EVE General Discussion

Thanks! This is one of the few issues I can say I have a significant amount of experience with, which obviously helps a lot when it comes to discussing it.



I thought one of your complaints was that the belts were full of Skiffs? As you've noted yourself, with weaker tank you'd still see pretty much just as many skiffs, because you've done nothing to make the other barges more attractive.

Let me put it another way:
If you rebalance a Skiff around tanking ~5 T2 destroyers, between my character skills, implants etc and fitting abilities I'll have something that can tank ~7 T2 Catalysts or ~5 Thrashers and I'll still use it over a Mackinaw or a Hulk that can only tank ~3 T2 Catalysts.
If you give me that same Skiff, or a current Skiff, but put it up against a Mackinaw that brings in 10% more with the same tank they have today and I'll take my pre-Kronos Mackinaws out of mothballs.

I'm not saying that every Locust would do the same, or every other miner for that matter, but a notable increase in ISK/time from non-Skiff miners would make them a lot more attractive than simply nerfing ships, which would in turn spoon-feed content to would-be gankers like yourself, thereby making everyone happy.



Unless you've actually alarmclocked throughout the day to check that it's the same people doing this, I'm going to assume you're being overly hyperbolic here. That said, if you think that they are bots, report them as such to CCP - that will bring the attention that you want onto them from Team Security. If they don't get banned, odds are good that they're actually human players with a timer rather than bots. Personally, I've lost count of the number of times people have called me an automated program just because they assume "lots of miners working in concert == botting".

Also, for what it's worth the ice anomalies are a hell of a lot less bot-friendly than the old static icebelts used to be.



And then you'll get people just rolling their alts through a new corp every day before the previous day's wardec goes live. The only thing that would really achieve would be making it easier for veterans to prey on newbies who don't know how to do that, the odds of it affecting most locusts is pretty much nil.



Most of the people saying that are also giving him advice for how to actually go about doing that something. Any entity in EVE could at least make that miner's life harder with a Stabber with a 100mn MWD to ram the Orca and freighter. That's not a high bar to reach.

Even if that wasn't the case, locusts themselves are "only certain entities" - it's not as if every single miner can field one, so why should every single wannabe ganker be able to kill one by themselves?

After reading more of this thread, the solution seems to be a yield nerf for the tanky barges. I'm fine with that .

If certain ships can not be flown by trial accounts, then certain ships cannot be flown by pilots in NPC corps while in high-sec?

OTOH, "one man locust corps" would still be able to avoid war-decs.

Perhaps... Captains Quarters is where Elvis keeps the Blue Ponies. CCP I am sending a truckload of gerbil heads in a box. You blew it.

CCP provided the forums for a reason...

Agreed.

Mr Epeen

Again, I plugged the numbers into IPH. A maxed out Skiff with boosts mines ~126 units of ice per hour. Same for a Hulk: ~165 units of ice. That's a good 30% increase in yield. More than "a little bit more" IMO.

Rule #1 of GD, never let facts get in the way of a good whine.

Code should deal with this. Orca mining should require a special mining permit that costs 100 mill.

There's an ever-rising demand because more and more people are making alts. Which single activity in all of EVE benefits the most from having alts? Actually, probably moving capitals around. But after THAT it's mining! So yeah, I think it's fair to say that locusts like myself have a disproportionately large affect on PLEX demand.

Further, rising PLEX prices generally encourage people to buy PLEX from CCP, as they can get more ingame ISK for their RL money.

Generally, rising PLEX prices only cause problems if the demand rises so massively it not only outstrips supply but actually depletes player stockpiles, which happened back when Inferno rebalanced Faction Warfare into a massive source of ISK for many players. CCP responded to that by selling off some of their own stockpile of confiscated PLEX to keep the market afloat. That's a very different circumstance to the comparatively slow increase in price that we've seen in the last few months. Typically if CCP want to counter PLEX prices then either they can release those stockpiles (which only happens incredibly rarely) or offer a PLEX sale, which increases supply, flooding the market and bringing down the price.



Hulks mine better than Skiffs. This is not debatable. Based purely on yield alone, a Hulk fleet would bring in more ISK. And yet, we never see Hulk fleets, even among the optimisation-heavy Locusts. So, why is that? Well, what does the Skiff have that the Hulk doesn't? Partly it's the ore bay, but that's not really a major draw for a fleet that runs ISBoxer and has its own hauler. So, clearly it's the tank. Now, why do people feel that the Hulk's extra yield is less important than a Skiff's tank? Because Hulks are ludicrously vulnerable to Destroyers in general and Catalysts in particular. So much so that the significant yield difference doesn't make up for the vulnerability.

So, given that the Hulk is already better at mining than the Skiff, and yet miners are choosing Skiffs over Hulks because (and I think this is important) avoiding ganking has become more important to miners than actually mining, how would you get miners back into the Hulk? Making the Skiff slightly less good at surviving wouldn't do it, because tank is still more important than yield for miners. The only way to "fix" it is to change that somehow - either you increase the tank on the Hulk to the point that miners no longer feel it's a giant target doomed to rapid ganking, or you increase its yield enough that it outweighs the weak tank ("Sure, I'll lose it eventually, but the extra yield alone will pay for a replacement before that happens"). Or you somehow decrease the need for tank itself, by reducing the risk of losing a ship while mining - in other words, making ganking harder.



You mean like miners defend themselves by flying ships that are too tough for a solo ganker to gank?