Science & Industry

As a hardcore miner, I’ve enjoyed and commented on a hundreds S&I posts, articles, and blogs related to the subject. I do not pretend to be good at much in the game of Eve, but I’ve been an empire miner, a null sec miner and even a WH miner. As many Mining posts that get written, there are few that will tell you Mining is working as intended and here is why.

For CCP, mining is a subscription business. It doesn’t matter that you think mining is boring. Mining as it is today is quite lucrative for CCP. It is one of the major reasons for legitimate multi-boxing and CCP loves multi-boxers. We’re not talking about botters, we’re talking the subset of hardcore miners. The sweet spot, some may call them fanatical but in reality they are just ridiculously reliable in paying subscriptions or buying plex because they are the OCD types who are executing a business plan. It’s what appeals to the industry types that PVP folks or market traders rarely grasp or comprehend. There are many hardcore miners in Eve, personally I know 10 guys between them account for more than 150 accounts.

Aside from being another venue of OCD industry folks executing a business plan, Hardcore miners create content for the PVP folks, we are defenseless, and we are the hunted, basically targets of opportunity. We are the players with the balls to sit in the belt with a Rorqual because it’s more efficient hauling. We make mistakes, just last month I accidentally warped one of my hulks back into an Ice field and lost it. ISBoxer accidents happen and they are delicious kill mails for the hunters. Mining for the hardcore multi-boxer is very active, it’s a dance, a mini-game of efficiency and we have to stay on our toes to keep from getting tunnel vision. We even AFK it in a belt now and then because yes we know we should safe up for a bio but we calculate the risk and the amount of time it takes for us to get set back up, sometimes we say screw it and on the rare occasion have paid for it. We don’t complain about how quickly we die when we get tackled, that’s the game of cat and mouse we accept.

The odds that CCP makes a change to mining that would hurt this community, well that is slim and none and slim got laid off 99 weeks ago, he’s probably filing for permanent disability at this point. Again CCP loves multi-boxers, I’m surprised we don’t get VIP pass offers for Fan Fest. CCP isn’t going to change how asteroids are mined because there are a lot legitimate accounts at stake.

Sorry PVP guys we know you spent 5 minutes mining and decided you need to fix something you’d only do for another 5 minutes before you got bored. Spreadsheet market traders, sure you can read some patch notes and write a VLookUp statement, but that doesn’t touch the human factors that make mining the profession it is today. On the bright side, Moon belt mining represents an opportunity for a different kind of mining but that seems to be a few expansions away.

I’m not saying that mining is perfect, but there is balance. Sure I have a bone to pick with CCP Fozzie over the mining crystal capacity of a hulk but don’t expect any serious changes. Maybe null sec gets lucky with some grav site changes, getting access to some more low ends and maybe losing some of those big high end rocks in the grav sites. CCP definitely over compensated high ends with the drone region nerf. Maybe even swapping out these added high end rocks in the grav sites for low end rock volume? Just going to wait and see or maybe even stalk a Dev at Fanfest….

If they do anything to Mining it will be supplementary to what is already in place. Well I hope it is, I don't mind mining semi-afk while browsing the forums or watching youtube videos

Actually logged in just to agree with this...


Mining really is in a pretty good place for both the purpose it fulfills, and the opportunities it provides players. OP explained it as well as I've ever seen it put.

As long as you assplode the Boxers, it's fine by me.

It must be great for you. I would have fun in mining as well if I could use a bot to mine in your pseudo null space as well, safe and more profitable than high sec.

On a spreadsheet, yes you can wax philosophical single/dual box mining operation gets and how single scordite rock is making you all the mad ISK. But when you''ve got a single PC with 11 Miners a Rorq in the POS boosting and crunch ore and a Rorq / Orca hauling in, human factors make being in empire not worth it. Human factors are where spreadsheet nerds fail.

- Empire Rocks typically die after a few cycles, as a multi-boxer, the more accounts, the more efficiency is lost because you're losing cycles in your dance to keep hauling, eyes on local and intel and chasing strips that are constantly dying. In null sec, I can leave one pilot on a crockite rock and he is maximum efficiency for an hour while two others are on Ark, 3 are on the ungodly amount of bistot, virtually working at 100% efficiency.
- Remember, your mining crystal degrades the second you start a cycle not when it completes so partials hits from rocks dying are numbers that add up when you start getting more accounts in play. Adding to the fact that CCP Fozzie killed the Hulk in null sec due to mining crystal limitations doesn't help much either. We really didn't care about the tank, hit.
- We don't log in and find that our belts didn't get a refreshed and we don't typically have to worry about someone else coming in and getting the favorite rock of the day and lose time hunting for that rock in other belts. Null sec its all about grav sites.\

If you asked me to take my fleet to empire and try and vacuum up the 1,000,000 m3 per hour that I vacuum up in null-sec, I'd tell you to take your keyboard and shove it where the sun doesn't shine, I simply don't hate myself that much. I'd have to venture a guess but I'd probably lose 40% of my efficiency moving my fleet around and chasing rocks because they popped so quickly. The hardcore multi-boxer just does things differently for different reasons and because things become more or less practical when you start managing a higher volume of accounts simultaneously.

...and you don't even have to do the math. http://ore.cerlestes.de/index.html#site:ore


edit: Although technically Low is more profitable, the logistics involved nerf the profits with the typical mining setup that is possible in High.

I've been playing in Low the past few months and will be making a scathing report about it soon-ish. We know it's broken, but BOY is it ever hopelessly broken. Had to see for myself.....and my God...........

Yup. And that's what exactly is found in Low as well.

The ISK m3 hour discussion is irrelevant to the general principle that mining is working as intended.

Too much ABC in grav sites is already well known. Not enough Low Ends in Null Sec is already a known.

That really doesn't change the topic about how mining is done is actually working exactly as it should be.

I fully expect to receive flame-throwers on full when I post about Low from Trolls who want to either get rid of High, or force 'highseccers' into Low. It'll be interesting.



edit: I got so tired of hearing about it, I decided to find out for myself.