EVE New Citizens Q&A

Ventures are still going to take around 15 minutes to get a full ore hold, which is not that different from mining barges.

And of course missions are going to give 10x the profits(a bit exaggerating here but okay) and standings, because you cant warp to a mission site, activate your weapons and go afk.

And you are still completely wrong. Ventures provide the perfect ships to enter wormholes to gas mine in, which is medium level gameplay.

Checked. They can use the Gas Cloud Harvester I.

How much better do you think mining barges are? As your skills improve, the gap between mining income and other forms of income grows wider.

You can drastically improve your mining efficiency by finding people to work with in a fleet. There's no need to upgrade to barges to make the Alpha clone experience more enjoyable.

If you're after a higher income, consider speculative hauling, distribution missions or security missions.

There's no actual cap on sp.
The skills are capped and once you have trained each one to what an alpha allows it roughly equals 5m depending on which skill tree you get. Amarr has the fewest number of skill levels, then gallente Caldari and minmatar.
There's a spreadsheet around here somewhere. Iirc it lists minmatar as 306-307 levels and amarr in the 290s. So in theory a fully trained min account would have more sp than an amarr account depending on how the levels are distributed maybe amarr has 1-2 fewer skills but they go to higher levels to equal it out.
But there's no point where you 5m sp and it locks you down from training skills, the skills are predetermined and you can train only those skills.

A 5m sp cap is a misnomer assuming all of that is correct and I didn't misread something.
Essentially the same thing just technically not a sp cap. A skill cap that also just happens to be around 5m sp

Why? Mining is not an ISK faucet.

There is nothing stopping an Alpha clone joining a fleet for mining or missions or PVP.

The range of ships for top-level miners is pretty much Ventures, Expedition, Barges, Exhumers. End of story.

The range of ships for Omega pilots includes Covert ops, Recon, Electronic warfare, battlecruisers, battleships, capitals, supercapitals, marauders, black ops, logistics, command ships, etc.

Thus the range of ships available to Alpha clones for mining is just as representative as the range of ships available for other activities. Alpha accounts are not intended to be satisfying gameplay on their own: they are a way to try out EVE for an extended period while you learn how the game actually works, make some friends, and then decide to subscribe to make their in-game contribution more powerful.

As for opening up Mining Barge to Alphas, here are the skills CCP would have to allow Alphas to train in addition to what they already have access to:

• Astrogeology 3
• Mining Barge 1

Once they get access to barges, why not battleships, cloaking devices, ME/PE research, invention … ?

Sure? Won't ore/mineral prices not just go down and compensate for more volume hitting the market? As long there is not also more demand for minerals, mining more does not give you more income.

how about allowing alpha clones to use mining Drones I & II
mining drones don't really do much other than reduce the time needed to get 5000m3 of ore by a min or two at best..... which is insignificant in the grand scheme of things

personally I don't want access to barges as an alpha... I just want access to astrogeology and being able to use mining drones (keyword is astrogeology and mining drones)

alpha's can't use mining drones at all

For CCP to make money there needs to be a difference between alpha and omega lifestyles for players. This is just one aspect of the overall plan. If they were so silly as to actually listen to this suggestion tell me where CCP would make their money from mining players.

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