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Mining- Why it needs to be saved, and how to do it

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Kuroi Aurgnet
Cry Of Death
Almost Underdogs
#161 - 2012-02-09 23:08:46 UTC
I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, especially after running into an army of bots the other night. One can only imagine the frusteration at eeing an army of 8 etrievers with the same name, marked differently only by a number, all flying through the areas you predominately mine. I actually have a screenshot of it saved somewhere, if only fot the marvel.

The problem is there is no way to stop bots. Realistically speaking, there is someone in the world who would have the intelligence to circumvent any counter-measure you could put in place. I was recently thinking that the eve servers shoud have a program to help them skim out bots, and since it would be a serverside program, it would be harder to circumvent. But in the end, someone can and will go around it.

However, I do believe the "more non static belts" idea is a great one. Gravimetric sites are too few and too far between outside of wormhole space (and ores in wormholes suck because they are all standard variants, you might as well find a secluded nulsec system and mine there.) the problem with THAT though is then everyone would have to train for exploration to mine. Simply using the onboard scanner for belts would be EASILY bot-able. The mixed ores idea is cool, but that would eliminate all of the processing skills for the specific ores, and make mining crystals useless, which would REALLY annoy a lot of hardcore miners.

yeah, this entire post was unnecessary, just pointing out some flaws. Even the wardecing idea is flawed because real botters stay in NPC corps. the only ways to stop bots would effectively ruin the mining profession and/or tick of a huge amount of players. Theoretically speaking, you could have something required in order to warp to a mining belt, such as those stupid anti-spam bot things you see in websites nowadays, where you have to type in some obscured letters. But who would want to do that?

In the end, I think the best idea is the non-static belts, because it would the most effective thing without inconveniencing too many players. Plus, i believe everyone should know how to use probes anyhow. And hey, added bonus, it would increase the market for probing items. maybe sell special probes for something like this. bring in a new market and fight bots. who knows?

Just that hint of cynicism the world needs now and then.
Issler Dainze
Tadakastu-Obata Corporation
The Honda Accord
#162 - 2012-02-09 23:28:17 UTC
I'm running for the CSM 7 and my major focus will be to get CCP to revamp mining in Eve. I am forming a council to help develop ideas to bring to CCP about how mining could be improved. Would the OP be interested in being part of the council to develop our ideas to bring to CCP?

The CSM 7 thread

Just post in the thread if you would be interested in joining us to create our mining proposal to CCP,

Thanks for taking the time to post so good thoughts about mining!

Issler
Hecatonis
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#163 - 2012-02-10 01:25:09 UTC
i dont know if this has been said yet, i was just skimming over the post after the first 5 pages, but a lot of people are saying that bots will know because they read the client data instead of visual.

the easy thing to do, i am no programer so i dont know how easy this is, is to not tell you what level of ore you are getting, just send the client you have "X amount of veld" let the server handle the info about how good it is. its already doing all the work anyways.

the hard part would be masking the client side info about the good roids. you client will need to know what to display and therefore will need to know what ID is a good roid, but you need to hide that information from everything other then the client.

love the idea, and would love to see it in game.
Paragon Renegade
Sebiestor Tribe
#164 - 2012-02-10 01:43:34 UTC
I LOVE EVERYTHING HERE

The pie is a tautology
Lord Sheer
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#165 - 2012-02-10 02:03:11 UTC
I completly agree with this! Mining as a profession or way of life in EVE is rubbish, and is far less profitable than ratting or running plex's. Given how vulnerable mining ships are to pirates, there should be a trade of in the amount of ism miners can make compared with ratters.
I remember when Zydrine was 3000 isk a pop, and Mega was 4000. Back then it was worth the risk to fly a hulk in 0.0 for the rewards but those days are long gone. I would live to see some serious attention paid to changing minin and making it both more rewarding and more fun.

Here's my idea - change the distribution of mnerals which you get from ore. Low end ores should refine for much less minerals. High end ores, rather than only giving rare minerals like mega and zyd should also give large amounts of the basic minerals. This way botters can still bot in empire (coz let's face it, CCP has long given up on stopping botting) but real players in 0.0 can enjoy much more substantial rewards for their efforts.
That said, any changes at all which mining either more fun or more profitable for real players gets my vote!
Sasha Azala
Doomheim
#166 - 2012-02-10 02:08:58 UTC
Lord Sheer wrote:
I completly agree with this! Mining as a profession or way of life in EVE is rubbish, and is far less profitable than ratting or running plex's. Given how vulnerable mining ships are to pirates, there should be a trade of in the amount of ism miners can make compared with ratters.
I remember when Zydrine was 3000 isk a pop, and Mega was 4000. Back then it was worth the risk to fly a hulk in 0.0 for the rewards but those days are long gone. I would live to see some serious attention paid to changing minin and making it both more rewarding and more fun.

