Science & Industry

I guess you'll survive to bot another day then.

e: I have been thinking about this further, and I think a variable timer would be better. most likely 3-5 hours, with variable minutes etc. This prevents one person from dominating an entire system without watching it like a hawk. It gives a chance for the casual 30 miner multiboxer to get a foothold in the rat race that is the run for hi-sec ice.

The summary I get from all the arguments to Jita Bloodtear's posts is this : Alliances need a proper, workable way to tax mining income. They need those taxes to help make up for the lost income of the tech bottleneck.

( Refining background info )
The way refining taxes works, for those not involved in null, is that the owner of the station gets a percentage of the refined minerals from any given job.

For ore, this works out decently from the perspective of the miner. You bring it to your closest nullsec station, refine it and sell the low-ends locally. The high ends now comprise a tiny percentage of the volume that the original load of ore took up, meaning it is far easier to ship to high-sec for sale.

This falls down when it comes to ice. The refined ice products take up *more* space than the source ice blocks and there is very little local demand for the component pieces in null. The creation of fuel blocks has effectively killed that market.

( Suggestions for taxing mining )
People skip refining in null via compressing the ore or ice using a rorqual and then refining in high-sec. This is the behaviour that many alliances are seeking to curtail in order to derive some level of alliance income.

Two ways I see for adressing this :

Change the relative volume of ice blocks to their refined parts. Simply put, the refined parts of 1 cube of ice should take up less than 1000 m3.

Secondly, and far more complex, the refinery tax in a station should be set by the corporation the player belongs to. Starter corporations should have a refinery tax similar to the base ratting tax. Yes, this could be circumvented by having an alt corporation, but API's management can curtail that to some level. The objective is to make it more work to get around the tax, in order to deter the casual folks. The determined types will always find a way ...

This has the added bonus of making it far easier for high-sec miners to move around to different systems or regions.. Suddenly the standings grind goes away.

I cant wait to see liquid ozone hit 1k ipu. I think it should be the new norm.

Tbh its the lowsec who need highest numbers. I know initially CCP planned nullsecs as most dangerous space, but lets be honest, lowsecs much more dangerous than nulls for years. And if nulls have it own LP market, thus not interfering with empire LP market, no matter how much LPs null habitants gaining. With mining its all same minerals and ice products. So as long as nulls gives higher output - there is simply no reason mine in low - higher risk, lower profit.

uncommented spaghetti code of doom that if touched would probably delete all outposts everywhere

CCP Fozzie....

As a casual high sec miner I had a few concerns about the new changes. While its been a while since I have mined ice, the respawn timing on these belts seem too dramastic for the limited quanity in the belts. With the current changes coming and not going too much into the math formula this is what we are looking at....if someone can check my figues on SiSi might help...


New Ice Harvester II Cycle Time....125 secs
+Procurer/Skiff Ice cycle reduction....42.5 secs
+2 Ice Mining Upgrade II......35 Secs
+Yeti 1005 Implant.......33 Secs
+Ice Rig......29 Secs
+Orca Boost.....15 Secs

So in theory we are looking at around 15 secs per cycle for a procurer/skiff do mine out 1 Block of Ice. So about 4 blocks a min..

2500 High Blocks divided by 4 blocks mined an min.....625 Mins or 10 Hours 25 secs for 1 miner to empty the belt

Now lets average in without the botters that their are 30 legit miner casual miners in a Ice block system....

625/30.....20.3 mins

So its going to take 20 mins for a ice belt to disappear....then a 4 hour respawn.

I don't know about everyone else, but I see this as a very bad thing. Its going to be a power gamer thing now to alarm clock the ice belt respawn timers....as an old gamer, I am having flashback of the Dragons and Rare Loot NPC timers in Everquest....where one player or guild would just perma camp the NPC.

Why are the belts not given a respawn timer comparable to the grav sites in Null secs....belt gets mined out....10 min respawn.

I think if it was lowered to that it would accomplish the ice belt anoms orginally goal of thwating the AFK/Botting Miners....while not effecting the casual player base.

Now your reply maybe that this limits the amount of ice harvested to encourage conflict or competition to mine out these belts, but I don't see how that is going to work. Most of the botters/70 man mining teams, are in a NPC corp, which cannot be war dec, so there goes the idea on that. With the small amount of time its going to take to mine out the belts, their is no way to compete....ie your playtime is 1230-1430 during the week....the belts are mined out by 1200, respawn is at 1600....no chance to mine any ice. Well.....head to null sec....well you got everyone and their brother cloak camping the belts there....which btw they don't have to fit probe launchers now....so get ready to be bombed.

