Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So you can only mine with strip miners? Mining laser and drones can be simplified away.

This simplification isn't need. EVE is complex, its ok for it to be complex. This supposed unnecessary complication helps introduce players to how complex EVE can be. It's not really a hardship. You mine chunks of ore, you refine what you get, and you have some left over. You then mine more ore.

Its really not difficult to work with. I'd rather time was spent on more meaningful issues.

If the complexity is totally optional because you can simply ignore it, then why have it in the first place? If it's so marginal that you don't care about it, then why force it on the community?

Unfortunately, some people will create any argument they can to prevent things from changing, even if the change is clearly to the best for the community.

I believe that the complexity that you, yourself, indicate is "totally optional" should be totally gone. If it's optional then it serves no purpose of any worth, and EVE would be better served by a more elegant ore and refining system.

There have been numerous community-generated maps/worlds generated for DnD-esque games (e.g. Neverwinter Nights) that have had a similar mentality when it came to crafting (though the numbers were smaller)... for example -- "mine 4 units of Iron Ore which weigh 2.5 pounds apiece, then take to refine into 1 unit of Iron weighing 1 pound" or "mine 10 units of Gold Ore at 5 pounds apiece to make 1 unit of gold weighing 1 pound" (assuming all the "minerals" used had a weight of 2 pounds; and as usual with RPGs of that nature, weight is the important factor).

Assuming that there arent pack animals, a "dumb as a rock" fighter is definitely the best option for a miner there, since he can carry the most ore around. Even with pack animals, the fighter might be the best option because of how the attributes (Strength, Dexterity, etc) in those games matter, and the game makes it inherently harder to mine something "better" (e.g. needing higher dexterity or strength or something to actually break off a piece of ore).

Now, said fighter would most likely be terrible at making things, as opposed to someone who's more dexterous or intelligent.

Here, it's the same idea; though instead of how much weight or strength you need, the only thing that matters on the mining side is how many cubic meters you can drag in per cycle coupled with how much capacity your cargohold has. Granted it's entirely possible for CCP to change the numbers to be even (e.g. 500 units); but that honestly doesn't matter one way or the other by the time you're in a barge, since you're pulling in (pre-barge update) something like 1700 m3/minute in a hulk -- enough that the only ores you're not pulling in at least 1 refine/cycle are ABC.

Allowing partial items to exist would require changes to the way all items are dealt with in EVE. I don't think changing the simple arithmetic involved in Ore refining to different simple arithmetic is worth changing the way EVE handles all items.

Not a partial item, if you refer to the drone. (The mining laser being partial did not make sense to object to)
The drone as I described it would be bringing in a full 1,000m3 object to the host ship. It would simply be dragging it rather than storing it internally.

This means the drones cycle time would be significantly longer. That means they are exposed to risk for equally longer, making their survival less certain.

With the expanded ore holds on many ships, the drones certainly have a place to store their large hunks of ore.
(Not really that huge, in meters 10x10x10, roughly a simple square 3 story building. Our barges and exhumers apparently can fit bunches)

Just to point out, this would mean u cannot interrupt ur mining cycle half way through for a half load. u MUST complete the (probably) 2-3 minute cycle to get any ore. This wouldnt be terrible, but i just wanted to make sure it had been considered.

edit: especially as T1 mining lasers and drones would have extremely long cycle times (after mining lasers timers were extended to reflect inefficiency)

That works for Exhumers (kind of). It doesn't work for non-exhumers. It also doesn't work for mining barges. If you launch 5 drones at once, they'll finish their cycles at about the same time, so you would need to always keep 5k m3 free in your cargo hold. What about asteroids that would spawn with less than 1000m3 of ore in them? What happens if you short cycling your lasers? One minor advantage of mining ore is that you get to keep something if you are forced off station (by an incoming hostile group or something).

And all this to remove some optional arithmetic.

You still didn't read the important part.

Sure it's optional to interact with it, but it serves a meaningful purpose. It is also entirely optional for a player to interact with the stacking penalty formula. Does that mean we should remove stacking penalties despite them serving a meaningful purpose.

You can't call a mechanic that requires looking at a paragraph once to understand, that is explained, in full, in one slide on a career mission, a "Rube Goldberg Monstrosity". It's a very simple chart to understand. If someone is having problems with the level of complexity represented by batch sizes and ore sizes, they're going to have some serious problems with refining in general, let alone the rest of the game.

You think that new players refining their first batch of ore and getting nothing isn't going to confuse them more?

Terrible shame if people actually had to do some math.

on the other hand, 1 m3 or 3, or 33 m3 makes no difference to me. Obviously, counting in cubic meters instead of irregular units is just more sensible and efficient, and less time consuming.

edit: I do think that 1m3 of material is too little to refine though. Nobody in their right mind is going to bother using equipment for that. I propose then, that the minimum refining amount becomes 10 cubic meters. It really should be a 100, but we're already letting you slip by with 33, so I'll let it pass.

That's a valid argument. 10m3 is a good round number. Decimals are nice.