Ophichius
January 15 2012, 02:19:07 PM
|Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit|
As we all know, mining in Eve isn't so much 'playing the game' as 'paying $20 a month for a nice screensaver'. It's easy to bot, it's boring, and it's not even providing all that much of the mineral supply for Eve.
Profit-wise, it's not terrible, but it pales in comparison to the current crop of 150M/h+ activities available to combat pilots. Peak mining yield in 0.0, with a max-skilled Hulk, receiving ganglinked, max-skilled Rorqual boosts, is 109M/h on Arkonor and 90.4M on Merc. Ice mining in a max-skilled Mackinaw yields a paltry 23.1M/h on Dark Glitter. The Skiff isn't even worth considering, as it mines less Merc than the Hulk, even with bonuses.
It's non-interactive: 60 second miner cycles are on the edge of bearable, 3 minute strip miner cycles are completely uninteresting, and 10 minute ice miner cycles mean the damn things may as well be labelled 'AFK Miner I'. This is not entertainment, it's drudgery.
It's easily bottable: Due to the static location of belts, it's trivially easy to build a bot which can warp to a belt, mine until full, and return to station. Sophisticated bots can jetcan mine, haul their own cargo, and effectively automate the above, incredibly boring process, completely AFK mining is a reality.
It's not supplying the lion's share of minerals in Eve. The introduction of the drone regions completely undid the mineral economy of Eve, shutting down a great deal of the demand for T1 minerals that the supercap rush and the constant use of capitals in warfare would normally generate.
The ships themselves make no sense, and are frail, vulnerable, uninteresting things. Compare the fittings on the Procurer, Retriever, and Covetor. Each ship shares the exact same PG output, and only the Covetor has increased CPU, despite each tier fitting one more strip miner than the tier before it. This bizarre progression leads to the counter-intuitive outcome of the Procurer being by far the easiest ship to fit a solid tank to, as the free CPU and PG after strip miners have been installed actually drops as you rise through the tiers.
|Valor Redux|
While the ships themselves are bland, uninteresting, and needlessly frail, mining itself will remain a risk-averse, boring profession. What we should be striving to emulate in our barges is not the staid, plodding grind of the modern industrial quarry, but the crazed fervor of a gold rush. Barges should not be ungainly slabs, but the resilient forward outposts of pioneering risk-takers.
With this in mind, I propose that barges be re-balanced to match appropriate combat ships in tank and agility. The lightweight barges will still mount only a single strip miner but will have the fittings and slots to mount a suitable, cruiser-sized tank. Middleweight will similarly be matched against battlecruiser tanks, and heavyweight barges against battleships. All barges will receive +1 utility high slot over their turret count.
Furthermore, barges should be racialized, allowing specialization within the new and expanded mining environment. With each race's barge's bonused towards their own tank type, and with a fixation on a specific type of mining role.
What this accomplishes: With barges actually able to weather the storm of enemy fire, and possibly even fight back a little, they are no longer defenseless floating targets for any pilot to wander along and pop, but a dedicated and hardened mining platform, with an entire range of fitting options possible.
|The Death Of Stone|
Why give barges a buff into defensively-powerful, more agile ships? Because the new mining needs it.
Enter Medusa.
After years of intensive mining, the static belts in orbit in all major star systems are withered husks of their former glory, more slag and rubble than precious minerals. The unfortunate or poor are all who are left to pick over these unpalatable scraps of former industrial glory.
All static belts in high-sec will have ore types downgraded to low-grade ores, with yields of only 5-10% of current mineral yield per batch.
Industry grinds on however, and the discovery of new mineral deposits is a lucrative and thriving trade, every day pilots discover rogue asteroids in eccentric orbits, once thought too valueless to burn fuel chasing after, now lucrative sources of the raw materials needed to feed New Eden's ravenous industrial appetite.
New anomalies will be seeded across all of high-sec, small clusters of asteroids or even a single massive rogue asteroid containing good-quality ore (current standard yield). These anomalies should be fairly quick to deplete, taking a Hulk only an hour or so to completely mine out. However, they respawn immediately somewhere within the constellation once mined out. Gravitational signatures in high-sec will yield smaller hidden belts and occasionally single rocks of guaranteed high-quality (5-10% bonused ores), representing 5-6 Hulk/hours of mining.
Meanwhile, in bars across the restless frontier worlds tales abound of wild riches, miners whose luck ran true and who made grand fortunes after finding exotic asteroids spinning through the cold depths of untamed space.
New mining anomalies in lowsec and nullsec will be composed of high percentages of high-quality ore (5-10% bonused), and have a smaller chance to instead be small asteroids of rare and exotic ores (100-500% bonus yield, but mined out in a few minutes.)