Here's my idea - change the distribution of mnerals which you get from ore. Low end ores should refine for much less minerals. High end ores, rather than only giving rare minerals like mega and zyd should also give large amounts of the basic minerals. This way botters can still bot in empire (coz let's face it, CCP has long given up on stopping botting) but real players in 0.0 can enjoy much more substantial rewards for their efforts.
That said, any changes at all which mining either more fun or more profitable for real players gets my vote!



So you want to make high-sec mining even more boring (less profitable) and give more profit to the 0.0 mining bots?
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#167 - 2012-02-10 11:31:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Indahmawar Fazmarai
As I already stated elsewhere, the problem with "slag ore" is that it can be hacked through by brute force.

Bots can simply sweep with everything if needed. Send in 9 Hulks, mine all asteroids and get 100% of the ore wherever it is hidden. Then onto next belt.

A solution would be that "bad" asteroids broke your ship. Let's say that stubbornly mining slag asteroids damages your strip miner. Looks like a good fix... but then the bots would learn to check the health bar of strip miners. Actually, bots would learn to test the asteroids by firing the miner for 5 seconds and see wether it took a health hit.

As things are, with mechanics based upon "go there, do that", as long as a bot can find the ore, will mine it one way or another, by being smart or by brute force.

So far the only mechanic that it's beyond bots it's exploration. And probably a "exploration bot" would be so difficult to code that mining boters would move into mission botting. But then, how about a noob? Should the noobs master the hardest mechanic ingame, just to carry out the less appealing task ingame?

If the bot can't find the ore, won't mine it. Now it's all about making sure that a noob who just logged in can find that ore too... maybe with a new mechanic altogether.

Think outside of the box, shall we? Question
Anshio Tamark
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#168 - 2012-02-10 14:44:08 UTC
Before I read this, I actually thought "Oh great, another moron who wants to make stupid changes to mining. It already works better than what they can suggest." And now, you've managed to (in one well-written post, no less) turn my opinions completely in the other direction.

And it would also make sense, if CCP wants EVE to be a space-simulator, rather than just a dull MMO. Things that have a higher density will usually spin a bit faster due to the thing called "momentum", and thus, the valuable roids will be spinning faster than the worthless ones.

Another note is this: In real life, all the resources in the world are not spread equally over a given area. So why should the ore in asteroid belts in a simulator-game? Easy, they shouldn't. The ores should be placed in clusters where some of the ore is more dense than other places. There should still be a bit of ore in the low-density rocks, but only trace amounts would be needed to make sure the roids would be there.

The only thing I don't really like about your suggestion would be the "ultra-high-density Tritanium". Maybe it's just me, but 100mil Tritanium in 10m3 may be a bit excessive (unless it's only found in 0.0 or W-Space, thus adding incentive to go mine there). But having several variants of it with varying densities and amounts of Tritanium (the lowest high-density type) being the equivalent of a Metal Scrap or two) could work, with their densities increasing as security level decreases... And just as a suggestion: Maybe adding similar types for the other minerals could work? Finding a chunk of high-density Megacyte would only be possible in null-sec, but it would still be a boost of income, even if it's only 10 Megacyte in 0.01m3 (that's still a compression-rate of 10:1).

All in all, I'm up for this idea. I don't really see the point in bot-mining either. It's like sitting in the station all day, only griefing other industrialists at the same time by ruining the market for high-sec minerals. Whenever I see a bot-miner, I honestly pray that someone will come along and blow up their ship and pod. They don't notice what happens to them anyway.
Mors Sanctitatis
Death of Virtue
#169 - 2012-02-11 05:30:26 UTC
Issler Dainze wrote:
I'm running for the CSM 7 and my major focus will be to get CCP to revamp mining in Eve. I am forming a council to help develop ideas to bring to CCP about how mining could be improved. Would the OP be interested in being part of the council to develop our ideas to bring to CCP?

