EVE General Discussion

Why is there an ever flowing tap of isk in moon minerals? With a constant flow of threads regarding hulkageddon one must ask where the money is coming from. What is the goal of targeting miners that have nothing to do with the supposed real game within eve, that being 0.0 space. Apparently mining while afk, or even kind of afk is a reason to grief a player minding his own business, a player that has absolutely nothing to do with what is going on in 0.0. Players have already mentioned how it is goons are funding their war against the irrelevant, how they are boosting their own profits due to moon minerals. Yet, there is one thing that no one has asked so far.

If a group is asking everyone to harrass a group of players that have little to do with 0.0, supposedly because they are afk mining, why has no one asked how it is anything less then hypocritical of them to incite attacks on afkers when they themselves are afk mining. No, they are not afking veldspar in a 0.8 system near Jita, instead they afk moon mining for massive profits. Profits that fuels their call for player harassment which CCP ignorantly throws a blind eye to in hopes that the player base does not call it by it's proper name, which tends to be against the EULA of just about every game out there. How does one even suggest that all attacks incited are against bots and afk miners? How long does it truly take for a few destroyers, or cruisers to destroy an actively operated barge? Apparently not to long as hulkageddon is taking place entirely within hisec and concord cannot stop the majority of the attacks before they are completed.


Putting the questionability of hulkageddon in regards to the EULA and what constitutes player harassment, we must ask if perhaps goons are nothing more then afkers themselves. We must also ask if it is right that in a game where everything can be depleted, if even for a small cycle, why it is that moon minerals are ever present, ever flowing, and requires so little of those harvesting it. This should be considered after CCP has made a clear effort to make datacore farming less passive, increase the difficulty in which individuals collect them, while putting a break on the flow of RP. This need to hack away at passive isk farming includes the changes to Planetary Interaction where individuals who wish to spend more time actively controlling their structures are hammered by the risk of depleting the minerals that they were spending time actively working on my setting low timers so that they could pull larger quantities of their chosen material. One must actually question the backwards nature of such a change as active players are penalized. YET, moon mineral farmers are rewarded for setting up their POS and letting the set up do it's thing, which is to extract without interruption a flow of isk that was in no way worked for.

Why does a game developer such as CCP that has ridden high on its soapbox of "pvp" and the creation of, and conflict between large alliances allow such an isk sink to flow without any effort? Clearly such ever flowing sources of isk that requires zero effort should become depleted. A game that is supposedly about the conflicts between alliances should allow for smaller alliances to gain a foothold, to have it's fortunes changed through making an effort to find precious moon minerals that can fund their warmachine. If goons have so much isk to throw about that they can constantly incite player harassment, regardless of how hypocritical and questionable it may be, and still defend their space then we need to ask when is enough when it comes to the free isk that they receive. We must ask if it is fair for a specific few players to have such a powerful influence over the player base because of a resource that only they have access to without it fading.

How many smaller alliances who hold some of the less desirable 0.0 systems would benefit greatly from having even temporary access to such a source of wealth, if only it would have a possibility of appearing in their space? Sure, asteroids are reseeded, but it is impossible for a miner to sit and farm a specific roid all day long without interruption, why should moon minerals not be a source of wealth that is something one can deplete? Why should it never fluctuate, never disappear from one moon and be found at another? This is especially strange when we consider how CCP wants EVE to appear to be a living, breathing gaming world where technology increases, where ships are lost permanently, where territory can change hands over a course of days. Why would it be absolutely impossible for a colony, or organization interested in finding such materials not be able to dig deeper, look harder, and discover some of these minerals, even if it is a temporary source that is reseeded on a weekly basis.

Would not a reworking of the moon minerals help to break up the strangle hold that some alliances have over 0.0 space? Would it not help add a bit more realism to a long ignored game mechanic? Would not smaller alliance be able to build up their fleets to oppose other alliances more often? Would it not benefit CCP to further shake up the game world by allowing players to get a taste of the wealth that only a few alliances have had access to. To break up the idea of the rich getting richer and becoming almost impossible to challenge without having access to these king making moons of ever flowing wealth would create a sense of instability and force alliances to manage their wealth in a responsible manner as what is there today may be gone tomorrow, and what allowed them to crush their opponents may end up being seeded in enemy territory. This could force alliances to attack in directions and manner that we do not see right now as it becomes a game of 'king of the hill' as they sit back and defend their precious moons.

What say you, should ccp shake things up and reduce easy flow of moon mineral based isk?

