Science & Industry

Hi all,

With all the changes to Ice mining, post Odyssey, are there any changes to asteroid belts in hi sec?

I know that in low sec, there will be new rats for the security tags to improve your standings, I'm just wondering if there are any other changes to asteroid belts in the EVE universe?

Thanks in advance.

All gravametric sites will be moved from cosmic signatures to anomalies and renamed ORE fields or some thing like that.

What this means is you will no longer need to go out with a scanning ship and use probes to find the gravametric sites. You can use the on board scanner on your mining barge. The standard ship scanner is part of every ship and does not need probes, or skills, they can find all cosmic anomalies in the system with a single scan.

The sites you need to use probes to scan down are cosmic signatures, these start at a low percentage signal and by using probes you can narrow down the location getting a stronger signal as you get closer and reduce range on your probes. Cosmic anomalies are the sites that show up on first scan at 100% signal strength, even if you do not use probes, and do not have any scanning skills you will still get these sites at 100% with just the standard ship scanner.

What this means for the average player is any ship in game from a shuttle or noob frigate, to a T3 can find these sites without having scanning skills, using probes, or equipping a launcher. Every ship has the built in scanner.

Sorry for the wall of text, but you hit a bit of a nerve for me on this one.

Many players, myself included are upset with this change to gravametric sites. In High sec these sites are rare, and you need very good scanning skills and experience to find them. Once found the high sec sites generally contained low sec ores such as Hedbergite, Hemorphite, and Jaspet. Or normal low end ores of a much larger size than normally found in high sec. These sites were a challenge to find, and provided more isk/hr than regular high sec mining. Now with the change anyone can instantly find these sites with no skills or equipment at all. A big kick in the junk for all those high sec explorer/miners that put the time and effort into finding these sites up until now.

As Far as low sec and null sec go, mining is done almost exclusively in gravametric sites as they are hidden and provide a layer of protection. How? Well any potential ganker has to scan down either your ship or the site you are in to attack you. If you watch D-scan you will see the probes or incoming ship long before the ganker lands on grid, you have time to GTFO. this layer of protection may seem insignificant, but makes a big difference when mining in low or null sec where passing hostiles or neutrals are common.

With this change that layer of protection is gone. Mining in null will be much more dangerous, you will have to rely on your alliance to protect you while you mine. How many PVPers in EVE will spend the game time they paid for protecting nullbears? Not many, I can assure you. Mining in low sec was very risky before, to the point where almost nobody did it. Even the hidden belts were to dangerous. Now low sec mining will be pointless, as you will spend more time in a POS or safe spot waiting for neuts or hostiles to leave the system than you will mining. 20% more isk/hr is meaningless if you only spend 50% of your time mining. It is just far to risky for such a small reward. As a miner you are better off just staying in high sec. The slight increase in the value of ORE is not worth the time you will spend avoiding gankers.

I don't think many null sec miners even realize how much protection they get from these hidden belts being hard to find. When this goes live it will be a real eye opener for many null sec miners. I see a lot of rage coming from this change. Just like when the new A.I. made drones useless in missions. Sure they are fine now, but the drone aggression has been turned down 3 or 4 times to the point where it is almost like the change never happened. There is no slider to adjust the new gravametric sites. I wish there was.

I would have much rather seen the gravametric site signatures put on a slider to control how easy there are to find. Why go from being the hardest sites to find, to being readily available for any noob without skills or a probes? Why were gravametric sites placed among the hardest to find sites in the first place? Because the added rewards for mining in them rather than static belts had to be balanced with the difficulty finding them.

If they had simply reduced the difficulty in finding these sites their goal would have been achieved, but removing the skill and knowledge required to find them completely seems way out of line with the intended result. This is game breaking for me. The methods of mining in null sec taught to me by veteran players back when I was a noob are now useless. If it was just a matter of learning new methods I would be happy to do so. But there is no method you can learn to compensate for this. The only way to mine safely in null now will be to belong to a massive alliance that can provide you with safe space to mine in. But what about all the players that do not want to be a part of those massive alliances and power blocks? Are they just supposed to quit and leave the game? Somebody explain to me please how I am supposed to mine in null sec after this change without the support of a massive alliance.

I will not mine in null sec in these new anomalies that are as easy to find as a static belts. I will not take my mining fleet out just to provide free targets for the low risk PVPers. I will simply not mine outside of high sec. Mission running and ratting have become tedious for me, And can not be done semi AFK while I am at work. I was really looking forward to moving my operation into null sec, but this change will keep me from doing so.

not to mention the new "ore" sites have new rats.. not sure about low.high but null ones are like plexs with ore in them. a small arknor/bistot site that spawned in a .2 system had roughly 8 sentry tower guns and 4-6 drone npcs.. some were harder then this. we had someone almost loose a legion in one. enjoy those new ore sites! gonna be alot of wrecks from people not knowing any better

YES,
Mining in dreads, now all we need is a capital mining laser.

Over the couple years and a half the mining industry has seen major buffs that people seem to forget.

Drone Poo Nerf
Mission Loot Nerf
Team Security
OMG Huge Mining Barge Buff
Teiricide

The current changes, in my view, only will nerf the lazy and stupid. Those that adapt will only see benefits from the changes coming.

I see the ice mining hordes looking similar like herds of buffalo in Africa migrating to the next water source, with the lions ever present to pick off the old and sick.

Been a long wait coming!

^^ +10

Looks like deep blue will be the only sane place to mine in NULL & forget about mining in LO for the most part. I expect mineral costs to shoot up in the short run again

And yet after all those buffs mining is still the lowest isk/hr profession. Nice analogy though. i think you hit it spot on.

Personally I have no issues with the changes to ICE. The stats I have seen high sec consumes less than 10% of the total ICE products consumed in game, But will able to produce 80% of the racial isotopes.

I do see a potential exploit in that the ICE fields respawn 4 hours after the depleted field de-spawns. What if someone leaves a ship in there long after the ICE is gone? CCP commented yesterday on EVE.TV that the issue with leaving a cloaked ship in a site to prevent it from de-spawning was addressed some time ago, and would not be an issue with ICE fields. But what if the ship is not cloaked? What if it was a miner AFK mining ICE and they wait 4-6 hours before coming back to move there ship? What if it is a Tanked Skiff that will cost a lot to suicide gank? What If I park a heavily tanked Battleship or T3 in the site, uncloaked, just to keep it from de-spawning? Would this not be a grieving exploit?

CCP has had over sites like this before. The fact that when the question was raised they answered with a reply that cloaked ships no longer prevent anomalies from de-spawning tells me that have not addressed the issue about ships that are not cloaked keeping sites open.

If I park a pair of spider tanking maelstroms with maxed tanks and remote reps, not cloaked, (no guns needed so way more room for tank) in the ICE field, will it stop it from de-spawning after the ICE is gone? These would be near impossible to suicide gank, or at least would cost to much to bother. Then I can warp them out at a time when the 4 hour respawn will be exactly when I want it to be. Or a griever could use this tactic to prevent an ICE field from re-spawning all all. It will respawn at down time and then be locked up until the next down time. 1 re-spawn per day rather than 6, roughly an 80% reduction in supply from that belt.

GOONSWARM alone could easily do this to every high sec belt in game. It would be way easier, and cheaper than the massive suicide ganks to slow down the ICE mining that they have done in the past. Combine it with ganking the ICE miners that show up to harvest the initial spawn and they could completely stop high sec ICE mining altogether. What an ICE interdiction that would be. If this potential exploit has not been addressed yet, it needs to be now. There is only 2 working/business days left before odyssey goes live. Overtime anyone?