I mean, seriously here, how much does it cost to hire an unemployed ex-finance guy in Iceland? One horned helmet? Two? Two horned helmets and a box of rotten shark meat? Let`s get serious here and talk business.

Personally, I'd favor a move away from the current corporation/alliance system, and have individual pilots declare their support for individual groups.

In real life, you don't walk around with the badge of your corporation on your shoulder. You walk around as yourself, and support different lists of organizations and goals. What if we made standings based on who you support/supports you, etc. And everyone are individuals that can support multiple organizations. It might be VERY chaotic at first, but I think it might be pretty interesting in the long run to see how the system stabilizes.

The disadvantages seem to be that people can avoid the refining tax if they have the resources to avoid it, causing a decrease in alliance income from large operators while simultaneously screwing over the average Joe who can't jump out to lowsec to get a lower refining tax, also since it is not a fixed structure small gangs will find it hard to catch any ring miners as intell out in 0.0 is pretty good and they would likely be reported and the miners safed up long before they ever entered the system.

If that is really the only con, simply make "ring mining refinery" an outpost upgrade.

No refining will happen outside sov territory, and the hunters get their "lighthouse" in terms of where to look for "ring miners".

If the intent is that ring mining replace moon mining it will by nature have to extend into lowsec, maybe highsec as well. Linking it to sov would make that difficult, although it could be done as a system hub sort of thing a la pocos, where they're owned by Interbus or something in empire.

The intent is to drive meaningful 0.0 conflict.

I see no reason why that needs to spill over into lowsec. That's a relic from the moon mining and POS mechanics.

But yes, if it is to replace moon mining completely, it would have to be a la POCOs, you're right.

POCOs can be targets for smaller gangs, just like system upgrades are in FW now. So yes, would probably fit better.

My point was more, if tax is the only con, it can easily be fixed.

If they limit ring mining to nullsec, that means all T2 production is reliant on nullsec. It would naturally be up to CCP to decide whether they want that to be the case or not. However, if they do it that way, they'd also have to take steps to ensure that the lower end moon minerals actually got mined - that the isk/hour is the same regardless of whether you're mining atmospheric gases or dysprosium. How they do that is pretty irrelevant - it could be that you just mine up a blob that refines into everything, or maybe atmospheric gases are considerably lower m3 than R64s so you get more per cycle, whatever. Point is, if players can cherry pick, they will, and unlike normal mining where you can cherry pick in 0.0 because no one's reliant on your low end production, allowing/encouraging cherry picking in nullsec-only ring mining would be a disaster.

That's what I was getting at talking about highsec/lowsec - an assumption that minerals would be roughly distributed by value. Making ring mining null only would be interesting though. Note that tying it to sov is still something of an issue with NPC 0.0 though.

If they limit ring mining to nullsec, that means all T2 production is reliant on nullsec. It would naturally be up to CCP to decide whether they want that to be the case or not.

If they limit ring mining to nullsec, that means all T2 production is reliant on nullsec. It would naturally be up to CCP to decide whether they want that to be the case or not. However, if they do it that way, they'd also have to take steps to ensure that the lower end moon minerals actually got mined - that the isk/hour is the same regardless of whether you're mining atmospheric gases or dysprosium. How they do that is pretty irrelevant - it could be that you just mine up a blob that refines into everything, or maybe atmospheric gases are considerably lower m3 than R64s so you get more per cycle, whatever. Point is, if players can cherry pick, they will, and unlike normal mining where you can cherry pick in 0.0 because no one's reliant on your low end production, allowing/encouraging cherry picking in nullsec-only ring mining would be a disaster.

That's what I was getting at talking about highsec/lowsec - an assumption that minerals would be roughly distributed by value. Making ring mining null only would be interesting though. Note that tying it to sov is still something of an issue with NPC 0.0 though.

The second one is Ring Mining. This has the advantage of group PvE, like Soundwave wanted.

@ Dinsdale Pirannha Just shut up about how many alt accounts you've unsubbed, and try to help get a consensus on how to get moongoo rebalanced. If you can't do that then don't troll the thread with your "Eve is dieing" bullcrap, because you're not helping.

Now there seems to be two lines of thought here. One, is that a clone of PI could be used for moons. This has the advantage of the alliance having an unavoidable tax income from moons, increases the "farms and fields" dynamic by providing something that an enemy can disrupt/destroy. The disadvantage to that idea is that it is another solitary activity, that doesn't fit with the group PvE ideal CCP Soundwave wanted, also it is another structure to shoot, and who loves to shoot structures.

