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[Proposal] better work/reward ratios for asteroid anoms
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Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2016-01-23 01:11:36 UTC
I am proposing a change to asteroid anomalies which will add to player choices and give more room for a miner to choose their level of work and reward, while adhering all asteroid anomalies to a similar gradient such that no miner and no asteroid region gets high reward without work, or high work without reward. This system will not account for player factors such as sovereignty, population, etc. which can alter the balance of risk. The dynamic risk caused by player factors will be what keeps the playing field interesting, while the static work/reward gradient background will allow players to better understand and predict the base game environment, leading to a higher quality sandbox in which the player activities become the core focus of the game, and all players are able to participate where they feel comfortable without having advanced insight into the dynamics of the sandbox.



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The proposed change is to have four factors of any mining region which will affect the quality of the ore/ice/gas present there:

1.) belt or signature
Asteroid belts, as they are today in EVE, are celestial objects that refresh each day while signatures eventually despawn and a new one of a different type spawns in a new location. Asteroid belts are easier to find and you can keep your old bookmarks and cans in them forever and even get to know exactly where each of your favorite asteroids spawns. This offers high risk as it is easy for other players to find you, but also low workload for the reasons mentioned previously. So belts will tend to have the worst asteroid yields, but there will be a wide range among all signatures, and the lowest work signatures will have similar yields to belts. Belts will vary only in asteroid spread factor, the other factors apply only to signatures.

2.) instant scan or probes required
Some mining signatures should need to be probed down. These will add to the workload of finding the asteroids, especially if these are small signatures that run out quickly. Mining in a probe-required signature increases your safety as it takes longer for you to be found. The larger signatures should be instant scan for reduced workload and increased risk. The signatures you probe down should have better yield overall, with a lot less total mine-able volume, meaning you lose time between finishing a signature and scanning down the next one.

3.) deadspace or not
Some mining signatures should exist in a deadspace pocket. This acts as additional protection because it forces anyone arriving at the site to warp in at a specific spot, and any miners who have been there for a while could have long since moved to asteroids on the other side of the signature. It also increases the workload since the logistics chain must move from the warp-in to where the mining is taking place. Deadspace signatures should have a small amount of high-yield ores mixed in with large amounts of low-yield ores allowing a short-term operation to put a lot of work into mining out the high-yield (which will cause the site to despawn), or a long-term operation can get a nice logistics setup going and take advantage of the increased safety.

4.) asteroid spread
Some signatures should vary in how far the asteroids spread. Sites with large asteroids packed tightly together would allow slow-moving barges to mine for long periods of time without stopping, while sites with less total ore spread out over greater distances would give benefit to smaller mining ships that move faster. The smallest signatures could have tiny asteroids spread tens of km apart, completely unsustainable for a barge, but a Venture with MWD could easily maintain 90%+ mining uptime in there. These would benefit newer players. Smaller sites should have higher yield ore types, and mercoxit should be especially prevalent in tiny quantities in these tiny sites. If mercoxit yielded a large amount of morphite in a small amount of time spent mining, but the mercoxit itself was rare and occurred in tiny amounts, then it could become a valuable target for intrusion mining in which you run a fast ship in, find and grab the mercoxit, and get out. This style of mining is generally unpopular because you have far too much downtime between mining sessions, making generic ore mining more profitable. Note that making the mercoxit rare but fast-mining allows a balance that prevents the cost of morphite from being strongly affected.


This segment explained my proposal in sentences, the next section will explain it in specifics.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2016-01-23 01:11:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Reaver Glitterstim
Asteroid belts

Asteroid belts will be very large, having a particularly high distance from one end to the other, and will always have a high total amount of ore volume such that they will virtually never get mined out completely. This ensures that asteroid belt celestials will consistently offer a place to mine, although it may be of low quality.

