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Sol Sigma
No Salvation
War.Pigs.
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Posted - 2010.02.24 00:43:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Sol Sigma on 24/02/2010 00:46:08
One of the biggest complaints of new and old players alike is the ridiculous monotony of mining. Why would someone want to spend hours and hours of their time monotonously going from asteroid to asteroid in addition to risking a sizeable portion of this potential profit to pirates?
An interesting solution to the problem could be an automated mining and industrial operation. After investing a decent amount of skill points into say ôMining Management and Operationsö + ancillary skills, a player could automate a part of their mining operations to large mining drone barges. The tradeoff for this automation would be reduced mining efficiency and exposure to players who could kill a playerÆs mining barges for special CPUs that sell for a decent % of the mining barges cost. Additionally, the amount of mining barges and their mineral harvesting efficiency would be dictated by skills and capped at a certain amount to prevent sprawling mining operations (say 5-8 barges harvesting æxÆ amount of minerals per hour).
Instead of players monotonously going from roid to roid, they could then concentrate their efforts on defense and/or attack of other playerÆs extensive automated mining operations. This would create a point of conflict for players and place a greater emphasis on sovereignty security. Pirates would also have an incentive to seek out these mining operations because of the potential profit of killing another playerÆs mining barges and/or the defensive forces guarding them.
Furthermore, if some people still had a desire to actively mine, they could do so alongside their mining barge drones and supplement the automated revenue generation while now feeling like they are controlling a large mining operation.
Implementation
I would envision the system operating something like this:
Player goes to an asteroid belt and manually instructs mining barge drones to begin harvesting all visible asteroids of a particular variety. The player then specifies an NPC station, player owned station, or industrial capital ship that these mining barges return cargo to. Or the player could establish a mining dump site where cargo containers are to be dumped for later collection.
The player is then able to go afk or log off with the insurance that their mining barges will continue their operation even after the player logs out.
Optional: player can then see/manage the production streams being generated by the mining barges in a separate UI created for this purpose.
As mentioned before, the player would control mining barges based on their skills with a certain cap placed on the amount of allowable barges.
Summary
The main purpose of this automated mining operation is to give players a way of making money that isnÆt so reliant on tedium. But it would do this while still exposing players to risk and creating incentives for other players to kill mining barges. I envision the income generated from mining barges to be fairly modest and only a way of supplementing income flow, not replacing it entirely.
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Di Mulle
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Posted - 2010.02.24 01:05:00 -
[2]
Mining surely needs big improvements, but your proposal is totally unacceptable. Even without starting completely legit flaming about player involvement etc.
If your autobarge is undefended - and profitable to kill - it will die in a minutes. There will be exactly zero autobarges operating.
If it will be unprofitable - next day there will be no "casual" miners.
As for defence/offense - what about CONCORD ? I can attack barge, but cant attack defender, CONCORD will blow me.
What about belt rats too ?
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Liang Nuren
No Salvation
War.Pigs.
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Posted - 2010.02.24 04:06:00 -
[3]
Well, there's several comments I want to make on the topic, both to your post and the one above:
- This eliminates most of the menial labor of mining, and is therefore a fantastic thing. As an added bonus, it will eliminate the unfair competition from macro miners, by virtue of giving everyone (with sufficient skills) the same 'advantage'.
- It seems like these bots might be best used from a player corp. It's not the only advantage given to player corps (putting up POSs, sov, etc), and would serve to make these mining bots viable war targets. Someone aggressing these bots (highsec or low) should get aggression towards the entire corp.
- Speaking of putting up a POS, it seems like it might be better if these minerals can only be delivered to a POS and that these bots take fuel for the next run from the POS itself. The implications are that your POS might go offline, and that there's an operational cost and logistics to be done to support these mining bots.
- It seems that a full flight of these "mining barge drones" shouldn't be able to mine much more than a low to medium skilled Covetor (even though your own skills might be sky high!).
