EVE General Discussion

I used to be a banker for EOH, but the EULA killed that cash cow. Now I mostly sit around in station, counting my ISK and eating starcakes. Being effectively retired gives me plenty of time to have friendly chats with the locals, and the recent chatter seems to be mostly negative comments about NPC mining fleets swooping in, popping the big rocks, and annihilating anyone that dares to shoot at them.

Can someone explain the rationale for these NPC fleets? Was mining so lucrative that CCP needed to add NPC competitors to gobble up the profits? Apparently, they snatch the most valuable rocks available and deplete them quite rapidly.

Is this CCP's way to force miners into combat with NPC vessels that apparently shoot as well as they mine? I'm sure every miner would love to lose their ships in pursuit of trashing their faction standings in the place they call home until they're KOS with the navy.

I'm afraid I don't see the benefit of this change. Of course, I'm relying on what I've heard from the local miners, so maybe there's something I'm missing here. I used to occasionally undock and mine from time to time because I find it relaxing, but it seems like the NPCs have been added to make mining a hassle, like most other EVE activities.

These fleet's are brilliant we need more advanced AI like this around the place for us to interact with, a friend of mine who hates to mine has been farming them for the ore, it's a neat combat way for him to mine without having to fly a barge and he's loving it, the AI is fairly good and if your not careful they will rip you easily.

In terms of miners these fleets offer some protection as their escort fleet will also rep players if their in danger which is really cool, personally I think we need more cool advanced player like AI doing more things for us to interact with, would love to see some AI Haulers with the same type of mechanic, scram them and their support fleet warps in giving you a cool PvE Encounter with the chance of some nice loot at the end.

CCP also said there are not to many of them around when I'v went looking for them its taken some times hours to find so its not like they are all over the place dropping on hundreds of miners, that's just not happening.

If I could offer suggestions to CCP I think the escort fleet that the NPC's have should warp in if ANY Player takes damage on the same belt, so if code for example try and blap some one with the NPC's on the same belt then their escort fleet should warp in and fight to protect the miners, small change but would I think make most miners happy to have them along side.

I think 12 frigates like that is enough to take down a new players' cruiser

They only rep players with excellent standing. Who has excellent standing with a NPC mining corp???
Also the NPC fleet needs to be on grid.
Even if you get reps, it probably wont save you because attackers usually have enough DPS to kill a mining ship in seconds. (Sub capital mining ships have a paper tank.)

Don't think the approach will be a sucess, effort/risk/reward is not attractive.

My opinion stands, every cent spend on smarter NPCs is wasted money.

Says the 3 year old NPC alt.

How about you enlighten us with your opinion instead of some elitist statement.

With the numbers of real miners dwindling ccp had to do something to keep minerals getting to the market. Without NPC miners we wouldn't have ships to explode other ships. It makes complete sense.

I appreciate everyone's perspective here.

What this seems to boil down to, however, is that the number of players willing to mine is dwindling, so CCP put in rats that can be shot to snatch the ore they mined. I see a couple of problems with this approach:

1) Years ago, CCP changed the loot tables so that people couldn't just produce a ton of materials from dropped loot.

2) Adding a combat alternative to mining--that preys on the very resource the miners need--doesn't improve mining as a profession.

This change doesn't seem to give players a desperately needed reason to go out and actually mine rocks. This merely ensures that those who would've mined casually will no longer be inclined to do it at all.

That's what we would be lead to think isn't it. How do you know what they are doin with the ore? Or where NPC taxes are going? You could be a drifter. You sure type like one.

I don't actually race Ventures. My racing days are long over. A friend chose the name Venture Racing for our team long before the Venture even existed in EVE.