This allows miners who are willing to brave lowsec and nullsec to 'strike it rich' with a lucky find, occasionally pulling in tens or hundreds of millions of ISK in ore in a few minutes. Similarly to how current exploration mechanics work with faction/deadspace drops. Think of it as 'faction ore drops' if you will.
Such riches are not without hazard however, in the maddened frenzy to feed the industrial behemoths of New Eden, risks are less worrisome than continued profitability. Ores which were once considered too unstable or hazardous to handle are now being extracted in ever-greater quantities.
Rare ores will have mining backlash, ranging from straight up damage effects to various e-war effects. 'A wave of radiation washes over your ship, disabling your warp drive temporarily.' is not good news.
When money is involved, humanity's darker side always surfaces, and this latest rush to wealth is no exception. Those who find these riches guard them jealously and tolerate no interference. The desperate, or determined, will go to any length to secure their fortunes.
Anomalies and belts will be guarded, the richer the site, the more potent the guards. In nullsec, one can expect an exotic mercoxit asteroid to be guarded by an armada of pirate vessels, which the miner must either tank successfully, or clear before mining. In higher security systems, weaker vessels will still warp in to defend their claims. Thus the need for a true tank on mining barges.
A frequent nuisance across much of New Eden, rogue drones have responded to this shortage as well, altering their designs and pathways to make more efficient use of ever-dwindling resources. Even hives in the still-rich drone regions are evolving in the face of potential starvation.
Drone mineral yields should be drastically slashed across the board. If it is necessary to make up the difference somehow, make all rogue drones drop small quantities of drone parts, and add 1-run 'integrated' drone BPCs as rare drops to the loot tables of normal rogue drones.
|The Serpent's Fangs|
Each race's barges will be specialized for this new environment, a rough breakdown of the proposed types as follows:
Ever-willing to seize new opportunities, the Gallente Federation commissioned ORE to design a new line of mining vessels to meet their military needs under the code name: Medusa. ORE engineers did not disappoint, delivering a line of ships featuring advanced damage control systems and state-of-the-art drone tech.
Gallente barges have a 7.5%/level bonus to armor repair amount, as well as featuring 50, 75, and 125 m3/Mbit drone capacity for the cruiser-weight, battlecruiser-weight, and and battleship-weight barges respectively. They are moderately weighted towards low slots.
Unwilling to let the Gallente gain an edge in the resource extraction arena, the Caldari intercepted several prototype ORE mining barges and reverse engineered them, putting a uniquely Caldari spin on the basic design. Optimized for massive retrieval operations in hostile space, they boast combat-grade shielding coupled with massive internal ore bays, capable of weathering intense storms of fire until their supporting fleet can scourge the area clean of opposition
All Caldari mining barges receive a 5%/level bonus to all shield resists, as well as having the largest ore bays by size class. They are heavily weighted towards mid slots.
Thukker insight once again proved itself in the creation of the Minmatar Republic's signature mining barges. Agile and fast, they are updated versions of the flexible mining platforms which accompany Thukker caravans through deep space, providing the necessary resources to keep the great caravans maintained.
Minmatar mining barges receive a 7.5%/level bonus to shield boost amount, and sacrifice one low slot for a spare high slot. They are moderately weighted towards mid slots.
Facing the reality that resource extraction in the mew era would require new mining techniques, the Amarr Empire commissioned the creation of deep space mining barges suited for the coming conflict. Featuring an immense bulk of armor plating, and reactor technology unrivaled by any other empire, the Amarrian barges are instruments of divine toil.
Amarr mining barges receive a 5%/level bonus to all armor resists, as well as having the largest cap capacity and best capacitor regen rate. They are heavily weighted towards low slots.
T2 barges will generally be based off of their T1 hulls, but with T2 base resists and exhumer bonuses added on. In general they will receive more drone bay, larger ore bays, and more agility over their T1 counterparts.
Tier 1 Exhumers (Skiff-type) become combat barges, capable of mounting greater offensive firepower, putting them slightly behind T1 combat cruisers for damage output. This makes up for their worse performance at mining (including mercoxit mining) compared to the tier 3 exhumers.
|The Serpent's Tail|
The intended goal of this proposed change is to break up the monotony of mining, reduce the ease with which mining can be botted and/or cripple the profitability of botting, reduce the influx of minerals from the drone regions, and increase the viability of lowsec and nullsec mining by increasing the survival capability of dedicated mining vessels, while also increasing the payoff for mining in low and null.
I highly doubt my suggestion is perfect, but I hope most of you consider it to be a step on the right path.
