Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With perfect boosts miner can expect some 15 M / h in minerals in -0.1 space. In that same sec status one can get about 20 M /h in minerals + 10 M /h in salvage + 30 M/h in bounties from grinding sansha anoms in cheap t1 battleship and noctis. It is clear that even if you are in it only for minerals, opportunity cost of mining, compared to rating, is so great that nobody should ever mine in 0.0 space, except for morphite. Even afk advantage of minig is absent in 0.0 space because one has to constantly watch local and intel channels to survive.

Main reason looting wrecks is superior source of minerals is that modules have smaller volume then minerals that are needed to make them, or that they reprocess into. So for example clearing snasha forsaken hub with noctis will fill ship's cargo hold only to about 1/3 of capacity, and reprocessing it will yield similar mineral value as two full ore loads of retriever.

The situation will get even worse with new auto tractor structure as noctis will not even have to spend time tractoring wrecks, only looting them and salvaging. Rating ship will simply drop tractor structure. Half an hour, or so, later he will return in noctis and all the loot will be in one place to be taken with only few clicks

So to fix this situation CCP should, as soon as possible, increase volume of all modules and scrap metal to ad least the level where they have the volume as big as the volume of minerals they reprocess into. Then it would take noctis multiple trips to loot it all, thus increasing time cost of getting minerals in that way.

As additional benefit this would also make importing minerals and modules from higsec harder, thus boosting need for domestic 0.0 industry.

Finally, in addition of being damaging for economy, modules having order of magnitude smaller volume then minerals that make them is stupid from verisimilitude point of view.

"All my stuff is free because I mined the minerals for free"
also you forgot the 10m you should pay for a mining permit

Mining largely appeals to AFK play and bots, so why we need to continually suggest changes to other game mechanics to compensate for this is beyond me.

No. Your idea is predicated on the notion that mining should make more than ratting. I won't get into the many differences between the two activities that might address this notion, save to say that its wrong. One of the reasons that its wrong is that the value of mining is set by the market. Clearly enough people find it worthwhile enough to do as it is now.

But hold on, you say, its not about how many people mine if the mineral prices are suppressed by gun mining! Well, the fact is, CCP already nerfed gun mining's contributions to the mineral pool quite a bit.

-Meta-0 mods got their volumes increased
-I believe meta1-4 items got their mineral refine values lowered below meta-0 refine values
-Number of meta-0 dropped from missions was nerfed.
-drone poop was changed to isk bounties

The result is a lot of the value from that 10m/hr salvage you referred to actually comes in salvage and meta-4 mods rather than mineral content.

Your suggestion to basically remove mineral compression would just be a pain in the ass, both to salvagers, and to everyone simply because finished products would be more of a PITA to move around. It would also be a big problem for industrialists that rely on mineral compression. It would also make looting pointless, which CCP clearly wants to be part of the gameplay. Also, if the main contributing factor to low mineral prices is that mining scales well with multiple accounts and that lots of people do it (this is the reason), then none of these changes would even make nullsec mining more valuable.

Actively ratting and passively mining are two very different animals. I'm not sure why you think they should produce similar income rates.

A couple of points:

When CCP rebalanced mining, it was quite a bit more profitable (2-3x more profitable in general). However, there was then an influx of miners, which altered the supply/demand curves, making mining less profitable again.

You have to understand how complex these things intertwine:

Salvage doesnt' compete with miners, and nerfing that makes no sense.
Bounty payouts don't compete with miners, and the true value of these payouts diminishes with inflation (thanks to all the other isk sources as well --- missions, incursions, NPC buy orders for blue loot, etc).
The only thing that "competes" with a miner in terms of mine that system or shoot rats in system, is the mineral reprocess value from module drops. Meta 4 modules generally have value independent of their mineral worth, and frankly, the mineral content of that salvage is a drop in the bucket to the mineral content of your mining.

My point is, that nerfing ratting isn't going to help your mining career. To improve your isk/hr, you need to increase the demand for your minerals or decrease supply. Since the majority of minerals comes from mining already, CCP can either incorporate tools that make stopping miners mining easier, they need to increase the build costs of ships, or they need to encourage more overall ship destruction (especially BSs & capitals).

Obviously, you have never tried to mine in Providence .

But I do agree that mining should be more engaging, but what ever changes to that regard should not cause a massive increase or decrease in mineral prices. However, Sofia does have some valid points in that there is an obscene gap in income between the nullsec professions.

I know most of the mining buff threads are just due to the current economic phase in EvE, but there Isn't a reason why the a decent nullsec miner should be punished beyond having to cope with the Rubicon and Odyssey changes. This new danger exists , but the reward for their risk has not changed, being able to see the ore sites with less effort was okay, I was happy with that change it ment I didn't have to beg for one of my Corp mates to scan down the anom every three days. However, but now with Rubicon those warp acceleration changes mean that interceptors and strategic cruisers can warp to these ore sites even faster. The income of a miner does not reflect this change in risk at all, and as Sofia is pointing out, could be going down. But stating in the end that mining is a zero-risk activity, you have never mined in Providence.

Active mining is definitely NOT simply afk income.

At the same time, carrier ratting is generally not 250m / hr..... not unless you are in super low truesec systems.

Here is the general issue between ratting and mining:

The value of mining is much more static: You can build X ships with those minerals.
While the value of ratting is much more dynamic: Yesterday you could buy a Domi for 155m, today they cost 150m isk, tomorrow it will be 175m isk.

When a whole lot of miners mine the resources to build a whole lotta Domi's, then the isk value of their work goes down as the supply becomes saturated. This is simple supply and demand, and to be frank, miner's are putting themselves into low wadge positions. Encourage more ship destruction (hence more demand for their minerals), Encourage more miner destruction (less competition for their minerals), or rebalance ship build costs to require more minerals (which probably wont solve the issue in the long run).

Remember, 6 months ago, mining was 2-3x more profitable becuase of the huge demand for minerals. If you are mining, you NEED people to use your minerals to make your income!

I mine all the time and never once paid for a permit and never will and never once gotten shot at for it...

fly tank, does the body good

Search the twitter feed, or go ask in the S&I forum section, as they'll probably give a link to some dev tweet that actually posts the numbers. Realize, I'm fairly confident the vast majority of minerals enter this game by miners mining ore. Also realize, that "minerals created from reprocessing" would be skewed, as a huge percentage of minerals are transported to nullsec regions for capital production using mineral compression (i.e. building 425mm Railgun 1's, shipping them, and reprocessing them at the destination).

I was hoping to find the stats for "amount of ore mined" in a QEN reports, but alas no luck.
QEN reports stopped in 2010, but the Q1 QEN (Prior to Drone Poo nerf and Meta 0 loot drop changes) and Q4 QEN (Post Drone Poo nerf & Meta 0 loot drop changes) from 2010 both show that the Hulk was the most flown vessel in the game, and the retriever was in the top 10. (If we had a current QEN, it would probably show the Mack as the most commonly flown vessel in the game).

In other words, there are a lot of miners out there, and they are the reason your mineral prices are soo low!
Gun mining (aka reprocessing loot drops) is honestly much less of an effect on mineral prices today, than it ever has been, and if you want "better rewards" for your mining efforts, you need to find a way to eliminate your competitor miners, or increase the demand for minerals.