Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Thought: Perhaps the idea of ore mixed on the same asteroid went a bit too far. If a given asteroid was one type of ore and waste rock, that would still let you tailor your mining efforts to a particular ore type. You'd still have to deal with generically named asteroids and waste rock, but a good prospector and various tools and modules would help to sort the good from the bad. Would that be more acceptable?

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Mining isn't broken, just dull for some.
It is probably on the bottom of the 'fix it' totem pole of Eve.

I think idea was not to add more work, but change it. Change would be from mining the belt or all certain asteroids from that belt to selecting what asteroids to mine from what belts. This would probably mean that you would need to add one pilot to scout asteroids and broadcast them or bookmark. Also with mining crystals you should get mainly only the wanted ore. Of course there would be some excess ore, but that can be used next week (same as you do with tritanium now).

Also as I mentioned before, I think there needs to be more those asteroids in overall to count the useless ones and the rock.

First on the scout, this would be pretty impractical since the scout would need to tag rocks as fast as a miner kills them. In most HS belts that is maybe once every 5 min per miner. If you spread out a fleet over a few belts, your scout has to work full time to keep up. Which then adds a useless mouth to the fleet. Which means the more plausible setup is to have each miner equip a scanner. I should not be required to fit a support module just to do my job. That's like making a mission runner needing to fit a ship scanner because each mission rat has specific resists and you have to scan them to know what ammo to use.

Second on the time wasted. Let's say I need 100k m3 of plag for the mex. Right now, at 2k m3/min, that's 50min of work. Now lets say with your system, the average rock in my area is 10% plag, now I need to mine 1m m3 of ore over 8hr-20min to get the same ore. And wind up with 900k m3 of ore I didn't want. Now of course that isn't useless ore, except all the "rock", but let's say this is the last of my order and I can only be online for 2 hrs before the contract is due?

Just because casual miners get bored mining whatever is in their way and selling it on the market doesn't mean that mining needs to be changed. It means those casual miners need to find a profession they like doing.

I can kind of see Sorra's point, though. When you are mining for a specific ore, anything but the target ore is almost as bad as waste rock. With multi-ore asteroids, this could cause some pain, as it might be hard to find a "pure" asteroid. That's why I suggested the idea of rock + single ore type asteroids above as an alternative.

With the actual material yield of each cycle needing to be somewhat randomized to prevent people from using a partial cycle as a cheap survey scanner (as pointed out about), it probably would be infeasible to keep the idea of mining scripts and/or mining crystals biasing the yield in favor of one particular ore.



I think this is partly true. I see the phrase "another mouth to feed" thrown out a bit when referring to the hauler, the orca booster, and the idea of scouts or rock jockeys, as though these support pilots aren't contributing to the efficiency of the whole. On the face of it, this does seem to be true, as each additional pilot expects to be paid for his time in fleet. But perhaps we should consider how this change would need to be balanced?

The main point of balance seems like it would be isk per man-hour. If that value doesn't change or went up, those extra people wouldn't be "another mouth to feed". To keep that number at least constant despite the additional man hours, though, at least one of two things would have to change: either the time you need to spend in the belt to harvest the same ore would need to decrease or the value of ore would need to increase.

Since the value of ore would be somewhat difficult to predict in the wake of these changes, the time in belt would probably be the easiest to alter. Let's consider a hypothetical fleet:
One orca running fleet boosts.
One guy in a tractor fitted Noctis as a rock jockey.
Two guys in Interceptors acting as prospectors.
Ten guys in mining barges doing the heavy lifting.
So, we have obviously added three additional guys to this fleet. I'm told that ten guys + boosts should mine approximately 1.2 mil m3 per hour. To maintain that same efficiency with three extra guys, the same job would need to get done in a bit under 48 minutes. That's about 20% faster than before.

Now, how do you make a mining fleet 20% faster at mining? The obvious answer is to increase yield per cycle by up to 25%. Of course, that requires them to not be interrupted by a lot of slow boating, so the efforts of the rock jockey and the scouts have to keep the miners in rocks constantly. The average Instability will have to be low enough that the rock jockey can spare a couple tractor beams to grab any rocks that are within ~80 km of the fleet., so the miners don't need to move as much as before. This is third of a grid's distance, though, so there should be plenty within reach.

The scouts will, of course, need to find all these rocks and, other than making the rock jockey's assistance possible, contribute nothing directly. So why would they be valuable? Perhaps we should consider what they are looking for. If their assistance is valuable, then the rocks they need to find must be able to support the new, higher yield mining cycles and so, despite waste rock, should probably contain more ore than is currently the norm on Tranquility.

Of course, these are just some hypothetical numbers using a fleet comp I pulled out of my non-miner brain. If the average fleet turns out to run 30 miners, 1 booster, 1 rock jockey, and 2 scouts, you'd only need a 10% increase make all the math work out.