The CSM 7 thread

Just post in the thread if you would be interested in joining us to create our mining proposal to CCP,

Thanks for taking the time to post so good thoughts about mining!

Issler


From a CSM standpoint, I'm not Pro-Miner or Pro-PVPer etc., simply Pro-"Excellent gameplay".

Unfortunately, the majority of your platform beyond the mining issues is planted firmly in the "carebear" agenda which I am vehemently opposed to. So, while it would be beneficial to improve mining, the opportunity cost of having the CSM poisoned with carebear influence is too much of a risk to support your bid for CSM just to get mining fixed.

Intelligence shouldn't be free.   Mining, reloaded.   ADDICTED.

Mors Sanctitatis
Death of Virtue
#170 - 2012-02-11 05:32:31 UTC
Anshio Tamark wrote:
Before I read this, I actually thought "Oh great, another moron who wants to make stupid changes to mining. It already works better than what they can suggest." And now, you've managed to (in one well-written post, no less) turn my opinions completely in the other direction.

And it would also make sense, if CCP wants EVE to be a space-simulator, rather than just a dull MMO. Things that have a higher density will usually spin a bit faster due to the thing called "momentum", and thus, the valuable roids will be spinning faster than the worthless ones.

Another note is this: In real life, all the resources in the world are not spread equally over a given area. So why should the ore in asteroid belts in a simulator-game? Easy, they shouldn't. The ores should be placed in clusters where some of the ore is more dense than other places. There should still be a bit of ore in the low-density rocks, but only trace amounts would be needed to make sure the roids would be there.

The only thing I don't really like about your suggestion would be the "ultra-high-density Tritanium". Maybe it's just me, but 100mil Tritanium in 10m3 may be a bit excessive (unless it's only found in 0.0 or W-Space, thus adding incentive to go mine there). But having several variants of it with varying densities and amounts of Tritanium (the lowest high-density type) being the equivalent of a Metal Scrap or two) could work, with their densities increasing as security level decreases... And just as a suggestion: Maybe adding similar types for the other minerals could work? Finding a chunk of high-density Megacyte would only be possible in null-sec, but it would still be a boost of income, even if it's only 10 Megacyte in 0.01m3 (that's still a compression-rate of 10:1).

All in all, I'm up for this idea. I don't really see the point in bot-mining either. It's like sitting in the station all day, only griefing other industrialists at the same time by ruining the market for high-sec minerals. Whenever I see a bot-miner, I honestly pray that someone will come along and blow up their ship and pod. They don't notice what happens to them anyway.


Re: high density Trit- I'm just throwing out numbers. All numbers can be massaged to dial in the perfect balance. Focus less on the hard numbers and more on the general mechanics. Blink

Intelligence shouldn't be free.   Mining, reloaded.   ADDICTED.

Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#171 - 2012-02-11 06:58:52 UTC
I like the idea about making mining more random. As long as the space the stuff takes up is the same, I'd say it's a damned good idea. Bots have no qualms with mining boring or interesting. All they care about is the net gain over time. So making random drops in mining will not serve to assist bots in any way, but it will draw more players to the profession.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Loda Dira
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#172 - 2012-02-11 10:49:59 UTC
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:

A solution would be that "bad" asteroids broke your ship. Let's say that stubbornly mining slag asteroids damages your strip miner. Looks like a good fix... but then the bots would learn to check the health bar of strip miners. Actually, bots would learn to test the asteroids by firing the miner for 5 seconds and see wether it took a health hit.


Another idead - no clue wether technical possible or not:

Move mining/asteroids into transversable celestial objects which have specific and dynamical changing environmental rules in them


  • which forster active mining by increasing reward when paying attention
  • require some form of scanning to maneuver through and find higher reward
  • have a probability to damage/destroy ships unless prepared to deal with dangers


Perhaps some sort of "dust cloud" with zones of high activity/vvelocity and zones of tranquility.

Through scanning those zones can be found and warped to.

Inside zones of tranquility a ship is safe. Inside zones of activity a ship is going to be damaged and might end up destroyed and if the player doesn't warp the pod out fast enough needs a new clone.

Zones of tranquility can be stabilized either by a bubble module orcas/rorquals can equip or by anchorable devices that need fuel.
Cailais
The Red Pill Taker Group
#173 - 2012-02-11 11:11:53 UTC
My suggestion would focus on the individual asteroid. Each asteroid would have an ore 'vein' running around it - a sweet spot (not unlike that shown in PI) which the mining player has to guide the path of the mining beam along.

