EVE General Discussion

Well, I think the real question is: What part of mining do we want the majority of effort to be concentrated? The actual act of mining the asteroid, or finding the good stuff and logistics.

If the former, then I think mining needs to be totally reworked so that actual player skill comes into play a lot more than it does now. Maybe something like Asteroids in 3D. The miner goes to an asteroid they want to mine, then switch to mining control mode where they have first-person control of the mining lasers. They shoot the asteroid until it breaks apart into medium size chunks, then they shoot those into smaller size chunks, then the smaller chunks turn into ore in the cargo hold. The trick would be to get the chunks before they get out of range. Just a very quick and not all that thought out idea.

If we want the prospecting/logistics to be where the effort is then we should go with a more passive system where the skill of mining comes from being able to find the good ore. Then once it's found, the miner places and configures a small structure at a belt and that does the mining for you. All you'd have to do is haul the ore when the structure fills up. The number of structures per player would have to be limited so as to prevent them from becoming like GSC's are now.

Since the actual effort goes into finding the ore, we would need a new prospecting skill and module. The module could work like a combination of the on-board scanner and a probe launcher. You jump into a system, run the prospector scan to see what's in system and what approximate quantities/concentrations, then if the system has what you want, launch a prospector probe or three and get to the business of pinning it down. This should work a bit different than normal anomaly scanning, maybe more automated or something just so that we don't have to probe down every asteroid we want to mine.

Couple of things about the passive method though. 1) As Nova suggested earlier, it would be necessary to add in a good number of new types of ore beyond what we have now because prospecting for something that's easy to find is a waste of time. And with only 16 main types of ore, prospecting wouldn't have enough variation to be interesting. 2) This might have a favorable impact on botting because the advantage bots have is negated when everyone can mine 23.5/7 and are limited to a certain number platforms.

I hearby disagree.

They are at a disadvantage against all the miners with guns. AKA mission runners and belt sweepers.

I'd say the general consensus was that mining wasn't fun, not that it needed to be easier.

I want an increased cargo bay that is all.

This isn't necessary. Anybody who is actually playing the game while they are mining (as opposed to afk mining while watching porn) can stay aligned and warp out as soon as a ganker warps in. The problem is that miners have gotten used to being able to gather resources and make money while not actually playing the game...something no other "profession" in the game is able to do (without violating the ToS).

Yes, trust a corporation member from 0.0 space to make that kind of comment :)

If you knew anything about economies you'd realise that one of the reasons that EVE Online and MMORPGs in general is the fact that they conjure up currencies from thin air which is mathematically and realistically impossible, our economies RL are heading the way of EVE.

If I'm going to be forced to work long hours for nothing in a sodding game as well as real life I at least want the game version of it to be as painless as possible. Also take a look at the economy you have in 0.0, it's nothing, this is what will happen when you try and nerf and gank industrial players off the servers, you won't be able to even get basic tech 1 ships anymore.

The difference between EVE and RL is that in EVE CCP can change up a simple bit of code that they already have and make the situation a lot better, realism is boring and it sucks, that's why we have video games and other forms of media to make us happy.

Oh and I just thought of a fantastic idea to fix the problem of depressing prices and CCP will be one of the first to do it, I'll write it up in features.

Pretty much.

People should be thinking about ways to make mining more interesting and interactive, not 'easier' or 'more profitable', especially since the way to make mining more profitable doesn't involve changing mining at all, but rather tackling the alternate sources of minerals which have completely crashed the market.

The problem is that a lot of people understand this wrong...

Most people would love to trade the afkness for far more isk. For example introduce a minigame that you have to play while mining that makes your yield far, far higher, but forces you to actually constantly play. That would make you mine more = earn more isk.

Bots would do it perfectly, players would do it near perfectly and hate that they lost their semi-afk income, and income would fall back to around present levels. Minerals are oversupplied and thus cheap. Normally this would self correct as miners moved to more profitable ventures and minerals dried up, but gunmining earns a very healthy income by selling the minerals they get from drone poop at current, oversupplied prices, so they don't move to more lucrative ventures because they're in one of the most lucrative ventures.

Mining can't be fixed while a Thanatos+Noctis combo will outmine a Hulk any day of the week.

Sorry, wrong.

When I started I tryed mining like most causal player. Mining frig -> Arbitrator -> T1 barg -> T2 barg -> 00 mining -> WH mining and never lost a singel mining ship. So I can't be that terrible, can I? I just stoped as it's BOOOOOOORING to pay for sitting around doing nothing but watch (often) bugged mining lasers and/or drones.

And sure, when you earn 200m/h you can pay people to protect you (as good as posible). But that's not the case (nor was it when I started, so don't know about 2003 when piracy and can flipping was no problem) anymore.

Becouse of all the bot mining, drone region loot and normal loot you are lucky, when you reach 50m/h even in WH/00 (counting all the afford to get the ore to trade hubs).

And you can't be seriously compareing rat BS to player BS. That's just a bad joke! Who cares about rats when mining?
A singel T1 cruiser is enough to kill a T1 mining ship (see all the Ruptur vids/mails) with 1 to 3 shots. That's FAR away from 3 BS! And 1 to 3 shots isn't even even enough time for remote armor reps to get a single cycle through!