Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The first argument I always see when new mining ships are proposed is, “How many ships do you need to shoot something that doesn’t shoot back?” Admittedly, we don’t need the 45 sub-cap ships per 4 standard Factions (not including T3 or indy) or the 3 ships per 7 pirate factions, but it would be nice to have more than 11 ships dedicated to mining. Especially since those ships are so finely broken into “roles” that you really only have 1 or 2 feasible ship per “role”.

Modules

The first step in diversifying mining ships within the game is to fix an issue that has existed since the beginning of Eve. Mining lasers are the only module in the game that give you partial benefit from partial cycles. You can’t stop an arty mid cycle and expect to do partial damage. If you want less damage and faster cycles you switch to autocannons. The same should be true with mining lasers.

Mining Lasers should be designed as close range, short cycle, small yield lasers. They would be ideal for cleaning up remnants in belts or ninja mining in low or null sec. The T2 version of this laser should also be redesigned to match that of the Strip Miner. This will detrimental to Alphas, who would not have access to crystals and would therefore not benefit from T2 Mining Lasers.

Strip Miners should be designed as long range, long cycle, large yield lasers. They would be ideal for clearing larger asteroids. These should also require turret slots so that the ships that use them can have utility highs. The skill requirement for these would also have to be adjusted such that they match what a Mining Laser requires.

Mining Drones should be more like combat drones. They should mine less than the main “weapon” groups, but should automatically mine as long as there are targets. In addition, they should be targeted by belt rats just as combat drones are targeted by mission and anomaly rats.

Ships

Now that we have three distinct “weapon” groups, we can diversify the existing roles to accommodate them.

Ships that specialize in the use of Mining Lasers would have bonuses to cycle time and would have more turret slots. This would make a ship that can still get high, efficient yield while mining smaller asteroids.

Ships that specialize in the use of Strip Miners would have bonuses to yield and keep their limited slots.

Ships that specialize in the use of Mining Drones would have bonuses to drone yield and speed, but would sacrifice most if not all of their high slots.

Each role would follow the typical stat/bonus distribution of the current exhumer setup.

Boosting

To me, boosting has never made much sense in the mining world. Before the removal of OffGB, it required you to carry an alt just to fill the role and make you competitive. With the introduction of OnGB, it now does not scale well with large corp ops in HS, now requiring a separate Orca in each belt. Rather than make boosting a special case for miners again, I would rather see the removal of boosting and the increase in yield of all mining ships as a flat bonus.

The faster cycle time of the mining lasers would have made Mining Equipment Preservation Charges useful, but that bonus could be added to the ships themselves.

Orca

The Orca always came across to me as a catchall ship. At this point it has so many roles that it can’t be too good at any one or risk becoming over powered. Based on the previous comments in this post I would remove boosting and drone mining and instead turn the Orca into a specialized ore hauler. It would keep all the hangers it already has.

Balance

Balance is important to make sure that each ship has a purpose and would be used.

To make Strip Miners more useful than Mining Lasers, Strip Mining ships would generally have a higher yield than Mining Laser ships. This means that where full Strip Miner Cycles are typical, they would generate more yield, but where partial cycles are more typical, they would be less efficient and therefore the Mining Laser ships would have higher effective yield.

Since Mining Drones would have automatic targeting, they need to have some drawbacks. The first major one would be making them prime targets for belt rats. The next would be a slightly lower yield than Mining Lasers (Not as big of a difference as a current Orca vs. a boosted Exhumer). And the last would be the cargo hold reduction, instead of having the Orca with a 50k m3 Ore Bay it would utilize new hulls that are in line with the holds of existing mining ships. And if someone wanted to truly be AFK, they would have to sacrifice 20% of their yield to keep a combat drone active to protect their mining drones.

Conclusion

These changes would allow for 27 ships by my count, not all of the ships would have three variations. This would allow for more diverse fleets, with each role having options for sub-roles and allow for different play styles to have different options without dramatically reducing their effectiveness.

Lost me at taking t2 lasers away from alphas.

Things are only to be added on to alphas, not taken away unless they're replaced by something if equal or greater value.

But I am also adding strip miners and a new hull for them. And if CCP switches some skill points around so Alphas get a level or two of mining drones, it adds another hull.

One complaint I see from Alphas is they only get access to 1 hull.

The mining profession has problems, but lack of ship diversity isn't one of them.

Pretty much as others have said, we could do something to make mining more interesting, but more ships or even modules are not what is needed imo.

Ore anomalies instead of 100% static belts could be a start, moving roids another one, or a optional thingy to do while mining, quite a bunch of ideas have been thrown in this forum over the years but none have been found practical and doable yet.

For the ideas here, more lasers or drones to shoot at the same exact roids will not help make the activity more challenging or fun.

hmm i can add nothing more to this topic that is sensible, all the sensible stuff has been pretty much said already.

Clean up?
Why?
Fire your fecking laser and turn it off to pop a rock.....
damn shiptoasting trolly ..............(continues to grumble whilst walking away)

Negative. F2P players are getting their money's worth with what they've got, and will continue to do so if some things are taken away. I'm sure CCP is smart enough to not add more capabilities to F2P, because each step in that direction makes it easier to drop your sub and go F2P.