Science & Industry

Make the management put some real work into it.

Build a ore calculator and run the hauling so they can make a % off it.

It's easier than you think it is to tax mining.

Heard before about something called alt account ? / facepalm

It is not bad design, but simply a misjudgment of how the player base will react.

For example look at the work done with faction wars. they tried to make it so you could suport your PVP efforts in factions wars through PVP. The solution they came up with was amazing, you could PVP and make isk. What they did not see coming was how players would use that new content in a twisted way to exploit those rewards for trillions of isk. Assets were seized, and changes were made to eliminate that exploitable income.

CCP Fozzie and the rest of the team has done an amazing job with the ships re balancing and combat aspects of the recent updates and expansions. He was a PVP player in EVE before he got a job at CCP. he was familiar with the game mechanics, and the issues with PVP and ship balance. that back ground helped him steer the changes in a direction that would give the most improvement. But I doubt he has ever spent any time mining as an activity outside of simply testing mechanics. Well maybe when he was a noob, but we all did at least some mining in an osprey in our first weeks in EVE.

The issues come in when trying to predict how players will react to new or changed content. I believe there is a lot of paranioa in CCP not to repeat the mistakes of the faction wars changes. Thus each buff is overly compensated in a way that basically nullifies the improvement. This is safe, but prevents the change we are striving for from happening.

I believe EVE would gain very much new life if the focus of the economy was shifted from high sec to null sec. empire space is a great place to start your journey in EVE, but should only be a stepping stone to null sec. The resources of null sec should support high sec, not the other way around. The conflict driver in null sec should be the control of those resources, to feed the empires, not just a place to establish player housing away from the guards. Null sec has become stagnant as it costs a lot of isk to establish an and maintain an empire, it is not economical to move it once it is built. So we are left with power blocks who simply defend their space, petty squabbles are the main conflict driver.

It is just not worth the effort and expense to push for better space when it has taken months and billions of isk to upgrade what you hold. But as in any other game, fear of losing what you have may keep you from taking the risks to reach for something better. Considering the fact that if you can take and hold space with a better true sec, you then have to put resources into upgrading that space, which would then be at higher risk of being taken from you by a more powerful entity. Could this be why so many null sec entities are content to just defend the space they have rather than expand or move onto better space.

I believe CCP is going in the right direction in their goal of making ICE like to oil of EVE. This works well as oil is the primary source for fuel in the modern world, While ICE is the primary source for fuel in EVE. But this could be extended to ore and minerals. Would it not make sense that the resources of high sec have been consumed by the growth of the empires. This has made it necessary to push further and further out into the depths of space to find new sources of these much needed resources. We have some of this in EVE already with the higher end ores being available in larger quantities the further you get from high sec. This frontier should be the home of most capsuleers, not high sec. I would love to eventually see high sec become nothing more than the noob starting area. But for this to be done successfully it has to come in small steps. I believe CCP is on the right road to make that happen, if that is indeed their goal.

Veldspar in Lowsec doesn't make more than veldspar in high....

In actual isk/hr it actually does. Not in isk/m3 but with larger rocks to mine you less far less partial cycles which adds up top move m3/hr of actual yield.

As side from the fact that hedbergite, hemorphite, and Jaspet are all low sec ores, and are 3 of the top 4 most valuable ore, low sec mining would be much higher isk/hr than high sec if you could mine non stop there. But there is were the issue lies, those who do bother to mine in low sec generally spend more time hiding then mining which drops the isk/hr below high sec.

Before grav sites were removed you could mine in low sec resonably well. Not many low sec dwellers equip probe launchers, and since they have to scan you down to gank you, it was possible to mine in low sec for profit. When someone did come along with a probe launcher looking for you, you would see the probes on D-scan in time to GTFO. All you had to do was be ATK and pay attention. Now every non friendly in the system has to be treated as if they are hunting you. Because by the time you know if they actually are it is to late to escape.

Fozzie says we will have to find creative ways to work around this. I do not have extra accounts to use for scouting or PVP defense, My PVPers are my miners. I do not wish to join a power block alliance just to continue accessing the content that was available to me before Odyssey. Does anyone have any bright ideas to make this work? Or do I just become a ganker/ratter like everyone else? Keep in mind if everyone was a ganker, there would be no targets left to gank.