Science & Industry

Since eve first started this lowly proffession has been constantly left behind or ignored.

The ships get bigger and we finally get some better mining ships, but there not BIG enough. The orca and its sister ship the roquel are nice boosters but still seem like a rushed idea.

So ideas for Complete overhaul.

Remove the current belts, Haveing a small cresecnt shape deployment of roids around a marker seems a little strange. Its called a belt not a deposit. The belt should be thousand of km;s across in all directions and should be orbting the sun or a planet.
Bits of it can orbit at different speeds so that its a truely dynamic changeing area with no set paths through it.

If the belts get changed then ccp can use a graphic thats allready in game, the mining outpost for players to set up and use as a location to base there mining operations from.

Ships, Personally i hate the mack, its badly designed and implemented. Why have a ship with a bonus to yeild that has such a small cargo bay it can only take 1.5 cycles from its own lasers! Id like to see some post ore development of the current ships now all the races have acess to them. Maybe some mad designes like taking an orac, ditching the corp bay, fitting a refinery and then welding 2-3 hulks to it so it can mine, and reprocess on the spot.

Or upgraded version of the tractor beam mixed with the strip miner that just pulls the entire roid into the strip miner field infront of the ship and then into the cargo bay.

Is that the best you can come up with? try stateing a reason and not just trolling.

Well the belts really need changeing. We have a lovely vast space with nice things to look at and then you find a small bunch of roids that should orbit a sun, planet sitting around a flameing marker.

There called roid belts, there the debris from planet creation they should be massive.

A good MAC setup can hold 3 cycles of its 2 harvesters. Why is that a problem?

As for mining, honestly, I am happy with the way it is. I can mine ice while playing something like skyrim or watching a movie. It makes for pleasant passive income while I enjoy additional activities. Why should this be changed?

Any changes that increase yield directly or indirectly are bad. Yes, you'll get more ore/minerals, but the prices will crash. Any changes ideally must either decrease the yield, or the net output, of all miners (Kill the supply, and price's rise - although best probably to leave the yield alone and hit the bots). Or alternatly increase the demand - for instance, by making manufacturing require more resources.

Aesthetic changes might be nice though. Just don't touch the yield

I go with the max capacity MAC, holding just over 12k cargo for 3 cycles. i have no hauler or orca support, so I fill, warp to pos, then back. Given that I'm usually on my xbox, I don't need to maximize time. I want less trips overall, so this works for me.

Now if I did have a hauler or orca, max yield would be better, but eh... Not stressing, just happy with a little extra income while playing something else.

Overall I think it's good. Here's a few amendments that I thought of (also, some added complexity, because mining is really easy now).

1. OK, but no bookmarks on overview, save for 1.0 sec. Change 1.0 sec to only yield veldspar (or some other NPC-buyer only rock). 1.0 Sec will still have the new sites, but newbies need something to cut their teeth on until they can scan.
2. nice idea ... only on rocks over a certain size though -- e.g. it has to have 150 000 veld (of any variety) before the scord or plag would start spawning. You'll need survey scanners too ... no more of this "asteroid [veldspar]" stuff
3. seed on Monday and Friday (IIRC, this is how it used to be).
4. I think you'll need 16 additional sites (total of 32 -- this should cover the number of belts any system has currently, with enough room left over for "useless" sites). The sites can normally be found only with specialised mining probes, though If the rocks in the belt get big enough (some km across or something?), then they can be found with normal scan probes as grav sites. Current grav sites are mostly unchanged, with the caveat you stop being told what the rocks are. Fly there and find out (survey scanner).


Now, even though every system has a potential for 32 "belts", only seed as many belts as the system originally had.

Looking at the Frarolle system (I went to dotlan, clicked a random region, and then a random system) -- it has 12 asteroid belts. So, under the "new" system, convert the 12 static belts into 12 of the new sections. The other twenty sections are just useless rock (use mining mission rock types, or simply empty asteroids).

