Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Pilot fatigue might be an easy answer to sucked dry asteroid belts.

We all know the feeling: after an invigorating burst of suicide ganking, ratting, getting blown up at a ghost site or whatever turns you on, you want to relax a bit doing low stress mining in a high sec belt - BUT belt 1 is empty, so is belt 2, and so on, and when you check the last belt you might just catch a glimpse of a fleet of retrievers named Uncle1 and Uncle2, ..UncleN with pilots all the same age and appearance. Very likely you found a macro miner. Your first reaction is just like a car driver when someone cuts into the lane in front of you: rage..take that bastards licence away..lock him up..for life! Welcome to Eve!

So is there a problem? Using macros is against the rules but for as long as mining in high sec is as boring as it is can you blame anyone for trying to automate the process ?
But here is the problem: often instead of mining for a few hours it becomes almost 24/7 and you end up with totally empty belts day after day. A few greedy outfits claim all the spoils, new players can't find the belts to mine for starting up their career in Eve, experienced players miss out on relaxation after a busy session and experience rage instead.

Banning macros is not the answer. It is not possible to enforce such a ban because macros operate external of the game client so CCP can not determine who uses a macro and who not, plus do we really want to force people to be bored while mining.

Answer one is to make mining more interesting, maybe through lots of randomly interfering events. That could stop macros from being practical - or indeed necessary to avoid boredom. But if that was simple to do would not CCP have done so a long time ago. If you have any idea how then lets have it.

Answer two is to limit 24/7 mining by a drastic drop in productivity after a certain amount of non stop mining and hauling. After a daily time threshold 'fatigue' sets in for barge pilots - even macro miners need one for each barge . If calibrated correctly it could limit robotic mining so that a regular supply of bulk minerals from low sec is produced while still leaving a residual content in belts for new players to practice and old players to chill after a busy day.

An activity timer on each pilot reset at daily downtime should not be too hard a technical challenge for the CCP programmers.
Macro miners might actually be filling a need for a steady base supply of minerals, its just that at the moment some greedy outfits are taking the lot. Forcing their pilots to take a rest after a certain amount of work might just put things into balance. What do you think?
Please don't propose a wholesale slaughter of all miners who look suspicious to you. Firstly they might not be macro but just have passed out because of boredom, secondly we do need miners, we just need to limit the greedy ones.
And if you have any ideas how to make mining more interesting and maybe so random that macros no longer work well - lets hear it.

Gotta disagree with this one.

1) How do you propose to track players mining and hauling? Coding something to monitor activity? Would it average the amount of minerals harvested and moved by a pilot of a period of time to decide whether the player is fatigued or not? It sounds like a lot of work.

2) It would punish active players just as much to have a fatigue timer. Giving players more reason to dock up when they would rather be flying isn't a good idea. Active pilots shouldn't be punished for concentrated effort.

3) Even if it was implemented, and the game allowed for players to go about their business reasonably long before reducing their productivity this could easily be circumvented by simply cycling bots. These 10 dock, these 10 mine. Always have a group mining, and just dock the other group when they become fatigued.

This seems like a very cumbersome way to combat bots, that has a side effect of punishing active players. I'm quite convinced bots will always exist, but you are right, they themselves are a symptom of a rather boring part of the game. You said it would be harder to make mining more interesting, but even if it is I would rather CCP improves gameplay design then work on such a cumbersome solution. Fix the disease, not the symptom.

And finally, I quite support the wholesale massacre of suspicious miners and fleets. Not because they may inherently be doing anything to deserve it, but because flying your ship without paying attention is risky and should be punished in EvE.

I know, CCP can sell items through the noble exchange, to reduce fatigue!


OP, the solution to "sucked dry belts" is to make a few hops away from the busy system you've settled in. Way back when I mined, I used an Orca as mobile command, and settled in areas off the beaten path. More ore than I could shake a stick at.

im tired of people suggesting to "make mining more interesting" simply because they dont like mining. same people who whined for changes to exploration, and now that its changed they still dotn do it, just amde it mroe tedious adn annoyign for the people who still WANT to do it even after it was changed.

anyway to "excite" mining would only change the mood for the first 1 or 2 times, then it just becomes extra button clicks and is just as tedious as before, except now your not allowed to leave the screen.


the good part fo EVE is that it offers a play style for everyone, casuals enjoy missioning, pvp'ers enjoy lowsec, soldiers and empire builders enjoy nullsec, nomads and hardcores enjoy wormholes.

mining is for those that like eve, like socializing, but have REAL LIFE interfering, the purpose of mining is to provide a contributional service to EVE community, while making some isk for the player, while still allowing them to focus on work outside EVE. i know i couldnt pvp while writing a college paper, but i can mine, because for the most part its passive.

if you DONT like how mining is, then find a different activity.

so you call the way others play exploit, and demand to spoil their game so it makes you happy.

sounds legit.

Activity fatigue timers are a terrible idea. They have been in every game that has ever tried to implement them. Because they punish active players. 'Sorry, you have to leave now'.

You are also trying to fix a problem that exists because of a totally different issue. Empty belts are a symptom of the poor downtime refresh mechanic for belt mining.
Belts should instead be entirely removed since they don't make sense anyway and all mining moved to match the current Null industry respawning clusters. Mine one cluster out, another one respawns somewhere else. This will also mess bots over because they won't have perfect warp bookmarks every time for the belts anymore. Nor anchored GSC's placed when the belt has been mined out. Obviously ore type should match the security level.