Player Features and Ideas Discussion

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6865682#post6865682


Exploration, mining, tackle and salvaging. These are the culmination of what an alpha newbro can actually do in null to help their corp or alliance. Some of these, like exploration and salvaging, can be very lucrative for alphas and require the least amount of skills for the payout. Others, like mining, though low skilled for entry do not actually offer any real incentive for an alpha while at the same time actually helping the corp or alliance on any significant level. Gas being the primary income source and some very low level non-solo ore mining is the best you will get in this area. Unless you live in a region with spawning gas sites your only other option is to wormhole spelunk which does nothing for local ADM levels or really supports anything but the wallet of the person running them. Tackle itself does nothing on the ADM front but is helpful in other ways.

Proposal: A method for actual newbros to use mining abilities with the venture to actually help out a corp or alliance before they get into a barge. Risk and isk must be commiserate with payout and help the ADM.

The reasoning is that solo mining anything useful, read profitable, has inherent risks associated with it that are way out of an actual alphas grasp skill set wise in null. Both high and low do not offer the same risks from NPCs and environment and though they have a lower reward there needs to be an option available to alphas from creation to help with corp/alliance functions or ADM measures while not being too lucrative or taking away from actual omega resource gathering. The primary functioning being to help on some level and be “productive” on a top down corp/alliance level.

Because of this NPC responses must be in line more with low sec than actual null sec spawn rates. Gated acceleration deadspace pockets are doable but denial of ship types must only be limited to barges or other larger resource gatherers and not pvp ships. Yet it has its drawbacks. Dscan spamming of short, dual or more warps needed and therefore much greater chance of escape are exponentially greater.
Rewards must be useful to player, corp and alliance yet not great due to the lesser inherent risks involved beyond living in a null sec region.

The last question is on type of resource gathering that is possible. Gas, ore, ice, moon goo. The idea of creating a new product type is useless and doesnt add any practical use of time. Though ore and ice help to add this to ventures for null sec would mean it must be added for other areas of space as well and would create too much imbalance beyond what it already is. This leaves gas or moon goo as an actual harvestable resource. Gas being the most viable until CCPs plans for moon goo are revealed with the new drilling platforms.

Most of the reward must be in ADM measures rather than raw isk, a solo option must exist much like exploration and the ADM measures must be exponentially declining. Enough to matter but never great. Isk rewards must be in line to low level solo high sec activities or be corp/alliance level resources that though are worth isk cannot be gathered in significant quantities to make this be a viable playstyle forever.

Alphas can fly cruisers that can clear belts of npc's (null rats aren't THAT tough). They can solo mine to their hearts content.

Why fixate on 'solo' alphas when the alphas you're talking about are clearly in some sort of corp/alliance if you're talking about them helping out. Why aren't their buddies providing support for their activities?

Alphas can dive wormholes for gas with ventures, or they can go hacking with their racial T1 exploration frigates. Both are pretty good ISK for risk.

With a gnosis, they can kill most null rats just fine. It also has a nice align time in case something they can't handle shows up.

Yes they are, yet neither of these will help their corp or alliance in any meaningful way within their own space. I know that CCP has said they wished to add hacking and exploration to the ADM yet I do not believe it has been implemented yet. Most explorers also generally travel far and wide outside of corp or alliance space to find sites. All of these sites done, regardless of where, would not add to a corp or alliance activity level.


So in the end though isk is decent, which isnt the point Im trying to make anyway, I am advocating for more activities for pure alphas in the corp/alliance welfare and development department where an alpha, as a pure miner, can truly add value from the beginning to a corp or alliance and to keep this chain going from character creation up to the top echelons along the mining/industrial profession. Atm it isnt the isk nor doing something "else" for the corp instead. Its why should you have to do something "else" than your chosen profession?


As for solo mining in a venture trust me I have done so in stain a few years ago just to see with a maxed miner character. So stop saying you CAN solo mine. Ive been mining in this game since 03. Ive done most other things but by nature I AM a miner. So Im not talking out my butt here. There is simply no progression for null activities that benefit. I, or others, either have to supply and organize ops constantly and if we do not there isnt much for an alpha to do other than... "something else". This to me seems wrong in order to build the comradery and support to even recruit pure miners. Smaller corps and even alliances recruiting purely in these areas are forced to tell members what? Go do something else?

Not at all Nat. Its not mandatory but I do understand the sentiment of **** CEOs. The idea of high taxes, or buying stuff at 50% Jita prices or even podding players back to a null system to keep them trapped is one of those things Eve has in spades. What this needs to consist of is that even newbro miners CAN be useful along the entire skill tree from day one of their training plans to not only their own wallets but also their corps and alliances for the profession they choose to engage in.

People need to knwo they are valuable moreso than simply do whatever we say to do and if we have nothing for you to do and you dont have the skills to do other things then "wait" or "log out" and play something else. This isnt a design paradigm that CCP needs. I learned early on that often the ONLY answer to things in game was simply to log off and do anything else. If they dont have alts, secondary characters, etc, this is the only option if there is nothing left for them to do. Eventually we all must learn to play solo in this game even if we are a social animal. Everyone else is ratting, no CTAs... what to do? Log off needs to NOT be the answer here. Especially for new players. Its bad enough for high sec denizens being told to log off until the war dec is over, or the entire blue ball culture of ALL areas of space. Its not good to NOT give people options that still help both themselves AND the corp or alliance that got them there.

To limit your reply to simply that someone will force them too. Well thats naive in thinking. To log off and or have nothing else to do until you train skills isnt the answer.


Beyond that I think the proposal for moon mining is a solid one to bridge the gap, as long as the ADM is the primary factor influenced and isk is secondary with the requisite risk/reward applied.

It's like people forget that raising ADM is in effect a "team" effort and mining only 10k m3 help to the value of 10k m3. It's not like there is a bar alpha can't reach where your contribution start to matter.

Hell if you team up with the bittervet in a rorqual, you can even the alliance benefit from more ADM by mining the large Spod roids while the rorq concentrate on all the smaller rocks making the alpha mine just as many m3 since the size of the rocks does not affect him while the rorq get more m3 for the ADM since his drone aren't slowboating so much.

There is no reason to give alpha a specific job when they can already work for the team.