Caveats of this system
- Grav sites just become "Gravimetric Signature" to scan probes. You need to fly to them and survey the rocks.
- Prospecting probes added, they can find grav sites and the belt "sites". They'll give a vague idea of what's there (similar terminology to wormholes, that changes as ratios change -- e.g. if it's just crap rocks "nothing but gravel here", if there's 25% of something "some veld", etc)
- asteroids no longer pop. when you get to 0 units of veld/scord/whatever, you start getting gravel (completely worthless, but it takes space).
- when not using specialised equipment (i.e. Modulated Strip miners, or deep core miners), you get a little of everything. So, if you're mining a rock with a T2 miner turret pulling in 80m3/cycle that is composed of 75% veld, and 25% scordite you get 60m3 of veld, and 20 m3 of scordite.
- Useless rocks also get bigger, and will spawn gravimetric sites at the same threshold as normal rocks. Useless rocks can be broken up with mining lasers (you get gravel), or guns (you do damage, they break).
- Once a belt is mined (even 1 unit), it will despawn and replace one of the "empty" belts on the next respawn DT. (so if you mined 1 m3 from every belt on a sunday in a system with 4 belts that had no other people in it, your four belt bookmarks would be useless after Monday's DT). If the ratio of "useable" to "useless" belts is high enough, then yeah, some belts will end up staying "useable" for a long time, until they eventually get their turn to be useless.

First of all I don't consider mining a lowly profession but hey everyone's entitled their own opinion.

+1 on being creative and posting your idea on the forums. I to think it'd be nice to see some changes in how the belts are deployed if not for anything just to keep things interesting.

But I beg the question to this statement:



Since when have we seen anything new above and beyond the Hulk? I don't consider the Orca and Rorqual to be, 'mining', ships per se. I don't fly the Rorqual, but I do the Orca and its just one big cargo hold and fleet booster.

A tech 3 Hulk? Now that would be interesting.

I agree. I have been in MINING corps. It can be quite fun, with the right people, Flying 5 or more Hulks, with an Orca, and strip a belt in an hour or so. You can make money if you do it right. Our old Corp made just over a Billion ISK in LESS Than a month..that was MAIN Corp Wallet. We sold minerals and ice to corps who built ships, etc, made some friends, got protection from pirates....it works. My CEO make money from MINING and building things...and most the time has over 3 billion worth of product on the market at any given time. So, isn't it about time we see some more presents for us that enjoy and make a living from Mining? :)

To the OP:

If you want my 2 ISK, here it goes.

1. I like your idea of rearranging the belts. I also find it stupid to warp into a belt shaped like a horse shoe and perfectly designed to allow a bot to mine with little effort. I like to see them scattered so much that you have to constantly move your ship to keep up with them as they move along as well. Brilliant idea and I approve of this product and/or service.

2. I'm gonna have to murder your idea of buffing the Orca to work like a mining ship for two reasons. First, it's an "Industrial Command Ship". It's job is to assist in your mining operation by providing fleet boosts, a decent cargo room, and it can provide a formidable defense against gankers in the hands of a seasoned Orca pilot. Second, adding a more powerful mining ship such as an improved-mining Orca (which currently only mines with drones) will only make it easier for bot users to **** the economy throughout New Eden with an increased mineral faucet that lowers the mineral value and thus further degrading the already-almost-dead-but-under-appreciated profession that is mining. I'm sorry I can't offer an alternative as this is something that is hotly debated.

EDIT:

Wait, perhaps I do have an idea to contribute.

How about allowing a Industrial Command Ship like the Orca or an Exhumer like the Hulk to create a holographic decoy of whatever ship it wants to project using some holo-projector that only mining ships can use? This could make it very interesting for gankers because now they have to run the risk of hitting a target that's not really there (while alerting Concord) in addition to the 100% guarantee that they will lose a ship with no hope of getting an insurance payout.

It actually benefits both the miner and the ganker. Miner has a 50% chance of getting out alive while the act of ganking becomes more fun for the ganker because now they have to figure out which is the real ship. What do you think?