RavenTesio
Liandri Corporation
46
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Posted - 2012.07.19 19:25:00 -
[1] - Quote
Except that's not alliance income. That's member income that the alliance chooses to take from the members and redistribute. By "alliance income" I mean income that doesn't come from one player grinding NPCs or grinding rocks or whatnot, but from the whole alliance working together to hold a strategic objective.
If moon mining was removed with no replacement alliance level income (I'm not saying that it neccessarily will, but so far I haven't seen CCP even suggest otherwise), you would basically have two options on how to run an alliance. Either it's everyone for themselves, where in order to fight you have to grind personal income for hours first - or the alliance starts imposing ratting taxes, mining taxes, refining taxes, market taxes, to the point where a big part of membership is simply exploited for all they've got in order to afford the "military" to have ships to fight in.[/quote]
And I would say welcome to life OUTSIDE of Null-Sec.
It isn't less difficult to earn billions each week in High-Sec or Low-Sec, but honestly you do have to take a more "every man for himself approach" because running POS are far more expensive ... in-fact ot the point where only the most valueable moon materials are even worth doing, let along the pain of trying to keep towers safe or even bloodty finding an empty moon that isn't useless.
On the whole this outlines the main problem with the Industrial aspect of EVE.
That not only the further down the Sec Status you go, do the materials you can aquire become far more valuable in larger quantity but on top of that you also get bonus' to the running costs via direct means (i.e. Less Starbase Fuel use)
This frankly is just bulls**t, as if God himself came along and neatly ordered the universe proclaiming "Risk vs Reward" ... which is kinda crap in-of-itself because Null-Sec is often a far safer place to be than Low-Sec.
I would also point out that Technium isn't broken, giving means to "suppliment" it will not help regardless what I've seen from many other players posts. All that will do is jigger around what becomes Moon Flavour of the Month to capture, hold and do nothing with to force up market prices in an agreement with many other Alliances to maintain your own stranglehold on the market with what in the real-world is the highly illegal act of INSIDER TRADING.
As it stands Null-Sec is just frankly inbalanced Resource-wise. The resources being tied to a specific aspect of the game is also kinda stupid on the whole... The reason why it is how it is makes sense, because systems have been added to the game without any major changes to other systems. I mean Moon Mining was introduced because of Tech 2 Production, as Planetry Interaction being added more specifically for DUST purposes (which haven't been fully realised yet).
Still it would make sense if rather than a bandaid solution (i.e. Alchemy) to a system that is broken, the better solution is to focus on redesigning Industry as a whole - so that Planet, Moon and Belt / Cloud Mining all result in Materials that are Refined to the same Common Elements, how many of those materials depends entirely upon the mining being done.
Still I will save that for another post, as it is a very comprehensive subject that would require some fairly dramatic changes that many players (particularly Alliances) might actually be quite against at first as it forces them to rethink their industry as a whole.
For now what I will do is make a counter solution to the "Alchemy" suggestion.
Moon Interaction
As it stands one of the biggest issues with Moon Mining really stems from how Starbases are used.. for the most part with Technium for example, there are only say 10% of the Starbases around Moons that are actively mining. The rest are setup as Large Tower "Deathstars" designed to stop anyone else from accessing the resources there; in-fact if it wasn't for dotlan evemaps, the majority of us here would never even know what resources are on a given Moon.
To me the best solution would be to introduce Planetry Interaction Mechanics to Moons, with the current Raw Resource; becoming a Teir 3 Material. It would greatly reduce the materials an individual would be able to recover from any given Moon, forcing groups who want to have the same output as they currently have to work together as a group to achieve that.
This would of course make the Moon Mining Array obsolete, but this could be replace (temporarily until Starbases are redesigned) as a Customs Office with similar Fitting / Anchouring Requirements.
I mean to me two issues are really Moon Mining is not a group activity ... a single person can anchour, setup and maintain these. In-fact with no limitations on the number of Starbases someone can Anchour down past the whole "Can we Protect this?" - which let's be honest in Null-Sec or High-Sec often isn't even a question you need to ask.
Push for these to be group activities, they should require players to work together to achieve.
It would also make sense if Moon Interaction was possible with Planetry Interaction skills, but the addition on specialised Moon Skills to help extend the number of Moons you can place Facilities on.
Seriously, think about it. This will make the most sense in the long-run. |