Assembly Hall

Fixing Mining: Heterogeological Asteroids

Mining asteroids that have a variety of ore in them.

Instead your overview shows the cubic meters of an asteroid estimated.

Your surveyor then shows the ore content of the asteroid in percentages.

You lock the asteroid and as you activate your mining laser you go into focus mode where you’re zoomed in on the asteroid you actually see the veins of ore in it. Then you set coordinates for your mining lasers to travel across the surface of the asteroid. How this interface works could be stripped from PI its just visually it would look different. These targeting co-ordinates would appear as little icons on the asteroid you would essentially rotate the asteroid and pin them to the surface of it. Each time you did this you would have to put down the same number of co-ordinates and there would have to be a minimum distance to set them apart to get max yield on the rock. So for instance lets say you scrunch all your co-ordinate markers together on a Omber vein in a roid. If they’re too close together you might get more omber content in your yield, but far less m3 in your yield over all then if you would have set them the proper length apart. The more of those points that land on an ore vein give you more of that ore until its gone. Once the cycle is done you will need to repeat the process or if the ore you want is gone from the asteroid, switch to another one that has it. In order for this to work cycle times and yield would have to be increased for normal mining lasers for this to be viable, it could probably stay the same for Strip miners. And since Ice only yields one unit a pop im not sure how best to alter the yield on Ice miners.

It’s a puzzle slightly similar to how PI works. Why reinvent the wheel.

Congratulations Bot mining is dead. The peasants rejoice.

This could give people the opportunity to get small amounts of rarer ores in higher sec. Small traces of low sec ore would be found in empire, and small traces of null sec ore would be found in low sec. The roids containing the best mixes of rare ores would appear null sec. This also solves the WH conundrum. You just set it where worm holes are a complete mixed bag. All there roid ore content is completely random and not based off high low, null asteroid ore content rules. Maybe to limit intake you just have it be where the C class of the WH determines the size of the asteroids in it.

Also the different variety’s of a single ore could appear in only certain areas of space. Take veldspar. In empire mining a roid with veldspar would only be basic veldspar. But in lowsec it would be condensed velds, and in Null sec it would be dense veldspar.

This would either give an opportunity to add more mining skills(another isk sink) or create more roles for the present mining skills. Very much like in PI, some or one of your mining skills would be about locating the ore veins on each roid accurately.

This adds an element of technique and exploration to mining. People who whine about this being too involved should be glad this change could actually makes it engaging to mine. If its that hard to do guess what, once the bots vanish, and people stop mining because they have to put their book down every 5 mins, and take three minutes to scan and mark, mineral prices will go up and people will want to do it again.

Actual animation for mining could get slightly more interesting because of a change like this. As the laser pulses it also could get moved around like its tracking the co-ordinates that were placed on the roid.

Which ever laser cycles first your or others grabs the yield.

To kill carpal tunnel inducing click this stuff has to be simple, right click hold spins the asteroid left click drops a pin. Maybe a little slider thingy to show ore content and concentration like in pi.

To those that like to mine with like 6 characters and a 7th in an orca. If you cant your competition cant. You can still get the hulk out their and the orca. If people are wielding fewer accounts at once there’s fewer minerals on the market people will pay more for them and you will still make a killing, while at the same time pulling more ‘actual individuals’ into the noble but maligned profession of mining.

CCP. If your worried you’ll loose money because of this. You wont. People who mine with that many accounts pay for them with plex. That’s why they do.

Please believe me when I say I’m not trying to butcher some one else’s cash cow, I’m just trying to make mining more interesting and screw botters at the same time.