Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Instead of mining giant static icebergs in space, the ice miners would mine comets, this will require some major changes to the Mackinaw.

Basic premise is that as a comet gets closer to the star it orbits it
starts to heat up and give off gasses, particles and other debris. As it
passes round the star the amount of energy hitting the comet would increase
and more material would be boiled off, until, on its outward bound it
passes the point where there isn’t enough energy from its parent star to
heat it up sufficiently to boil off debris.

Ice components, and by components I mean Ice products. Ice miners would not
be mining Ice, they would be collecting the boiled off components i.e.
Hydrogen Isotopes. These would be released in a sequence as the comet
rounds the star, the exact point at which each becomes available would be
dependant on such factors as the comets orbital proximity to the star,
comet size and star size. Some comets would only produce Hydrogen isotopes,
whilst others may only produce Strontium Clathrates, others would during
the relevant part of their orbit, go through the entire spectrum of
possible products. In terms of the sequence it would be easiest if
handled by atomic weight so Hydrogen, Helium, Nitrogen & Oxygen isotopes,
Heavy water, Liquid Ozone and Strontium (I’m assuming that the isotopes are
picked up as single ions not molecules here) would be given off in that
order

One advantage of this system would be, whilst most systems would have
comets, only those within certain distances of the star would produce any
product. So those systems that produce ice would be changing on a regular
basis, it could also cause interesting strategic situations when certain
products become concentrated in certain areas for a period.

In terms of how this relates to security status of the systems, High
security systems would by default have fewer comets and those would be well
known and of much lower quality, Low security would have more and their
orbits would by and large be known. Null/WH security on the other hand
would have most comets and they would have to be located/scanned down. This
would in effect be creating a new class of exploration signature. Null
sovereignty mechanics should allow for a structure to track the comets for
sov holders.

In practical terms the procedure would be that the mack would warp to the
comet and whilst following in the wake of the comet (the dusty, gaseous
tail) hoover up gasses given off by the comet by a gas harvester style
module. The amount of gas collected would be dependant on the ships
proximity to the comet and the skill of the pilot. I’m not suggesting that
new skills would be needed here as Ice harvesting would still be relevant.

However, comets are a tad more hostile than your average ice field (and I’m
not talking about gankers here) The tail of the comet contains a
significant quantity of debris and the background radiation levels would be
higher. This would create 2 (in this scenario) issues for the ship;

Firstly there would be a constant damage rate to the miner from the comet
and sun, caused by the radiation. This would be akin to sitting in a toxic
cloud. The level of damage would be dependant on the ship’s proximity to
the star, for comets producing the heaviest (Stront) material damage should
be significant.

Secondly, there will be periodic impacts on the mining ship from debris and
larger explosions from the comet itself, which at worst should be ship
threatening, the rate of these would be highest when the comet nearest the
star, but should be possible throughout the comets productive phase – this
is I suspect would be most difficult to implement from a game mechanics
point of view. It should be possible for an attentive pilot to avoid these
more dangerous impacts by flying round the fountains of debris whilst still
mining.

In effect passive tanking and going afk should be much more risky, the
background radiation damage would also kill a pod fairly fast too.

In terms of adjustments to the Mackinaw

It would have to be able to mount a BIG MWD, comets travel really fast, and
as the Mackinaw will be following the comet as its moving, effectively in
real time it will have to move very fast too.

It would need a good tank, just to be able to function.

It wouldn’t need as big a cargo bay, but that said the issue of unloading
at speed would preclude an Orca or industrials. So a balance would need to
be struck between the two.

I haven’t put any numbers to this, its just an idea and there are a lot of
variables but I can see one problem that will need to be addressed, which
is the speed of the comet/Mackinaw, if its accurate we’re talking 25+
Km/sec (Halley’s comet tops 70Km/sec for example) , not sure the
interceptor pilots would like that, obviously the ships agility is low, but
at that speed they wouldn’t be gankable, at all – by anybody.

Ice Miners would have option to ram other players and if done right, could
cause the demise of another ship and would be very satisfying to achieve,
and should generate some form of Kill mail.

At corp mining events there’s a new form of chicken to play – how close to
a comet can you get, survive and fill up? Yes it should be potentially that
risky.

It would make botting more difficult, they would no doubt adapt eventually,
but it would be more troublesome and they’ll have to move systems when a
comet stops producing.

TL;DR

Ice comes from comets, Macks chase comets, Macks screw up flying properly -
Mack blows up. Macks fly fast. Oh an NO ICE FIELDS AT ALL

sounds interesting I guess ... but



you are aware that you can WTZ on the star and land ~10k KM from it and not take any damage, right?

I have to admit I didnt read the OP. But comet mining would be quite interesting.

However



I could be wrong, but I dont think an object in Eve can randomly 'fire/shoot' something in a specific direction. it fires at a target, in whatever direction that target happens to be.
Might mean some serious coding in the core of the game's code to pull this off.....

when you warp to a planet your in orbit, so your travelling same relative speed as planet. In this case your not warping to orbit so you'll have follow the comet at speed. Remeber the comet is moving in real time through system. So it will always be moving away from the warp in point.

As to WTZ on stars -yeah I know and Yeah thats really B****y stupid, if you warp to close to a star you should fry or take damage, same way you should crash into planets if you get too close, but thats just me.

I'd Assume that all orbital bodies are static and do not actually move in each of the systems... But I can imagine the server crashing from trying to keep track of all the bergs moving thru the universe.

All for it if OP is gonna fund the extra Computing power :D