It might be possible to include in this concept higher rotational speed asteroids (naturally harder to keep the mining beam path 'on track') with more valuable seems of ore vs slower 'roids, wider ore seems and so forth.

Colourising the asteroids ore seam would give a clear indication for the human player where to guide the path of their mining lasers (managing several such paths might even become a skill in itself) whilst leaving the hapless bot unable to follow the optimum path.

To prevent bots from simply aiming at one specific point on the roid and waiting for its naturally spin to hit the target point as the roid orbits I would include the idea of 'flow rate': in simple terms the miner needs to maintain the mining lasers path along the ore seem for a given period of time to achieve any result.

C.
Mocam
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#174 - 2012-02-11 13:50:50 UTC
EVE tends to be about trade-offs. Fitting for tasks, etc. If you fit poorly, you find you have problems doing things.

Fit for heavy damage, you give up stuff - fit for heavy tan, you give up stuff, etc.

As you gain SP, you can fit more and better equipment, it becomes easier to fit the ship more powerfully but the trade-offs never really go away.

Miners avoid trade-offs. They don't fit tank, fitting only for cargo and enhanced mining abilities and this lack of fitting decently tends to make them victims.

No - I'm not putting it all on the miners but I do put a hell of a lot of it on them. Mining ships, in war areas - which is pretty much *ALL* of EVE - should fit tank, giving up some of the POTENTIAL capacity/ability to mine for the extra protection -- or bring friends so you HAVE protection there.

This game provides virtually no reason for doing this and slim abilities to fit protection on the lesser mining-specific function ships (barges & exhumers).

A long time back, about 2 or so years ago, I suggested a different approach to what you have. As a miner mines more, it causes more and more rats to spawn in the belt. More miners - more rats. The rats go for the mining ships.

As such, the ships will be beat on harder and harder as they pull more and more ore.

Now if rats spawn due to mining - tougher rats, etc... Then what you have is those who want to kill those rats, also want miners around - enough of them to keep a steady supply of rats to hunt.

As such, you add challenge to the task of mining WITHOUT changing it. Someone who wishes to AFK mine a bit, can still do so but they would have to scale-back what they COULD mine due to the potential of too many rats spawning and blowing up their ship.

"over mining" would slow and combat ships would pretty much be needed with a large group of mining ships around because "all out", a batch of hulks would cause too many rats to show -- enough to kill an orca.


The above wouldn't give you your "bonus ores!" but it would make mining a risk profession that would require trade-offs to accomplish. Griefers... Hell, 4 guys in hulks pull in next to you and start mining furiously - then warp off!!! :-p

Seriously though - it would change how folks mine - without ... changing how they actually mine.

The only changes I'd recommend would be to enabling the ships to fit some better tank. Not much but at least enable things like a retriever to get some decent tank while outperforming a cruiser for mining.
Mors Sanctitatis
Death of Virtue
#175 - 2012-02-11 19:59:28 UTC
Mocam wrote:
EVE tends to be about trade-offs. Fitting for tasks, etc. If you fit poorly, you find you have problems doing things.

Fit for heavy damage, you give up stuff - fit for heavy tan, you give up stuff, etc.

As you gain SP, you can fit more and better equipment, it becomes easier to fit the ship more powerfully but the trade-offs never really go away.

Miners avoid trade-offs. They don't fit tank, fitting only for cargo and enhanced mining abilities and this lack of fitting decently tends to make them victims.

No - I'm not putting it all on the miners but I do put a hell of a lot of it on them. Mining ships, in war areas - which is pretty much *ALL* of EVE - should fit tank, giving up some of the POTENTIAL capacity/ability to mine for the extra protection -- or bring friends so you HAVE protection there.

This game provides virtually no reason for doing this and slim abilities to fit protection on the lesser mining-specific function ships (barges & exhumers).

A long time back, about 2 or so years ago, I suggested a different approach to what you have. As a miner mines more, it causes more and more rats to spawn in the belt. More miners - more rats. The rats go for the mining ships.

As such, the ships will be beat on harder and harder as they pull more and more ore.

Now if rats spawn due to mining - tougher rats, etc... Then what you have is those who want to kill those rats, also want miners around - enough of them to keep a steady supply of rats to hunt.

