EVE General Discussion

Problem is some of you refuse tosee that the sickness is far more advanced in other areas of the game. Whether this is because you serve your own self interests or you are oblivious to the "ecosystem" as whole. I wont speculate. However, the long term effects of a broken Sov system coupled with power blocks who have all but blue'd up most of the resources in null sec is MUCH more alarming and unbalancing towards the ecosystem then Mining barge EHP and concord reaction times.

Until these threads that harp on high sec include and honest discourse that involves the rest of the broken aspects of the "ecosystem" I will continue to discount them as self serving drivel meant to serve self interests under the pretenses of "concern for the well being of Eve". If folks were really concerned for the well being and balance of the game the threads would start with suggestions in changes to Sov/Null and low sec and then address high sec.

TL DR

More self serving crying echoing from the null sec camp whom "LOVE" their unbalanced carebear havens but hate yours.

Stealth minerals investor whine.

And then the crack wore off and you realized how stupid that sounds.

Yes, it is.

When people who want PvP refuse to fight each other, they break the ecosystem.



Local chat, intel channels, bubbles on gates, cyno jammers in systems, low or zero non-blue traffic (NBSI), and the abundance of non-invasion pacts between nullsec entities: these are what make mining in nullsec safe. The effort a nullsec miner puts in to remain safe is to pay attention to local & intel channels. The reward is safer mining than is available in hisec. This lack of risk is displayed by the value of the ores that nullsec miners are mining. The major factor of income risk in nullsec is availability of mining hours: that is to say that a miner in nullsec is more concerned about having to stay docked up than they are about being ganked by neutrals. There are still miners losing ships in nullsec, most likely because they ignored intel, went AFK, ignored that "AFK cloaker", or got caught in a logon trap.

In hisec the miners are operating in relative safety, with no assurance that neutrals are non-aggressive. The risk they take is that some roaming gang will destroy their mining ship. Miners in hisec are not going to be concerned about availability of mining hours.

If hisec was truly safer than nullsec, there would be a much larger disparity between the value of hisec ores versus nullsec ores.

The problem with nullsec is the people in nullsec. There are some things we can do to encourage different people into nullsec, but what do we do to encourage the big blue donut boys' club to leave? There's so much talk about how to "force" people out of hisec, but how do you "force" people out of null? How do you make people fight each other in a PvP game? This is one of the motivations behind discussion of "activity based" sovereignty: the first rule of sov club is that if you have sov, you have to fight.

The relative safety of mining in nullsec is not going to be affected by changes to mining barges. The value of nullsec mining is not going to be improved by making hisec more dangerous. The value of nullsec mining is going to be improved by making hisec mining safer and faster.

As for lowsec, it's just far too dangerous. The difference between hisec and lowsec is night and day: in one system, people won't bother shooting you unless you're carrying far more value than the cost of blowing you up before CONCORD arrives. There are faction police to discourage people behaving badly. There are immediate and fatal consequences for actions. In lowsec there is practically no safety: there are some gate guns, there is security status loss for aggression, but there are no faction police, there are no consequences for actions beyond the tankable gate guns. As a result, the "consumer" or "predator" population has hunted any possible prey to death.

Again, the problem with lowsec is the people in lowsec. My opinion is that hisec is always too safe, and lowsec is always too dangerous. There should be finer gradation between "high" and "low" sec. There should be more import in the difference between 1.0 and 0.5 than the difference between 0.5 and 0.4.

Rather than talking about balancing mining barges, why not look at the things stopping miners heading in to 0.4? First there is the near certainty that any barge or exhumer is going to be blown up. Second there is the lack of reward for taking any risk at all.

Poetic Stanziel seems to think that if there were a hundred barges mining away in lowsec, only one or two would get blown up. I'm not sure where this delusion sprang from, but the fact is that if there were a hundred barges in lowsec, there would be two hundred associated killmails (barge + pod). There are so many predators in lowsec that any amount of prey would be hunted to extinction. Larger prey would simply invite bigger packs: people would contact their friends, "hey, there's this fleet of exhumers tackled in Lasleinur" and more predators would appear to take part in the feeding frenzy.

Perhaps it would be better to look at ways of gradating the NPC enforcement response. In 1.0 systems every single offensive action would spawn a new CONCORD patrol. As the system security is lessened, there is a lower abundance of CONCORD patrols, with enforcement being done more and more by faction police. The difference for the attacker is how long they have to live after the aggression starts. But then this has to be balanced so that people looking for PvP can actually get it. Perhaps wannabe PvPers could take some action to voluntarily trigger the suspect flag such as, for example, always carrying contraband in their holds.

With a rebalancing of ore distribution (e.g.: replacing the nocxium in pyroxeres with pyerite) and a better illusion of safety, it would be possible for suicide gankers to blow up heavily tanked mining ships in 0.2 systems with a fleet of rookie ships. The reward must be worth the risk, and in order for the risk to be worth taking, the chance of loss must be less than 1. On the flip side, for wannabe attackers, the chance of loss when attacking a "nonconsenting" party should be very close to 1. Perhaps it is possible to kill the NPC police tackler to get away? Sure, you take a security status hit when doing so, but you can gain that back by shooting NPCs in belts or running missions.

An organised group should always be able to succeed in an attack against a disorganised solo pilot. An organised group should always be able to succeed in a defense against a solo attacker. This is the kind of surety that is required to draw carebears into some form of risk-of-PvP situation.

I have access to an infinite supply of Scordite rocks with 60-80k units of ore. All available in hisec with a minimal effort when I want them. The limiting factor is the time required to harvest them.

But this thread is about the health of the ecosystem, not where one finds rocks suitable for harvesting.

People on the outside looking in see the value of hisec ore and nullsec ore very close to each other, and thus assume that hisec is too rewarding (as opposed to nullsec being too rewarding, which is why the ore out there has dropped to the same value as hisec ore).

Some people such as James 315 think that the way to "fix" this broken ecosystem where hisec miners are earning as much as nullsec miners, is to make hisec mining more dangerous. What this will actually do is tip the rewards further in favour of hisec miners, since reducing supply of hisec materials will increase their value. A better way to fix the broken ecosystem would be to make nullsec and w-space more dangerous.

To make space more dangerous, you need more players engaging in PvP. Thus the folks engaging in the hisec miner bumping exercise are going about it exactly the wrong way. They need to organise fleets, head out into nullsec and w-space, and blow up miners.

You perhaps, but historically most people have done the opposite.

I wish exploration had this much consistent income


Also, your effort for breaking down Null vs High is commendable however your perception of it may be a little off base

The problems in null are player made, with giant blue lists, and from supercap proliferation, where the small alliances/coalitions can't compete with the big guys. Nerfing hi-sec mining won't fix those problems.

There are also too many miners in null and they keep prices of high end minerals low. There is no shortage of miners in null. Miners haven't abandoned null for a life in hi-sec. Mineral prices are proof of that. If a large number of miners left null the price of high ends would rise. Again, nerfing hi-sec won't fix oversupply from null.

The prices of low end minerals are high right now because demand is outstripping supply in hi-sec. That's why mineral miners are doing so well in hi-sec. Hi-sec miners are not suffocating demand for null minerals through direct competition.

All of this focus on hi-sec miners will not fix null. The 315 cult won't fix null either, because the problems in null *and hi-sec* aren't really related to *hi-sec* ice mining.

HAHA! You wanna talk about an ECO system in EVE, OP, there is your ECO sytem, right here!

ITT a bunch of high sec miners turn into a Tea Party Community-like CJ.