EVE General Discussion

--Note: TLDR at bottom. Yet another 'save the universe' post.

Time for something constructive: The problem is not the moon mining. The problem is the composition of modules and ships. Tech is not the bottleneck because of production, it's because of consumption. The solution is a dreadful rework of blueprints. On that note:

75% of the drake and abaddon (and mael) is trit. 18% is py. Both minerals are far more likely to be mined in HS, since the volumes required far outstrip the ability of 'byproduce' minerals from higher end ores. This makes HS the engine to drive war in null, which I'm pretty sure you'll agree is the wrong way of doing things. Solutions:

Run HS industry into the ground. I'm serious.

Right now, you wanna get a new abaddon? Chances are it came from Jita. You want to get some more drones? They came from Jita. Chances are even higher than it was produced in HS, in a HS station. Compare the number of production, research etc slots in HS stations to that in null. HS has far far more potential than Null. What's that I hear you cry? "Put up a POS ***!" Well sure, but what about the running cost? It's still higher than HS, and HS can put up quite a lot of safer POSs. So that's not a solution.

So we have a situation where:
The majority of minerals for popular doctrine ships are sourced in HS
The majority of production capacity is in HS
There is no incentive to move production out to the 'empires' it fuels

So what to do?
Well, a blueprint rework is a giant pain. So let's try something else. Something like running HS industry into the ground by removing 90% of production capacity from HS, and tripling the production capacity of a Null station (even more for the 'factory' version maybe, someone go run me some numbers). You can still produce in HS, but you have to run a POS to do so. This puts up your production cost, but doesn't eliminate you from competing if you want (ok, it will on some items, so sue me). In contrast, the bulk of production is now in nullsec. Would you rather a) mine in HS and ship it all out, uncompressed or b) mine in Null and move it into the factory station?

What would this do?
• For starters, it'd give HS industry a massive blow to the face and then a backslap for good measure.
• Would it do much to bots? Mmmmm maybe. At least in Null they'd have to content with the 'ever AFK cloaker', and computers are bad at risk calculations (yeh, I know, someone will figure it out, but that's reality).
• Next, it'd promote the industrialisation of nullsec, something that is missing. Empires are not empires, they are gangs that go to the local superweapon store and pick up a bunch of stuff then fight with it.
• On to the Farms & Fields dead horse: What's the point of a farm and field if there are not farmers to farm it? In order for space to hold a value it must be used. Right now, space is of a value by itself, even unused. If a greater emphasis can be placed on the value of using it, it will prompt the larger blocs to encourage smaller entities to move into it. Sure you'll still have the blobs, but smaller entities will war amongst themselves and in general provide a bit of diversity. So make your field, and then promote farmers to come farm it. If the guy next door wants your farm, he'll have to fight for it.
• Logistics. Not the ship, the space empire fuelling variety. If production can be moved out to the empires, then the logistics change dramatically. No longer about shipping from Jita, you'd have to manage your space to be able to fuel your war machine. Wanna expand? You don't have the income from the farms to do so. You have to go to war. That in turn will stimulate the economy of the local area, so prices will have a greater local effect.

So to conclude: EVE is a game about fighting. Be it in the production of materials for fights or the actual fighting, it's still fighting. Currently, the production for those fights is easier, safer and cheaper in HS than it is in Null, so the people fighting source their superweapons from the giant supermarket in space that is Jita. This makes space seem 'small', as it's just a short trip to the market to get new stuff. Smack HS production in the jewels and shift it out to Null. This makes 'bloc' market fluctuations (unless you're dumb and, and change is a) good and b) makes the world look larger. Uniformity is what kills EVE, it's why ships are changed, modules added etc. Time to do it for the industrial side.

