use too. Because nothing is more effective behind enemy lines than invisibly motoring around on grid. But heaven forbid you should need to Warp somewhere, because you’ll have to drop Cloak, and get your ship turned into Swiss Cheese.
Not that its twin brother, the Prospect, is any better.
The Endurance and the Prospect are both joke ships. I was shocked and amazed when they tried to advertise Mining Frigates that could sneak behind enemy lines and go mining for valuable resources inside hostile territory. As if you aren’t going to get caught while you float there for 30 min laser’ing on the same rock.
Show me a ship that can mine asteroids while remaining Cloaked, and then we’ll talk. =)
However yeah. pointing at the endurance as a good argument for miners having to probe stuff is just stupid. You aren’t going to make more than a barge would on a lower value material simply by getting the next sec status of ores.
