Suspect flag players mining ores and ice in HS who do not have HS structures

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Bots and AFK players residing in non-wardecable NPC corporations use highly gank resistant orcas to farm resources. This is not a healthy playstyle for the Eve ecosystem.

Empires should enforce requirements of having a stake in high sec space development (in the form of a player corporation owned high sec upwell structure) in order to extract high sec resources with ‘green safeties’ enabled. This only applies to non-mission ores and ice.

Forms a clear pathway to aggress other players who exploit resources.
A. If they do no own a structure and choose to mine high sec ores or ice they are suspect flagged when mining and can be engaged in combat without CONCORD response. Opens additional emergency gameplay opportunities for suspect baiting.
B. If they own a structure and take resources from your space, CONCORD war declaration can be initiated on their structures to punish action.

Large entities should co-opt this system and be rewarded if they can mobilize resources at scale to secure and enrich space.

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I don’t see the problem here. If you don’t like mining orcas grab a ship and bump them away from belts and steal their drones.

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Question: what happens to new players, who are still in their starting corp, but want to try mining to make some money?

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Sounds like the orca is the problem here, not that they are ice mining.

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Nah orca isFine. what they say to new guys? Adapt or die right?

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you did not explain why this is not a healthy play style, btw.

never mind the fact that it’s adorable that you think you have any right to say how someone wants to play a game is “healthy” or not.

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Sure, but players with ECM modules will also be flagged as suspects, due to having potential bad intentions towards innocent civilians.

In case they attack any non-suspect target, CONCORD will intervene, and put them in jail for 1h+, which they can bail for an isk fee according to their security status, or just wait it out while being online, as being offline doesn’t count to jail timer.

Anyways…

Rather than a cumcumbersome mechanic like this to try and deal with bots, something simpler, like CCP managing to differentiate between human and bot behavior would be much better.

People (and bots) mine in orcas for a reason, because it’s convenient, and mostly due to the dangerous environment that gankers have created.

Your suggestion would make it so people in wardecable corps are always at the mercy of someone richer that can wardec them on a whim.

Even if they don’t bother to wardec them, as long as a member of this corp fly any ship that isn’t tanky, they will just get ganked anyways, due to being an easy target.

On another note, according to training time, an Orca takes a much higer investment in order to be an effective mining vessel, so I see no point in the player not being rewarded for their investment to reach that point.

Reference:

-Mining Orca
Industrial Command Ship V 2.048.000
Drone Interfacing V 1.280.000
Drones V 256.000
Mining Drone Operation V 512.000
Mining Drone Specialization V 1.280.000
Mining Foreman V 512.000
Spaceship Command V 256.000
TOTAL: 6.144.000 SP

-Mining Exhumer
Mining Barge V 1.024.000
Industry V 256.000
Mining V 256.000
Astrogeology V 768.000
Exhumers V 1.280.000
TOTAL: 3.584.000 SP

With the best,a nd most expensive, mining drones, Orcas should have a similar mining yield to Macks and Skiffs, but still fall below a Covetor and Hulk.

As I have stated before here Multiple Orcas at one location, an easy balancing option would be to include some more related skills for the Orca training, or simply for the mining drones themselves, and that would “fix” the “problem”.

IMO however, the real problem is how Orcas overshadow exhumers, having much better tank and similar yield with maxed skills.

To fix this, you just have to improve Exhumers.

If Exhumers had a role bonus to mining laser range, I’d jump into one in no time, no matter if it costs x10 or x20 times a mining barge, but currently I see no point in flying them, not being worth the extra skill time investment for such a meager increase in income, while putting a “free shiny killmail” target on my back.

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Buff all exhumers to fix one ship?

If one ship is the problem, just nerf the one ship.

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Again, Orca is a “perceived problem”.

In my post, I showed the difference in time investment between an Orca and Exhumers, so although Exhumers take almost half the SP investment, people still fly Orcas because it’s safer.

Directly comparing in terms of safety:

  • Procurer: 70k EHP, 45M isk
  • Skiff: 80k EHP, 290M isk
  • Orca: 320k EHP, 1.3B isk

Skiff is x6 times more expensive than a Procurer, but barely offers any more tank.

Orca is 4x times more expensive than a Skiff, but offers 4x times the EHP.

It’s no wonder people upgrade to an Orca from a barge and compeltely skip Exhumes entirely.

A good example would be if HACs didn’t offer anything extra from normal T1 cruisers.

Doubt many people would upgrade to the T2 version, just for a slight increase in DPS and tank, for x10 times the price.

Definitely not me.

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A. There are fewer diminishing returns to resource harvesters who can hide from war declarations by staying in an NPC corporation to mine. The Eve ecosystem is driven by loss and CCP have released target goals to reduce wealth and resource accumulation.

B. Provide an impetus to join player corporations if the player wants to mine in high sec with green safeties. CCP’s communications on retention metrics show higher longevity of subscription time for those that join null sec-esq organized entities. Placing higher emphasis on structure ownership in high sec to establish a psuedo sovereignty system would drive an organizational emphasis to recruit, train, and cultivate players as a resource in high sec.

