Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Mining in Eve is, right now, not an occupation that encourages player interaction or even joining a mining corporation. There is no way for an industrial group to "stake a claim" and there is very little that can be done for one industrial group to get an advantage over another. There is very little in the way of possible conflict or ownership of space.

The concept below for Mining Charters is intended to change that, but in a way that should not have a strong adverse affect on casual / solo miners. It will affect mainly high sec; I do not see these changes as having a significant impact in low sec (who mines in lowsec?), and no change in null sec where mining rights are enforced already by alliances.

The Mining Charters concept contains the following suggestions:

Changes to Mining Belts / Public Mining Areas
Ice is already moving to sites that must be scanned down in order to be accessed. Ore should move in the same direction, with the exception of the most common ore types. Veldspar, for example. Anything more rare would need to be scanned down and found.

Keeping asteroid belts as they are, and keeping them open to the public, helps ensure that new players can experience a very simple version of mining and can provide them with their current mining income, as well as a place to find belt rats.

Nothing changes to asteroid belts other than the ore that can be found.

Mining Sites
Other ore that is more rare than Veldspar should move to new mining sites. Sites should be able to be found using the mechanics that will be used for the new ice belts.

All ore located in these mining sites is considered owned by the empire which controls the solar system. Attempting to mine this ore will give the miner a suspect flag.

Mining Charters
When a mining site is found, any player inside of the site may buy a mining charter from the local authorities. The mining charter gives the player's corporation full rights to all of the ore in the site.

Charters are transferable. They may be sold to other corporations using the current contract system, or perhaps a new feature of the market. A charter may also be made "open", allowing the owner to set a fee (which may be 0 isk). Anyone who pays the fee may mine in the site until all of the ore has been mined.

Anyone who attempts to mine the ore in the site without access to the Charter will incur a suspect flag. You bought rights to the site, the ore is yours. Anyone who tries to poach your ore is stealing.

Charters can only be bought by player corporations / alliances..

Site Size and Availability
Sites should be "scare" and "large".

Making the sites scarce will ensure that buying and holding a Charter will have real value. If there are lots and lots of sites, then it would be very easy to just find a new site for yourself. That would discourage player interaction. Making the resources "scare" will encourage player interaction, be it asking for permission to mine, to buy the charter, or attempting to coerce the Charter holder to give the charter to you.

Making the sits Large will help offset the scarcity and make the sites worth defending. If a site only has 2-3 hours' worth of mining with a half dozen miners, then there isn't enough ore to bother with. Large sites go hand in hand with the idea of scarcity. If the site will last you four or five days, you're going to move in and make a good effort to defend your valuable space.

Cool Stuff

• Exploration people can make income by finding sites, buying a Charter, then selling the Charter to industrial corporations.
• Real competition over resources means industrial corporations have a reason to band together. There would be safety - and access - in numbers. Players have a good reason to join player corporations.
• Being responsible for your site's security gives combat pilots a place in industrial corporations.
• Gives high sec corporations a sense of real ownership, like temporary sovereignty in miniature, and the ability to defend their territory.
• Lone Miners can buy access to sites with an Open Charter, mine in the Veldspar belts, or maybe find their own site and mine there while selling access to others.
• The Empire factions spend a lot of resources securing solar systems. Why should they give you all that good ore for free?
• Increases player to player interaction via joining corporations, negotiating over the price of a Charter, paying to join Open charters, ore theft, etc.
• Making sites "scarce" means that warfare against industrial corporations can have meaningful effects. Combat pilots in mining corps now havea reason to exist.
• Puts more control of Eve into the hands of the players.
• Offers content to combat pilots as well as industrialists, marketeers, and anyone who wants to strong arm the mining industry.

The Charter system could be first applied to Ice Mining as a future iteration to test the system and see how things work out. If it seems to be a net benefit for Eve, it could be expanded to mining sites in general as explained above.

I like this idea.

To be clear, you're suggesting that the first person to click "buy mining charter" inside said site gets the mining charter and only one corporation may hold a charter to a particular site?

I like this.

If mining rights can be sold, I'd add that if someone incurs a "Suspect Flag" and can be attacked that defence rights are capable of being sold as well. Theoretically you could end up with enforcers and player corp belt police that ensure that no-one without rights mines in others' belts.

This could range from the people who bought into the charter having kill rights on unauthorised miners, to charter owners hiring their own police force and including them as part of the deal when buying mining rights off them, to entire contracting corps that deal with mining enforcement.

I don't think it's worth arguing over specifics as CCP will be the ones deciding those anyway, but I really like the general concept. It encourages player to player interaction which is what EVE needs more of, as well as potentially some conflict.

Excuse me while i grab my Cloaky Proteus, buy a charter, rent it out, and kill any people who decide to steal ore from the belt instead, oh look I just found a way to pick on carebears in highsec easier WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! If the pay the Rent on the charter I get my iskies!!!!!!!!!!!

Idno iv come across some pretty dumb carebears in my time. And its not like im going to make the rent absurd, it will be within reason to the worth of the belt, its just those who dont wana pay are gonna loose there retriever or mackinaw

This +1

Or how about a device similar to a sov unit / poco (only alot smaller) that you anchor on the site, put charters into it and it consumes them x amount / h with some fuel or something thus making that grid "yours". Much easier to implement i belive. Rights to do stuff on the grid can be rented from the device and who ever has set it up can control it much like an poco.

Or they can find their own site, but yes. That's the general idea. Or, they could move to low or null (which is some ways is far safer than highsec anyway).

I really doubt that. Scanning isn't a difficult activity and it doesn't take much time.

I would expect mineral prices to rise somewhat with this change. Good news for the miners, though - it means they make more money.

Wouldn't kill PvP either. Here's the thing: Let's pretend that mineral prices jump up 25%. That doesn't affect frigate PvP at all - a hull will still be less than a single T2 gun. It won't affect cruiser PvP for the same reason. The cost of modules and rigs are far more than the hull itself. It might put a small dent in BCs, but if you can afford to lose BCs on a regular basis then money isn't an issue for you anyway. Same for anything larger. Also note that insurance is tied to current mineral prices: Prices go up, so do insurance payouts. Yet another offset.

As far as T2 ships are concerned, the T2 components make up a large share of the total cost - so mineral prices rising won't have an effect here either.

So no, mineral prices going up (even if it jumps 20%) won't "kill PvP in its existance".

Besides, if there is a spike large enough that it causes a problem, there is a simple solution: Increase supply. Spawn more sites or have ore refine into a larger amount of minerals.

This is, by the way, the reason I suggested it be tried out on ice first. Try it out on one product, see if there are issue, and if so, correct it. Then when applied to something else, you're ready and have things in place to mitigate whatever ill effect you saw.

I heard that 75% of statistics are made up on the spot.

I think you missed the concept above where current asteroid belts would continue to exist, but hold only low end ore. The ore you would typically find in 1.0 and 0.9 sec system - where AFK and bot miners typically mine anyway. Their life doesn't change. If you want better ore then you're going to have to put in some effort into getting it. Nothing drastic here. If you want greater rewards you should have to put in a little more effort.

This is an interestingly perverse idea that adds investment and ownership to industry in a new way.
That is not a criticism, simply observing how it would spin the otherwise FFA nature of mining in high sec.

I think it could be fun, if things are done right.