If you really want to get rid of botting, have a captcha pop up for every strip mining cycle 15 seconds before its done.

want to remove the bots or at least lower the amount of them, increase the difficulty.

Bigger the fleet present the bigger the Rat resistance that spawns, sounds good to me..

Maybe the rats should be seen to be competing for the ore..........

Except then non bot miners also couldn't make an income. And you have just destroyed an entire play style. Industry also becomes worthless since minerals are worthless meaning a 5% profit margin is 1-2 isk. So you have now destroyed a second play style. Oh, and ships become worthless, since they are so cheap to build. So you have destroyed PvP as well since there is no value to the destroyed goods so no-one cares.

Dumb idea.

I think who ever suggested high sec was genuinely safe, was being funny. Maybe not by intention, but that is another matter.

There are simply different rules in high sec than in other parts of the game, rules where you can get away with something if you do it fast enough, but it will cost you so be warned.

Safety, like paranoia, exists in the mind of the player only. Sometimes the game just happens to agree with them.

just because your paranoid doesn't mean there not out to get you.

You guys who say it wouldn't stop the bots don't seem to have a grasp of the scope I'm talking about. Let me give you an example from a different game: cobblestone and dirt in minecraft. Those items have value on public servers but they are in such high supply that nobody could ever make a significant income by mining and selling the stuff, unless they were selling it for a fixed NPC price. When people want some, they either mine a bunch or ask a friend for some. Sometimes people exchange small amounts of server currency for them, but there's no specific price without an NPC price floor.

Except then non bot miners also couldn't make an income. And you have just destroyed an entire play style. Industry also becomes worthless since minerals are worthless meaning a 5% profit margin is 1-2 isk. So you have now destroyed a second play style. Oh, and ships become worthless, since they are so cheap to build. So you have destroyed PvP as well since there is no value to the destroyed goods so no-one cares.

Dumb idea.

I personally would go in the opposite direction - reduce belts to 1/2 per system.

key advantages include more competition - easier to gank - less minerals from highsec. I'm sure others could be manufactured but the principle is increased competition is healthy for the economy.

So whatever solution , presuming there is one, would have to be heavilly weighed and considered from ALL perspective EVEN the insane x-emplyee that snapped' :D

If you are going to suggest AFK play as important to an MMO, we may be better off simply automating the experience.

I love that expression.
I think it salutes the attitude we share that would seem crazy in most other places.

Now we are getting a bit zen, however. As you probably know, paranoia is not defined by a belief that others are out to get you, but a more specific thing indeed.
It is considered paranoia if you are wrong, and you are actually not being targeted by the forces you expect.

Nobody, by that definition, can be considered paranoid in EVE. We most definitely are out to get each other.

Just pointing out again that mining is *intended* to be a lower income low attention relaively low skilled profession. Making it fun (not possible) wouldn't help as people would simply stay mining full time rather than move on to other things. I think you will find most miners are mining whilst doing something else and then using the profit for more fun activities. Mess up the mining dynamic and you will cause many knock on effects...mostly negative ones in my opinion

If you really want to get rid of botting, have a captcha pop up for every strip mining cycle 15 seconds before its done.

But, I must question the premise that players should NEED to move onto other things, since by default this implies that mining is limited to the shallow end of serious play.
Indirectly, I feel it implies that end game content may be undefined, but it definitely does not include any mining.

End game mining would be in lo or null I think since you have to keep killing the rats and protect your miners...and you need to protect your territory too...anything to make mining less dull would rapidly become so due to how repetitive it would have to be by nature

If we accept the premise that basic combat play against other players can remain interesting, then the problem I think for mining centers around the lack of comparable player interaction.

I am the guy who wants to make mining interesting, by bopping over to the other side's belts and trying to pew with the belt dwellers there.

If we make the miners able to fight toe to toe with covert style craft, and gate camps filter out the obvious PvP centric combat front line ships, then add in the cyno jammers, you have created a stadium for combat capable miners to fight against covert players.
(Add in a no-beacon spool up to cynos, and the threat of hot dropping can be balanced out)

I want to be on both sides of that fight.

Now, back to the theme of this thread, can you imagine a more effective anti-bot mechanic, than players with lasers?

People will still want ships and the industry will still be just as active. All that will change in industry is the price of materials, which will directly affect the price of output. The margin remains the same because it costs the same amount of work and has the same amount of access.

Mining will continue in places outside of highsec. The price of nocxium, zydrine, megacyte, and morphite will not change significantly. The other minerals will become bystanders which the miners will have in excess and will sell to manufacturers who wish to use them.

Mining in highsec will not be very profitable, and it shouldn't be. It takes very little work and is easily done by bots or mostly AFK. It should pay accordingly.

Misconception: Miners don't want to fight, miners want to mine - that is why they are miners. If you need to fight AND mine, the activity of mining becomes way more tedious and laborious than other activities and consequently even less attractive to miners than it already is - and more bot-madden.