Try if you want, Darth, but don't be surprised if you don't accomplish anything more than having a lot of miners yelling at you. Me, I'll start being concerned if I see the price of trit drop below 2 isk, and won't actually think anything's really wrong until it drops below 1 isk.

Try if you want, Darth, but don't be surprised if you don't accomplish anything more than having a lot of miners yelling at you. Me, I'll start being concerned if I see the price of trit drop below 2 isk, and won't actually think anything's really wrong until it drops below 1 isk.

I can respect that. But I t hink by the time those prices are seen there will be demonstrable wailing.

However speculative that may appear, I am sure of one thing. The risk to supply acquisition that keeps mining valuable has been all but erased. Its impacts can already be seen. The future of Eve is in the hands of our developers.

One thing is certain, though.The mathematics of economics are alive and well in the sandbox.

~many moronic pubbie posts~

You ignore the fact that mining aligned doesn't increase yield over the bots, so they would NOT in fact "outperform and render obsolete AFK miners and bots". We aren't able to mine 23/7, the bots are; AFK miners can't quite manage that, but close enough. The yield differences from paying close attention to what amounts to watching paint dry aren't THAT good. I'm sorry, but there just isn't any way to call anything about the current mining system 'engaging', and the long odds of an actual gank don't make it more so. Imagine, if you will, spending 4 hours at a go watching paint dry, only moving infrequently to catch a drip, and being told that there is a remote chance, at some point, that someone might come in and destroy the wall. It'll keep you awake for a few sessions, might be enough to wake you up a few times for a short while when you hear the mailman outside, but it isn't enough to keep things interesting indefinitely
until and unless it actually happens. You're working against psychology and human nature. Your suggestions in the OP are good, but not a long-term solution; CCP has to do something, but opening the barges up to PvP combat isn't the solution.

Though it might be entertaining if CCP were to create ships that looked and were named exactly like a normal barge, but had weapons hardpoints instead.

Addressing this directly, there are many professions which cannot draw any task related benefit from interaction:
Moon mining
PI
Mining
Manufacturing
Research
~Skill training~

Stop with the no risk in high sec. That statement is flat out wrong. It is a flat out lie. It is misinformation.

Skill training is not a profession its the natural progression of your character and to include it as a profession is dumb. For those other professions it may not be obvious how your interaction draws a benefit for them but it is there. For example moon mining, you'll be required to defend that moon, the defense being the interaction. You benefit by being able to continue mining the moon. Interaction benefits all of those.

Being required to defend the moon doesn't make the accruing on moon minerals active. And there is nothing active you can do to speed the process. You are AFK moon mining not because you don't have to defend it, but because defending it when needed provides no boost to output compared to when defense isn't needed.

Skill training I will stop counting as a profession once the character bazaar goes away.

It is the same as having to be attentive ATK while mining. Dead POS mine no goo, dead miners mine no asteroids. Moons do not defend themselves and require a lot of player input. We risk a lot for the moon and in return we reap a lot of reward from the moon. When compared to highsec they risk almost nothing so they should be rewarded with almost nothing.

It was only ever cheap and easy when the miners made it cheap and easy by leaving their untanked (or negatively tanked*) mining ships in belts while they were AFK.
Those who tanked their ships didn't get ganked.
Those who were attentive didn't get ganked.


*Cargo expansion reduces your tank.

No one said there wasn't any risk, but unless those POS require at ALL times A) Continuous attention for maintenance and opperation or b) Continuous defense from an actual ongoing attack then you are making demands of the miner that you don't have to make on the moons and the moons don't get removed from the list of AFK professions.

Once an hour doesn't cut it. Defense every other day doesn't cut it. We're not talking risk but activity here. So if accruing minerals while not actively doing something as player towards that end is an EULA violation then every few minutes those moons aren't touched that same violation occurs.

And to the point of defense, there is still a way, other than ganking to affect miners that is far easier, faster and requires far fewer people to be done efficiently than tanking down an undefended POS. Bumping. An AFK miner has less defense against this than an otherwise undefended POS with a single gun has against a 1000 man fleet.

Defense is not just forming the fleets to actually defend the POS. Continuous defense in the form of surveillance is required which is the constant attention you're trying to claim is not required. Bumping is another activity that requires constant attention otherwise the miner will get back in range and continue to mine. Also bumping is a nebulous area as far as legality is concerned.

Legality isn't nebulous for bumping. It's entirely legal, but legality is a non-issue as it prevents the miner from mining. Mining vessels lack the speed and agility to recover quickly from a series of bumps from a vessel for for the task and an AFK miner cannot even accomplish trying.