The size and spread of the asteroids will vary greatly by security status of the system it's in.
1.0 - tiny veldspar spread far apart from each other, too sparse to be worth any veteran's time, thus these are always available to newbies
0.9 - small veldspars mixed with a few tiny scordites
0.8/0.7 - medium veldspar and scordite, with a few small pyroxeres or plagioclase
0.6/0.5 - medium to large veldspar and scordite, medium pyroxeres or plagioclase, with a few small omber or kernite
0.4/0.3 - large veldspar/scordite, medium to large pyroxeres/plagioclase, medium omber/kernite, small jaspet
0.2/0.1 - large veldspar/scordite/pyroxeres/plagioclase, medium to large omber/kernite, medium jaspet, small hedbergite/hemorphite
0.0 to -0.2 - large up to omber/kernite, medium to large jaspet, medium hemorphite/hedbergite, small gneiss/dark ochre
-0.3 to -0.5 - large up through hemorphite/hedbergite, medium gneiss/dark ochre, small spodumain/ABC
-0.6 to -1.0 - large all except ABC which is medium

There is some value to deeper nullsec because it provides more high-end ores but you can also get those from the higher quality signatures.






Signatures

Signatures will occur in five size categories: small, medium, large, huge, and enormous. Any given system will tend to get a good variety of sizes of signatures, allowing you to pick the one you like most. Size of signatures will not vary by security status but the actual amount of ore in the site will. The effective security status modifiers will allow for small signatures to get ores that don't naturally spawn in the asteroid belts in your system, while larger signatures may not possess ore types you can find in the local belts. In deep nullsec there won't be much variance as to what types are available.

Any signature you don't have to scan down will have an approximate site radius of 50km. The larger sites simply have larger asteroids in greater numbers so there's less distance between each asteroid but the radius of the whole site is the same. You'll warp in to the center of the site if it's not deadspace, or you can bookmark any part of it and warp directly to that.


Small: tiny asteroids spread too far apart to mine with procurer/skiff, ideal for venture/prospect. Mostly +10% yield ores. -0.2 to effective security status for ore generation and -0.4 effective security status for mercoxit generation.

Medium: small asteroids spread out too far for covetor/hulk, ideal for procurer/skiff/venture/prospect. Mixed +5% and +10% ores. -0.1 to effective security status for ore generation and -0.2 effective security status for mercoxit generation.

Large: medium asteroids in relatively close proximity with a good total yield volume, good mining for any barge. Contains some +5% ores and a small amount of +10%.

Huge: large asteroids in abundance for very high total yield volume, good for a sustained mining operation. Contains a handful of +5% ores. +0.1 to effective security status for ore generation. These cannot spawn in 1.0 security status space.

Enormous: huge asteroids, extremely high total yield, good for a very large mining operation. Contains only standard yield asteroids. +0.2 to effective security status for ore generation. These cannot spawn in 1.0 or 0.9 security status space.







Probing sites

Sites you have to probe down will spawn with the same rocks spread apart the same amount over a much smaller total site radius, for a far smaller total yield volume. They will then be tagged with a name one size class down, smalls will become "Tiny". For example: a large site spawns as one you must scan down. It will be labeled as a medium site, its asteroids will be the same as you find in a large site but spread over a radius of only maybe 15km. (That's anywhere from as much as 2.25% to as little as 0.34% of the total ore volume, depending on how thick or flat the site is.)

These sites will be mined out quickly but will respawn throughout the day instead of only at downtime. They will have -0.1 sec status for ore and mercoxit generation and will have increased variance of +10% yield ores. Tiny sites will have only +10% yield ores.







Deadspace sites

Sites within a deadspace pocket will have a warp-in at one edge of the site. They will have increased pirate NPC activity and you'll see larger and more powerful waves of rats more frequently, however the rats will have a small aggro radius and may ignore players who are farther away. The chance of hauler spawns in these areas is increased, but they will almost always spawn far away from the warp-in.

These sites will be labeled one size up, with enormous becoming "Colossal". They will spawn with the asteroids of their base size type in more and larger asteroids but with a reduced prevalence of +5% and +10% ores, while there will be mixed in a bunch of tiny or small asteroids with increased chance of being +5% or +10%. Mining all of these little asteroids and leaving the big ones behind will allow the site to despawn once no players are present.






Deadspace sites you have to probe down

Rarely a site will be both deadspace and require probing. It will then be listed as its base size value but will have changes from both factors, so it'll have a small site radius packed with big low-yield asteroids and a few tiny high-yield asteroids. In addition to all this, it will be accessed via an acceleration gate. There will be just as many rats spawning here as in a large deadspace asteroid signature but due to their closer proximity they may seem more aggressive.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#3 - 2016-01-23 08:26:19 UTC
I think that sounded much better in your mind as it came out, I have that too sometimes.

