Proposal for Revision of Mining in EVE

[Alistair]

Proposal for Revision of Mining in EVE Online:

Step 1. Revision of Asteroid Distribution:

--All Low-Tier (Veldspar, Scordite, ec.) Asteroids are distributed Universally (all space, high-sec, low-sec, 0.0) and in Static, Permanent Asteroid Belts.

These permanent re-spawning belts have a small chance to spawn a rare higher-tier Asteroid or two at each Belt Re-Spawn.

--All Mid-to-Higher-Tier Asteroids are distributed in Exploration Site Locations Only. These must be scanned down as with other exploration sites, and each location will contain only a few asteroids (1-10), and (usually) no Faction rats.

These Exploration Asteroid Clusters only appear in certain locations of space, as determined by CCP. Some Ores in some 0.0, Some Ices in some 0.0, some Ores only in Low-Sec and some Ices only in Low-Sec. This uneven distribution is designed to create trade, scarcity and opportunity. Not all minerals or ices should be in abundance everywhere.

Step 2: The Mining Process:

--Currently, Mining is as simple as “look at overview, get in range, fire zee Miners, rinse and repeat”.

--Under the Revision, All Asteroids on the overview lose their type descriptions. All asteroids must be scanned to determine what ores they contain and in what quantities, and their location on the asteroid. Some asteroids will contain nothing of value. Most will contain a single ore-type. Some will contain multiple ore types.

--Miner will scan the road till they find one they wish to work on. Once that is done, (and the results pop up), they can activate their mining modules/drones on the results.

--Every 10-15 cycles, the asteroid must be re-scanned and the miners re-targeted and re-activated. Failure to re-scan will result in a lower yield, or worthless space rock (random chance of either).

Step 3: The Rare Events Table (Pop-Ups/Action Events):

--Implement a “Rare Events Table” of events that can occur while mining, that require or promote human reaction. For example:

Pressure Pocket Rupture – You’ve ruptured a volatile and unstable gas pocket. You have 60 seconds to withdraw to a safe distance. After 60 second, an AOE Damage Explosion occurs (destroying the asteroid that was being mined) that damages all ships within 20km. In place of the destroyed asteroid is a very small amount of ultra-rare-elements (to be implemented) that serve some industrial/manufacturing purpose.

Hidden Ore Uncovered – While Mining, you’ve uncovered a hidden pocket of improved Ore/Ice your scanner could not detect. Gives the option o re-target the better Ore-type or Ice if acted upon within 60 seconds. Failure to act results in the ore being lost to cave in, crushing or mining unit damage.

Valuable Gas Pocket – You’ve uncovered a pocket of rare and valuable gas (i.e. Wormhole gasses). If you have a Gas Harvester on your Ship, you can Harvest these gasses by re-targeting them. Failure to do so within 60 seconds means the gas escapes and the opportunity is missed.

Asteroid Depletion -- Apparently your scanner was wrong, and the amount of Ore less than thought. The Asteroid is depleted early.

Hidden Cache – You’ve uncovered a hidden cache of supplies buried within the Asteroid. Gives the opportunity to loot the cache for 60 seconds. Failure to do so and the asteroid collapses on the cache, destroying it. Cache can contain any kind of module, salvage or other loot as determined by that systems Security-Level. Lower value in high-sec, higher in 0.0.

Hidden Database – You’ve uncovered a hidden Faction Database. This remote database storage link unit contains the location of an Expedition, or Faction Rat Location (security level appropriate) and provides you a bookmark for its location nearby (1-5 systems away). Failure to react within 60 seconds causes the database unit to be damaged beyond repair by your mining units.

Both the Hidden Cache and the Hidden Database would be the “ultra-rare” rare events, and could contain some special miner-specific stuff. Specifically, Faction Mining Gear (to be implemented, the miners equivalent to Faction Rat Belt Spawns) all the way up to ultra-rare Faction Mining Vessel BPC’s (Frigates, Cruisers, Battleships-equivalent Mining Hulls for Each Faction, lots of opportunity for rareity and cool new hull designs).