C. Carve out a stronger understood niche for raider/ninja playstyle. Under this proposal, players can still harvest high sec resources however they do so under a suspect flag.

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It is indeed driven by loss, and that’s why people choose to fly Orcas, because they don’t want to lose their mining ships from random gankers, and it’s the tankiest minign ship available, even if it’s not the most effective.

That’s because people krab as much as they like in “safe” null space, and have reliable incomes to sustain their subscriptions with in-game currency.

This is called can flipping, and already exists.

Now, addressing the whole thing itself.

NPC corporations are part of the empires already, so there’s no lore reason for someone that’s part of an empire corporation having diminishing returns when compared to a private corporation that isn’t directly sided with anyone.

There’s no need for a system enforced “miner permit”, just like there’s no need for a “ratting permit” or a “ganking permit”.

EDIT: your suggestion probably would involve messing with “PI permissions” and etc as well, so yeah, no.

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At least CODE arent shy of bringing 50 catalysts to gank an orca. You, my friend, are just asking for an easier way for youself to gank that juicy orcas.

Why would that be i wonder? Maybe because at the time of that metrics null was much safer place even to HS?

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Sp investment is irrelevant. If the answer is to always choose an orca over all exhumers, then it’s the orca that needs nerfing, not all the barges that need buffing.

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You think this is seriously worth investing 250M more than a barge into?

If a Skiff had a reliable 100k+ EHP tank, then perhaps, but with just 10k extra health, it isn’t.

Other than this, in terms of investment, I also suggested for the Orca to require mining and astrogeology to be a reliable mining vessel like the other ships, or for at the very least the drones themselves requiring these skills to work, so there’s this approach to meddling with them too.

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Yes. Because you’ll make that value back before you’re ganked.

No the skiff doesn’t need a buff. None of the exhumers do. They we’re seeing plenty of use before the Orca got it’s buff.

That’s all that needs to happen. Revert some of the orca stats back. Namely yield.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/afpbfr/comparison_of_mining_barges_and_exhumers/
Considering that this post is correct about max possible yields.

Rounding it up, you get an extra 4m3/s in yield.

That’s 240m3 per minute, and 14.400m3/h.

If mining the most valuable ore in High Sec, which currently is Veldspar, you get an extra of 144.000 Veldspar mined per hour using an Exhumer.

That’s 1440 Compressed Veldspar, which currently goes for 3,542,400isk on Evepraisal.

That’s around 70h30min of actual mining time outside.

If you have loads of free time, and can, lets say, play 6h every day, it’d take you around 12 days to pay your upgrade off before you begin to actually profit.

If you can only spend half of that time playing however, that would require you close to a whole month for paying your investment off.

I’m aware EVE is all about long term investment, but it’s definitely not worth it investing 250M in a paper thin upgrade that can be done in by a fleet of catalysts.

The Skiff might be able to survive it somehow, but the other exhumers are simply sitting ducks waiting to be killed off.

As for the option to mining alongside a command ship to get a boost to your tank and minign yield, that’s great and all, if you can actually play together everyday with your buddies in matching time schedules.

Someone who doesn’t have an Orca alt which they can log in anytime they want to boost their barges/exhumers can’t exactly count on the boosters being up whenever.

More than anything, having a boosting Orca present seems to somehow attract gankers even more, as someone in my system who invites me to fleet up when we are both on has lost two exhumers to gankers already, just past month, both while under Orca effect, so even fleet mining isn’t that much of a safer option.

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So everything you’ve just described there is saying how the skiff is a viable investment.

Even using your math, if i mine for 2 hours a day it only takes 36 days for a skiff to pay itself off. And how many people lose skiffs that often? Not many. And what about the people that mine for more than 2 hours a day?

Maybe the skiff is not viable for you and your circumstances, but it clearly is for some people. And that’s the crux of it. The skiff does not need to be the correct choice for everyone.

The problem is that the Orca is overwhelmingly the correct choice for everyone.

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Seeing as how the majority of the loses are in Low/Null, I can’t say every loss is relevant, but I still went back 30 days in order to check how many Skiffs were lost in High Sec space over the past month.

Answer: 77 Skiffs lost

If it takes close to an entire month to pay one back, and the ratio of Skiff loses is around 2.5 per day, you are making quite a risky investment.

As for Orca loses…

Answer: 177(had to stop at page 10 due to so many kills)

It was quite surprisingly to see how many loses there were. O-O

Probably many weren’t properly tanked and etc, but if we are doing similar math, and an Orca pilot mines only 2h per day, it would take around half a year before being able to pay off a 1.2B mining fit.

Then, considering the ratio of almost 6 Orcas lost per day on High Sec, it’s definitely worth considering not getting one of those…

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Compare that to the amount of people mining per day. 2.5 from a population of thousands of players.

As a matter of perspective, there are roughly 350 road accidents per day in the UK. But cars are not considered too risky to use because 350 is a insignificant number compared to the million or so people that drive every day.

In fact many people go their entire lives without experiencing a road accident.

It’s just because the vast VAST majority of miners are using orcas instead of barges these days. And that’s something that indicates that the orca is a problem.

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