These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

What if Rorqual's could only mine Spodumain?
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Throwaway Sam Atild
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2017-02-26 04:44:58 UTC
Been a while since I spat out a bad idea and got called bad by the internet, so here we go:

What if Rorquals could only mine Spodumain?

This forces a relationship between Barges and Rorquals. They have to work together to respawn ore anomalies. A fleet of Rorquals can't clear an anomaly. Barges can clear an anom, but they have to chew through all the devalued Spod to get the high value stuff back. The mining role of the Rorqual pilot becomes respawning Anoms faster. You can un-nerf his mining drones to provide a reward for the valuable service he provides.

Super large groups retain an advantage of being able to use Rorquals and barges together to clear Anoms, but multiboxing 10 Rorqs in the same spot becomes less efficient as you need to eventually clean up the field with non-rorqs. At an absolute minimum it forces the rorq fleet to move around.

Medium to large groups strike some sort of balance utilizing Rorqs and barges together to clear out fields.

Small groups who can't reliably protect a Rorq can mine the good stuff in their fields and nearby systems, and rely on daily timers to reset their anoms. As they grow and their fields empty faster they might have incentive to convert their barge miners to lookouts and guards so that they can siege a Rorqual or two to clear the junk ore.

Fire away! I have thick skin.

I think the potential in this idea is that it may provide an advantage to Rorqual mining that doesn't disproportionately benefit the super-groups. Belonging to a small group that can't defend a Rorq reliably, I currently have no incentive to buy and field one at all, especially as dropping mineral price and yield (nerf) make it less likely to make up the cost of a loss. Only folks who can mine in total safety would have a great incentive to use Rorqs, and then as many as they can fly.
Cade Windstalker
#2 - 2017-02-26 06:14:57 UTC
This would be a pretty ridiculous and arbitrary restriction.

These sorts of hard restrictions aren't really in the nature of Eve, like if you put a gun into the game but said it can only shoot Machariels.

Also personally I don't think it would be very good for balance since the general effect would probably be to just crash the market for Trit, Pyrite, Mex, and Isogen.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#3 - 2017-02-26 06:54:24 UTC
Scipio Artelius
Weaponised Vegemite
Flying Dangerous
#4 - 2017-02-26 10:29:37 UTC
I love this forum. That made me laugh hard.
Throwaway Sam Atild
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#5 - 2017-02-26 15:31:58 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:


These sorts of hard restrictions aren't really in the nature of Eve, like if you put a gun into the game but said it can only shoot Machariels.

Also personally I don't think it would be very good for balance since the general effect would probably be to just crash the market for Trit, Pyrite, Mex, and Isogen.


To your first point there's already a mini precedent for it in that the Rorqual can't mine Mercoxit or gas. These are examples of hard restrictions, and in the spirit of Eve in that many ships have tight roles they thrive in.

Your second point I don't follow as Ore would still generally be consumed in anomaly sized chunks which have a fixed mineral composition.
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#6 - 2017-02-26 15:35:03 UTC
Throwaway Sam Atild wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:


These sorts of hard restrictions aren't really in the nature of Eve, like if you put a gun into the game but said it can only shoot Machariels.

Also personally I don't think it would be very good for balance since the general effect would probably be to just crash the market for Trit, Pyrite, Mex, and Isogen.


To your first point there's already a mini precedent for it in that the Rorqual can't mine Mercoxit or gas. These are examples of hard restrictions, and in the spirit of Eve in that many ships have tight roles they thrive in.

Your second point I don't follow as Ore would still generally be consumed in anomaly sized chunks which have a fixed mineral composition.


Those are things that require specialised equipment to mine, which the roq doesn't have access to. That's a completely different kettle of fish to what you're proposing.

Those are the minerals that come out of spod. If spod is all a rorqual can mine, then spod is what is going to flood the market to a ridiculous degree as rorqual pilots try to actually get some return on their investment.
Cade Windstalker
#7 - 2017-02-26 15:53:28 UTC
Throwaway Sam Atild wrote:
To your first point there's already a mini precedent for it in that the Rorqual can't mine Mercoxit or gas. These are examples of hard restrictions, and in the spirit of Eve in that many ships have tight roles they thrive in.

Your second point I don't follow as Ore would still generally be consumed in anomaly sized chunks which have a fixed mineral composition.


What Danika said on both points.

The fact that you didn't even know what the mineral composition of Spod was says you haven't thought this through. Your basic assumption, that people would mine out anoms rather than simply move when they ran out of mineable ore, is also probably incorrect. Even right now people will cherry pick what's available out of their ore anoms, rather than mine out the whole thing.
mkint
#8 - 2017-02-26 16:30:11 UTC  |  Edited by: mkint
It feels like a bad idea on the surface, but the fundamentals I think are a good idea:

1) a rorq or a fleet of rorqs should be effective, but not to the detriment of other ships
2) a rorq should enhance barges rather than obsolete them.

The rorq does the whole strict progression thing too well as it is, which is incredibly uninteresting and I thought we were done with in EVE. There's no reason whatsoever to use a barge if you have a rorq, except for cost, and since we don't balance on cost we can disregard that. Maybe if it was broader... like maybe the higher rank the ores the lower the excavator yield? I dunno, still feels arbitrary, but leaving a bigger niche for barges does feel like a good idea, though I'm not sure the best way to go about it.

