Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I was thinking about all of the AFK mining, multiboxed mining and botted mining that we see in highsec and even in safe areas of sovereign nullsec and had a couple of ideas about it.

Firstly, CCP has been doing some reasonable work countering the blatant botting lately. But we should ask the question - why are there elements of the game so dull people want to bot them? And the answer came to me - mining is needed to produce pretty much anything, but outside of the intervention of other players (New Order/Hulkageddon in highsec, pirates in lowsec/non-sov nullsec or hostiles in sov-null) there is simply no danger to miners - in null you might want one cruiser or larger ratting with you, everywhere else your drones can kill the rats. Contrast this to W-space, where gravimetric sites have rats that are legitimate threats (albeit weaker than other sites).


So how to counter this?

A change to rat spawn mechanics, IMO.

Presently rats spawn in pretty predictable waves that do not pose any threat of note to player ships. Consider if rats spawned according to the following patterns:


0.9-1.0: Rare spawns of 1-3 weak frigates

0.5-0.8: Most spawns consist of 0-3 weak frigates/destroyers and 1-2 weak cruisers, however, one spawn in 20 consists of much bigger spawns that non-combat ships would need to flee from. Example: 3 elite cruisers, 1 battlecruiser and 1 battleship - a tech 1 cruiser could handle that fight but a Hulk would need to flee.
No rats would point, so a mining barge or even Orca that is not AFK could flee comfortably before they were popped.

0.0-0.4: Most spawns consist of 1-6 ships total, with a mix of regular frigates, cruisers, battlecruisers and the rare battleship. However one spawn in ten consists of significantly more, perhaps 6 elite frigates (without warp scramblers), 3-4 elite battlecruisers and 3-4 battleships. A PVP fit tech 1 battleship hull with tech 2 fittings should be able to handle these uncommon spawns alone.
No rats would point in lowsec, but the firepower from the rats might kill the odd unescorted barge before they align.

Nullsec: Rat spawns vary from standard (1-2 battleships, 0-4 other ships) most of the time, to uncommon large spawns (similar to the lowsec large spawns), to rare enormous spawns (on par with the firepower of a level 5 security mission, potentially even with an NPC carrier in very low truesec systems). Unlike high or lowsec, null rats can and will point.

Finally, heavy mining activity in a particular belt would accelerate the rare, more powerful spawns, while ignoring a belt would cause the powerful rats to despawn.

As this would make mining more difficult, mining yields would need to be rebalanced. I have some ideas for that below.


The flow-on effect:

This would cause the following:

- In starter systems (0.9-1.0), little would change but the rare spawns would teach players not to go AFK. It should be pretty hard to lose ships here.
- In highsec (0.5-0.8), alert miners might choose to pay a mission runner that is in system to come and blow up the rare rat spawns, particularly in icefields. More player interaction is always a good thing. The AFK/botted/multiboxed miners would lose ships repeatedly unless they fleeted up with at least one combat ship.
- In lowsec, organising a smallscale mining fleet operation of 3-12 mining ships, one Orca and 1-3 PVP fit ships would be the norm (again, assuming lowsec mining is made worthwhile, see risk/reward). If player pirates do not show, the PVP fit ships would be on rat control. The presence of mining operations like this should make piracy more viable as they provide excellent targets for cunning gangs of 2-6 pirates.
Of course, sometimes the mining op itself will be bait for pirates, leading to bigger fights.
- In nullsec, the presence of warp scramblers on some rats will make fleet operations necessary to mine. These fleet operations would be quite lucrative if not interrupted, but they would revitalise the nullsec food chain, providing very real targets for roaming gangs to attack. Again, of course, sometimes the mining op will be bait and one of the 'mining fleet' will be ready to cyno in overwhelming force to crush the roaming gangs - and sometimes, that will be what the roaming gang wants to happen. More fights that are not over POSes will revitalize nullsec.


Risk/Reward:

Presently there is little ISK/hour difference between highsec, lowsec, sovereign nullsec and non-sov nullsec. Once you factor in the increased time spent on supply chains in the more dangerous spaces, mining in highsec is the clear 'best choice' at the present moment.

In addition, these proposed changes taken alone would reduce the amount of ore mined, potentially making construction of battlecruisers and larger ships take significantly more time spent mining.

To address this, some suggestions:

- Instead of the present system of having 100%, 105% and 110% concentrations of the various ores, introduce the following. Don't use these names, names like 'Golden Omber' are better than names like 'Superior Grade Omber':

- Low grade ore (found mostly in 0.9-1.0): 60% concentration.
- Standard ore (found rarely in 0.9-1.0 and commonly in all other systems): 100% concentration
- Improved ore (found rarely in 0.5-0.8 and fairly often in low/null): 130% concentration
- Concentrated ore (found rarely in lowsec and fairly often in null, particularly in systems that are seldom mined): 160% concentration
- Superior grade ore (found rarely in nullsec, mostly in systems that are seldom mined): 200% concentration

This should make it worth braving more dangerous space and bringing combat ships that do not mine.

Switch all belt spawns in all sec to Null sec sized Incursion Sansha spawns.

How about this, CCP release huge asteroids (pluto sized), You can mine them the conventional way which is slower than normal asteroids or you can use the new Slave Mining Barge that uses groups of slave on tethers to mine away at the interior of the pluto sized rock.

Ofcourse the slaves have a short life expectancy and die after 5 or 10 minutes but they're replaceable, the downside is for every slave that dies you get a 10000isk bounty on your ship and a 10000isk bounty on yourself and you're made a suspect.

Thats the only way Risk/Reward, in my opinion would be balanced for mining

It'll pull Concord in all Hi-sec, you can only use it in null, low or w-space

The answer to more interactive mining is simple: make asteroids explode.

RL mining is very risky and labor intensive. There's always danger of cave-ins, explosions, sink holes, you name it. It certainly isn't an AFK activity, and it shouldn't be in New Eden either.

ALL asteroids should have a percentage chance to explode based on several different RNG factors: the value of the ore (higher value, higher chance to explode), the amount of time mined, and the number of mining beams being used on a single asteroid. The damage inflicted should also increase in severity according to the above. Not only would this decrease AFK mining, it would also encourage miners to actually fit a tank on their ships.

I'd also be in favor of random environmental damage in asteroid belts.

Another answer might be in how Star Wars: Galaxies approached mining asteroids. You had to break small pieces off a large rock in order to retrieve the ore. You had to actively pilot your ship and re-target the broken off chunks.

CONCORD?

How do you create a spawn threatening to an AFK mack but not completely wrecking a venture piloted by a newbie in a single volley?

Unless those bots can handle combat, they'll likely become negative ISK/hour. And I'm pretty sure bots that handle combat should be much easier for CCP to detect than ones that just do mining.

Over 110% would cheapen the minerals, but perhaps it would increase overall null isk-per-hour?

Right now, it's better to suck SCORDITE in most cases, than to go to null.

You're saying better refining would be a better solution than better yields?

is it me, or does this line we can blissfully ignore your idea because you have no idea what you're talking about?