EVE General Discussion

People keep asking for various boosts to the mining industry in EvE but everything that makes mining more profitable as an activity has the knock on effect of raising the costs of every ship and module in the game that relies on minerals in order to exist.

Thus the value of the extra ISK income that industrialists see from any such buff is instantly countered by inflation.

Furthermore, unless macro mining is decisively dealt with this only leads to even further ruin. CCP will not fully eradicate macro mining since its prevalence provides them with a considerable income, which through poor decision making and now being accountable to investors is simply not going to happen.

There is literally nothing you can do to make mining more valuable an activity.

Can't entirely agree they give CCP any money at all as I understand it they pay with isk ie. plex there account, it's totally unrelated that someone has payed CCP for that plex it would have happened regardless.

Don't realy know about the effect on the plex market, if any, hard to say when you don't know there relative size or Plex use/spawning .

Simply not true.

If you redistribute the source of minerals to be more effective for miners then principly you are help the proffession to be more competative.

E.g. if refining yields from loot/drone goo where reduced and mining yields increased to "balance" it then effectively you havent changed the total amount of mineral assests in the game, thus not effetively changed anything in a global way within the economy.

Considering that the vast majorty of minerals on the market arise from loot it it is important to ensure this is maintained for the above reason mentioned.


So lets see this in effect:

Before change:

Mining mineral value = 100, Loot mineral value = 10,000 Total mineral value = 10,100

Apply a balancing change:

Mining mineral value = 105, Loot mineral value = 9995 Total mineral value = 10,100

Overall total value stays the same.
Mining value is increased by 5%
Loot mineral value is reduced by 0.05%


As such all you are doing in the example is redistributing the wealth to the industrial activity. And since the total effective assests and/or value of minerals remains unchanged you haven't changed anything in the overall economy. Yet even with small adjustments (even lower than the example above if needs be) you are helping mining to be more competative.

Considering that mining never actually generates any real isk and is not a faucet as such, it does nothing in terms of inflationary issues. All mineral assests provide is a medium for redistributing where the ISK flows in the game in the medium of provided goods.

If anything, more money in the miner's pocket allows for the possibility of reduced prices as they require less. However given that the above example is a balancing issue influence to prices will still be more apparent based on supply and demand. Which in theory would be the same.

If mining popularity is marginally improved then you also have to remember that it is one more person not doing isk generating activities potentially and as such helping to reduce inflation by moving from those faucet activities to the industrial ones which simply moves isk around, thus helping to reduce the effects of inflation. The increase in supply would further reduce pricing in theory due to more availability. But more isk would flow into the mining profession as a result.

You'd think therefore that it would be a self balancing model given any increased popularity. But given that the new miner was a mission runner who would have generated minerals and loot, the movement of activities will if anything compensate also. All you'd do is swap activities, but definatley help to reduce activity in isk faucet related way helping to reduce the inflationary issue.

However a call would be to not make it more preferable to other choices for this reason, but something can be done to improve the miner's lot, certainly from the long neglected and undervalued treatment it has been getting for a long time now.

I didn't bother reading replies, so in case someone else post same thing I do now.. oops

OP, you're wrong. You assume that mining would get a flat out boost? There's plenty of other things you can do to make mining profitable/viable. I'll give a few examples:
* Remove drone alloys completely, replace them with bounties and loot.
* Nerf refining, perhaps heavily, so there's little (or none at all) high end minerals from refining.
* Combined with point two: to reduce the easy/cheap hauling of modules with JF's, that later gets refied and produced in null, shouldn't it be the other way around? Minerals mined in null, built in null, and sold in high.. the natural change would be to just remove all highend minerals completely from refined mods, and step two would be:
* Transform the cargo bay on exhumers and barges to an 'ore bay', and make ores massive in size. That way JF's and other ships can't just move shitloads of minerals around at nearly no cost. It has to be mined on the spot.
* Make belt mining better than upgraded sov mining sites and similar, the more appealing it is to belt mine, the more miners will spread out, the more people will find their 'own turf', this should appeal to both casual as well as solo-hardcore miners. Only gimping group mining a tad.

