EVE General Discussion

The belts in Everyshore are gone within 20 minutes of spawning. In Aydoteaux there is a gambit: stay and finish this field, or be first in the second field which just respawned? Then there is the caravan of mining ships heading from Aydo through tole to Carirgnottin. We (and here I dare to speak on behalf of other players who I barely know) have good natured banter about scratching paintwork and personal space. Boosts are shared because while it is a competitive environment we are all carebears and want the smaller players to feel that they at least had a chance. Of course we then switch to max yield to ensure that our cycles end that 1 second earlier than the other miner's to ensure that we get the last block.

Will ice mining become ultra competitive? I don't think so, most of the miners are conflict averse and view this as a running race rather than a cage fight.

The only complaint I have with the new ice spawning system is the regular-as-clockwork respawn at four hours. I am sure this is longer than the weeknight play time of most players, and the ability to log in at a certain time to be guaranteed an ice belt spawning is beyond the pale.

This does not change my opinion of CCP's rework of grav sites, mind you.

I just shake my head sadly about this whole change in the mechanic, and sneer at the concept that Odyssey was about "exploration".

This was always about transferring more wealth from high sec to null sec, and allowing the large cartels (read as botters) more control over the high sec income in ice mining. (jabber/ tweets/web sites, giving the precise moment that ice belts will reappear)

How many billions of ISK in wealth was transferred to null sec when high sec can only produce a MAXIMUM of 80% of the ice wealth in the game, as opposed to the 98.3% it was before?

If CCP was serious about exploration and "resource distribution", they would have made ALL resources something that has to be scanned down, in ALL of the game.

You deplete a belt, it pops up somewhere else in the constellation, immediately.
And you have to scan them all down, not just warp to it.

Oh, and that also means moon goo. Moons would no longer produce anything.
You get the raw materials now from belts that follow the same rules as any high sec, low sec, or wh resource belt, and that means scanning them down, and actively looking for them as they jump from system to system.

Of course, that won't happen, because that would destroy the personal fiefdoms of the null sec cartel leaders, and under no circumstances does CCP ever do that. There is zero chance of CCP EVER destroying static, easily controllable income sources for the null sec cartels, not until CCP gives them something even more lucrative (like controlling all T2 mfg through null sec stations, where the station owners can charge whatever they like for mfg and R&D slots).

The steps taken in Odyssey are just test feelers sent out by the cartels.
Over the next 2 releases, watch how more income is forced into null sec, and how much more of the game is gutted to serve the cartel leaders. There is a reason that they cartels have established a stranglehold on CSM over the last years. They know who important it is in charting the direction of Eve, and that means big money to the people that control it.

Yes yes, everyone join goons are partake of the vast wealth that has been handed to them by CCP.

See, that would require playing by a set of rules that I frankly don't care to play. So.. i can have no-fun playing someone else's way, thus shortly to unsub and vanish, or I do something... Else.

Fortunately, mining really *is* a sideline for me. So I can leave it to others to go play in ways they don't like, or leave the game.

From an 'enjoyment' perspective, the new HS ice mechanic is... less awful than before. By a fairly large margin, actually. Still, that's kinda like saying a punch in the nose is more enjoyable than having your toes crushed in a vice. Neither are very much fun - unless you're maso.

I'll leave the financials to folks as are better at that stuff than I.

Probably the people trying to kill him.

What you are forgetting is that hisec ice supply is dropping by 15%. For nullsec denizens to harvest ice for profit, the value of ice will have to rise by an order of magnitude. So right now ice is worth about 30M ISK/hr for the scant few minutes that you are doing it.

The price of ice will continue to rise. There will be more miners in hisec trying to outdo each other with being first to the site and fastest to harvest it. Ultimately I expect people to give up when the time to completion for an ice field is in the order of 5–10 minutes, since at that point it takes more time to log in, warp to belt, warp to station, place ice on the market and log out, than it takes to actually gather the ice.

Being hisec carebears with a very thin competitive streak, I expect some groups will even form cooperatives where they message each other once a field is cleared, allowing the next shift to start their timers and be available in system when the next field spawns. After all there are currencies other than ISK: you scratch my back, I scratch yours, and all that.

1) I found out how to use the new system without a lot of drawbacks, in fact if you'd read this system's local yesterday evening you'd see it's a lot of others who are quitting mining not me (I am actually not a miner, I only do it when it's profitable like i.e. during Hulkageddons).

2) It's going exactly as I predicted in a thread well before Odyssey. Some even tried the "team up" thing, with horrid results:

- team up also means to actually end up in those belts your group found. Too bad the roids are an handful and last *well below one ore hold fill*. When the team gets there, these few roids have 8+ ships on them each already and vaporize. So they pour in the team effort but don't get a reward.

- there's no blind luck. The instant a belt spawns it's immediately aggressed by a swarm. You will NOT stand a chance moving around to find another because the belts often spawn at similar times, those who start from A and go to B, find B's belt half empty or worse.

Anyway this is an academic talk for now, I have seen few "team up" talk expecially after people found out that a team that arrives to a instant-close-to-emptied belt gives less profit that a "solo" who does his own scouting and may find the rare intact belt and keep the "secret" for himself.

I really enjoy the changes to Ice Mining. It has taking it to the level of Ore Mining. However I do think the amount of Ice in each Block should be slightly raised, and the Respawn time to be slightly Lower. Not everyone plays for hours a day.

I have plans to mine ice in low-sec. I cleared out an ore belt just fine the other day, even with half a dozen people in local. I think this might actually work for me and my personal ice needs, especially with the reduced cycle time.

If Fozzie boosts the Procurer as he said he might, this will no doubt be even easier.

i'd also just like to tell you all how funny i find it that ccp doubled mining's isk/hour and every one cries like a baby about it. it's beautiful.