Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A lot of people have been talking about mining changes due to Hulkageddon and recent botting nerfs. I wanted to throw in my two cents.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to consider mining as both a passive and an active source of resources. We need to cater to both the players who want resources for industry and to the players who enjoy mining as an activity unto itself.

Passive Collection of Asteroid Resources ('Roid Interaction):

Passive asteroid income should be a little-to-no-effort process designed to give a capsuleer a slow stream of resources scaled upon their trained skills and a system's security status.

• Static asteroid belts can still be warped to, but individual rocks cannot be targeted by mining ships.
• All static asteroid belts now have a "View in Resource Mode" button.
• Interbus drops a Customs Office on asteroid belts like they do with planets. The lore reason for this is that Concord is concerned about the environmental impact of mining in space and wants to monitor mining output. As per usual, customs offices can be replaced by POCOs where applicable.
• Players can place a Asteroid Extractor (AE) in an asteroid field.
• Once an AE is dropped, a miner can search for hotspots of the materials they want (veld, scord, arkonor, etc.) in the asteroid belt and assign extraction heads like they do in Planetary Interaction.
• Every N hours, the AE is filled with ore and has to be exported to the Customs Office. Player can warp to said office, grab their materials, and warp away. Due to ore sizes, this may encourage the use of freighters.

Active Collection of Asteroid Resources:

Active asteroid income should encourage groups of miners to team up to demolish an asteroid that would take a long time for a single capsuleer. The resources given should be scaled upon a team's trained skills, a system's security status, and the rate at which they can mine.

• By converting static asteroid belts into 'Roid Interaction sites, we encourage mining teams to find gravimetric sites (which are often left alone these days because the hassle of asteroid belts is less than the hassle of hunting grav sites).
• Ship roles and bonuses continue to work as they do now.
• Gravimetric sites and their asteroids continue to work as they do now.
• Gravimetric sites cannot have an AE installed to them.
• Watch the amount of resources gained from passive asteroid mining and adjust the grav sites' yield so it remains viable.

I like the idea of breaking it into two forms.

The passive form should still require the player to be in the belt in their mining ship of choice. It could be even more automated than before and make bot/macro programs useless. However, when passive mining, the returns are about 20-30% what they used to be. Also, still require some sort of interaction every now and then (that bots aren't capable of doing) to ensure nobody is mining while they sleep.

Then have a new more active version of mining that's at least a little fun. This could take one of many forms. I'm sure many have been suggested on the forums before. Some sort of minigame would be nice; and it should be complicated enough that bots can't do it. This form of mining could produce up to double or triple what today's mining returns are if the player does really well.

I don't think that you'd have to redo any of the mining ships to make this happen. Passive mining is something that I think is an amazing idea. At 20-30% the yield of a hulk this would make it so more people are mining, but less people in the belts. Also use of the customs office can be taxed and draw more additional resources from the passive mining.

The reason you wouldn't have to change the ships is because Grav sites would still work the same and the mining ships would have to move Grav sites every once in a while. This would cut down on botting and make mining more of a dynamic profession where explorers become assets in mining corp.

I'm a little confused:

Active form:
Same as it is now?


Passive form:
-- Setup a PI-like extractor in the belt that slowly extracts materials... Come back every x-number of days to pick materials you export to a CO somewhere in the belt?

1.) You seriously think a passive collector should extract at a rate of 20-30% of a hulk? absolutely not... PI earns about 2-3m per planet per day, whereas a hulk earns 10ish m per hour. A passive extractor should extract at maybe 1-5% of a hulk, not 20-30%.

2.) I have no problems with a passive form of mining, but it needs to be disruptable. I would make the extractors an anchorable object that can be destroyed moderately easy.... In exchange, make them cheap. (Think something like a medium-to-large mobile warp disruptor for both cost, size, and HP). You could even skip the CO's then! If I blow it up, I can get the minerals inside it.... Since they are anchored objects, this will limit their placement in hisec, but so what. They can also then be anchored for corp, making them accessible to corp memebers too. As long as they don't give KM's, the griefing of these objects will be kept fairly minimal.

3.) I'm torn on how mining skills should apply to the yield of these units. I think appropriate pre-reqs like astrogeology and anchoring are appropriate, and perhaps there can be t2 versions with higher pre-reqs, hp, and yield....

With the exception that you can no longer mine in belts, but have to scan down Gravimetric sites, yes. Find rocks, shoot them. Repeat ad finitum.



I never specified an exact value; that was Gerrick Palivorn.

The passive rate should be:

1. High enough that the general public has an interest in 'Roid Interaction.
2. Lower than the rate of active mining, such that the increased risk provides an increased reward. In order not to violate #1, this may call for a bump to the rarity of minerals in grav sites (as Tchulen proposed) or a bump to the mining turret rate.

I would expect CCP to tweak the values as necessary a few months after deployment to ensure both.



Agreed. I think the Planetary Interaction Customs Office provides a suitable amount of gank opportunity for highsec, lowsec and nullsec, and I think the same principle applies to 'Roid Interaction.


I like this idea because I think can flipping and general pirate tomfoolery could use a buff. However, I'm opposed to this because it requires new functionality to be built into the game. I think my CO solution provides more opportunity for code reuse.


Quite frankly, I think PI should be expanded to the corp level, but that's another discussion.

I think it's safe to say that EVE players will optimize anything they can get their hands on, up until they feel it's no longer worth their time to continue optimizing. Look at mission runners, using tutorials for "blitzing". Look at PI, which within a month had ridiculously complex charts telling people what PI production methods were viable.

No matter what solution is implemented, people are going to attempt to optimize their isk gain.


As mining is such a critical part of the EVE economy, I would hope CCP would pay close attention to any solution they implement, and tweak resource output as necessary.

My hope is that passive mining would be a slow and steady source of minerals & isk for players, while active mining would provide a greater mineral & isk reward for the required teamwork, risk, and effort put in.