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.

It already pays peanuts.

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

Compared to other sources of safe highsec income it's pretty high, and safe highsec income is generally much higher than it should be anyway. 25 mil an hour is way too much. Newbies would still mine if it were 5 mil an hour.

I'm also interested to hear how you armchair economists have come to the conclusion that it will destroy the EVE economy.

The bottleneck in production is Trit and Pyerite. Not nulsec/WH minerals. Those are insanely glutted, and if the majority of highsec miners went to nullsec to mine, the market would be saturated to the point of uselessness.

I stopped reading your post about there since you clearly don't have even the most basic grasp of EVE economics.

I stopped reading your post about there since you clearly don't have even the most basic grasp of EVE economics.

So then the high end mineral costs should be increased.

So then the high end mineral costs should be increased.

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

This would solve nothing. I know WAAAAAY More botters in Nullsec then in Hi-sec. Especially with the recent Buffs to Null industry. Also reducing the cost of the economy scales ALL areas. Minerals are Eve's Lifes blood. If the Economy tanks.. PLEX prices will tank as well. All this will do is keep the botters, Doing what they do.. BOT. When I started EVE Plex was 275M each.. Now its 650. If the economy Tanks.. Players dont make as much ISK... ANYwhere.. Plex will drop, Botters will Bot. Nullsec Botters will still Bot, Hi-seccers will still Bot. Prices would scale down.. In the end.. your paying the same. All that changed was inflation.

ISK inflation is controlled by ISK income. PLEX went way up after the Incursion expansion gave everyone a way to make ridiculous amounts of ISK safely in highsec. There have been some other ISK faucets opened up since then as well, and very little increase in overal ISK sinks.

In fact, as of the last economic report, it was stated that EVE was sitting at a very healthy slow rate of inflation, and that Sinks/Faucets were well balanced.

Slow is not how I would describe it. It's slow in comparison to what it was doing after Incursion, but there's still so much ISK coming in that the economy is still inflating when it's already gone so far that if anything it should probably deflate a little.

the primary payout for Incursions is in the form of Concord LP, not bounties.

P.S: Incursion is a sink, not a faucet. Unless I'm mistaken (I could be, Incursions are the one thing in eve I don't know **** about), then the primary payout for Incursions is in the form of Concord LP, not bounties.

Solution: Make highsec mining not profitable enough to sustain an account all by itself.

This would mean more "bot" miners. A normal human miner wouldn't do it if it were not profitable. Therefore all that is left will be the bots. As it is mining makes mere pennies compared to other professions.

This would mean more "bot" miners. A normal human miner wouldn't do it if it were not profitable. Therefore all that is left will be the bots. As it is mining makes mere pennies compared to other professions.

Wrawr, bad man for proposing anything that negatively impacts miners, bad terrible man!

you my friend need to life as a miner for one month and try to mine your plex

wrong, wrong and wrong...

want to remove the bots or at least lower the amount of them, increase the difficulty. Take rats from null, put them in empire. Deep null, BS rats that hit like a freight train, eat hammerheads like munchies.

Win/Win miners learn how to tank, and defend, have backup to kill rats. Can't afk without risking loss of ship to rats.

Yeah Null ratting in Highsec! What could go possible go wrong?!

Oh dear Cthulu no. While it would be nice if mineral prices dropped a bit, I'd rather it was by giving active paying attention miners a way to increase yield through interaction, increasing mineral flow that way. But this idea.... this is impressive in a truly Razzie fashion.



It already pays peanuts. Really. 20-25 mil an hour for a highly skilled solo miner actively scanning rocks and adjusting cycle lengths? With less for a partially afk miner? Forget that. You can make quadruple that in FW with the same SP. If someone wants to rot their brain out semi-afk mining for less isk per hour than I can count on my fingers and toes (in millions), then they are welcome to do so.

You know the "hacking game" and the "loot spew" mechanics people keep talking about?

Stick that as the "mining interface".

Try automating those suckers.

You know the "hacking game" and the "loot spew" mechanics people keep talking about?

Stick that as the "mining interface".

Try automating those suckers.

You know the "hacking game" and the "loot spew" mechanics people keep talking about?

Stick that as the "mining interface".

Try automating those suckers.

So, you want to put something you don't like in one part of the game and slap it onto another part? That's hilarious.