I think it's a fairly decent idea, and I'm always a fan of taking the tedium out the most boring possible way to make ISK. My only concern would be flooding the market with minerals.
-Liang
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Liang Nuren - Eve Forum ***** Extraordinaire |
Liang Nuren
No Salvation
War.Pigs.
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Posted - 2010.02.24 04:13:00 -
[4]
Edited by: Liang Nuren on 24/02/2010 04:13:47
 Originally by: Di Mulle
Mining surely needs big improvements, but your proposal is totally unacceptable. Even without starting completely legit flaming about player involvement etc.
Players aren't really involved in the process of making moon goo. Really seems like a non-issue to me.
Quote:
If your autobarge is undefended - and profitable to kill - it will die in a minutes. There will be exactly zero autobarges operating. If it will be unprofitable - next day there will be no "casual" miners.
Yes, I thought that was explicitly one of the stated purposes behind the proposal. If you leave your assets undefended (from a ship, to a POS, to a station, to an auto barge), you will lose said asset. That's as firm of a rule as there is in Eve!
Quote:
As for defence/offense - what about CONCORD ? I can attack barge, but cant attack defender, CONCORD will blow me.
I would imagine that they have no offense personally, and I would imagine that aggressing one in highsec would in fact bring Concord upon you. That's one of the reasons that I suggested that they can't be used in player corps, and one of the reasons I suggested that they can only be used from a POS. You can wardec a player corp.
A POS would also let them operate in Wormhole space.
Quote:
What about belt rats too ?
I would imagine you could either kill the rats (preferable), or you could RR the bots, or you could let them blow up, or whatever. Hopefully these bots would have no shields but a pretty medium amount of EHP (maybe 50-60K EHP?) - not impossible to kill by any stretch of the imagination, but enough time for a corp actually defending their assets to help them out.
I should make clear that I think there's a lot of things that Eve could do to remove the tedium from the game... this seems like one of the more reasonable suggestions. I don't really see this as being terribly different from moon goo, as a passive income.
-Liang
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Liang Nuren - Eve Forum ***** Extraordinaire |
Amberlyn Stardreamer
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Posted - 2010.02.26 01:57:00 -
[5]
I'll admit that mining is not the most mentally challenging activity in Eve.
But its more active and interesting to move ore from hold to can regularly than to sit in a belt watching someone else/some automated piece of machinery mine while occasionally shooting a rat.
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Psyentific
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Posted - 2010.02.26 02:19:00 -
[6]
The solution to mining monotony is to read a book and manage your barge on the side. (ie. When you hear "The asteroid is depleted", or "Cargo hold full" or something like that)
Have you tried Ender's Game? Speaker for the Dead? Honor Harrington series? Anything by Arthur C. Clarke? The Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, etc)? The Eve books?
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mchief117
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Posted - 2010.02.26 02:22:00 -
[7]
i do liek the catch on this that it only evens the fields with macrors. and that the mining drones themselfs ad a bit of chance to the game , leave them running all night and you may wake up to a hanger full of ore, or a note on the side saying cya later sucker.
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Liang Nuren
No Salvation
War.Pigs.
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Posted - 2010.03.01 00:22:00 -
[8]
Originally by: Psyentific
The solution to mining monotony is to read a book and manage your barge on the side. (ie. When you hear "The asteroid is depleted", or "Cargo hold full" or something like that)
Have you tried Ender's Game? Speaker for the Dead? Honor Harrington series? Anything by Arthur C. Clarke? The Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, etc)? The Eve books?
What's the REAL difference between these two situations:
- You reading a book and mining "AFK" - only tending to your barge every 15-30 minutes
- You reading a book in your favorite spot (or going out clubbing or what have you) - only tending your barge fleet once a day or so when its convenient for you (or someone in your corp).
Well, one side has:
- Less network traffic for Eve servers
- Possibly less CPU for Eve servers (we don't know how CCP defines the differences between PCs and NPCs - but I strongly suspect there's lots of things that don't happen for NPCs and do for PCs. Otherwise, we'd have seen CCP nerfing the number of rats in missions to make room for players).
