Cordele
Gemini Technologies
|
Posted - 2009.06.18 06:54:00 -
[2]
Quote: Change moons to have a random amount of minerals. When these deplete it spawns somewhere else randomly (Maybe in the same region??) and not in anything 0.4 or higher.
If the problem is certain moons being too lucrative, then this will not help. If the minerals are respawned in the same region then they will probably appear in the same alliance's sovereign space. Moons therefore wouldn't change hands much, and this would just create more arduous and uninteresting industrial work for the owners.
Quote: Moon Miners harvest at a rate depending on the Sov level. For example at sov 0 - Low sec, NPC regions you will get 50 units per hour vs the 100 you would normally get. At Sov 4 you would get 150 units per hour until the material is depleted.
I don't know what this would achieve, other than incentivise outpost spam in constellations containing high end moons, and significantly increase moon income in favour of large alliances with constellation sovereignty.
Quote: Number of Minerals deposited through the universe would grow based on the number of accounts so that prices will somewhat stabilize
This makes some sense, but I think it would be better to find a mechanism that wasn't tied directly to an out-of-game factor like subscription numbers.
Quote: Number of Minerals deposited through the universe would grow based on the number of accounts so that prices will somewhat stabilize
As you say the process would have to change drastically, as moon scanning is a pretty tedious business as it is. It would also have to be implemented in conjunction with a change to the POS mechanics, because the logistics of regularly moving an alliance's income generating infrastructure with the current mechanics would be horrendous.
I agree that the moon mining system could benefit from an overhaul to make it more balanced and interesting, but I would do something like the following first to improve the situation:
- Introduce moon minerals to wormhole space. The difficulty of getting a large capital fleet into a wormhole system might encourage smaller entities to secure moons (especially when large alliances have the advantage of much easier logistics and defense of moons in their sovereign space), and it would present interesting new challenges that involve the current exploration system by necessity.
The moon minerals could either be existing ones, new ones required to create new materials or to act as substitutes in existing reactions, or a combination of both.
- Introduce new invention mechanics to allow invention on T2 Component blueprints to produce BPCs with different material requirements than the originals. In the real economy, the more expensive a material or process used in the production of a commodity in high demand becomes, the greater the incentive there is to reduce costs by finding alternative ways to produce the commodity cheaply that do not rely so heavily on the expensive material or process.
This could be implemented using decryptors; for example a decryptor which reduces or removes the Ferrogel requirement, and/or decreases the requirement for one material whilst increasing another, or modifying other stats like production and material efficiency. In this way the market would respond to increasing moon mineral prices by encouraging invention of component BPCs with alternative build requirements.
More novel ways of acquiring these decryptors should be introduced. Exploration could continue to be an element as it is now, but there should be some other more interesting R&D process for them that doesn't rely simply on finding the right hacking sites by chance. If demand for a certain decryptor or material increases, then there should be a reliable way to capitalise on that, and it should be possible to actively seek to procure these resources in the same way miners can switch to more lucrative ores as the mineral markets fluctuate.
|