Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TL;DR

Make asteroids have a chance to drop refillable mineral chunks, like RNG loot in other PVE activities.

Make highsec have the lowest chance of getting asteroid loot, while in lowsec the chance doubles.

Also give asteroid destruction effects when depleted

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Mining is a very boring activity. It isn't much different than other in game activities:

1. Warp to site

2. Lock on to target

3. Activate mods

4. Wait for the bacon :3



So why is one more boring than the other? Well, other than one activity taking a lot longer to do, RNG loot is a lot of fun as well.

When you do exploration, missions, sites there is always a randomized chance of you getting an awesome drop. It rare you'll get anything good, but there is always that chance.

It adds spice to what would normally be a mundane activity.

I think mining would benefit from an addition like this.



Have it so when an asteroid is depleted there is a chance for it to turn into a cargo container like entity. Depending on the ore your mining there will be a chance to drop a "chunk" of a mineral that comes from that asteroid.

eg.

Veldspar = 1:1 Tritanium (if you do get a drop, it will 100% likely be tritanium)

Scordite = 2:1 Pyerite, Tritanium (if you get a drop, it will be twice as likely you will get tritanium than pyerite)

Their should also be concentrations for the drops, scaling density of minerals with rarity.

Tiny = 500 units {As common as metal scraps}
Small = 5,000 units
Medium = 50,000 units
Large = 500,000 units
Huge = 5,000,000 units {Essentially deadspace/officer loot}

Just throwing numbers around, would obviously needed to be tweaked per mineral, but you can get the idea. (same with rarity)


Security status should also play an effect on loot (as it does in with other loot in game).

Highsec should be at least 50% as likely to get drops, and have a hard cap on what kind of mineral drop they can get (they can at most, get the medium drop).

Nullsec space should be the normal when it comes to drop rate, and the biggest of loot they can get is Large.

Lowsec and WH space should have a 25% increase to getting a drop, and be able to get the Huge variant.

I think lowsec and WH space should be more likely to get drops to increase the usefulness of mining in those regions in ships other than barges (Venture, Prospect). Barges are still useful if used, since on top of being generally good for mining, it is also useful for popping asteroids faster.

My original idea was for the mineral to teleport to your cargohold, like ore did, but I think it would be more "content creating" if it spawned where the asteroid was depleted.

It would be possible if you weren't close to the asteroid (like in a barge), for someone else to steal it. A cloaky ship in lowsec/WH space not kill a miner until they see that the asteroid they've mined dropped something. Makes it more dynamic, kind of like ninja salvaging and stealing sites in other aspects in game (ore makes for pretty crappy drops compared to PVPing other PVE ships).

Well that is my idea. Would like to hear feedback, positive and negative. I've learned that "Player Features and Ideas Discussion" is really good at showing you why an idea is bad.

PS plz add an affect when asteroids are depleted. Vanishing into thin air is kinda lame.

PSS I'm not counting ice, new moon mining, or Mercoxit

Pirate haulers appear in belts and if you kill them they drop minerals and sometimes very valuable mining mods. There are also special pirates that drop faction ammo and loot.

RNG- have to pay attention- can be stolen- spice.

As far as changing actual mining, i liked someones idea where almost all ore becomes the standard type (no +5%/10%, this would make industry and paying miners much more efficient). Instead belts had a chance of spawning rare valuable rocks/ice that yielded +50% or +100% yield in minerals. Maybe even more than that. Finding these rocks would be a worthy pursuit, there would be competition to mine such rocks and ninja mining in low/null would hopefully become worth while.

Better would be that all ore drops as the base type, but mining a +50% rock gives you 50% more of the ore. Rather than the ore being 50% more mineral content. That simplifies the unneeded complexity out of the system and like you said, makes paying miners easier, along with compression etc.
Yes it makes for a little more work emptying ore holds.

Oh, the idea itself is terrible. PvE you get the majority of your loot from the simple act of shooting the NPC. This idea you would get 100% from the loot, 0 from the shooting.

sure as long as I can finish a belt in under 20 mins....

Is that possible given how mining modules work on a m3 basis?
I'd rather not just because of emptying hold more often anyway.

1.Good point. I didn't give any negatives. I don't know about absolutely NO ore. I think enough ore that is comparable to what bounties you would get for rats. A bit less, since mining isn't as ship risky of an activity as ratting.



2. Well you can already kinda tell what kind of drops you are going to get with NPCs. The loot pool is a lot larger and random than my system would be. But Blood Raiders will drop Amarr based loot for the most part (crystal ammo, armor hardeners, ect.). But Not knowing what ore until mined , I'm for it! Would reduce cherry picking, and give more use to survey scanners, just like cargo scanners for exploration. Would be more active if you had to survey belts before mining them. Maybe make it so only exploration ships can use survey scanners, and you have to lock onto the asteroid before scanning it.



3. This is what I've stated in my post. drops will be similar to rarity of normal loot. A bit more rare in default to regular loot, since it is a lot easier to farm and warp belt to belt than some anoms. Most of the time you will get scrap metal equivalent loot/ carbon.



Thanks for the feedback! You made really good points. I was really trying to make mining in lowsec/WH more of an interesting thing that can be done in a mining frigate, but I see your concerns.

Hint, Mining already isn't better done solo. Mining in a fleet with multiple real players is more efficient. And all the fleet warp stuff the FC can still do to get the fleet out of trouble.
You are showing that you don't fleet mine if you are making claims like this.

A multi boxer will always make more isk overall than a solo player.... But that doesn't make it more efficient.
The forum/reddit posts are saying mining is only profitable multiboxing because they are talking about plexxing mining accounts by massed amounts of mining and still having a large overall profit left at the end to use on your main account.
I.E. If 90% of your income goes towards the Plex, and you only have 10% left afterwards, you want to multiply that 10% by lots of accounts to make it a large sum.

I know this used to be a thing in the dark past, however I have not seen one of these in past few years and given just basic random chance and the time I spend scanning in high sec I would have expected to come across at least one of them by now. Gives on cause to wonder do they even spawn anymore?


Excellent point.


Using a scanner might work, concerned about it giving to much information. If the scan returned the exact type of ore then you have not reduced the ability to cherry pick. Given that is only takes a few seconds to scan as asteroid / ice chunk the only delays there would be was the first one, because after that you can scan while you mine. Not sure if this is good or bad but we need to address the concern in some fashion.

[quote=TheGuy Akachi}2. Well you can already kinda tell what kind of drops you are going to get with NPCs. [/quote]
In your example we can classify NPC based on race and that gives us a clue of what we may get but it does not tell us precisely what we will get. So that brings up the question how do you classify ore so there is a range or possible ore without telling the player exactly which ore they will get?