The Key to the Entire System/Proposal:

Mining needs to be made less (or preferably NON) bot-friendly. The ideas above would add a lot of activity and variety to the mining profession, which helps.

But to make sure bots would have some trouble, I propose two things:

First, a method of informing the player of the event would need to be generated that the player could see visually, but that would NOT be logged anywhere the bot could read it. I.e. a pop-up message on the screen, but no logging of the message anywhere clientside.

Second, the message would need to be slightly (and randomly) garbled, but only VERY slightly. So players could easily read the pop-up message, but the random replacement of just a few random letters in the message would make bot-reading of the message much harder.

This combination should make it far more difficult for bots to know an event has taken place. The bot would have to be able to “see” the pop-up on the screen and be able to understand it even with random garbling of the message, and still be able to react. If nothing else, it would create (IMO) a lot more work for the bot programmer to make it work.

With that said, I am not a software guy, and I don’t know if the above is possible or would slow down the bots.

But I think the entire proposal would make mining a more interactive, enjoyable and even valuable profession for PvE players to choose. And hopefully, the nature of the new system would make botting it harder, opening up more opportunity for players to enjoy the content without the competition form non-player bot accounts.

[Wrack]

Captchas: No.

[Alistair]

Captchas: No.

It's not a captcha.

Same principle, but completely different implementation.

There is no requirement for a player to do anything for the majority of pop-ups. No typing entry of any kind. Only the AOE Gas Explo. even requires movement.

What it is is making the mining process more ineractive, less static. Not "mine this roid with one clock for an hour", but "mine, scan, mine, scan, mine, scan" to get best yield. One could just mine, but their yield would eventually suck due to lack of action.

The rare events add the same kind of "take advantage of it" type events Belt Rats, and some Exploration Content offers, of occasional, rare, events that could be profitable if taken advantage of (with a few risky or negative events).

Captcha, the entering of a random blob of text to match a random blob of text, is a horrible mechanic.

This is designed to be in-character, interactive, and varied. More driven by player action (with inaction or bot-like repetition having a penalty), and to provide miners more reason to mine by giving them events to take advantage of.

It almost means the better stuff all has to be probed down, not just "warp to static pre-existign belt, mine, load, haul, repeat", a very easily botable mechanic.

[Alain Colcer]

I like it, specially the "random" pockets and findings. Althought the hidden cache and databases belong more in the exploration/archeology field so not sure about those.

Four small additions:

1) Instead of increasing the "volume" when mining, skills, ships, equipment and ganglinks should only reduce the cycle (ie: faster mining instead of larger bulks). This would also make the even triggers more often.

2) Separate Mining and Deep Core Mining into two specific techniques. Regular mining uses normal lasers and basic skills (mining turret, regular strip miner, and modulated versions of each, with tech1 and tech2 versions). Deep Core mining uses special lasers and higher skills being itself the only way to obtain mercoxit (deep core laser, deep core strip miner and modulated versions of each, with tech1 and tech2 versions). Only modulated versions can equip crystals, both tech1 and tech2. This would mean a much larger variety of mining equipment with greater variability. Using deep core lasers can trigger better "events".

3) All mining-specialty vessels should have large ore bays (mining barges, exhumers, orca, rorqual) and small cargo bays.

4) The random events, findings and pockets, should only be triggered when doing surveys.

On a different note, also a small adjustment with ships. Currently all mining vessels are ORE designs, there are basic Tech1 frigs and cruisers with bonuses to mining, but in reality it makes no sense to train anything else than the retriever if you are a casual miner, or train for a hulk if you are a serious miner.....so in essence you jump from a frig into a retriever most of the time, i would prefer if we tone down the Procurer's requirements and cost so it becomes the first option right away.

Procurer should only require barges lvl1, astrogeology lvl1 and industry lvl 4 (very easy to train to)
Retriever should require lvl3 barge and other skills at mid range
Covetor should require lvl4 barge and astrogeology 5 (or other support) at high level.

Finally, in order to make regular mining turrets useful, first i would change the module so it only requires a high-slot instead of a turret slot, and then create 4 faction cruisers (empire designs) with their specialty for using mining turrets (6 high slots, cpu/yield bonuses).