Also, who do you think mines all the trit to keep your ships affordable? Who doesn't really care about gankers banking all your mining ops on all sec levels? Who continues mining day in, day out so that ****** PVPers don't have to do it? Its the bots that keep your limited world perspective running. Remove that part entirely from the game and you lose the very material that keeps it running. Because real people care what happens to their ships and don't continue doing things that others always ruin without thinking about the implications.

Besides, your logic has once again a huge flaw: if botters were to be removed by whatever change to mechanics, and taking into consideration that stupid players don't become less stupid over night, prices would rise sky high and botters would be rentable once again. So, no change at all.

It won't be bit of a problem for bots unless they're using computers from 1980.

You must *really* hate miners :D

if you consider half a month "a pretty small fraction of the month." ok

Woah, easy there.

I did not mean "make the mining interface a living hell for miners", I simply meant that CCP is apparently capable of making some new UI's that require quite a bit of selective clicking that would be hard to automate.

It would be a lot harder if an automation program had to deal with even a simple "minigame" in order to select and start a mining beam on a new asteroid. Pretty sure you could make it next to impossible as well, just by messing with their ability to deal with patterns and colours.

I suggested it on page 2. And it's not about hating miners. Mining is the single most botted activity in the game, period.

If they want to kill that, then putting loot spew on it would kill bot mining. The "real" miners wouldn't be effected, assuming that there are any.

Bot mining is extremely common because it is more than possible to mine enough income in highsec to plex the account using a simple computer program that can run the mining operation.

Solution: Make highsec mining not profitable enough to sustain an account all by itself.

Economic reaction: Nearly all highsec bot mining operations will disappear; the majority of remaining highsec bot miners will be characters that are used for other things as well. The only remaining characters devoted entirely to botting will have operators who run other passive income sources as well to suplement their income.

How to accomplish this: Reduce the demand for highsec minerals. Dramatically increase the prevalence of minerals tritanium, pyerite, mexallon, and isogen.

If normal players could mine in highsec enough for their own ships in their off time, then highsec mineral income would plummet. The economy could not sustain lots of bot miners because there simply wouldn't be enough demand for those minerals. A lot of manufacturers would refuse to pay large amounts of ISK for their minerals when they could just go mine them in a short amount of time.

I dont think you really know how the market in Eve works...

The market will reach an equilibrium no matter what you do to it. This means if you lower the value of asteroids in high sec, less and less people will do it until there is a mineral shortage which will increase the price until people start to do it again.

Also, if you somehow do make it worth less to mine then less humans will mine and more bots will do it because bots dont care what their isk/hour is and they dont get bored.

no reducing Highsec Minerals would solve nothing, Bots are everywhere

Instead of reducing Highsec Minerals i would rather

-replacing all static belts with small Veldspar asteroids and not mining able Rocks with some Ship wrecks in it
- putting more random Grave sites
-they will respawn every 3h after they are depleted
-making Belts smaller (bigger and fewer Asteroids)
-turning miners to Nomads, moving from system to system scanning for sites for mining

Unfortuneately the OP is rather an extreme solution, pretty much burning down your house to stop the birds roosting on the roof.
If CCP were determined to root out bots, then I am sure they would have succeeded by now.
It is more likely that they accept it as part of the overall economy by now.

Or is it just another stealth nerf hisec thread?

Perhaps I don't understand.

How does production currently work? Do you need a portion of your materials from highsec ores and a portion from lowsec/nullsec ores? Is the proportion of these materials out of balance? Is that what you are suggesting?

I know t2 production is like this, but can you build my thorax with 100% highsec materials?

Perhaps I don't understand.

How does production currently work? Do you need a portion of your materials from highsec ores and a portion from lowsec/nullsec ores? Is the proportion of these materials out of balance? Is that what you are suggesting?

I know t2 production is like this, but can you build my thorax with 100% highsec materials?

Is there any way to tell if a miner is running a bot or not? I mean for a player that is. If I come into an area and see a mining barge how do you know if this a bot or not?

Using a bot - when an asteroid is mined out does the bot just switch to the next asteroid or does it do scanning to select the type of ore it is looking for?

If the bot just moves to the next asteroid then maybe seed some low yield asteroids in the belt. You would need to scan the asteroid or highlight it and pull up info on the asteroid to see a density figure. Otherwise you could sit there for hours and get very little ore. Instead of xxx per 60 second revolution you would only get 1 tenth of that from a low yield asteroid.