If you take another look what that would do, you would see that the "only" ores in low and nullsec were high end ores but no or not enough low end ores to make stuff.
I haven't checked the exact values yet but when you are baking capitals the capital components need a (insert colloqual word here)-loads of tritanium and pyrite.

Those anomalies wouldn't have veldspar or scordite to mine or at least not enough. In w-space the ore anomalies are filled with a bit of everything since there are no belts.
Now those w-space anomalies are high risk, high reward anomalies, with a value of many hunderts of millions of isk but they also take a lot of manpower to mine them.

I know you mean well but with this you would create unnecassry bottlenecks for production and what is the best content driver? Your friendly ship bakery and replacement service.

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

Aura sound-clips: Aura forever
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2016-01-23 10:59:40 UTC
elitatwo wrote:
If you take another look what that would do, you would see that the "only" ores in low and nullsec were high end ores but no or not enough low end ores to make stuff.

You're assuming I am proposing to reduce low-end ore amounts in lowsec or nullsec but I never said anything about that. Quite to the contrary, I was picturing (though I didn't say it) that the ore anomalies would have low end ores also mixed in. But even if I didn't alter the amount of low-end in lowsec or nullsec per each site, my changes would not reduce the amount of low-ends available but rather would increase them as I am proposing making belts larger. But it's a moot point as high-end ores offer more low-end minerals than low-end ores do. Veldspar and Scordite are best yield for Tritanium and Pyerite, respectively, but by a small margin over Spodumain which yields enough of both plus its mexallon and isogen yield to beat either Veldspar or Scordite for mining value for industry. Gneiss has the highest mexallon yield, and Dark Ochre has the highest isogen yield.




You know what big change my proposal will make? No more Jaspet, Hemorphite, and Hedbergite spawning randomly in highsec for barges to scoop up. You can get little bits of it in small sites, or to get anything big you have to scan sites down or go out of highsec. This will also reduce the amount of Gneiss and Dark Ochre in lowsec, in similar fashion. I think this is good because miners make too much profit mining those ores in a barge in highsec without even having to probe them down. It's ridiculous.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Iain Cariaba
#5 - 2016-01-23 12:58:42 UTC
Shocked

Hold on, give me a minute here....

Shocked

Well, I'm pretty sure this is the first time you've posted anything I agree with, Reaver. I no longer mine, nor will I ever do so again, but this would have been great when I did mine.
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#6 - 2016-01-23 15:15:49 UTC
Then I agree!

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

Aura sound-clips: Aura forever
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2016-01-25 22:17:59 UTC
I think there's really some potential in putting small bits of good ore spread out for frigates to chew on. It'll help make up for their reduced ore yield by allowing them to take advantage of their advantages, and make mining frigates more useful for veterans than they are currently. Perhaps one day mining barges won't be the only way to mine.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#8 - 2016-01-25 23:49:45 UTC
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
I think there's really some potential in putting small bits of good ore spread out for frigates to chew on. It'll help make up for their reduced ore yield by allowing them to take advantage of their advantages, and make mining frigates more useful for veterans than they are currently. Perhaps one day mining barges won't be the only way to mine.


Wait what? The Prospect does mine close to the same amount a Procurer can with a covert ops cloak and a very decent ore bay for a frigate.
I have no reason to complain here and you cannot mine in a barge when you find a shattered wormhole.

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

Aura sound-clips: Aura forever
Thorian Baalnorn
State War Academy
Caldari State
#9 - 2016-01-26 01:53:46 UTC
I would go a different route than this. I would put new versions of each ore type in these special/secret pockets. they will be the same yield in minerals per unit of normal ore but be lighter and faster to mine. They would be better than tier 3 ores in yield/time and weight/ yield, yielding about 15%-20% more minerals per unit when considering time to mine/haul the heavier tier 1 version of the ore.

This would add a unique desirable aspect to such fields that can only be found in these locations.

Sometimes you are the squirrel and sometimes you are the nut. Today, you are the nut and the squirrel is hungry.
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#10 - 2016-01-26 02:08:18 UTC
elitatwo wrote:
Wait what? The Prospect does mine close to the same amount a Procurer can with a covert ops cloak and a very decent ore bay for a frigate.

I'm picturing very small ore fields where you mine each asteroid quickly and spend more time traveling to the next one than you do sitting there mining. This type of mining would be much more active so that sitting there dropping ore every now and then doesn't have to be the only way to mine, but it needs to have much higher yield ores inside to be worth chasing down.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."