Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I will be listing a number of possible ideas here. I do not claim to accurately know how easy any of these ideas are to implement, or if they are even possible. If I add a complexity factor, it's a rudimentary guess at best.

I have also checked the commonly proposed ideas and forum, but I saw no propositions that were very similar to this one. The closest ones arguably being:
http://community.eveonline.com/iNgameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=354671 the unrealistic systems
And
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=32515 a revision of mining

I particularly like the planetoid bit, so scroll down there if you’re only going to read part of this article.

Mining:

Asteroid belts:

This part would be epic, but nearly impossible to do: It has always bothered me how asteroids are arranged in very unrealistic fashions, it would be great if the old asteroids belts could be taken out, and some systems could receive full asteroid belts throughout the whole system, with beacons places at several places in the belt.

In such a case you could then fly along the belt to your heart's content, potentially making lap around the whole system (if you had a few years to spare). You could even place the old hidden belts with rare resources inside the belt, so you'd have to find the by manually scouting. (the old scanning mechanic could be maintained or revised to help with this).

Now I acknowledge this would: A. require a lot of resources since there would be a fuckton of entities in space, and B. would mean a complete gameplay revisal of the asteroids system since there would be so many more of them. (this would potentially also bother Jenshae Chiroptera although to be fair I think more asteroids wouldn’t really break the system (more rare asteroids might)).
Issue A can to an extent be resolved by placing the belt at about 1AU of the sun, and not having a full belt, but pockets of asteroids.
Issue B can partly be resolved in the same way, and generic rocks without useful ores can be placed in the belt as well. (although this would once again increase the strain on resources, but less so if you make them meshes and not entities)

This bit would be greatly more feasible: Redoing the belts to set them on an real asteroid belt distance, and making each belt some 200km long with intervals of tens of AU between belts would give the impression of a proper asteroid belt, without any of the issues I mentioned previously (although I don't believe it would be quite as cool).
e.g. Take Couster, a system with 4 belts, one belt at planet 1, and three at planet 3 (for instance).
Instead of this you could make a virtual asteroid belt at about 5 AU from the sun. Along the circumference of this virtual belt you would then place down 4 actual belts.
You then stretch them for some 150-250KM along the virtual line of the system wide asteroid belt. Maintaining the old system to an extent, but improving both the look and feel of the belts. (and also the logic behind it)

Ice field:

To an extent I'm quite happy with ice fields, they look like they are chunks that have fallen off a comet which passed through the system at some point (although placing ice fields on the same elliptical orbit would make even more sense).
In order to further increase this visual effect, an extra large chunk could be placed at the edge of the field. Other than that, I’m quite content with it.

Planetoids:

It would be cool if in addition to the regular mining sites there could be such as a thing as planetoids, moving through the systems at about 1km/s.
You could then use these to house rarer minerals, or have them be comprised of several targetable areas, each containing a different ore.
Since only ventures with afterburners would be able to catch up to these, they would be the only ones able to mine it, and as they have small cargo holds they'd have to continually move the ore to station before getting back into action. Or jet canning it in a string behind them, and then bookmark them for pickup. (you could perhaps also make it possible for chunks to be cut loose from these planetoids, spawning asteroids).

Regardless of the method, it would not create an overabundance of rarer minerals if you keep it moving at 1km/s. A moving mineable entity would make mining more active and engaging (as opposed to the passive semi-afk activity it is now), and it would make newbie miners in ventures a lot more useful.

Potentially you could also make a beacon on the overview for warp to, rather than have to scan the planetoid down.

Comets:

Much the same idea as a planetoid, but with ice.

Planetary rings: (depending on the chosen method this may or may not be considered a mining related idea)

Another thing that bothers me is that planetary rings are just a flat plane with very little to them. Ideally you'd want these rings to look like chunks of rock and dust.
A relatively 'easy' fix for this would be to apply the effect you get in sansha systems to anyone flying in the rings (although perhaps with a bit more dustiness).

A harder but more visually impressive feat would be to get both dust and asteroids going, but, this would be harder to accomplish. Perhaps a sort of Seyllin I asteroids effect, but then with millions more tiny asteroids would be possible. This is not as resource intensive as 'true' asteroids, since they wouldn't serve as entities, rather just an assortment of floating meshed (no collisions, non-targetable, etc)

Comprising the rings of true asteroids would be epic, but likely near impossible to pull off.

Editors note: Word to forum does not translate well, please for give me for layout fuckups, i tried my best.

Well i gave it my best :p

Anything in here is stuff i've been bothered with for a while now.

+1 agreed.

I like the idea of hunting down rare rocks, makes a good time / isk game out of scouting rocks.

Having a large set of belts also spread out the miners, helps annoy the gankers.

I hate to burst your hollywood bubble, but how asteroids are currently implemented are MORE realistic than having an infinite stream of asteroids going off into infinity.

Many asteroids have ZERO other asteroids visible from it, but gravity has forced some little groups of asteroids to clump together.

The more you know.....

my suggestion... stop making suggestions to improve mining, it is fine the way it is nothing needs improvement

The Planetoids idea is probably the best base idea, just drop the speed so normal mining barges can use them also. The so called 'rare' minerals aren't actually significantly more valuable, nor are they actually rare. And just use the Planetoids instead of belts. Have them show up like normal complexes on the base scanner so they don't need probing but don't show in the standard overview so aren't taking up room

Some great ideas, I would love to see any or all of this implemented.

I have to say that your last idea. the one with planetoids is actually a decent idea but like others have said have varying speeds so some can only be mined by ventures and some can be mined by barges