And lastly vigilance is not itself an act unless physically guarding the POS with said fleet at all times. Putting in a plan of readiness is an exertion of effort no doubt and having people willing and able to execute it is a worthy achievement, but it is still not a continuous act requiring the total task dedication of any one character at all times in which the act of procuring minerals is occurring.

I'm pretty sure he meant nebulous legality in terms of the EULA, which is an absolutely true statement.

I could be wrong however I understood that only to be an issue when claims of its use as a greifing tool were invoked. To be specific bumping is not illegal but greifing, even when bumping is the mechanism used, is against the EULA.

I don't claim to have GM information, which I wouldn't be allowed to share even if I did, but from what I understand it's only not grief behavior if it is tied to an in-game motivation, such as James 315's business model.

I think that the point is quite valid that it is not legitimate gameplay in and of its own right outside of such contexts.

I stand corrected. But needing to combine annoyance with extortion seems hardly like any real negative for the bumper. Infact, stabber are pretty cheap...

But if they are bots they won't ever buy. The same is true if they are AFK.

Extorting AFK miners and bots is impossible, making the bumping proposal a catch-22.

Bots won't be negatively affected too much depending on how they respond, but I don't think player enforcement is the best answer for them. AFK miners won't pay, but if you do your part they won't mine either. Your revenue becomes the at the keyboard miners no doubt, but the AFK miners provide proof of intent and incentive to be at the keyboard for anyone who doesn't choose to move.

I just want to point out that bumping ATK pilots, even out of refusal to pay some extortion fee, does not have the desired effect of increasing the rewards for those who are paying attention ad displaying adaptive behavior.

Besides that, though, you're absolutely right. ATK players will be the easiest to "extort" and bumping them has the most impact because they are the only ones with the potential to even be responsive. A bot is likely to reapproach the rocks none the wiser, while an AFK player will merely be annoyed and have no context of why.

For me, were I actually inclined to participate, the benefit of at the keyboard miners wouldn't be amongst my real concerns, though I may claim otherwise. In the end the isk if any you extort from at the keyboard miners would likely nullify if not exceed any gain they got over time from the minor reduction of supply any individual with my available playtime could cause towards actual bots and AFK miners.

No one said there wasn't any risk, but unless those POS require at ALL times A) Continuous attention for maintenance and opperation or b) Continuous defense from an actual ongoing attack then you are making demands of the miner that you don't have to make on the moons and the moons don't get removed from the list of AFK professions.

Once an hour doesn't cut it. Defense every other day doesn't cut it. We're not talking risk but activity here. So if accruing minerals while not actively doing something as player towards that end is an EULA violation then every few minutes those moons aren't touched that same violation occurs.

And to the point of defense, there is still a way, other than ganking to affect miners that is far easier, faster and requires far fewer people to be done efficiently than tanking down an undefended POS. Bumping. An AFK miner has less defense against this than an otherwise undefended POS with a single gun has against a 1000 man fleet.

I don't claim to have GM information, which I wouldn't be allowed to share even if I did, but from what I understand it's only not grief behavior if it is tied to an in-game motivation, such as James 315's business model.

I think that the point is quite valid that it is not legitimate gameplay in and of its own right outside of such contexts.

Moons only require defense when they're attacked.
Miners only require defense when they're attacked.

I see no problem.

[quote=Tyberius Franklin]Also, Moons require the constant input of ISK in the form of fuel. Where's the constant fixed cost of running an Exhumer?

Nor do I, so long as we're not calling AFK mining an EULA violation, which is what started the line of conversation that resulted in that post.

The AFK Mining as EULA violation comes from CCP's insistence that AFK PVE Activities are EULA violations. Which is, on its face, ridiculous, but as they've made that ruling we must ask, what's the difference between AFK mining Ice in a Mackinaw and AFKing other PVE activities that were originally intend to require effort (remember, Mining started out with Battleships and Miner 2s)?

Legality isn't nebulous for bumping. It's entirely legal, but legality is a non-issue as it prevents the miner from mining. Mining vessels lack the speed and agility to recover quickly from a series of bumps from a vessel for for the task and an AFK miner cannot even accomplish trying.

And lastly vigilance is not itself an act unless physically guarding the POS with said fleet at all times. Putting in a plan of readiness is an exertion of effort no doubt and having people willing and able to execute it is a worthy achievement, but it is still not a continuous act requiring the total task dedication of any one character at all times in which the act of procuring minerals is occurring.