Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Pyroxeres contains Nocxium.

I will admit that i did not see the part where this was mintioned in the OP.

But with perfect refining you get 11 nocxium per batch, which is hardly the cause of people not wanting to mine in low sec.

Are you proposing this because you want more commerce in lowsec, or are you simply cranky because there's fewer easy targets for you to shoot at?

Altering the ore distribution pattern MIGHT draw a few miners into lowsec. More likely, it will increase mineral prices, and result in more salvage loot being reprocessed. Hisec residents are not, as a rule, going to move to lowsec to earn ISK. The risk/reward ratio is skewed too far in the pirate's favor. They'll just train up the required skills to do something else to make ISK.

Take a look at level 5 agent distribution, and then compare it with the PVE ship kill distribution. You'll notice a pattern. The only level 5 agents that see regular use are those extremely deep into lowsec, where the 0.0 alliances hold more sway than the local pirate gangs. Why do you think that is? The ISK is less when you're level 4's, but that's where the mission runners went to, instead of risking their mission ships in lowsec.

Risk/reward. The very enthusiasm with which you lowsec people hunt down anything and everything is what keeps the population/activity levels so low.

lowsec gets all the ores sans Megacyte

They introduced crokite into lowsec grav sites awhile ago

Your figures look deceptively similar to mine, albeit with slightly different wording. Am I missing something here?

Folks, read the marketing about Rubicon, read Seagull's comments, read the conclusions of more than one blogger.
High sec over the next 2-3 years is being completely overhauled, and handed to the null sec cartels.

You think handing the high sec POCO income stream to the cartels was the end of it? That is just the beginning.
Soon enough, the differentiation between high sec. low sec, and null sec will be so small, it won't matter.
High sec players will be paying an ever increasing tithe to the cartel leaders.

So stop worrying about what zone has more Nox, and start worrying about if your playstyle is being completely eradicated.

Reaver - consider what you're proposing, and think it through, from the viewpoint of the person you're trying to attract to lowsec - a hisec miner:

1. Eliminate noxcium from hisec ores. This dramatically increases the price of noxcium as soon as the patch is announced, as the big mining corps, industrialists, market PVP'rs (yes, trading is hella intense PVP, even if you never find out who your opponent is - but that's a discussion for another forum post), and everyone else interested in cashing in on future scarcity of an item either buy up the supply, hoard their current stocks, or run out and mine the belts clean (great way for CCP to identify hordes of mining bots, though!). This may, at the same time, slightly depress the price of the other minerals in those ores, as they flood the market.

2. The price of modules that refine into nox goes up, because the refiners can stock/sell the minerals for more. More mission runners salvage their missions.

So far, so good!

Patch day!

1. No more hisec nox!

2. The mining bots that didn't get caught return to regular mining.

3. There's a slight rise in 0.0 mining, as they work to meet the market demands for nox. Good for them!

4. A few brave hisec miners venture forth into lowsec. They have Skiff's fitted with a DCII, a Warp Stab, and as much tank as they can fit. They have a cloaked hauler with them.

A. They get caught at the entry gate by the local pirates, and promptly blown up, unless they had the foresight to position these ships ahead of time 4-5 systems deep, and position jump clones there.
B. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that they are now mining in lowsec. Assuming that they're working from a POS, and don't need a station, they happily mine, unmolested, and dump their ore at the POS. Now what? Transport bulk ore to hisec? Bit risky to use a jump freighter for bulk ore. Refine it? Are you nuts? We lose too much, even with max skills, all the best equipment, implants, etc! No way! Do we have a Rorqual handy? Sure, why not. Let's compress that ore, then jump it out! Wait, the local pirate group is threatening to ransom our operation, or blow it up! Now what?

You begin to see the issues involved, do you not? You need a (probably well-defended) POS (with the Bastion module, Dickstars will be a thing of the past, they'll kill the E-war, and then the Dreads show up for the real destruction, this is lowsec, after all), a jump freighter, a Rorqual, and lots of time with no pesky piwates showing up. Why? Why, when it's so much easier to rent a nice quiet pocket of 0.0, bubble the crap out of it, cyno jam it, set up 3-4 POS's, and mine like crazy, with better yields, local blues, intel channels, the ability to upgrade the system for even better yields than what they started with, and a much better return on investment, given that the initial investment levels will be about the same.

If you want to increase the population density of lowsec, you're going to have to create some item exclusive to lowsec, that is either (a) going to be in high demand, or (b) pays exceptionally well compared to the time involved.

We already have (b) by the way - it's called Faction Warfare. The ability to use, and lose, cheap T1 ships to gain LP. In that circumstance, the reward is worth losing a few ships.

Mining - absolutely no way. All of the risk is placed upon the miners, for the reward of having to replace their ships regularly, having to constantly stop mining and warp off whenever a new face shows up in local, exposing billions in assets to potential destruction, etc. In the end, unless you unbalanced mineral distribution in a radical, and, frankly, idiotic pattern, it makes more sense to mine in hisec, even at a slightly lower rate of return, to not need a POS, a jump freighter, a Rorqual, etc., or to use all of that to mine in 0.0.

TL, DR; There is simply no valid reason to ever venture into lowsec with a mining ship, unless you're in a no-implant clone & a Venture, running mining missions, where an Inty can't immediately warp to you.

I'm not trying to attract highsec miners to lowsec. It'd be great if a change could convince some of them to come. I'd love to see a significant amount of carebears capable of turning a higher profit in lowsec, but I just don't see it happening.

There are already lowsec miners in the form of corporations and alliances who live in lowsec and own space there, who have members who mine, who are protected by the rest of their corp or alliance. I'm trying to throw them a bone. Just as it is already difficult and inefficient for them to mine there, it is also difficult for them to mine in highsec and try to transport the ore back home--there's just not much reason to mine out there when all the ore is just highsec ore. I'm trying to increase the value of that ore so that the people already living in lowsec who already want to mine in lowsec are not turned away from that job.

And it's still a step in the right direction toward bringing carebears to lowsec, even if it doesn't bring very many in.

I'd like to keep regular asteroid belts, but I want to see their ore yield degraded substantially. I'd like the +5% and +10% ores to be upgraded to perhaps +20% and 40%. Lower sec level grav sites should have more and more ore quantity the lower you go, with the highest highsec sites being pitifully empty, but a lot more in grav sites that have to be scanned down than in the ones that do not need to be scanned down.

I think the regular belts in all sec levels should have almost entirely basic ore, while grav sites that do not need to be scanned would have mixed basic and +20% ore, and grav sites that must be scanned ought to have a significant amount of +40% ore (in all sec levels and wormhole space).

People will just mine Nocx in null not low, lowsec is too heavily traveled to be safely used for mining.

Therefore, it will only buff null, not low.