Can you please reduce the respawn timer down to were it will at least allow casual gamers to be able to mine ice...10-30min respawn time is sufficent to prevent botters/afker mining....they not going to want to have to rescan and resetup their camps every 10 mins....

This is an analysis of ideal highsec ice product supply vs galaxy need. Most of the statistics I include here are just because players might find them interesting. Please enjoy the statistics:

These ice fields post-expansion:
Blue ice (Gallente): 17 systems with 23 ice belts
Clear Icicle (Amarr): 24 systems with 28 ice belts
White Glaze (Caldari): 25 systems with 30 ice belts
Glacial Mass (Minmatar): 16 systems with 17 ice belts

A fuel block takes:
10 isotopes
3.75 ozone
3.75 heavy water

A highsec ice field provides:
750k isotopes
62.5k ozone
125k HW
2500 stront

Let's examine our ice need
Based on Jita market history, towers are consumed in the ratio of 37% / 22% / 41% (S/M/L)
This implies the average tower consumes (37*10 + 22*20 + 41*40)/100 = 24.5 fuel blocks/hr
There were last reported 21,543 online towers
That's 13.26mil fuel blocks/day
Or 132.6mil isotopes/day

Let's look at isotopes:
98 ice belts cycled 5 times per day = 490 ice fields of supply
These numbers place highsec isotope production at 367.5mil/day
With the CCP estimated need at 459.375mil isotopes/day
This implies the galaxy has a leftover 326.8mil isotopes every day
Some of this will be lost in assets never to be found
The rest will be consumed by capital ship jump fuel
With an old estimate of 15k capital ship pilots at any given time
This implies the average cap pilot uses 21.8k isotopes/day
If this is true, then highsec technically could supply 80% of the isotopes to the game.

Let's look at the new highsec ozone supply for curiosity's sake:
We have a demand of 13.26mil fuel blocks/day
Which is 49.7mil ozone/day
We estimate cyno usage at 2mil/day
And JB usage at 4mil/day
This puts the galaxy at a 55.7mil ozone/day need.
Ideally highsec produces 30.6mil ozone/day
That's an estimated 55% of the galaxy's ozone need

Now for Heavy Water:
We have a demand of 13.26mil fuel blocks/day
Which is 49.7mil HW/day
We estimate an extra rorqual consumption of HW at 10mil/day
Placing a galaxy demand around 59.7mil/day
Ideally highsec produces 61.2mil HW/day
Highsec would satisfy 97.5% of galaxy heavy water need

Please note that these highsec supply numbers are based on the theory that 100% of all highsec ice belts will be mined to completion 5 times a day. I still consider this to be unreasonably idealistic. It implies any highsec ice belt anywhere in existence will only have an average life span of 48 minutes (20hrs spent respawning, 4hrs being mined out 5 times). Due to low population timezones, isolated highsec islands, piracy, ice miner locust swarm response/travel times and the such, the actual highsec supply will probably be 40-60% the numbers presented here.

Firstly, since high-sec does not need JB fuel, I am going to toss those numbers.
Secondly, you are talking about racial ice and not dark glitter or krystallos which would cover those needs.
Thirdly, racial ice is only 300 topes, 25 LO, 50 HW, 1 Stront. Painfully short of LO/HW to even support basic POS fuel blocks. Extra topes are sold to buy LO/HW and make the blocks. I am going to assume you know this.

So please re-do your math(s).

Casual? Mutiboxer? I believe there's a thread on GOON forums expressing just how much of a pubbie casual I am. Literally your unicorn, right here baby. When I get the itch to mine ice (and sip gin, black currant, black cherry cocktails) I have a perfect booster, two perfect ice miners, and i use a couple PvP toonies~~~ as belt-rat shooter and hauler. This happens a couple times per month-ish.

Frankly these changes to ice mining are effing incredible. I love them. The tears in this thread alone have provided deliciously stimulating materials relevant to my prurient giggles, and the patch hasn't even dropped yet. I long for the explosion of melodrama from anti-social hisec autists as starvation economics suddenly force them to socialize. It might be worth cashing in some POWER OF TWO just to get some spy accounts in a few re-tard colonies. Besides TEST.

o7 no h8 m8

nobody is mining it becuase it's **** isk/hour which has nothing to do with the composition of the belt.