- Less hassle/grind for players
- Less illegal macro mining (at this point it just becomes a matter of cracking down on RMT instead of "macro miners")
-Liang
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Liang Nuren - Eve Forum ***** Extraordinaire |
Meredith Midnight
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Posted - 2010.03.05 23:50:00 -
[9]
Wouldnt this cause a huge influx of minerals to the economy (since any serious miner would be insane not to have their own little bot fleet and follow the path with the most m3/cycle).
Also: I assume that the bots stop mining once all the belts are mined out. Do you think there will be any issues for large swaths of empire with empty belts because, unlike moon mins, belts are an exhaustible resource.
Another thing, while new and clearly a fun idea, it doesn't solve the player's experience (read: boring monotony) while mining itself. It does give an alternative to those who dont feel like actively mining, but what if i wanted to mine? It'd still be the same "wait til cargo is full then empty".
If you're saying that they'll be running the defense fleets, then i would argue that most miners really only care about the m3/hour. if they're in an area where they need defense then other players step in and take care of that role while the miners mine in their hulks. The min/max mindset is common in the miner profession.
The reason why mining is so boring is because it's repetitive, and lacks any player participation other than when the roid pops or the cargohold is full. This was also the reason why the exploration system was revamped, my buddies literally read books waiting for the long cycle times to finish in the old system. Make the system require user participation throughout the process, then it'll at least be engaging.
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Dark Drifter
Amarr
Sardaukar Merc Guild
General Tso's Alliance
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Posted - 2010.03.06 19:46:00 -
[10]
ok so the OP is asking for a macro . . .
although the idear has merit there are a few points that i realy hate.
1: u log off ur bots keep going? no no no they are drones for all intensive purposes
u log off they stop
2: not in player corps? again no only in player corps this means that the macro miners
have to be in a corp to utilise this
3: y we need this? macro miners will just train all there accounts for this and
hay presto macro mining macro miners.
4: only from POS's? this sounds fair, i also think they should be restricted to lowsec and
nullsec
5: and what would u launch these from? an orca? a roqual? or a new interum hull?
to our departed friend EDD "april 09" fly true man |
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Demjon
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Posted - 2010.03.08 02:23:00 -
[11]
Originally by: Dark Drifter
ok so the OP is asking for a macro . . .
although the idear has merit there are a few points that i realy hate.
1: u log off ur bots keep going? no no no they are drones for all intensive purposes
u log off they stop
2: not in player corps? again no only in player corps this means that the macro miners
have to be in a corp to utilise this
3: y we need this? macro miners will just train all there accounts for this and
hay presto macro mining macro miners.
4: only from POS's? this sounds fair, i also think they should be restricted to lowsec and
nullsec
5: and what would u launch these from? an orca? a roqual? or a new interum hull?
I think that point 5 is the key here. I have maxed out all the mining skillz and all the refining skillz and have an orca and should probably pick up a rorqual. I hate waiting for other players to "want" to mine. Instead of a new mining barge drone we can just use any mining ship produced by ORE. You still get to outfit them and customize the ships but they just go to the belt you tell them and mine what you tell them to mine and return to the command ship to drop off thier cargo when they are full. A simple toggle switch with all the ore types on it would do "Mine all the following checked boxes" These ships would run only from the Orca and Rorqual ship maintenance bay. That means you have to launch them from the command ship. The ship maintenance bay may need to be expanded for a hauler or more barges. Assign your hauler to go from the command ship to the POS, or Station. The barges would opperate according to my skill set, meaning they pull the same amount of ore per cycle that I would if I were opperating it. Let me tell you that mining is boring but sitting in an Orca or Rorqual is even worse! At least let me help with the mining since that is what I am suppost to do! I might even be able to pay a pvper to watch out for my barges this way. Pvper are expensive you know they won't sit in a belt for less then 15m and hour (wishful thinking I know).
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