Science & Industry

Fun while certainly a key factor for a GAME is relative. After all if a GAME is not fun why play it?

But I do not believe this is the problem with mining. Null sec mining is more fun, at least for me, than high sec mining. The added risk makes it less boring.

The issue is risk vs reward. CCP just has no idea where that balance needs to be for it to work. They think they are close, so they make adjustments in such small increments it makes no difference, and they can not figure out why.

To determine the rewards from mining it takes far more than the max yield of your ship compared to the value per m3 of the ore you mine. Many factors affect the actual isk per hour you make.

Currently the theoretical isk/hr of mining in high sec is only slightly lower than mining in null sec.

The size of the rocks you mine has an impact, smaller rocks pop in less cycles creating lost time in not only partial cycles, but time to re-target new rocks. To a skilled miner this loss is minimal, but comparing the rocks in a 0.9 system to the hidden belts of null sec this does add up.

If you could mine nothing but Arknor all day this number goes way up. but that is not possible for most, you need to mine out the whole belt to get it to respawn and give you more Arknor. CCP's recent changes to ore compositions address this issue. But there is another issue that has a far far bigger affect on the isk/hr of a null sec miner.

How much time is actually spent mining out of each hour on line? This is the biggest issue that drops the isk/hr of many potenial nulll sec miners.

If you warp to POS every time a neutral pops into your system you are losing time mining. If you only spend 20 minutes of every hour actually mining than your isk per hour is one third what it would be mining non stop. Many current null sec miners do not have this issue. Why? because they are mining so deep inside friendly space there are no neutrals or hostiles. Since this situation is the only way currently a null sec miner can make more isk/hr than a high sec miner, we can see why the number of null sec miners is not near where it could be.

Increasing the isk/hr difference between high sec miners and null sec miners means you can afford more down time and still make enough isk/hr to be worth the extra effort. The ore composition changes were a good step in this direction. However when that change is offset by increased risk thru making null sec miners easier to hunt down the benefits that would have brought more miners to null sec have been nullified. Increasing the reward adds no benefit if the risk is increased as well. This would work if the current risk vs reward was balanced, but it is not.

No we can look at the barges themselves. Why did the changes to the mining ships not make them more survivable in null sec? More tank should have solved the problem right? Hell NO! Tank does nothing for an industrial ship in null sec unless there is a white knight on the way to rescue you.

In high sec you can tank your mining ship to survive, you do not need to beat the attacker, only last long enough for CONCORD to show up. In Null sec it does not matter how much tank you have. CONCORD is not coming, more tank just means a few more seconds before you go BOOM. A 20k ehp mining barge with +2 warp strength would have a much higher chance of survival than a 200k ehp Skiff without the warp stability. Tank means nothing in dangerous space unless you have the DPS to kill them before they kill you. warp stability Rigs would solve this problem, say a rig gives +1 warp stability at the cost of 20% armor or shields. Sure we have the warp stabalizers for low slots, but the draw backs on them are way to heavy.

Industrial's sacrifice cargo space or tank for warp stability, mining ships sacrifice tank or mining yield for warp stability. If that was all there was to it, it would work great. But those modules have heavy side effects. If I put 2 of these on a Exhummer, I sacrifice the slots normally used for tank or MLU's. That is a fair trade off, but 2 WCS would also give me a -80% signature resolution, which is manageable, and a -80% targeting range, which would be game breaking. When mining in null sec I would gladly give up tank for warp stability, but targeting range is so important for mining ships that one of the used mining ganglinks is targeting range. with 2 WCS a unboosted Mack would be down to about 3km target range, and even a boosted mack would be down to about 4 km. How are you supposed to mine with that range?

Before the mining ship changes a Skiff had a natural warp core stability bonus, Why was that removed? It was a far better null sec bonus than the improved tank it now has. Did it make them hard to catch? Yes, but being hard to catch is the only effective defense in null for a non combat ship. Reducing the risk for null sec miners will bring more miners to null sec. The added difficulty in catching them will be offset by their numbers. PVPer or Ganker, more targets means more PVP. No carebears are going to go to null sec just to provide shooting practice for the gankers and PVPers. They need incentive to go, yet CCP keeps shifting the scales in the wrong directions.