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Making mining more interesting
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Phocas
Horizon Exploration
#1 - 2011-11-11 00:33:01 UTC
I thought of a way to improve mining. This system would have very "Eve-like" mechanics, which (I think) makes it different from the usual suggestions. Most people suggest making mining a mini-game, probably because they're not sure how mining could ever be fun otherwise.

The key is that Eve industry players tend to love logisitics, optimization, and planning. Give them an intellectually interesting problem to tackle, and they'll love it. These are players who actually enjoy "spreadsheets in space," so the system should be designed around that.

The inspiration for this system is how mining works in real life. I'll use a gold mine as an example. First, some basic geology:

Gold is distributed throughout the earth's crust. So if you can find gold atoms in rocks everywhere, why exactly are there "gold mines" in certain locations?

Gold is obtained by refining rocks that contain (1) some gold-bearing minerals and (2) other stuff. The other stuff might be other metal-bearing minerals (so you can also get silver, copper, etc.) or waste (i.e., minerals that have no economic use).

In order to be economically feasible, you need to extract rocks that have an abnormally high concentration of gold atoms. Thus, even though there is gold "everywhere" in the ground, you should only extract rocks from places where it makes economic sense to refine the gold out of it. A region of rock where the gold concentration is high enough to be worth extracting is given a special name: it is called "ore."

This gives a hint as to how it could work in Eve. Asteroids could be mostly waste material, with residual trit, pyrite, whatever that you need to get at. The "game" would be a logistical/business simulation game that mirrors the real life "game" of how best to find the ore and get it out in a cost-effective way.

In reality, a lot of engineering and economic work that goes into designing a "mine plan." First you survey the ground, then you drill into it to figure out the shape of the ore body. Then you design the most cost effective way of getting ore out (where you'll blast the rocks, etc.). Sometimes you leave ore behind if there is too much waste in the way, because you'd lose more money getting it than it would make you. Imagine a game mechanic like that in Eve mining: you'd have to make actual decisions instead of just using the laser!

Designing real mine plans can take many years. Only a much simpler form of it would be make sense as a game. The point is though, the "mining game" should be about designing a mine (either physically or economically or both) and discovering a good site for it, not actually extracting the ore. Extraction of the ore is fundamentally a boring thing (in real life and also in the game) and should be done entirely by drones.

If you look at the "EFT warrioring" that goes on in the ships and modules forum, you can see how much players love a good optimization/planning problem. This can work for mining, as long as CCP has the courage to redesign the system in a major way (that is the biggest obstacle). It shouldn't be that bad, since the existing system has no mechanics at all: the "mining game" was never developed in the first place.

In this system, I imagine asteroids being very large. The mining profession involves surveying them, deciding which ones are the best ones to establish a mine on, designing the mine plan, etc. In such a system, you put a lot of upfront work in, but then the extraction takes place AFK. The mines wouldn't have a long life (maybe a few days?) so botting wouldn't be effective; setting up a mine can't be automated, and you can't AFK mine without the plan.

This could have a positive impact on 0.0 gameplay. One interesting idea is that in 0.0 or low-sec (or high-sec, although you'd be flagged a criminal for doing this) you could steal someone's mine while they're not attending to it. This would give 0.0 players more to defend than their gates and POSes. They could stop small gangs of looters from raiding their sources of raw materials, which would need to be guarded much of the time. It would help solve the problem of alliances claiming huge amounts of space that is empty.

It's possible that all this is far too much to ever implement, but I think the player base might really enjoy it.
TrollFace TrololMcFluf
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#2 - 2011-11-11 03:19:27 UTC
mining is really interesting when a bunch of 1400 alpha pests warp in though not so interesting for the miner
Kilobar
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#3 - 2011-11-11 05:43:33 UTC
Eve already has these things you describe. Its called moon mining and PI.
Phocas
Horizon Exploration
#4 - 2011-11-11 16:36:24 UTC
Kilobar wrote:
Eve already has these things you describe. Its called moon mining and PI.


That's true. Although I've never done moon mining, my impression is that it is like the system I've suggested, only the "exploration" and setup parts only happen once.

Then you just need to maintain the logistics of the associated POS. The problem with a system like that is, once you solve the logistical problem, the only thing left to do is haul materials. I really think moon mining (and regular mining) should somehow exhaust and then the process needs to repeat. This would make the profession more about exploring for good resources and planning out which to extract from and how, not about the hauling them on the predetermined schedule that you've already optimized. The boring parts (the parts that never change) should be done automatically. Otherwise, our characters are actually doing the parts of the task that would earn minimum wage in real life.

One of the serious problems with Eve is too much of the industry and logistics are drop dead boring. Once you've solved the intellectual problem of what to do and how best to do it, there is nothing left to do but execute the eye-glazing plan, which usually involves hauling cargo around or hitting a button.

Think of an in-game process as containing some parts that are uncertain and require judgement and skill, and other parts which simply "must be done" in order for the work to happen. In a real corporation, the planning of the operations is a challenge and the people who do it make a lot of money and the job is rewarding. Actually conducting the operations is boring as hell in many businesses. Eve has players performing the wrong role: it is sort of like "janitors in space."