hey there - i have a couple of thoughts on mining that I wanted to expose for public scrutiny. Please feel free to bash it, but would appreciate if you would bash the idea not the person, no matter how much it offends you (I don’t think it should but you never know). My intention with it is to have your more informed brains figure out ways in which it could be exploited.
EVE Mining Rework
Intentions
Have mining opportunities drive player actions
Add another factor in deciding where to settle or what to conquer
Allow for uninterrupted mining and, at the same time, known fight locations
Make it more realistic, as to how mining has worked out through history
** Prospecting is lucrative
** “Gold rushes”
** Communities built around mining operations
Large scale infrastructure where it’s worth building it, hunting for small scale/high value opportunities in other cases
Proposed changes – high level
Available asteroids increase greatly in capacity BUT do not regenerate
Best mining anomalies could keep a large alliance mining it for years in the same spot
Asteroid belts are huge but regenerate very slow and based on the amount of consumption (the more it is depleted the slower it regens)
** very slow as in if fully depleted an asteroid belt will get up to 50% of its capacity over a year e.g.
** Depleting it should also take about a couple of years or more of constant mining at an average rate
Anomalies need to be scanned down using combat scanners
** They contain extremely high capacity asteroids
** They do not regenerate, but others will appear from time to time
1 max fitted hulk can mine about 1.7 km3 in a year of nonstop mining
Each asteroid belt should support an average mining fleet for 4 months – 30-40 hulks with boosts etc.
before depleting
this system will support a fleet of 40 hulks mining for 10 years before it’s completely depleted
Ex 2 – J122635, WH space
Anomaly spawns – contains high value compressable ore that has an extremely good yield, but in small
volume – can be mined entirely in 1 hour by 10 prospects or 2-3 hulks
Ex 3 – Sheri, Aridia
A small arkonor planetoid has been prospected roaming in the system, by an alliance member
Fleet is deployed to secure it, prospectors come about to evaluate it
The amount of arkonor in there is enough to keep a fleet or 30-40 hulks mining it for 1 year
Infrastructure is deployed, the area is secured, the mining operation begins
A representative will be along shortly to tell you that some or all are not original, as well as other angles to attack you personally. Enjoy!
Seriously though, I salute your ideas anyway. Lots of great ideas came to be used after the 1000th person came up with it independently.
One thing I would suggest though is that rather than using combat scanners, how about create surveying scanners?
I do like the ideas of large belts. In fact, I also had this idea but with new belts being formed here and there after depletion. What is new to me is the idea of “overfishing” the belts. I like that.
For a way to explain this relplenishment we could say that New Eden is a particularly messy area of space with bits of rock floating everywhere that get pulled in regularly by planets and adding to the belts.
Blockquote
For a way to explain this relplenishment we could say that New Eden is a particularly messy area of space
with bits of rock floating everywhere that get pulled in regularly by planets and adding to the belts.
Yes, exactly how i thought about it as well - the asteroid belts have a gravitational pull that gets diminished as you drain them significantly.
I thought as well about special probes or some new type of scanner, but it just felt a bit like an artificial hinderance. However, I’m pretty sure a lot of gameplay elements can be added around the scanning down, securing and surveying the rocks you get, even before you would get to actual mining.
I do like the proposed changes but biggest issue for me and mining was that there was no interactivity.
Absence of interactivity breeds excessive multiboxing. Excessive multiboxing breeds devaluation of single player mining.
Any change that is going to be done to mining should encourage attention and being there all the time. (see for example Elite Dangerous explosive mining)
I like that your proposed changes add things to the planning phase, it is very good
I agree that, if you aim to make mining more interactable, or, let’s say, an active process, these proposals do not help that in any way.
I could think though that having some people always undock and mine at the same big boulders for months will make also hunting them somewhat easier and maybe that regulates multiboxing just a tiny bit.
Also, once these amount of advantages are given to the miners (no need to move around, no need to micro cycle times) that opens up a lot of options for adding drawbacks - adding harder rats, having to swtich targets to “nuggets” popping out of the main rock if you want max yield etc. Again IF the aim is to combat multiboxing.
That is a terrible idea and you should feel terrible for even suggesting it. What this “always be active and pay attention” approach does to EVE has been demonstrated in the last 6 years. CCP made Mining more active with Rorquals using overpowered mining drones that you need to babysit or you lose them to rats or thrifty players. Result: Mineral markets and subsequently the entire economy crashed and devaluated not just individual mining but production, markets, overall income and allowed the creation of nigh unbeatable capital umbrellas.
Same thing happened with fighters and carrier/super carrier changes that also demanded continuous attention, which resulted in these ships being so good at PVE that they started to rake in the ISK like never before. In combination with the mining changes it turned into a vicious circle because you could generate more ISK which meant you could afford more Rorqual chars which meant you could built more supers and titans which allowed you to rat more which generated more ISK to afford more miners and then more supers and so on.
And right now the same happens again with Trig space and has always happened with wormhole space. Both require continuous attention and in turn allow the farming of ridiculous reward levels.
What I want to say: Any change that is going to be done to mining should encourage attention and be there all the time is a bad way to improve mining or make it less multibox-able. Just because something requires you to be there all the time does not mean it is in any way, shape or form good for the game overall. Usually it is in fact bad for the game.
This is not going to fix a thing. If you can mine enormous yields with this method, you can just crack a few rocks and mine them with other chars while you crack more rocks.
Even bots can do that because, judging by some info videos about this, the basic process is not dissimilar to the hacking game with finding the core (best vains) to extract the most value.
You don’t need to turn things to 11, do not disapprove my statements by considering worst case that happened before.
You can multibox rorquals no problem. The gameplay does not require you to be at the wheel all the time and you definitely can use 6 rorquals from one computer without any damage to your bottom line.
If you make mining worthless by turning into a horrendously repetitive and unrewarding chore by turning it basically into a continuous hacking minigame, you have to increase the rewards. Or tone down the rewards for basic mining and by that means deceive players into thinking they make more with active mining than with passive mining like CCP does with skill training (you don’t train double speed, you train at the same rate as omega as before alphas and alphas train at actually half the speed as before).
As for not taking historical worse case scenarios into account when considering your suggestion: This is CCP we are talking about. Worst caste is not a possibility, worst case is inevitable with these developers. That is what the history of the last at least 6 years have undeniably demonstrated.
Sure, you can. But if you don’t pay attention, you will lose your excavs and sink hours of mining with just one lost drone.
I find mining so boring that I’m willing for CCP to license bots themselves instead of 3’rd party bots. Like way back when there was no way to bring rl cash into the game. 3’rd party rmt’ers got the cash instead of CCP.
Face it everyone, players are always going to find a workaround. CCP should make out somehow.
Mining… If I want to go to sleep, I’ll just go to bed. If I can’t sleep, I’ll just take a quaalude. Both are just about as much fun.