Maxim 6. If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
Throwaway Sam Atild
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#9 - 2017-02-26 16:56:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Throwaway Sam Atild
Cade Windstalker wrote:

What Danika said on both points.

The fact that you didn't even know what the mineral composition of Spod was says you haven't thought this through. Your basic assumption, that people would mine out anoms rather than simply move when they ran out of mineable ore, is also probably incorrect. Even right now people will cherry pick what's available out of their ore anoms, rather than mine out the whole thing.



You're actually striking very close to the whole point of my idea here. If you take a look at the history of the minerals you've named (or just Spod) you'll see they've been tanking (save mex which is stable, ~25% of spod ) since Rorq mining. This is because large rorq fleets /have/ to chew through the entire anom because cherry picking would be a waste of time for them. They mine so fast that moving anom to anom for the ABC's would be a waste of time.

The point of limiting the Rorq to Spod limits the multi-boxing Rorq pilot and forces him to either spread out and become mobile, increasing his risk, or utilize cherry pickers to clear the part of the Anom that he cannot.

Assuming these fleets opt to spread out and not cherry pick, they'll lower the price of the associated minerals. This is a boon to barge miners and smaller organizations because it means they're rewarded for their cherry picking, as the ABC prices rise while S falls.

If they opt to just warp out their 10 rorqs and warp in 10 skiffs to clear the anom, at least they've had their mining rate limited a bit.

Lastly, to really divorce Rorqual income from Barge income and create niche's for both, you could shift the weight of Spod to be even more Trit heavy, so that Rorqual mining depressed the market for other Rorquals, but not for the other miners of New Eden.

All of this can even be worked into the lore -> Excavator drones and Rorquals are huge breaking machines incapable of the delicate work required to mine ABC's. They have one setting, hulk smash. They clear stuff fast, but can't do the delicate cherry picking.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#10 - 2017-02-27 01:49:24 UTC
what ccp is already doing is smart.

supper buff the rorq to ungodly levels so ppl will risk using it

see that mining with one isn't the 100% death sentence they claim it was

slowly nerf it back down to reasonable levels

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Kaybella Hakaari
State War Academy
Caldari State
#11 - 2017-02-27 02:06:15 UTC
What happens when they rebalance ore in a few months again and Spodumain becomes "too good?"
Cade Windstalker
#12 - 2017-02-27 03:43:21 UTC
Throwaway Sam Atild wrote:
You're actually striking very close to the whole point of my idea here. If you take a look at the history of the minerals you've named (or just Spod) you'll see they've been tanking (save mex which is stable, ~25% of spod ) since Rorq mining. This is because large rorq fleets /have/ to chew through the entire anom because cherry picking would be a waste of time for them. They mine so fast that moving anom to anom for the ABC's would be a waste of time.

The point of limiting the Rorq to Spod limits the multi-boxing Rorq pilot and forces him to either spread out and become mobile, increasing his risk, or utilize cherry pickers to clear the part of the Anom that he cannot.

Assuming these fleets opt to spread out and not cherry pick, they'll lower the price of the associated minerals. This is a boon to barge miners and smaller organizations because it means they're rewarded for their cherry picking, as the ABC prices rise while S falls.

If they opt to just warp out their 10 rorqs and warp in 10 skiffs to clear the anom, at least they've had their mining rate limited a bit.

Lastly, to really divorce Rorqual income from Barge income and create niche's for both, you could shift the weight of Spod to be even more Trit heavy, so that Rorqual mining depressed the market for other Rorquals, but not for the other miners of New Eden.

All of this can even be worked into the lore -> Excavator drones and Rorquals are huge breaking machines incapable of the delicate work required to mine ABC's. They have one setting, hulk smash. They clear stuff fast, but can't do the delicate cherry picking.


There are a lot of bad assumptions here.

First off, you're assuming that most of the mining is large Rorqual fleets that can actually eat an entire anom in even a day. It's not, quite a lot of it is 1 or 2 Rorquals, and basically all of it is less than 10, which won't eat an entire ore anom in the time most people play in a single day.

Of these people they fall into two categories, people who mine for production and thus will mine what they need Spod or otherwise, and people who mine to sell who will just mine the highest value minerals and leave the rest.

In either case it absolutely is profitable to move between rocks or even anoms to mine the best stuff.

The only reason Mex hasn't tanked as badly as the other minerals (though it has started to in the last month) is because it's still not as valuable to mine as the ABCs because it's just high volumes of cheaper minerals.

Also, your assumption that this would somehow only affect other Rorqual miners is massively flawed. The minerals that make up Spodumain are also the primary minerals that make up High Sec ores. The primary people this would impact would thus be the High Sec miners, who would basically be completely unable to mine enough to PLEX their accounts, let alone make much beyond that.

Your whole idea here is based on faulty assumptions and bad economics.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#13 - 2017-02-27 04:57:39 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
The primary people this would impact would thus be the High Sec miners, who would basically be completely unable to mine enough to PLEX their accounts, let alone make much beyond that.




....


is that really a bad thing?

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble