Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So fun for you is to be able to do something without a sweat and walk away from your keyboard while doing it?

Obviously I don't agree with your point or I wouldn't be posting this as a suggestion. We need to disrupt (make HARDER not IMPOSSIBLE) afk mining and make the whole mining activity more challenging so that it doesn't just feel like something you HAVE to do so it's okay if you do it afk.

What's the point of having an online game when you can play it while you're not in front of your keyboard? Why can't YOU just get that in your head and realize how THAT is stupid?

And by the way, they can't ban botters because they can't catch them right now, mainly because of the fact that someone can leave a ship forever in a belt with only 5 drones to guard him and never fear of being blown up by NPC pirates.

That's untrue. I make a ton of cash mining even though it's not my main income, and I'm not blaming highsec botters because I'm not making enough cash. Money is hardly the reason for this suggestion.

As for botting, you're right, nothing prevents him from botting a cruiser to guard him, but that would be much harder to do since the bot would have to be much more intelligent. Again, this suggestion doesn't mean to put a full stop on botters or afk miners, it just means to make it HARDER for them to do it.

One baby step at a time.

I was under the impression the Procurer and Skiff could get battleship levels of eHP, so in theory they could just passive tank rats equivalent to L2s, particularly if they are orbiting an asteroid and moving a little. Maybe the other two barges couldn't tank em, but risk-free solo hisec mining would still definitely be viable in the Procurer if they introduced cruiser rats to randomly spawn in belts.

except his idea, as per his own admission, doesn't make mining harder. it makes it impossible.

And you miss-read my response apparently, because I answered directly to this. I stated I would be fine with that, the goal is to make it much harder for solo players (as in, one account, one character, alone, without help from any other character) to mine while afk or bot alone.

Well, there has to be a just middle-ground. The 3-4 drones I was referring to are Hobgoblin I drones. I'm able to mine afk without any risk in a .5 system in my Retriever with only 4 x Tech I drones, and my shields barely ever got touched. It's way too easy right now. I guess I wasn't specific enough in my thread, but a fully skilled character with maxed drones skills, implants, drone damage modules and pimped up Skiff probably wouldn't have a problem staying in the field for hours if it had an armor repairer.

Maybe you're right, but until I see a bot that can do actual combat I have my doubts.

First of all, flying a Mack in highsec to mine ice afk is asking for a gank. It doesn't provide any significant yield increase compared to the T1 mining barges. A retriever is a much better choice. What you said confirms my point: Ice mining is almost as if it was "made" for afk mining. It's extremely boring, the yield is slow because of the size of the ice blocks, and the ice asteroids are so huge that you can mine the same one all day without having to target another one. This either has to change so that it becomes more interactive, and/or NPC pirates waves have to be tougher so people can't abuse it afk like this.

My thoughts exactly. And so you guys know, this character is a real carebear (me), and I'm mostly skilled for mining and transport. I'm still the first one to want this to change and be more challenging. I didn't spend all those skill points on mining barge to just sit at my screen looking at nothing but asteroids all day and would very much like to have a bit more challenge without getting into PvP. Most of the time when I mine, it's with my corporation in mining operations, or with 1-2 friends. I do know a few people however that have multiple accounts (over 6) and basically created their own mini-mining-op to mine the same Ice rock AFK all day long without using bots and make enough ISK that way to fund PLEXes for all his characters. I find that a little abusing.

Simple solution (to a problem I'm not even sure the OP really thinks exists).

Make belt rats bump. James and his henchmen have proved it to be hugely effective at extracting tears from miners. It only really works against afk characters, does not flag for aggression (so the rat will not be targetted by drones) and effectively switches off the afk isk tap (faucet to you Atlantically challenged folks).

50% of a belt rat spawn will be ships dedicated to bumping, random aggro on a player ship in belt, will not target drones, will bump until that target ship has no active high slot modules. Rat will then target another player ship until either no more high slots are active on grid, or 30 minutes have passed since spawn.