As such, you add challenge to the task of mining WITHOUT changing it. Someone who wishes to AFK mine a bit, can still do so but they would have to scale-back what they COULD mine due to the potential of too many rats spawning and blowing up their ship.

"over mining" would slow and combat ships would pretty much be needed with a large group of mining ships around because "all out", a batch of hulks would cause too many rats to show -- enough to kill an orca.


The above wouldn't give you your "bonus ores!" but it would make mining a risk profession that would require trade-offs to accomplish. Griefers... Hell, 4 guys in hulks pull in next to you and start mining furiously - then warp off!!! :-p

Seriously though - it would change how folks mine - without ... changing how they actually mine.

The only changes I'd recommend would be to enabling the ships to fit some better tank. Not much but at least enable things like a retriever to get some decent tank while outperforming a cruiser for mining.



Great input- I like it!

Intelligence shouldn't be free.   Mining, reloaded.   ADDICTED.

Amaroq Dricaldari
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#176 - 2012-02-11 20:32:59 UTC
Kuroi Aurgnet wrote:
The mixed ores idea is cool, but that would eliminate all of the processing skills for the specific ores, and make mining crystals useless, which would REALLY annoy a lot of hardcore miners.

The Mixed Asteroids wouldn't give you a 'Mixed' Ore, but instead give you multiple different types of ore. Depending on your Mining Crystal, how much you get of a certain type of ore should change.

This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#177 - 2012-02-14 14:39:51 UTC
OK, just figured a way to use the "good ore/bad ore" as a way to stop bots... let's say that hitting the wrong asteroid means that the specific module can't be used for a set amount of time (like, 15 minutes). That would make time-costly to hit wrong asteroids, whereas noobs still could learn soon to "shoot the shiny rocks".

Anyway I wonder wether bots could just hack the client memory to read whatever made "good asteroids" different from the "bad ones" (FAI, object X calling a different texture would mean that object X is the one to mine)... Question
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#178 - 2012-02-14 15:34:17 UTC
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:

Anyway I wonder wether bots could just hack the client memory to read whatever made "good asteroids" different from the "bad ones" (FAI, object X calling a different texture would mean that object X is the one to mine)... Question


Short answer - yes.

Making resource gathering more tedious/difficult just means that it's even more likely to be botted.
Miss Whippy
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#179 - 2012-02-14 16:33:01 UTC
I like this idea, I think it should go further with the random rares finds though. Maybe uncover some old artifacts and the like too?

Anyway, I also think a way needs to be found to give miners way of defending themselves in low-sec. It's soo easily vunerable to ninja kill miners, and not all the forces of EvE can stop such an attack in low-sec. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how you could do this, but the pew pew dynamic of Low-sec is so dull and stale now. We need something to spruce it up.

[URL="https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=82348"]UI Iteration isn't enough, we need to start from scratch[/URL]
Rhydic Ujbikist
Spacegoat Enterprises
#180 - 2012-02-14 18:01:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Rhydic Ujbikist
half of this idea was suggested earlier in this thread, but i want to add onto it

asteroids could vary in size and the amount of layers; a scanner could be introduced to show the depth and amount of layers of an asteroid

outer layers are, essentially, the worthless loose garbage on the top that hardly has any ore, and have no chance of having any high-density ores; could possibly have some chance to have metal scraps on them in high-combat belts? another module could be added that is basically a weak, wider tractor beam to suction up all the loose rock off the outer layer and collect the metal scraps

the middle layers have more valuable ore and the ore could be sporadically set throughout the layer, and have a very low chance of getting lower-end valuable high-density alloys

the inner layers would have higher concentrations of higher-end versions of the ore, and have a low chance to have a super-dense alloy

the way this could work is to get rid of asteroid rotation or create a function to orbit an asteroid at the exact speed it's rotating and allow the miners to choose the exact spot on the asteroid where mining lasers are activated

that way, you could actually tunnel straight into an asteroid to extract the minerals from the core and middle layers of the asteroid, which is supposedly what current lasers are doing

textures would obviously have to be redone as the ever-shifting shape of asteroids would make the current function of textures obsolete. the color of the asteroid could optionally change with depth, which would make it more visually interesting and help with immediate identification of how mined an asteroid is; every day at downtime existing layers could be improved in their mineral density and/or new layers could be added

this, implemented with the other things, would make it incredibly hard for bots to function at all, let alone effectively, since the size, shape, density, and layer count of asteroids would be very diverse