Neither of this above makes mining more powerful than it is today. The exhumers are already very very strong mining vessels. The above suggestions would rather transform the mineral value from NPC drops to the miners, instead. Back the way it used to be, pre-dronelands, pre-exhumers, pre-lv4's, pre-jumpbridges and jf's, etc.

Well no, but if CCP removes the vast majority of mineral sources, which they seem like they are going for (Drone Compounds) Mineral prices are going to shoot up, and mining will suddenly be viable again, and then there will be more poor bastards waiting to be ganked than there is now :3

Are you suggesting that allowing null sec mining to be profitable would be a bad thing?



Many people (including myself) would prefer to see drone poo being replaced with drone viscera: that is, items similar to salvage that can be used to produce drone-related implants & modules, or better drones through invention.


In general, it is entirely possible to make mining income higher (per hour) without raising the general price of minerals on the market. Moving all asteroids to grav sites (except, perhaps, veldspar), increasing the yields of these asteroids, and controlling the spawn rates will mean that the actual mining consumes little time, with the actual effort being in the act of locating the rocks to mine. Reducing the amount of time required to acquire a certain amount of ore means that miners will be more mobile, and thus exposed to lower risk of suicide ganking.

Moving all asteroids to grav sites will also introduce a secondary market of trading in bookmarks.

The figures are closer to 40 + 60 = 100. Removing drone poo (but leaving T1 meta-X loot in NPC drops) will do more to boost the profitability of mining than any other possible change. When profitability goes up, more people will do it, which will bring the profitability right back down.

Have a look at the mineral market today. Ripard Teg reckons that the drastic rise in Trit/Pyrite is due to strife in the Drone Regions limiting the supply of drone poo.

I agree with the basic theme of your thinking.

In addition to "rebalancing" mineral sources by simply removing drone poo, CCP could focus on further tightening which ores refine to produce which minerals. Thus — for example — pyerite might be more abundantly available in Gallente & Minmatar space, while Mexallon is more abundantly available in Amarr & Caldari space (i.e.: adjust Pyroxeres/Plagioclase, limit them to half the regions each). Regional specialisation is a requirement for trade: something has to be less abundant (or more rare) in one region in order for there to be a need to take that thing to the region.

Other boosts to mining could arise from simple things like restricting the availability of high-efficiency refineries in hisec to mining corporations and improving the efficiency of POS refineries (so that they refine "instantly" and take advantage of character skills and implants). Since grinding standings with mining corporations is painful, very few people will do it, so having access to high efficiency refineries will be a driver for trade.

I have both feet firmly on the ground of, "mining should be the majority contributor of minerals to the economy." I don't think refining of modules needs any nerds, though I do feel that mineral compression through module construction should be nerfed, and the supply of modules from NPCs needs to be nerfed.

The improved value of high-end minerals should be enough to fund the import of far higher volumes of low-ends (due to removal of mineral compression). Nullsec can profit highly from being the near-exclusive provider of high-end minerals.

So the OP is falling into the trap that prompted me to run for CSM 7.

While miners want to make a decent living with their ore, what they also want is new mining content that adds some challenges, freshens up mining and makes it more FUN!!!

We have goons saying that mittens is the friend of all miners because he wants to reduce the affect of drone loot which could make mining a little more profitable (mostly for bot-ers, which strangely enough are more likely to be really running rampant in sov controlled nul.....). But miners deserve more than more coin in the pocket, the are long overdue for new experiences and a new upper level mining challenge. And that challenge should be available throughout Eve, not just a way to force miners out of high sec to places in Eve they reject.

Mining needs to be more fun!!

Issler Dainze
The Miner's Friend
Csm 7 Candidate

It's true. I know many poor fellow newbies that just can't handle the beginning part of being an industrial character since often you need cheap materials. And the best way to get it is to mine yourself. Early on, this just doesn't seem to be as fun as taking security missions and blowing stuff up.