But I am still so new to this game that I haven't even found the bathroom yet - nor the save game feature

BYW - where is the nearest Starbucks :)

And I could have been an adventurer like you but then I took an asteroid in the knee

In my opinion, a player that is active at the keyboard while mining should be able to pull more ore than one that starts the process and goes and reads a book.

What about a NPC mining "negotiator" that shows up in the belt (not every time of course, but once every so often)?

The "trick" would be to use a random UI (elements and questions) for these negotiations, making it difficult to program a macro.

If you are a player, you simply agree to the terms of the negotiations and they'll go away.

If you're a bot which would have difficulties responding, the ships' strip miners are infected with a lock down virus, until negotiations have concluded. At this time negotiations will have to be continued in a system station, where a station negotiator can be called upon.

A player would be given plenty of opportunity to respond, since a bot don't care about time so much anyways. If a player happens to get their strips disabled, simple enter a station and complete negotiations.

A bot on the other hand would be forced to continue with the strip miners not functioning, amk.

No. Some o the higher end minerals need to be mined out of null. You could essentially make everything in null since all the roids availibl are there.

You could if much mining happened there, but it's inefficient so most of the minerals come from highsec and most of what isn't available in highsec comes from sources other than mining.

Requirements for a thanatos from an me 0 prod eff. V prints:


Tritanium
69 888 997 - 2.327 mil m3 Veldspar
Pyerite
17 080 304 - 2.051 mil m3 Scordite
Mexallon
6 393 846 - 2.911 mil m3 Plagioclase
Isogen
996 807 - 0.974 mil m3 Omber
Nocxium
281 781 - 0.997 mil m3 Hemorphite
Zydrine
50 677 - 306 k m3 Crokite
Megacyte
21 792 - 209 k m3 Arkonor

So mostly trit and in huge quantities for super caps you don't mine you buy t1 crap and fill your JF with those and drop them to null and reprocess because with this scale you need a freighter loads (literally) of processed minerals.

So then the high end mineral costs should be increased.

Mining Minigame on par with hacking.
Mining fixed.

Bot mining is extremely common.

Solution: Make highsec mining not profitable enough to sustain an account all by itself.

Economic reaction: Nearly all highsec bot mining operations will disappear; the majority of remaining highsec bot miners will be characters that are used for other things as well.

How to accomplish this: Reduce the demand for highsec minerals. Dramatically increase the prevalence of minerals tritanium, pyerite, mexallon, and isogen.

If normal players could mine in highsec enough for their own ships in their off time, then high-sec mineral income would plummet. The economy could not sustain lots of bot miners because there simply wouldn't be enough demand for those minerals.

Mining Minigame on par with hacking.
Mining fixed.

Pew Terror wrote:
Mining Minigame on par with hacking.
Mining fixed.

i look forward to the mini game you have to complete every time your guns cycle, that will be a fun one.

The solution appears to be elusive yet simple. Disable auto cycle from mining lasers including strips. means all miners must at the keyboard. ergo anybody not at the keyboard is a bot - then kill with antimatter. Problem solved. And this can be done by dev in a heartbeat. Why waste devs time with extravagance for mere miners when they would not appreciate it? There are better and more worthy things in this game deserving attention.

The solution appears to be elusive yet simple. Disable auto cycle from mining lasers including strips. means all miners must at the keyboard. ergo anybody not at the keyboard is a bot - then kill with antimatter. Problem solved. And this can be done by dev in a heartbeat. Why waste devs time with extravagance for mere miners when they would not appreciate it? There are better and more worthy things in this game deserving attention.

no reducing Highsec Minerals would solve nothing, Bots are everywhere

Instead of reducing Highsec Minerals i would rather

-replacing all static belts with small Veldspar asteroids and not mining able Rocks with some Ship wrecks in it
- putting more random Grave sites
-they will respawn every 3h after they are depleted
-making Belts smaller (bigger and fewer Asteroids)
-turning miners to Nomads, moving from system to system scanning for sites for mining

If we want to eliminate or at least heavily discourage bot mining we need to come up with some interactive methods to improve and reward "human" mining that can't easily be replicated by programs.

wrong, wrong and wrong...

want to remove the bots or at least lower the amount of them, increase the difficulty. Take rats from null, put them in empire. Deep null, BS rats that hit like a freight train, eat hammerheads like munchies.

Win/Win miners learn how to tank, and defend, have backup to kill rats. Can't afk without risking loss of ship to rats.

