SencneS
Rebellion Against Big Irreversible Dinks
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Posted - 2010.08.26 18:25:00 -
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I don't think anything will really stop macros but what might limit their effect is to make Mining interactive rather then passive.
There has been COUNTLESS ideas to improve mining and remove macros none of which CCP have really initiated. They've added "better" belts to exploration so active participants get higher grade ores in high-sec but that doesn't really stop the Macros from doing what they are doing, or lower their impact. Probably the best idea I've heard was one from a fellow corp mate and long time buddy. The idea is to keep mining exactly the same as it is now, but you have an option to "Enhance" your yield by interacting directly with the mining process itself. He used "Tetris" as an example of how interactive mining would work.
Basically the mining laser or group of lasers has an option on it to "Manual Operation", when selected you are given a window which shows the ore currently entering in the mining laser's "capacitor" before dumping into the cargo hold. The shapes of ore pieces are random shapes and sizes and they all come in the very center of the capacitor. If you do nothing, you actually lose efficiency then letting the computer do the sorting, (Which is what happens when you don't perform manual operation.) So going into the Manual mode you HAVE to interact otherwise you're yield is less then normal mode.
However. In Manual mode you are given the options to move or trash the piece of ore the lasers have brought in. You'll have 10 seconds to place the ore, but you can move any ore anywhere in the capacitor or even trash pieces making room for better fitting pieces. Basically you are sorting out the ore to take up the lest amount of space possible. Like I said, the ore pieces are different shapes and size. Once it's "full" it auto dumps into the cargo hold. At the end of the mining lasers cycle it dumps whatever is in the capacitor into the cargo hold. Note that I said - Autodump, not manual dump. I thought the same thing but my buddy made a great point, why would a macro not just go manual mode and dump into cargo every 10 seconds, they get maximum ore that way. The alternative he had was was very similar, only change was, once the capacitor gets to the amount of ore a cycle would normally produce in automatic mode, it dumps.
The idea for that was, The capacitor for the group of mining lasers is more then the mining lasers produce, for example lets say a Hulk with skills produces 3,000m3 of ORE, well the capacitor on the same hulk is say 5,000m3. This gives the Manual Operation the ability to produce up to 5,000m3 per cycle. But he added more later saying that once it's full it dumps and the ore keeps coming in. This means if you're REALLY good at sorting the ore pieces, you could get OVER 5,000m3 before the lasers autodump the capacitor and start again on a new cycle. So if you're lucky and got really big pieces that took up a lot of room and you hit the 5,000m3 capacity it would dump and start again.
He wanted to make it so if a Macro chooses "Manual Operation" and does nothing they actually lose out and it might only have 1,000m3 in the capacitor at the end of the cycle. So he thought the ore pieces would have a little generic physics like dropping decent sides rocks into a bucket. If you have the ability to real time sort the rocks going into the bucket and move current rocks in there, you'll hold a lot more rocks. If you do nothing the rocks basically fall where they fall eventually filling the bucket and any more rocks being added simply fall out of the bucket.
He never proposed it on the forum because while it would make mining more fun and rewarding for the active player, without effecting the macros. The programing of this idea is significant and balancing would be very difficult, you could have an army of people performing manual mining which would crash prices as everyone is mining more, along with the current macro contribution.
Amarr for Life |