In another thread the discussion turned to the moon minerals and their passive isk generation, read as AFKing, and the possibility of creating another means of applying the skills and interests of miners in 0.0 by modifying the current method of harvesting from moons. One of the suggestions thrown out onto the thread was a specialized mining ship that would probe the moons for possible seeding of high grade materials. Such a mining ship could go about gathering samples and dropping probes to refine the results.


Another possibility would be to modify the harvesting process altogether by removing what so many people hate, which is the afking of materials, by switching the odd moon mining pos set up for an active mining vessel. This vessel could be absolutely new, or perhaps a retooled Orca or Roq, thus giving birth to a variant of the large mining related vessels. Such a ship could force alliances to rethink their defensive strategy as the ship would clearly not be able to use a POS shield to defend itself. Such a ship may need to lock itself into position in order to begin harvesting the moon minerals with powerful lasers and tractor beams, which would simply be part of the mining gear that it would equip in it's slots.

Since there are a lot of smaller moon mining operations that are run by small corps, or even individuals in low sec which harvest the lower end of the moon mineral spectrum, it is possible that CCP could design a system of seeding that allows the standard operation of POS moon mining, but of only specific tiers of minerals. Changing the game so that in order to harvest silicates one needs a billion dollar capital ship would completely destroy the T2 market and harm those that are barely covering their costs. The goal is to shake up the most valuable moons, while giving those that have access to some of the poorest moon minerals the opportunity to, at random, have access to such minerals. All moons can be revamped so that they always contain lower tiered minerals, which could optionally fluctuate which can help break up the monotony of market prices by increasing supplies of x, and y tiered moon mins. This also has the potential of creating smaller, but still awesome sources of wealth for low sec inhabitants as they may find their moon now has better mins then it did last time. This would create a baseline of moon minerals so that each moon has X value but has the potential for so much more.

Obviously the idea is still rather raw, but there is an opportunity for CCP to revamp the moon mineral system so that people need to actively seek out and discover deposits of precious materials. That they have to work to harvest the materials since we know that CCP does not care for how people can simply sit back and get rich off of datacores, a much smaller source of isk then moon minerals and the production and sales of t2 related goods.

The pros for a revamped system are:

Changing a passive means of making great sums of isk to an active profession.

The seeding of precious moon minerals instead of fixed moons with an inexhuastible supply adds additional realism.

The introduction of another industry based capital class ship.

Additional application of preexisting mining and probing skills.

The introduction into a specialized barge capable of taking samples of a target moon and finding seeded deposits.

Adds to the value of preexisting mining and probing skills by providing a new role that is critical to all alliances.

Creates hot spots of interest in often ignored null sec systems due to fixed 'true sec' status.

Hot spots can quickly reshape alliance defenses to protect the precious mineral deposit(s).

Hot spots also has the potential to send other alliances marching to attack and capture deposits found by other alliances.

The best of all, a further reduction of passive, and afk mining that leads to wealth far greater then a hulk mining veld.

Possible reshaping of the sov map as alliances work upon tips from intel from spies or sympathizers.



Cons:

None.

CCP has already hinted at their intention to add a dynamic aspect to t2 raw materials and to, once again, attempt to alleviate the "bottleneck effect".

Your wall of text is unnecessary and uninformed.

Yea, I said pretty much this years ago. Content like this needs to be dynamic. Also, all asteroid belts need to be removed as they constitute a static resource too. All of this stuff can easily be implemented as anomalys, perhaps with some being so easy to find you can do it without probes in any ship (such as in high sec).

If you make moons run out of a resource, but that resource crop up in a moon elsewhere, you also create an incentive for moving space, with the consequent opportunities for meaningful conflict.

having to scan down asteroid belts or "clusters" would be fun, I'm training up scanning now, still a total noob but having fun at it. Finding sansha bases and blowing them up for sport! The rare mining scan sites so could be made into the general mining sites in systems replacing the obviously easy "belt 1 warp to 0". Best of all, the time and effort required in finding a site would partially increase a miners "safety" in that gankers would need to scan the same site down too. Of course soon as they get a 100% its game on. It would buy the miners a little blanket to wrap themselves up in *ahh so warm!* But wouldnt eliminate high sec "pvp"

Not sure if that would entail having to fit probe launchers on mining ships though. Some miner ships only have the 1 high slot so would be stupid doing all that then being unable to mine lol

GSOL will disagree with you on the afker part.

running a moon goo POS is hardly passive

go build a POS over a tech moon and tell us again how little work it is

if you can warp directly to the rock of your choice the gankers can too

it would actually make mining less safe

I'm all for it

This 100000 times

Cute, a goon is suggesting that their ever present isk tap that does not require you to fly a ship to harvest, then move the materials is anything but afking on a massive scale. We can go over the absurdity of your post, but we both know what it really is.