TLDR: Really long post about how to influence production in HS and Null, enhance the worth of space, improve the 'this is my empire' feeling and save the universe from entropy*

*maybe

Nullsec is all about size. The big alliances can afford to be elitist right now cos they don't need the industrialists. Make it so that industrialists give a significant edge to combat and they'll have a reason to be nice and stop the 'omfg we're big we want this space cos we can have it'. You seem to have missed that point.

Also, lowsec is next to highsec. Highsec will still be capable of production, more than enough to produce for FW, wars etc. Heck, if it isn't then I'm pretty sure that Null will supply it. Highsec/low can be accessed from null.

Nullsec is all about size. The big alliances can afford to be elitist right now cos they don't need the industrialists. Make it so that industrialists give a significant edge to combat and they'll have a reason to be nice and stop the 'omfg we're big we want this space cos we can have it'. You seem to have missed that point.

Also, lowsec is next to highsec. Highsec will still be capable of production, more than enough to produce for FW, wars etc. Heck, if it isn't then I'm pretty sure that Null will supply it. Highsec/low can be accessed from null.

when you can go to jita and immediately replace a moon then i'll take any comparison of ice mining and moon mining seriously

Ice mining is not competitive with moon mining. Two completely different markets.

As to the 250 man fleet protecting the pos for one hour....of sure. But you're going to have to quantify a ton of other variables. See, to compare moon mining to ice mining in hs you're going to have to quantify not just the moon goo, the poor sap that has to maintain it and the defense fleet. You're going to have to quantify all of it....all of the moon mining....how many times each moon mining pos was attacked in a given time....all the income generated by the alliance in the same time frame by all activities even at the player level since it's assumed they pay up to their corps who then pay up to the alliance. Then we're going to have to calculate "effort" for all this including for moon mining, boil it all down to comparative data. You can't just say a fleet of 250 people shows up for 1 hour and that's comparative effort.....it means squat because that ice miner has to spend the entirety of his time mining to mine his ice. That defense fleet who benefits from that moon goo doesn't. They can go off and do other things to make isk while their moon-goo is extracted and that needs to be considered too!

Run HS industry into the ground. I'm serious.

This is not about 'OMFG STARVE HS MWAHAHAHA'

You keep confusing comparable and competitive.

Competitive means that, with or without some extra effort, you can match or exceed the income

But if we want to keep diving into your comparative rabbit hole:

A fleet of 250 Ice miners showing up for 2 hours will exceed the income of a Tech moon. That's not "all their time," that\s 2 hours a month. One person, acting alone, devoting all their time, can exceed a Tech moon (in a pretty reasonable total hour count if you multibox). But tech moons cannot be held by one person acting alone (no matter how many alts they use).
The owner of a Tech moon has to be able to field that fleet of 250 at a time of his enemy's choosing. Which requires the ability to field a fleet 24/7. The Ice miners get to choose when and where to invest their effort, and have no need to coordinate timing.

Which is harder, fielding 250 people for two hours a month (or 125x4hrs, or any other combination that equals 500 man hours of mining, each hour consisting of not much more than one button press) a at any time of their choosing, spread out over whenever they want to show up; or fielding 250 people all at once at a time of your enemy's choosing (or, if you're lucky and have someone available to Stront time, and the enemy doesn't kite the timer, maybe a time of your choosing).

What if the people in control of the pos also mine is?

Isn't 1+1>1?

But, we still have the constant that someone who has a pos, even 250 people who share in its duties, can also ice mine when they do NOT have to defend the pos, which allows for a combination of mining and gaining passive income from the pos, since they need to be logged in anyways concerning the arguments given.

That's where the 1+1 comes from, compared to the ice miner who is just 1.

…and, likewise, those ice miners can do something else when they do NOT have to miner the ice to match the moon income (since it takes pretty much no time at all to bring it to the same level). So they get 1+1 as well.

The point is that the POS income isn't nearly as passive as people like to make it out to be — it requires a fair amount of manhours to keep it going, so it can very easily amount to less payoff for your efforts than what the competing, moon-less organisation is doing.