-O
As we all know, mining in Eve isn't so much 'playing the game' as 'paying $20 a month for a nice screensaver'. It's easy to bot, it's boring, and it's not even providing all that much of the mineral supply for Eve.
Profit-wise, it's not terrible, but it pales in comparison to the current crop of 150M/h+ activities available to combat pilots. Peak mining yield in 0.0, with a max-skilled Hulk, receiving ganglinked, max-skilled Rorqual boosts, is 109M/h on Arkonor and 90.4M on Merc. Ice mining in a max-skilled Mackinaw yields a paltry 23.1M/h on Dark Glitter. The Skiff isn't even worth considering, as it mines less Merc than the Hulk, even with bonuses.
It's non-interactive: 60 second miner cycles are on the edge of bearable, 3 minute strip miner cycles are completely uninteresting, and 10 minute ice miner cycles mean the damn things may as well be labelled 'AFK Miner I'. This is not entertainment, it's drudgery.
It's easily bottable: Due to the static location of belts, it's trivially easy to build a bot which can warp to a belt, mine until full, and return to station. Sophisticated bots can jetcan mine, haul their own cargo, and effectively automate the above, incredibly boring process, completely AFK mining is a reality.
It's not supplying the lion's share of minerals in Eve. The introduction of the drone regions completely undid the mineral economy of Eve, shutting down a great deal of the demand for T1 minerals that the supercap rush and the constant use of capitals in warfare would normally generate.
The ships themselves make no sense, and are frail, vulnerable, uninteresting things. Compare the fittings on the Procurer, Retriever, and Covetor. Each ship shares the exact same PG output, and only the Covetor has increased CPU, despite each tier fitting one more strip miner than the tier before it. This bizarre progression leads to the counter-intuitive outcome of the Procurer being by far the easiest ship to fit a solid tank to, as the free CPU and PG after strip miners have been installed actually drops as you rise through the tiers.
|Valor Redux|
While the ships themselves are bland, uninteresting, and needlessly frail, mining itself will remain a risk-averse, boring profession. What we should be striving to emulate in our barges is not the staid, plodding grind of the modern industrial quarry, but the crazed fervor of a gold rush. Barges should not be ungainly slabs, but the resilient forward outposts of pioneering risk-takers.
With this in mind, I propose that barges be re-balanced to match appropriate combat ships in tank and agility. The lightweight barges will still mount only a single strip miner but will have the fittings and slots to mount a suitable, cruiser-sized tank. Middleweight will similarly be matched against battlecruiser tanks, and heavyweight barges against battleships. All barges will receive +1 utility high slot over their turret count.
Furthermore, barges should be racialized, allowing specialization within the new and expanded mining environment. With each race's barge's bonused towards their own tank type, and with a fixation on a specific type of mining role.
What this accomplishes: With barges actually able to weather the storm of enemy fire, and possibly even fight back a little, they are no longer defenseless floating targets for any pilot to wander along and pop, but a dedicated and hardened mining platform, with an entire range of fitting options possible.
|The Death Of Stone|
Why give barges a buff into defensively-powerful, more agile ships? Because the new mining needs it.
Enter Medusa.
After years of intensive mining, the static belts in orbit in all major star systems are withered husks of their former glory, more slag and rubble than precious minerals. The unfortunate or poor are all who are left to pick over these unpalatable scraps of former industrial glory.
All static belts in high-sec will have ore types downgraded to low-grade ores, with yields of only 5-10% of current mineral yield per batch.
Industry grinds on however, and the discovery of new mineral deposits is a lucrative and thriving trade, every day pilots discover rogue asteroids in eccentric orbits, once thought too valueless to burn fuel chasing after, now lucrative sources of the raw materials needed to feed New Eden's ravenous industrial appetite.
New anomalies will be seeded across all of high-sec, small clusters of asteroids or even a single massive rogue asteroid containing good-quality ore (current standard yield). These anomalies should be fairly quick to deplete, taking a Hulk only an hour or so to completely mine out. However, they respawn immediately somewhere within the constellation once mined out. Gravitational signatures in high-sec will yield smaller hidden belts and occasionally single rocks of guaranteed high-quality (5-10% bonused ores), representing 5-6 Hulk/hours of mining.
Meanwhile, in bars across the restless frontier worlds tales abound of wild riches, miners whose luck ran true and who made grand fortunes after finding exotic asteroids spinning through the cold depths of untamed space.
New mining anomalies in lowsec and nullsec will be composed of high percentages of high-quality ore (5-10% bonused), and have a smaller chance to instead be small asteroids of rare and exotic ores (100-500% bonus yield, but mined out in a few minutes.)
