These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Science & Industry

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Player-Owned Mining Colonies
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
DetKhord Saisio
Seniors Clan
#1 - 2011-11-07 01:03:10 UTC
This hopefully is not the first time somebody thought of this... you see mining colonies if you run missions.

Why not make mining colonies the "fields and farms" aspect of nul mining? The raw ore to be collected at custom's offices. Alliances cut-off from high-sec mineral resources due to enemy blockade would be forced to make everything locally. I don't know, some sort of natural-phenomenon; comets or asteroid storm causes erratic warp gate behavior, so all regional gates are disabled. Does not really matter how the blockade occurs since the intended purpose is to introduce a reason for minerals to be mined in nul and due to alliance demand; tax collection is pivotal to nul-mining importance.

So, there is the methodology:

The Alliance installs a refinery module to reduce shipping requirements, collect taxes from the miners, and help supply the alliance with minerals. Individual miners still use their ships to mine in the usual methods, but any form of income will receive attention and probably protection from the alliance.

Protection is required, since the mining colonies can be attacked by enemy. Repair/regeneration takes a day if a rep fleet is used, a week if left to its own devices.

Just like in missions, there could potentially be hundreds of mining colonies per constellation.
Athereon
Aths Harem
#2 - 2011-11-07 02:39:35 UTC
An interesting idea.

I don't see though how this is any different to using an outpost with refining facilities. The Alliance is still able to take a tax in the form a percentage of minerals from the refined ore. This tax can be avoided (for a loss of efficiency) by using a pos and the ore / minerals still need to be transported from the belt. I don't see any advantage to transporting the minerals to a customs office vs an outpost.

Otherwise it would be interesting to be able to anchor a refining module at a belt and refine on-site saving transport time but I suspect that this was the original vision for the Rorq (with compression of ore instead of refining).

Maybe a refinery module for the Rorq but if the efficiency is any higher than an Outpost then nobody would use outpost for refining.

I can't see CCP extending PI to cover "asteroid minerals" and that is the only way I could see a customs office becoming part of mining.
DetKhord Saisio
Seniors Clan
#3 - 2011-11-07 10:54:32 UTC  |  Edited by: DetKhord Saisio
Like the custom's offices, the mining colony requires alliance protection from attack. Since it transfers the ore automatically to the custom's office, no actual miners are required. Individual miners are ignored by nul alliances since taxes from ratting is their primary source of taxed income; miners can not get earn a 15 million wallet tick and are therefore not a "profitable employee".

While enemy pilots damage and camp these facilities, the alliance loses out on taxes/income, but can only prevent production and not destroy the facility. If they damage the mining colony and the custom's office, the alliance is required to respond (i.e. repair shields) or lose a source of income. The facilities would be easier to attack than an outpost, so smaller enemy fleets can be more effective.

Enemy pilots always want something to shoot. This can provide that something.
Lairne Tekitsu
DadTZ
#4 - 2011-11-08 19:24:48 UTC
I do really like the idea of being able to own asteroid-based mining colonies. If nothing else, they'd have very cool CQ's and ship spinning backgrounds.


Also, here's an idea: Gravity well generators, player-owned structures that could generate gravity wells. (duh)

They'd draw in ice and asteroids from all over the system, including, for technical purposes, ones that are normally too isolated to be worth mining. These would show up within 100 KM or so of the structure, and have to mined by hand. There could also be directed ones, like giant tractor beams, that you can aim at scanned-down (scanning structures, anyone?) ladar and gravimetric sites to pull in ores and gas and mine them manually.