Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You may be right about mining being intended to be boring.
I don't know offhand if CCP ever commented either way on that.

But, I must question the premise that players should NEED to move onto other things, since by default this implies that mining is limited to the shallow end of serious play.
Indirectly, I feel it implies that end game content may be undefined, but it definitely does not include any mining.

Why not?

Why can't I mine for one alliance, then turn around and jump into a covert craft and harass my counterparts in another?
Why should I be encouraged to move on, as you put it, and leave that behind?

Maybe I like the combination of the rugged self reliant prospector on the one hand, and the merciless guerrilla combatant on the other. The merciless guerrilla is being funded by the prospector, and I would hope others duplicated my style so I would have more to play with AND against.

Not all of us aspire to large fleets, or repetitive roams, or even have the luxury of a schedule to permit that style.

I would like to think our sandbox has room for my desired play too.

End game mining would be in lo or null I think since you have to keep killing the rats and protect your miners...and you need to protect your territory too...anything to make mining less dull would rapidly become so due to how repetitive it would have to be by nature

Lasers are definitely a great anti-bottling tool. I think adding a five-minute log off timer for activating a mining laser would be a good addition.

I agree, highsec mining should not be very profitable. Removing highsec endless ice was done. If I understand you correctly, you want to do the same thing to highsec ore.

The issue remains access to a market hub, but more importantly local creation of market hubs where those minerals are 'created'/mined. The effort required to move the (currently) highsec minerals (tritanium, pyerite, mexallon, isogen, nocxium) increases the cost of producing items. So lowsec & nul market hubs to buy sell locally but also sources of trillions of trit in low/nul currently does not exist. Mining (risk) is not worth the ships lost to highsec ganks or just being too slow warping out. Not complaining about getting ganked or caught, just simply I have better things to do with my time.

The other problem is miners pulling in ice/ore in nulsec or lowsec will be more of a target once all the ice/ore sources are removed from highsec. Like moths to a flame, the bats will follow the prey. A production nerf for highsec would remove the highsec production monopoly, though I suspect many casual players would leave game... say goodbye to highsec ganks. Mineral prices will also go up. Another issue is what to do with all the empty highsec areas once everybody moves to 0.4 and below.

Still as ever, CCP needs to fix the bot/macro problem. Ban, don't ban, perma-ban; who knows what would work, but anything CCP does here would remove players, thus reduce CCP profit. How can CCP prevent macro/bot use without reducing the playerbase? I bet that one has them stumped. I do not have a solution either. And this afk style of play is the problem, so afk mining, afk pve, Planetary Interaction, Moon Goo, market/trading, and anything else done while afk.

Whatever solution CCP goes with, proving a person is at the keyboard is the end goal here. Activating some sort of capta, fingerprinting, voice-recognition, or video of you talking may accomplish this and work for a while, but hackers would likely figure out how to defeat any security protocol quickly. Afaik, CCP has known of bot/macro use for years, but took minimal action to stop it. Are IP bans the answer?

Speak for yourself, my friend.

I am most definitely a miner, I have the skills, the ships, and the killboards confirm it.
(That's supposed to be funny, asteroid kill mails don't exist... well, I sold the ore, LOL)

We very much enjoy fighting, in the right context. Heck, with null belt rats, it is not like we have any actual choice in the matter.
(You either need to tank BS spawns, or be able to kill them off)

Fighting players, and knowing they did not have an option to overwhelm unless you could avoid being overwhelmed, makes more sense to me.
(Your intel channel would report the marching band approaching, and a spool up would neutralize hot dropping)

I'm pointing out that if highsec ore had a high enough yield, the highsec bots would become unable to sell their ores to nullsec because the cost of transportation would become greater than the cost to mine locally, and nullsec would get their own low-end ore. Then highsec mining would cease to be anything but a fringe business, run by people who want to sit and watch the lasers or even just go AFK (or a few low-income bots), and it would be purchased by highsec and used in highsec primarily. If that's what you meant, then yes, I agree with you. I'm not endorsing my original post as a good solution, but I stand by my assertion that it would, in fact, have the projected consequences. I'm also not saying it's a bad solution. That is for you guys to decide.

CCP put a lot of effort into stopping the bots at one point, and they were hugely successful. Several years back, there was a bot infestation in which swarms of bot accounts literally plowed out to lowsec and mined in industrials. Players would shoot them, but there were just too many to make a difference. But CCP developed new technology for spotting bots and is currently employing this tech live on Tranquility, where they detect bots and continue to update the technology. Initially, they banned thousands of accounts accurately, with very few accidents involving banning legitimate players. There are still bots, but it is no longer quite so easy to maintain one. People will tell you that anyone can download a macro program and run their own profitable bots in EVE but it simply isn't true. If it were true, there would still be bots flying industrials into lowsec.

CCP is taking measures to decrease botting even more, but they are also aware that a very substantial amount of EVE's minerals come from bots mining, and that totally getting rid of them in one fell swoop would cause serious economic backlash. Alternatively, it's not something they need to worry about because there's no way they can get rid of botting in one fell swoop. It won't happen.

Yup just another troller trying to encourage bots. Classic null bear logic.

strangely, i'd be perfectly fine with the economic backlash of mining's isk/hour not sucking balls.

A higher demand doesn't reduce sales. Miners would easily profit from the disappearance of bots. Mining would become much more profitable.

True, no choice. So we all go back to Frigs, as in 2003. Because Cruiser, BC, Caps prices multiplied with a factor of 40 (I assumed an average of 500k/frig) are very unlikely to be used in actual combat. See your Mineral dreams fade away.