Jita Park Speakers Corner

Since we have already begun the new election cycle for the Council of Stellar Management, I felt that it's best to take the opportunity to encourage our up-coming CSM-member Overlords to put forth their views and ideas regarding the single most critical issue surrounding the industry profession: Mining.

Before I get started, I just want to make it abundantly clear that I am not running for the CSM. The purpose of this thread is to give our candidates a chance to present their thoughts and ideas regarding the issue at hand. I ask that all candidates stick to the issue at hand and not stray off topic to anything that is not related to the mining profession.

Mining

We all know that the mining profession in the game has suffered a lot for a long time and it's already gotten to the point where it has even been regarded as a crap profession in which capsuleers throughout New Eden are treated like dirt. The rewards gained from mining asteroids compared to the amount of time and resources needed to invest in specializing in this area (skill books, buying the ship and related mods, insurance, and searching for profitable systems) are minimal at best and miserable at worst if you take into account the wave of ganks that has increased during the past six months or so (especially since Crucible was released. But of course, this is just one part of the issue at hand.

Bots

The second issue is a big one. Bots. Those who do stay on the keyboard in front of their computer for hours on end (the truly-dedicated, honest-working miners) are frustrated by the fact that there are other players who cheat by employing bot programs that allow them to leave their computers unattended entirely for hours on end without putting in any effort and still rake in boat loads of ISK worth of ore by the end of the day. As a result, the market is flooded with minerals from such illegal activities and therefore the depreciates the value of the ore over time. As a result, the profession has become almost meaningless in terms of profits.

Note: I understand that there are also mission bots, ratting bots, hauling bots and trade bots, but those topics will be discussed in new threads later on. For now, we are focused on the issues related to mining in general.

Candidates, fire away.

The biggest single fix to mining is already in the pipeline under CSM6 - removing of drone alloy drops and replacing them with bounties.

If you don't understand what an impact that has on mining, then you probably don't belong in this thread!

I wasn't replying to 'you' specifically, that's the plural form. Cheers!

Revamp the mining profession so that it's not so disgustingly easy to automate.

Not to totally derail this thread, but I like the idea of drones dropping something unique instead of getting a straight bounty from Concord. It does add a little variety and flavor, if nothing else.

Perhaps the refinables could be replaced with something else? Perhaps parts required for T2 drone manufacturing, or something new entirely.

The drone alloy drop change will benefit miners quite a lot.

An extension of that might be to reduce the drop rate of Meta 0-2 modules in level 4 missions, as those are generally just recycled and put to market in the form of minerals.

I'd like to see highsec asteroid densities reduce at the higher security levels, forcing the veld-mining bots I see in 0.8 space to move to .5 or .6 where they're easier for vigilantes to gank repeatedly.

+1, support positive discusions on improving the competitiveness and validity of a long neglected profession.

Balancing the redistirubution of minerals from "mission/ratting" to mining as pointed out is a sensible way of doing this without having a diverse effect to the overall economy. The important thing is the balancing.

Concerns however that adding more bounties unchecked with no sink compensation might add to inflation.

And one potential idea for improved methods to mining to make it more active and hopefully remove the effectiveness of botting, would be to have variable hotspots on an asteroid that require refocusing of the laser's position/targetting to be efficient at the task. Could be done as a number of optional mini-targets on the roid with visual cues? Unsure how best to do this without it becoming a tedious mini-game though, especially as the EvE engine is not "twitch" based aiming or follows that dynamic. Something to work on perhaps?

If given the chance to serve you all in office, I propose to sigh in a deeply despairing fashion whenever the subject comes up, then focus my gaze off into the distance, shake my head dejectedly, and re-focus my attention inward on my own personal problems.

Miners remember who shoot your ships few months ago on ice belts, and who will sooon as GSF support the next hulkagedon

I'd say go beyond that, make all rat loot non-refinable, or even better, make rat loot appear in the form of smashed up modules which cannot be refined and actually require minerals to repair into a usable module. The drone regions and rat loot are both sources of minerals which devalue mining, make them into mineral sinks rather than faucets and you'll see a vast resurgence in the mining profession.



Yeah, drone region bounties is a decent quick-fix but its not particularly interesting. Its ok as a stop-gap measure to save the mining profession, but over the mid-long term I'd like to see rogue drones switched so they drop something new and unique (perhaps some new datacore-esque item required for new forms of manufacturing, developed to tie in with the long-awaited Industry Revamp expansion we were supposed to get about 4 years ago?)