This allows miners who are willing to brave lowsec and nullsec to 'strike it rich' with a lucky find, occasionally pulling in tens or hundreds of millions of ISK in ore in a few minutes. Similarly to how current exploration mechanics work with faction/deadspace drops. Think of it as 'faction ore drops' if you will.
Such riches are not without hazard however, in the maddened frenzy to feed the industrial behemoths of New Eden, risks are less worrisome than continued profitability. Ores which were once considered too unstable or hazardous to handle are now being extracted in ever-greater quantities.
Rare ores will have mining backlash, ranging from straight up damage effects to various e-war effects. 'A wave of radiation washes over your ship, disabling your warp drive temporarily.' is not good news.
When money is involved, humanity's darker side always surfaces, and this latest rush to wealth is no exception. Those who find these riches guard them jealously and tolerate no interference. The desperate, or determined, will go to any length to secure their fortunes.
Anomalies and belts will be guarded, the richer the site, the more potent the guards. In nullsec, one can expect an exotic mercoxit asteroid to be guarded by an armada of pirate vessels, which the miner must either tank successfully, or clear before mining. In higher security systems, weaker vessels will still warp in to defend their claims. Thus the need for a true tank on mining barges.
A frequent nuisance across much of New Eden, rogue drones have responded to this shortage as well, altering their designs and pathways to make more efficient use of ever-dwindling resources. Even hives in the still-rich drone regions are evolving in the face of potential starvation.
Drone mineral yields should be drastically slashed across the board. If it is necessary to make up the difference somehow, make all rogue drones drop small quantities of drone parts, and add 1-run 'integrated' drone BPCs as rare drops to the loot tables of normal rogue drones.
|The Serpent's Fangs|
Each race's barges will be specialized for this new environment, a rough breakdown of the proposed types as follows:
Ever-willing to seize new opportunities, the Gallente Federation commissioned ORE to design a new line of mining vessels to meet their military needs under the code name: Medusa. ORE engineers did not disappoint, delivering a line of ships featuring advanced damage control systems and state-of-the-art drone tech.
Gallente barges have a 7.5%/level bonus to armor repair amount, as well as featuring 50, 75, and 125 m3/Mbit drone capacity for the cruiser-weight, battlecruiser-weight, and and battleship-weight barges respectively. They are moderately weighted towards low slots.
Unwilling to let the Gallente gain an edge in the resource extraction arena, the Caldari intercepted several prototype ORE mining barges and reverse engineered them, putting a uniquely Caldari spin on the basic design. Optimized for massive retrieval operations in hostile space, they boast combat-grade shielding coupled with massive internal ore bays, capable of weathering intense storms of fire until their supporting fleet can scourge the area clean of opposition
All Caldari mining barges receive a 5%/level bonus to all shield resists, as well as having the largest ore bays by size class. They are heavily weighted towards mid slots.
Thukker insight once again proved itself in the creation of the Minmatar Republic's signature mining barges. Agile and fast, they are updated versions of the flexible mining platforms which accompany Thukker caravans through deep space, providing the necessary resources to keep the great caravans maintained.
Minmatar mining barges receive a 7.5%/level bonus to shield boost amount, and sacrifice one low slot for a spare high slot. They are moderately weighted towards mid slots.
Facing the reality that resource extraction in the mew era would require new mining techniques, the Amarr Empire commissioned the creation of deep space mining barges suited for the coming conflict. Featuring an immense bulk of armor plating, and reactor technology unrivaled by any other empire, the Amarrian barges are instruments of divine toil.
Amarr mining barges receive a 5%/level bonus to all armor resists, as well as having the largest cap capacity and best capacitor regen rate. They are heavily weighted towards low slots.
T2 barges will generally be based off of their T1 hulls, but with T2 base resists and exhumer bonuses added on. In general they will receive more drone bay, larger ore bays, and more agility over their T1 counterparts.
Tier 1 Exhumers (Skiff-type) become combat barges, capable of mounting greater offensive firepower, putting them slightly behind T1 combat cruisers for damage output. This makes up for their worse performance at mining (including mercoxit mining) compared to the tier 3 exhumers.
|The Serpent's Tail|
The intended goal of this proposed change is to break up the monotony of mining, reduce the ease with which mining can be botted and/or cripple the profitability of botting, reduce the influx of minerals from the drone regions, and increase the viability of lowsec and nullsec mining by increasing the survival capability of dedicated mining vessels, while also increasing the payoff for mining in low and null.
I highly doubt my suggestion is perfect, but I hope most of you consider it to be a step on the right path.
-O