Am I missing something? Single miners can make reasonable small scale income, that scales nicely with a group of miners co-operating (real or multi-box). The bots aren't greatly affecting this and CCP will take them out when they find them anyway. Where is the problem that the OP is suggesting solving?

I'm sure more balancing issues would then come into play, but I'd love to see the mining focus shifting more in such a direction.

Without any officer or deadspace spawns, I'm not sure there would be major income issues in basic null BS's in High sec thinking about it. Of course, BS rats in Empire space in the main belts is just a weird thing. Since supposedly they patrol it.

Couldn't be further from the truth. The meager amounts of CONCORD LP you get from running incursions is watered down by the insane LP costs of items in CONCORD's LP store. People run incursions for the ISK, and there's a lot of it. You get about 10 mil per Vanguard site and those can be run in under 5 minutes by an experienced group with blingy ships. My first incursion run, I brought a Navy Megathron and ran with a mediocre group that was far from the best. In a little over 3 hours we made 300 mil each. Incursion Assaults pay significantly more and can also be run in highsec. I don't know the actual amounts but from what I hear, the people who can run assaults will never bother with vanguards if they don't have to. Apparently the difference is pretty significant.

I have not bought anything from the CONCORD LP store yet. I'm not just holding out, I simply haven't scored enough CONCORD LP over all of my incursion runs (maybe 60+ sites) to actually buy anything of value. My CONCORD LP is worth nothing compared to the ISK payouts.

edit: I have 116,206 CONCORD loyalty points

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.

Keep on defending botting, bro.

Have we utterly demolished bot mining yetGǪ?

Keep on defending botting, bro.

Have we utterly demolished bot mining yetGǪ?

The solution to mining is interactivity.

How come people don't suggest all the amazing interactivity for PvP, you know there you actually want to pay attention 100% of the time?

PvP is already interactive, especially at the small gang/small fleet level where most fights take place.

PvP is already interactive, especially at the small gang/small fleet level where most fights take place.

What I don't understand is why anyone would argue for the Bots.

Err no it's not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmNQEiJUthc

This is interactive PvP, not lock your target from overview and press F1.



Because they're not bots and any bot would eat up the simple minigame ideas that would do nothing but encourage botting.

Respectfully, I disagree with anyone who supports the Bot-laden status quo, or who thinks small-scale PvP is "noninteractive", or who thinks Bots can handle any mechanic CCP can create.

The game would be better all around with my suggestions above. Of that I have no doubt, and I find it hard to believe a miner would prefer no-interaction and current loot levels, to an interactive minigame that could provide them increased profit, ore and drops AND put them in a better situation than the Bots.

The only player type I'd expect to be against such a system are the AFK Miners and the Bot Operators.

But I'm open minded, and happy to engage with you if you have a superior idea to buff player mining enjoyabillity and nerf the abillity to bot the activity.

1. Part of the reason why bot miners are a big issue is because of market inflation; Mining is bigger business now than it was simply for the fact that once they make the initial investment, it's basically free money for the amount of time plugged in. Ship and mineral prices skyrocketing after getting rid of drone minerals was a big part of it (and a rather myopic one on CCP's part, I'd like to think), so adding alternative methods of getting minerals would be an appropriate way to go about fixing botting.

2. Divvy up belt types and difficulty a bit. An interesting way of fixing botting would be to have the asteroids actually do damage when you bump into them, and make it so they're spaced out a LOT more like in real space, and moving around. That plus a barge buff to speed would be an excellent route to go as it would promote such necessities as manual piloting and possible active tanking to make it a more involved process, and fun for those miners who actually do it. It would also spice up PVP a bit since you could have the mechanic of being chased by a pirate, doing a quick calculation of asteroid trajectory in your head, then maneuvering in such a way the unwary pilot doesn't make the maneuver and slams into an asteroid, exploding violently. The lore justification for this mechanic would be the every ship has anti-collision fields installed to prevent catastrophic impacts, and it would be its own EXTREMELY fun industry mini-game instead of just...sitting there. Firing your laser into a rock.

3. Change ALL belts to scannable locations. Currently you have specific locations with specific quantities that pop up specifically on your overview. This is a hilarious misrepresentation of real life astronomy, in which the asteroid belts in solar systems are either in the orbital path of planetary bodies or in deep space between the orbits. The more difficult you make the process to automate, the fewer bots you have and the more enjoyable the mechanic is as a minigame.

