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Doug Dread
Minmatar
Tyrell Corp
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Posted - 2009.12.22 15:08:00 -
[1]
First off to state my biases: I am generally a pvper, but I really do a little of everything from trading to pirating to missioning and soon even mining - all on the same character.
Now the background of the idea: I really want to get into mining as an addition to my repetior of activities to improve my fun. It's supposed to be a relatively passive experience where I can focus more on chatting or working on other stuff than on the task at hand. This sounds like a great activity except for one thing: For most mining ships which have little cargo space, I have to actively click the ore over to a can every minute (3 minutes if strip mining). I know that a hulk with expanded cargoholds and rigged can mine a decent amount without doing this, but I think the mining experience needs to be more accessible than that.
The idea: The general idea is to implement a way where I can have my ore automatically be exchanged from the mining ship's cargohold into a can that has been chosen by the miner. This way I can enjoy the passive nature of mining without the tedious checking every single minute to ensure I have enough space for the next batch. Special point that I need to emphasize for this idea:
- This automation is only available for transferring stuff from the cargohold into the can - NEVER THE OTHER WAY AROUND. I am not advocating the ability for a hauler/miner combo to have closed the timing gap, preventing 100% any theft of ore.
How this affects ore thieves: Not by very much if at all. Remember the purpose of this idea is to allow miners to passively mine a little more appropriately without checking their cargohold every minute for new ore to transfer. If anything most miners who take too much advantage of this will become more distracted than before, allowing you to more easily steal their ore.
How this affects pvpers/pirates: Again, like the ore thieves, you would more likely benefit from the fact that miners can be more easily distracted.
Does it make the game easier for miners? No not really, it just makes it lazier, which is kind of what mining is supposed to be about - passive playing while chatting or browsing. At least this is what my interpretation of the activity is as there have been no indications that there would be a more active role played by miners.
I know I could have suggested other ideas such as increased cargohold for mining ships and such, but doing that could have many unforseeable consequences and would make the hulk a little less valuable, which isn't fair/proper.
Lastly, I know that miners would still have to put up with ore targets dissipating - well I am just asking for a more passive mining experience but I am not going to suggest going too far with it.
I hope my idea has merit and is viable under current technology. If it is simply not viable I just wanted to convey what would make mining a more attractive experience for me without boosting the profession.
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shady trader
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Posted - 2009.12.22 16:26:00 -
[2]
This idea while nice from a miners perspective (I am one my self) does have some down sides.
1) It makes sweet shop mining accounts easier as they done have to keep moving the ore from there 10+ accounts.
2) it would make it harder for players to stop possible macro's.
3) it would also make mining a lot more profitable for the mount of effort the player does. So those who micro manage there mining and ore will have less advantage to those who just come back every 10 minutes to target new roids.
There was a thread either today or yesterday for a module that you could mount that would automatically transfer ore from your barge to an Orca.
While I am for things that make basic mining easier, there should still be a big difference between the basic mining player (alt account while doing something else like mission running) and the elite dedicated miner (someone who spend the majority of there time interacting with the game mining).
As you said in your post, it would make mining more passive activity, it really needs to be less passive to make macro/isk farming less profitable so that its more profitable for real players to mine.
Macrointel, the place were the nature order of the universe does not hold sway. Pirates and ore thief's are congratulated by carebears for the actions. |
Sollunux
Gallente
Dawn's Requiem
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Posted - 2009.12.22 20:25:00 -
[3]
Personally I don't see macro miners being affected here as they have programs that handle moving the ore for them (both 2 and from the can). This would help make mining a little lazier and miners would still have to watch the rocks to keep from wasting cycle time (if they're picky) or to at least restart the mining lasers.
However I'm sure this or something similar has crossed CCPs idea table several times and if they believed it was useful/within game balance, it would exist in some form already. POS moon mining has a similar ability to tunnel the moon mining laser to a silo and this is basically the same thing, but there's variety in how people are suggesting to fill the role of the coupling unit that links the miner and the "silo".
However that having been said, I do support the idea. I do a fair amount of mining and got my alts into covetors and hulks specifically because of the said "minute" problem. However my proposed suggestion would be that the cargo hold empty every X minutes. This maintains a use for having a cargo hold to hold the ore as you would already need, and reduces the number of DB calls to what they would normally be if an attentive miner were present. Now how exactly to "calibrate" that for game balance I'm not sure.
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Doug Dread
Minmatar
Tyrell Corp
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Posted - 2009.12.24 00:28:00 -
[4]
Edited by: Doug Dread on 24/12/2009 00:30:52
Thanks for the replies.
I agree that this doesn't affect macro miners in any way whatsoever for the reasoning given above. This also doesn't improve profits for miners at all. If the issue is that it makes it less effort for the same profit when comparing micro managers to those who come back every 10 minutes, well the micro managers have the bonus of being more alert to ore thieves and other risks.
I can understand if CCP has already considered this as it isn't something that takes a lot of creativity to think up. I just wanted to voice it to hopefully convince them to relook into the micro management problem of mining.
Edit: And in response to the module where you can transfer into an orca automatically, my original post specifically said that this was not the intention. People can only select cans (and in my opinion, only jet cans or unsecured cans) to transfer to since this doesn't affect the ability of ore theft or any other balance measures that must be considered. I am not proposing safer mining.
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