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Thoughts on Mining as an Industry
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Rosenkranz
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#1 - 2011-10-29 15:09:59 UTC
As someone in the mining industry, this also concerns me. To address the mining industry, one has to frame the question. What’s the problem? Is there a problem?

Some Problems I see:

  • Mining is too easy to bot.
  • Hulks are too easy to get into and too cheap.
  • Some folks think better yields is bad for the industry


Lets address these in reverse order. If better yield is bad for industry then logically, worse yield is better. Taken to it’s logical conclusion we should be forced into mining in T1 mining frigates using T1 mining lasers. If this seem ridiculous to you, so should the opposite logic.

So, what I’m saying here is that yield, for better or worse, isn’t relevant and isn’t good or bad for the industry. Thus creating more elite mining ships with better yield potential isn’t good or bad for the industry. But it would be good for the players. The trick is keeping them away from the Bots.

This brings us to the second point. I remember when Hulks were OMG expensive and bots usually ran in retrievers or covetors. I remember when Hulks were the elite mining barges they are described as.

However when invention came along, Hulks (and a lot of other T2 stuff) got a lot cheaper. My first Hulk cost me 650mil and the mining lasers cost me 25mil/ea. That was an accomplishment of epic proportion for me at the time. Now a hulk is around 200mil fully equipped. With the elimination of learning skills and the noob skill training bonus, you can train from scratch to fly one in less than a month.

These aren’t elite anymore. They are standard. The T1 mining ships are strictly for noobs and really are good for nothing more than fodder for inventors.

I would like to suggest the controversial notion of rebalancing the Exhumers. CCP could do so by

  • changing material amounts required for manufacture, making them more expensive.
  • changing the difficulty of invention, making them more expensive.
  • changing the skills required (say Exhumers V instead of III) making them harder to fly.


Baring this, a Strategic Mining ship might be in order. Strategic Cruisers cost about 600-900mil to buy and equip and come with some pretty steep skill requirements. Something like this might be elite enough that the Botters won’t bother with them for the same reasons they didn’t bother with exhumers back in the day.

Some might ask, why does cost or skills make a difference? Well, botting accounts get banned and recreated all the time. As it is, one plex of time and 200mil gets you a new mining toon capable of using a hulk to near full potential. Botters have toons in the pipe training so as mining toons get banned they’re just replaced with the toons in training and new toons are created to train up. Heck, most of the training could be done while still on the 14-day trial.

When it’s this easy, even Hulkagedon on a regular basis won’t make a dent.

However, if it takes several months of training and near a billion for the ship, that means your mining toons better last longer and/or be super profitable and you’ve got to have more toons in training at any given time to keep up with attrition from the ban stick.

This means that fewer Botters would bother with anything higher than a Hulk or Mach.

The last point is a toughy though. How to eliminate Botters. I’ve got a question. Are there any good estimates on just how much of the mining industry is actually bot generated? If all the mining bots in eve just stopped logging in, would there be enough of us mining to hold up the economy? Or would EVE’s economy collapse for lack of minerals and ice products?

I suspect this may be something on CCP’s minds when they think about this problem. If they over correct and are too successful, we could all be in a world of hurt. So I can see why they might choose to error on the side of caution. But they do talk a good line and seem to take it seriously.

I think the trick to this is making mining more interactive. I’ve seen a few posts on this and started one myself earlier ()

While I think that one is the easiest, it won’t help all that much. But the idea is to help every little bit rather than to try to solve it all at one go.

Some have suggested mini-games, but so far I’ve not seen any ideas that really turn my crank as a miner.

Anyone have some ideas on this?
Akrasjel Lanate
Immemorial Coalescence Administration
Immemorial Coalescence
#2 - 2011-10-29 15:41:17 UTC
CCP actualy ban bots you say Shocked

CEO of Lanate Industries

Citizen of Solitude
Woo Glin
State War Academy
Caldari State
#3 - 2011-10-29 17:05:58 UTC
That's a rather roundabout way of begging for new mining ships.
Barbara Nichole
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#4 - 2011-10-29 17:53:41 UTC
Rosenkranz wrote:
  • Mining is too easy to bot.
  • Hulks are too easy to get into and too cheap.
  • Some folks think better yields is bad for the industry



    • mining is easy to bot, but then missions are now botted as well.. are missions also too easy?

    hulks are too expensive (not too cheap)... and impossible to insure completely against loss (note I'm not even considering modules or any of the associative loss) It takes a full three months to get into a hulk and fly it well enough to be what I would consider an adequate hulk pilot.

