Player Features and Ideas Discussion

hello all thanks for taking the time to come in and read my proposition

i propose since the big time null sec guys got their new stations to play pew pew with us lowly high sec miners get an update to make mining more involved for said player

let me explain

as it stands right now mining is easily one of the most boring things to do you lock on you fire then you look at youtube for 20mins

i would like to propose an update to make mining something that requires just a little bit more attention like say having to adjust beam strength for different ores or perhaps your miner laser jams and you have to fix it or actually run your mouse curser along a line the more accurate you are the better the ore you receive

feel free to add ideas on but i just thought id raise the issue

The new stations should increase demand for minerals which should, in turn increase prices.

I used to multibox an ice mining fleet - Orca plus 3 Skiffs, some people fly much larger fleets but that was enough to keep me busy. With the expansion there will be ice mining drones for both the orca and the exhumers. To me that seems like a reasonable workload.

There are also mining drones and they do make a significant difference in your yield. I currently fly a 2 skiff fleet with T2 drones - one pilot has a foreman mindlink for 15% boost (pity that is going away next week). Again it is reasonably active gameplay - I have time to update my industry and PI but not much else. The highsec rocks are too small!

I don't agree with adding busywork for the sole purpose of preventing people from stepping away from the keyboard. More work needs to result in more income - or other benefit.

I disagree.

First of all, the steps you've suggested are unnecessary minigames. They are extra actions that you have to do, in order to continue mining. Nothing's going to be more hated than that, and it will just lead to bots / macros, not to an increase in interest.

Second, ways to make mining more interesting already exist: instead of sitting in a barge in high-sec, jump into a T2 mining frigate and go steal gas or ice from lowsec, null, or wormholes. You will make A LOT more money than in high-sec, and believe me, the risk of getting killed will keep you on your toes. It's also a quick ninja affair, followed by trying to get your ship full of ice or gas safely to high-sec.

I believe that CCP is not interested in increasing mining yield in high-sec. In fact, they are adding NPC's that mine the high-sec belts, just to deplete them and decrease the players' yields in high-sec. Coupled with buffs to ships like the Rorqual that are meant for null, I think they're really trying to move mining away from high-sec altogether.

Those that persist must really want the "boring" gameplay, and I know that some people will be angry if they can no longer make a bit of ISK while watching TV. Those that don't want this kind of gameplay will easily be hooked the first time they spend less than an hour in a wormhole and return with 100+ million worth of gas in their hold.

So, TLDR, I disagree, your proposal nerfs an existing gameplay option that some people actually like, and it completely misses the fact that options for less boredom already exist.

Leave existing mining as is and introduce comet mining as per the extensive thread on it for active higher reward mining.

Your first mistake, OP, was the assumption that mining was ever great.

Your second mistake was posting what is probably the single most posted generic suggestion regarding mining.

It's an old suggestion, but an important one.

However, simply having your mining lasers randomly **** up and force you in to a minigame will destroy a lot of mining gameplay.

In stead, make it an optional way to cut chunks off the cycle time, or increase the yield of the current cycle. Success at said minigame buffs the cycle, failure causes heat damage to a random rack and lose some cap power. Think of it as "active overheating" where you're actively managing increased power output to the laser by basically routing it through patchwork conduits to overclock the lasers. ******* up arcs the conduit, which loses you some cap and cuases the heat damage.

Then add low slot modules and rigs that adjust the difficulty of the minigame (similar to how you can adjust the difficulty of hacking by taking different ships or rigs.) and do not stacking penalize them. The difference is that these modules don't make the minigame easier, they make it harder. The harder it is, the bigger the buffs are when you succeed, but the bigger the heat damage is when you fail.

Now you have options. You can use the same mining fits as always, with laser buffs in the lows, and happily mine passively like always. You can pop in and out, get a bit more ore when you are being active/winning the minigame, and thus your ore input is enhanced if you remain active. OR you can completely get rid of those laser enhancers, load your lows up with minigame modules, get stupidly fast/profitable cycles, but have to remain engaged and active the entire time, and be good at the minigame, and possibly a bit lucky to effectively "blitz mine" in this fashion. Because your ship is fitted like garbage for passive mining you can't simply stop doing the minigame.