Assembly Hall

I posted this idea to my blog, ( http://beboldbebriefbegone.blogspot.com ) and thought I'd post it here as well.

One Idea – Fragment Mining
***WARNING*** I am going to use some very basic equations to make my point that do not take every detail into account. One of the advantages o f ratting is that you have a chance to loot really decent items from the wrecks. It is simple, depending on the security rating of the system you an (Y %) chance of a faction/high end loot drop. So for a combat orientated player they can look at their income as: Income = ((X ISK/hour) + (Y%/Faction Kill)) . Am miner’s income, on the other hand, is based on the amount they can strip or mine in an hour: Income = (Market rate of Ore) * (Ore mined/hour). Notice that in the case of the miner he has a fixed income rate depending on the ore mined! His experience is constant & in my opinion a bit boring. I want to add + (Z%/Amount Mined)

Now how could CCP change that? What about a chance of high end ores (such as the ABCs) or possibly moon minerals such as Technetium dropping? This system would not merely have these prizes dropped into your cargo hold, but you’d have to work for them.

How it would work:
1- Miners begin mining a rock. Depending on the security rating of the system the miner is in & the type of ore being mined, would grant a X% chance that the rock would yield a High End Ore Fragment (HEO Fragment) per FULL mining cycle for each mining module. (or maybe based on the amount harvested?) I would suggest either limiting this benefit to strip mining modules OR grant bigger bonuses to the drop % based on the type of modules being used. A civilian mining laser should NOT have the same chance as a fully fit out T2 Hulk. (Which in turn could allow for additional benefits for using T2 mining crystals or special rigs, or maybe even allow for *new* mining ships especially designed to search for these fragments?)

2- When a mining cycle results in the spawn or drop of a HEO Fragment it appears in space, much like a loot can or wreck. It also would only remain on grid as long as any other wreck. The fragment must be targeted. Now you could simply loot this fragment like a loot can, but I think that would be too easy, and allow folks to come along and steal this precious cargo from the hapless miner. I suggest the additional steps below.

3- When HEO Fragment is targeted a special mining module must be used to extract the mineral from the fragment. It would share the same mechanics as salvaging, yet use skills specific to the mining profession. (WOOT!!! New Mining Skills & module to work for!) I’d recommend that current mining ships could be given an extra high utility slot or two that could be equipped with these modules but not additional strip miners. (Using mechanics equal to those limiting turrets/bays & utility slots on combat ships)

4- Once the minerals have been “extracted” from the HEO Fragment they may be looted into your ship’s cargo hold.

Until next time,


Be Bold…

No, god-damnit, captcha has NO business in EVE, ever!

I'd hope that CCP would consider market effects & adjust drops accordingly. The concept is to promote & reward those players that are at their keyboard. You could even use the system to simply increase mining yields of the same ore/min type.

Thanks for the feedback.

One idea to work against bots.... why not make ALL the ore have to be looted from the rock, and not directly drop into the cargo hold?

I am all in favor to any idea that make those at the keyboard gain an advantage from those that simply afk mine.

bots can easily identify colours - use keyboard shortcuts... click various aspects of the screen and react to things that occur on screen.
The advanced ones even sniff out data coming to the client from CCP's servers that even us as human players dont see. one of the main reasons why i want CCP to stop sending clients all the data and then having the client filter the data from what clients should see to what they shouldnt.

its horrendous tbh...

I like the idea...if anything it will bring a little more balance to mining. Rewarding those in "riskier" areas of EvE. As for the "capcha" issue...why not just make mining more interactive in general? I keep thinking of something from Mass Effect 2 where when in your little hover car you can extract minerals from sites but as you hold the button down to do so the site starts pushing your hover car around more aggressively until it either pushes you off the site or you successfully extract the mineral. This would work for mining lazers if done right as well. Granted bots WILL in time find a way around it. They always do. There is quite litterally nothing you can do to stop a bot developer from finding a way but that isn't the point. The harder we make it for them the better...within reason. It has to be fun for the player too.

Thanks for the catch... I have changed it to reflect Technetium. I should add that my actual blog post starts with me telling folks that I am industrially inept in game.

Exactly! Something like this could be the carrot to draw miners out of High-Sec. You could actually make Low-Sec rewards be equal to or greater than Null-Sec. IMHO the Low-Sec rewards should be a bit higher than Null-Sec in this system. I see the risk being much higher in Low-Sec than Null. You can't bubble up gates, nor control the traffic thru it as easily as big alliances do in 0.0.

I'm thinking the Low-Sec pirates wouldn't mind hunting for miners or their haulers either.