Also of consideration is if the scouts are themselves mining rare inclusions (one possible add-on to the whole idea), they are contributing value to the fleet themselves, which would further reduce the needed increase in yield times. However, we have waste rock to definitely consider, so yields would probably need to increase somewhat more, depending on what becomes the standard "good" asteroid.

Luckily, there's a lot of factors in this new system that could be used to tinker with expected time in belt. Maybe some highly unstable belts have very low rock and so only rock jockeys are really needed there. Maybe instead of an Orca for boosts, you use a Rorqual and it does double duty as rock jockey and booster. Maybe inclusions are so valuable that you fly twice as many scouts. Maybe you sweep a field with a fleet of Nocti and haul all the good asteroids off the field using a bucket chain technique so you can mine in piece and just need to watch for combat probes.

This new system has more complexity, more needed judgement from the average miner, and I think they can handle it and I think it could make it easier for the devs to give miners some new toys to play with because it has more places where mechanics can be anchored than the current system.

No its not more efficient, every miner with a scanner(req gear) can scan the belt, with boosts up to 30-40km range and already know what the rocks are and how big they are.



Maybe a highsec miner, we dont have the stupid crap nullers do.....yet we can mine much more efficiently for some reason. And in Caldari space, well plag is the top rock mostly.

AND fyi there are plenty of choices already in the rock types, if you were indy you would understand that. you and most Miners that do not do indy but only mine for isk(pffft) dont understand that, maybe never will, ad are poor choices of people for discussing this.

Give it up already.

I updated the first two posts a bit. Shouldn't be anything shocking to those following along, just some clarifications, refinements, and moving the list of module ideas up front for anyone just joining us.



Except that choice is already made before you leave the station "We want to mine Omber and Plagioclase". "No mining Veldspar". The choices I want to foster are judgement calls on grid.



Have you done much salvaging? There's something about making all the calls about what to tractor first, what to fly towards, what to start salvaging, and what to loot that keeps your brain awake and engaged. When you get things done quickly and efficiently, there's a satisfaction there that is oddly rewarding. If that doesn't make any sense to you, then perhaps it's just one of those things that's hard to convey in words, like the attraction of orbiting space rocks for hours.

I'm sure that enough tools can be provided that semi-afk mining can still be a thing, if that's really what you want. It will just be less profitable than someone who is actively directing their mining actions and might mean sacrificing tank to make it happen. I've already suggested several modules that would help towards that goal - precision mining lasers, directed deposit scanner, and mining laser field stabilizers.



Every miner who fits a scanner is giving up a mid slot module that could be used to help bolster his tank. Why not let one cheap frigate take the hit, trust him to know what he's doing, and let him call targets?



I think he was talking about individual asteroids, not the broad types. You know, a "Do I mine this asteroid that is 40k Omber and 50k rock or do I mine this asteroid that is 20k Omber and 10k rock?" As long as a belt isn't just constantly stripped of anything "good", you should have your pick of which asteroids are available.

oh and btw....

An orca pilot with the correct leadership skills and what not already boosts the rnage of survey scanners....there is absolutley no need for a Mining Foreman Link implant or module to do that.

Orcas also get a 500% role bonuse to the range
Rorquals get a 900% bonus

So uhm, maybe you should go look at ISIS or the market and read up on the ships maybe.

Seriously dude....

just quit trolling.
Your a goon and thats what goons do.
Sure if you wnat to continue to play stupid then so be it.

but seriously this thread should be locked.

My solo industry process goes like:

1. plan what to build
2. check what minerals I need
3. check where I get most of those minerals (start from the more rare minerals as the asteroids containing those will yield basic minerals too)
4. go to ore belt. sort overview by type. select nearest ore I want
5. mine
6. dump ore to station and repeat.

The point of 4 is really stupid. How my ships knows exactly what some asteroid is. Like exactly. Also if I would use survey scanner it would know how many units/m3 there is that ore. Damn those are good scanners.




Yes. Making things more interesting normally requires it to be more complicated. Mining part of mining is quite simple, thus afkable... Of course there is those other pats like planning. Any case, we are just trying to innovate here for possibilities to enchant the mining, not to brake it.

Could you help use with that by telling what in mining is making you interested about it?




True, if the scanner works well enough from the orcas distance. We still haven't iterated about the belt sizes or how far out asteroids are spread.




Having single ore in asteroid is simpler, but it also makes it more pointless to have rock in it as then we could only tune the mining yield. If we have 50% Veldspar and 50% rock, then it is just 50% of the total yield. With multiple ores it makes it more interesting to use crystals to maximise the wanted ore.

Other idea to thing about. What if the asteroids would have some what random amounts of raw minerals. Like raw isogen. This would remove one level of complexation as now you would be hunting for the best or required minerals and maximise those in the asteroids.