The second one is Ring Mining. This has the advantage of group PvE, like Soundwave wanted, increases the "farms and fields" as small roving gangs can disrupt/destroy operations as well, and it is not a structure to shoot. The disadvantages seem to be that people can avoid the refining tax if they have the resources to avoid it, causing a decrease in alliance income from large operators while simultaneously screwing over the average Joe who can't jump out to lowsec to get a lower refining tax, also since it is not a fixed structure small gangs will find it hard to catch any ring miners as intell out in 0.0 is pretty good and they would likely be reported and the miners safed up long before they ever entered the system.

Well the third thing is a band-aid fix of alchemy

Good nullsec alliances already have no trouble creating their own group content. We really don't need CCP to hand us group PvE to keep us entertained.

Also, "group mining" is largely a myth. Most of it is 1 guy multi-boxing a mining fleet. Mining is just so brain dead easy that 1 guy can run a fleet and still be engaged enough to get out of harms way.

And if the thing is anything like incursions, it will be some select group that goes and runs them, and they'll have no interest in bringing in anyone but the bare minimum, so they don't have to split the rewards too much.

That's it's directly taxable by alliances/corps is I guess relevent to tech-dependent 0.0 alliances, but not as much to me now that I think about it

Yeah, as I'm reading this thread I'm starting to think Moon POCOs instead of ring mining are the way to go as far as fixing moon goo goes because

1) Mining sucks
2) It's implemented faster because the PI interface already existed, and Soundwave says that the team developing the feature is backlogged already.
3) Can branch into DUST in the future

That's it's directly taxable by alliances/corps is I guess relevent to tech-dependent 0.0 alliances, but not as much to me now that I think about it

That it's directly taxable by alliances and corps is in fact relevant to any 0.0 entity, especially if they want to offer reimbursements and whatnot. The more taxable income they can generate, the more things like that they can offer.

Of course, if you're in an alliance that doesn't do anything like that where the directors just pocket the taxes, I could see you not caring. ;)

One possible solution I can think of is to tag all ore mined and it can only be refined within a 10 jump radius or something. This way alliances get their taxes as users can not refine it anywhere else.

At Ring Mining ::

I think an interesting idea would be instead of requiring to "dock" and deposit ring mining goodies, that you can drop them off at a station attachment that would be designed like a POCO hangar (bear with me).

The Moon Mining Deposit Bay would let you drop your ores into the station and it would be taxed and then taken to the appropriate hangar (corp/personal). This would avoid the need for constant docking and undocking when full up on materials and would let miners get taxed as they go, providing a service and a convenience and a method of taxation.

Just exploring here on forward thinking mechanics.

That is a decent idea except that it would be easy for an alliance to tax it to 100% or whatever an artificial limit would be.

Then nobody would do it. The system would still require people to be pushing buttons often and so if we take all the money from that, they won't do it.

yeah the destination of the moon riches of detorid doesn't really keep me up at night (not where we get our income from)

You may personally not see the benefit but I can assure you that a taxable ring-mining system will benefit more than just the currently tech-dependent alliances.

That is a decent idea except that it would be easy for an alliance to tax it to 100% or whatever an artificial limit would be.

There are multiple models of how to replace moon mining: [edit: PI, asteroid mining, anomalies]

Would they spawn in NPC space? Should they spawn there? or nearby to allow for smaller alliances to seriously disrupt the production?

Should the ammount of moon goo available to mine be the same amount as what is currently available, or more to compensate the steady income a moon mining POS generates?

Moon goo already spawns in NPC space and low sec. Why would ring mining sites not spawn in these locations?

Who would mine anything if there was no compensation for them?

The amount of moon goo available should be unlimited, depending on how much effort people are willing to expend to find it. The supply into the economy will adjust based on value: if it's worth more, people will make the effort to hunt it down. Alchemy is a short-term solution that assumes the population of EVE will never grow big enough to challenge all existing supplies of moon goo. Moon goo from exploration sites spread over entire regions will scale to supply as much as people are prepared to hunt down at a particular value.

Of course, resources from ring mining (diffuse sources spread over a region) means that it will no longer be sufficient to park an AFK cloaker in one system as a means of waging economic warfare on an enemy.

Moon goo from ring mining should absolutely not be limited. Normal minerals are limited - abundant, but still limited. Why should moongoo via ring mining be any different?

Well, I think normal minerals are far too abundant and should be moved to exploration sites. The effort required to scan down mining sites will limit the abundance without putting any artificial limits on volume of rocks spawned per day, but simultaneously allow CCP to perform some simple economics experiments (what happens if we double the number of Pyroxeres spawns in low sec).