    Better yields are not going to help anyone except the untrained miner maybe... belts run low due to crowding as it is.. and those who mine enough whine that more yield brings down value of their product...but there will always be a finite amount of material to mine. (Note null sec miners rarely enter the picture as they mostly horde their mineral for construction or their own purposes)

    any serious miner already has exhumer V so changing the req for hulks would do nothing for them really. Stretching out training for the profession is really in my mind a non starter.. I would rather see more added to the profession with more skills to train.

      - remove the cloaked from local; free intel is the real problem, not  "afk" cloaking -

    [IMG]http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a208/DawnFrostbringer/consultsig.jpg[/IMG]
    Diggles McGiggles
    Aliastra
    Gallente Federation
    #5 - 2011-10-29 19:50:03 UTC
    Quote:
    The last point is a toughy though. How to eliminate Botters. I’ve got a question. Are there any good estimates on just how much of the mining industry is actually bot generated? If all the mining bots in eve just stopped logging in, would there be enough of us mining to hold up the economy? Or would EVE’s economy collapse for lack of minerals and ice products?


    Regardless of the a mount of botters out there banning all of them would have very little long term effect on the economy. To suggest the economy would colpase from a shortage of minerals is absurd. Ore prices would rise and encourage more people to mine and bring prices back down again. There are plenty of people out there with a chunk of SP in mining that isn't used regularly or at all because there are more profitable ventures out there. Make mining more profitable and you'll see a lot more miners.

    If there is a significant amount of ore coming in from botters all of eve is enjoying an unrealisticly low price on ore. Banning bots would make ore prices rise to their "real" prices.
    People's Republic ofChina
    My Other Capital Ship is Your Mom
    #6 - 2011-10-29 21:04:15 UTC  |  Edited by: People's Republic ofChina
    Edit: Need to L2read OP fully before posting to avoid repeating information.
    Joshua Aivoras
    Tech IV Industries
    #7 - 2011-10-30 21:28:55 UTC
    I wonder if us miners will get our balls in a twist about new mining content everytime new pew pew content is added?

    95% of the players are loving EVE, the other 5%? On the forums.
    Velicitia
    XS Tech
    #8 - 2011-10-30 21:44:33 UTC
    yeah people complain.

    The problem with yields is that lower, and everything else gets expensive again. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you do something that adds even MORE yield to what miners can do, than anyone who isn't in your new T3 mining ship of awesome is cut even more out of the picture.

    One of the bitter points of a good bittervet is the realisation that all those SP don't really do much, and that the newbie is having much more fun with what little he has. - Tippia
    I Accidentally YourShip
    Republic University
    Minmatar Republic
    #9 - 2011-10-30 23:20:35 UTC  |  Edited by: I Accidentally YourShip
    Velicitia wrote:
    yeah people complain.

    The problem with yields is that lower, and everything else gets expensive again. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you do something that adds even MORE yield to what miners can do, than anyone who isn't in your new T3 mining ship of awesome is cut even more out of the picture.



    Why is this a bad thing? It's called progression. It's not like only a handful of people would have them and then CCP would take away the ability to get more, they would be available to the people who put the time and ISK into it. Just like a supercarrier or a titan. Single people can and DO get these ships, but there is a lot of work into getting one. I doubt a T3 mining ship would even be a notable fraction of the ISK and time requirements in comparison.

    Edit: Though I personally think they should nerf the mining rate of all ships, cut reprocessing returns on modules by a huge amount. Drone alloys could be cut down a little bit (again) too. Less minerals total in the system, up the value of ships and materials, increase the ISK cost of items and devalue pure ISK sources a bit. This is from my viewpoint as I do L4s often and I find I get an excessive amount of ISK for the time spent.
    pussnheels
    Viziam
    #10 - 2011-10-31 11:28:41 UTC  |  Edited by: pussnheels
    mining is too easy to bot
    indeed it is that is why it is important to report bots , since ccp introduced the report bots i ve seen less bots around in the high sec belts , sadly there still plenty around in the ice belts

    Hulks are easy to get into
    Not true , indeed if you start training straight away you in a hulk in a month , but those are minimum requirements with only t1 stripminners no tank and only a slightly higher yield than a cov , a good miners goes for t2 strip miners all the t2 mining crystals he think he will use , perfecrt refining, good standing for the npc refining tax ( missionsà, a tank , average to good drone skills , also add ice mining into it so you want exhumer lvl 5 atleast

    higher yield is bad for the economy
    no market is dependant on demand and supply , if demand are high price will go up , if demand are low price will go down till a certain lvl where it will stabilize, basic economics , it also has a ripple effect on production high demand and other product will rise in price as well low demand and prices of other products will fall
    at the moment the price is about right how it should be (my opinion), that is untill the Goons start with their hulkageddon campaign they promised will happen soon , then,you will see alot of specualtion going on aswell