[Rudolf Miller]

Point is, if it's not a captchya, it can be botted. In many ways worse than before. It improves gameplay kind of for the breathing types, but for the ones that run on electricity its just a means to make more and and depress the market faster.

[Wrack]

Oh, for some reason I was reading your last section ("The Key") as a separate bot-detecting popup that would go along with mining, disconnected from your previous ideas. Regardless, it's terrible design to have to misspell words to throw bots off, or whatever.

Here's what I'd do with mining:

Instead of asteroids spawning ready-to-be-mined, spawn "clusters" instead. Clusters would need to be destroyed by conventional weapons in order to break into mineable asteroids. When a cluster breaks up, it will turn into a few big rocks of low-end minerals, and a few smaller high-ends that go flying off at 1 km/s or so in a random direction (but can be webbed). It's harder to bot, more interesting, rewards teamwork, etc etc.

(This idea can be combined easily with your special-events ideas: the events are specific things that can pop out when a cluster is destroyed)

[Shaikar]

White text is a terrible idea on a forum with a skin with a white background.

[Alistair]

Point is, if it's not a captchya, it can be botted. In many ways worse than before. It improves gameplay kind of for the breathing types, but for the ones that run on electricity its just a means to make more and and depress the market faster.

I guess that was my one question area. I'm confident the gameplay idea is a solid one.

But for botting, the bot needs to get it's data somehow, right? Is it not possible for the serverside to give a pop-up without any electronic log of it on the client side, and to have the popup be a text message with just enough random "static" to make pre-programming the bot to understand "Message A, Do this, message B, do this" far more difficult?

Having not written any of my own bots, what is the source data the bots are drawing upon to trigger their actions? And can some workaround not be found to get the data to the screen in a form the bots cannot read?

[Alistair]

White text is a terrible idea on a forum with a skin with a white background.

Sorry for that, I don't use a white background here, I use the default red/grey one. Never even thought about it tbh, apologies.

[Qwert]

Random events won't even dent botting, Runescape of all games has proven this conclusively. And Captcha systems won't affect the "Chinese Guy watching 30 boys at once" scenario at all.

[Shin_getter]

Make all roids spawn in Amamake would, however. :D

[Alain Colcer]

I think that beyond the issue of making mining "un-bot-able", adding a sort of interactive minigame to the mechanic of mining is a nice idea. We should at least aim to make mining a less "adrenaline intensive" activity but still entertaining in the overall scheme.

[Mike deVoid]

Python injection bits read the code running in memory (non technical jargon here). Is impossible to to get the code to make the game do something without making it detectable.

[Alistair]

Python injection bits read the code running in memory (non technical jargon here). Is impossible to to get the code to make the game do something without making it detectable.

Then is it impossible to make any activity in EVE "unbottable"?

If so, why even try?

[Mike deVoid]

Well, as i understand it (and have almost no technical knowledge here) many bots currently do things the 'simple' route and are detectable via machine-repeatable behaviours. Others are detectable via signature communications they make to eve's servers, for example simple errors which allow the desired behaviour, are unnatural for the genuine client.

At least these are the 2 main algorithms I've been able to discern from paying attention. Alternatives I think they also do include pulling apart a bot and looking for its signature comms directly or how it exploits the client.

[Sponk]

Bots are good at repetitive actions, like pres butan get mineral

Humans are (supposedly) better at making decisions, like moving pins on a heat map, or deciding when to fight vs when to flee.

[Shin_getter]

Humans are (supposedly) better at making decisions, like moving pins on a heat map, or deciding when to fight vs when to flee.
Its more like there is little demand to bot decisions because there are better ways at money making and very little utility value in letting a bot consume wealth.

Some part of me wonders how hard is it exactly to run botted alpha camps that safes upon scout info while fetching all data from a KB and using a learning algorithm for threat assessment, but I'm too lazy and it does me no good.....

[Sponk]

Some part of me wonders how hard is it exactly to run botted alpha camps that safes upon scout info while fetching all data from a KB and using a learning algorithm for threat assessment, but I'm too lazy and it does me no good.....This is already happening~