    Indeed there needs to be something done to make the mining carreer more appealing , but last thing miners need is a new barge with higher yield because that will only help the bots

    I do not agree with what you are saying , but i will defend to the death your right to say it...... Voltaire
    pussnheels
    Viziam
    #11 - 2011-10-31 11:29:54 UTC  |  Edited by: pussnheels
    double post

    I do not agree with what you are saying , but i will defend to the death your right to say it...... Voltaire
    Velicitia
    XS Tech
    #12 - 2011-10-31 14:42:24 UTC
    I Accidentally YourShip wrote:
    Velicitia wrote:
    yeah people complain.

    The problem with yields is that lower, and everything else gets expensive again. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you do something that adds even MORE yield to what miners can do, than anyone who isn't in your new T3 mining ship of awesome is cut even more out of the picture.



    Why is this a bad thing? It's called progression. It's not like only a handful of people would have them and then CCP would take away the ability to get more, they would be available to the people who put the time and ISK into it. Just like a supercarrier or a titan. Single people can and DO get these ships, but there is a lot of work into getting one. I doubt a T3 mining ship would even be a notable fraction of the ISK and time requirements in comparison.

    Edit: Though I personally think they should nerf the mining rate of all ships, cut reprocessing returns on modules by a huge amount. Drone alloys could be cut down a little bit (again) too. Less minerals total in the system, up the value of ships and materials, increase the ISK cost of items and devalue pure ISK sources a bit. This is from my viewpoint as I do L4s often and I find I get an excessive amount of ISK for the time spent.



    Oh, I agree that "progression" is a good thing (T2 and T3 stuff is fun to play with). I was flying with a RL friend of a friend yesterday (newb pilot in EVE) -- with a few fixes to his fit and me sitting in an itty 5 we got him mining 200 m3 or so per minute.

    So, there I am sitting in a belt, 10KM from the rocks in a 0.6 system trying to help this poor kid mine some rock... staring at all the HUGE veld rocks (seriously, you'd think it was nullsec) thinking that I could kill off a handful of the bigger veld rocks in the time it was taking him to mine the three Omber he found (for all of 7k units).

    I remember being in his shoes, trying to mine in ANYTHING I could cram a few Cu Vapor or Miner II modules on to; always looking for the elusive cargo space to bring more back to station with... seeing the odd retriever or covetor in the 0.6 and 0.7 systems I was calling home (also note at that time, it was Mon and Fri that were respawn days ... so no hulk pilot worth anything was wasting his time on the pittance in those systems).

    Now we have respawn on every day ... we have hulks living in these essentially zero risk systems stripping them clean. Perhaps the best fixes are going back to the way things were? Though, I do believe "every day" respawns in the rookie systems are perfectly acceptable.

    Better yet -- fix how mining inherently works; so that there is a reason for the progression.
    Veld and scord are the domain of the smaller miners --> a barge can do it, but say ruins some of the useable ore in the process. Frigs, Cruisers, and BS can mine it and get 100% yields (1k, 1050, 1100 trit/refine) whereas strip miners get say 80% or so (800, 840, 880 trit/refine), maybe less?

    Plag/Pyrox/Omber/Kernite are the domain of the mid-range guys --> frigs are able to mine it slowly, cruisers/BS are OK at best, Procurers/Retrievers are best suited to the task. Covetor/Hulk is the best here but they're better put to task on the "higher end" ores in the list. No refining penalty on strip miners for this stuff.

    Hedbergite/Hemorphite/Jaspet are the domain of the barges/exhumers --> frigs are right out, cruisers/BS can mine it (slowly), Procurer/Retriever is OK, Cov/Hulk are best suited to the task.

    Nullsec stuffs are the domain of the hulks (sans Mercoxit, which has the skiff) --> Frigs/Cruisers/BS are right out, Ret is really slow, Cov is "OK", Hulk is best suited to the task.

    One of the bitter points of a good bittervet is the realisation that all those SP don't really do much, and that the newbie is having much more fun with what little he has. - Tippia
    Toku Jiang
    Jiang Laboratories and Discovery
    #13 - 2011-10-31 20:19:44 UTC
    CCP could make mining more interactive to fight botting, but that would only last so long as someone will figure out a way to make a bot work. As long as there have been MMO's that require you grind and grind and grind to get something, there have been bots and there will always be bots. New ships won't fix bots, and mining can make you rich if your willing to put in the time and effort.