4. Failing at these changes, integrating in-game watch mechanics to penalize botters would be an appropriate route to take, much as how Retribution's new aggression mechanic made evading concord a bannable offense. The tech and programming should be fairly simple, and even failing at that, making pirate rat spawns more frequent and deadly would be another appropriate route to take.

How do you ensure a bot cannot complete your proposed activity? Explain that, in detail, and you might get some buy in. Until you can do that, the only type of mining you might kill off is AFK mining, which means that you effectively prefer EULA violators to those that play according to the rules.

Also, it should be noted that greater yield doesn't necessarily mean greater profits. Market values per unit tend to drop when supply increases without a new source of demand.

If your only retort is "but Bots can do it!" and you have no solutions of your own, you'res imply not being a productive part fo the conversation.

In point of fact, I cannot "prove" that you, sir, are not in fact a Forum-Bot. Using text recognition software and a library of resposonse fragments to create replies that appear human, but are not.

Quackbot says hi.

With that said, the aim in game design when combating Bots is to make gameplay enjoyable (with depth and proper reward) to encourage humans to play it actively, an active participation requisite gameplay mechanic, to eliminate simple bots and their ilk, and to, as much as possible, design gameplay mechanics that are non-preductable/random/ and hence less scriptable. There are a variety of ways to do this, from the CAPTCHA idea, to non-predictable key stroke requirements that flash on screen to achieve certain outcomes, to adding complexity to the activity itself (i.e. building bot-defeating mechanics in at every level, i.e. require scanning for asteroids with prompts a Bot has difficulty with so humans can find the best roids, then design active, bot defeating mechanics into the activity of mining, etc, etc, etc.)

Yes, some players might be put off by active mining. And some who would never think of it (but play Minecraft for ages) might just like a new, more complex, more profitable mining game in their EVE.

Again, since I cannot prove you are not a script-bot, I equally cannot prove these ideas would deter all bots, in fact Id say no game mechanic can defeat all bots.

But if we can design game mechanics that defeat a majority, thats still a win.

And again, my bot friend, it's highly suspicious that anyone would argue FOR that staus quo, knowing what that status quo is.

Game mechanics defeating a majority of bots is a myth. The reason being bots aren't static. If one doesn't work after a change either they will update it or change to one tha

It hasn't been a myth since Turing devised his test. Ever since then, people will work for years and years and spend tremendous amounts of resources to build computers that can beat humans at various tasks selected for their AI difficulty--and every time a computer is made to beat a task, the task is updated quickly or a new one is swiftly devised by a single person that once again defeats the machine.

There's no practical limit to what things an AI can do, but crafting one to best a human at the things humans do best is extremely difficult to accomplish yet all too easy to topple.

At last check, chess wasn't updated to beat deep blue.

how many unique iterations of mining should CCP make

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/
Sure it was. Of course, since Traditional Chess leans so strongly in favor of the AI, the rules had to be changed so dramatically that you wouldn't call it Chess. But it can be played with the same board and pieces.

Chess is a terrible example because of all human games, Chess is one of the ones that AI can beat humans at most easily. It is a game in which in many situations, only a handful of millions of possible outcomes can result in victory, and the setup is easy for a computer to understand. Pick almost any other game and a computer has a harder time beating humans at it.


One. Like with probes and the new hacking mechanic. I don't know how well the new hacking mechanic will stand up against bots but I do know there aren't any good probe bots, and the reason for that is that they don't have the spacial reasoning to contemplate the symbols the server sends, and even if they were integrated well enough into the client to read the probe map as it is rendered, they still would only be able to scan down sites that had already reached a yellow signal strength.

Only allow 1 active login from 1 IP adress. Problem solved. No more mutli acccounting, more fair play.
Oh wait, CCP encourages mutli accounting...

Only allow 1 active login from 1 IP adress. Problem solved. No more mutli acccounting, more fair play.
Oh wait, CCP encourages mutli accounting...

What about the people who use several accounts at the same time for a wide variety of things, including boosters for fleets, scouts for fleets, market PVP, industrial stuff excluding mining, Plex/Ano/Mission running? This idea has been suggested in a separate topic already and it was utterly demolished there. For the exact same reasons. Any more nice ideas on how to not solve issues?

Only allow 1 active login from 1 IP adress. Problem solved. No more mutli acccounting, more fair play.
Oh wait, CCP encourages mutli accounting...

To be fair, other Games fill this roles with other humans, i dont like Boxer or even Alts but yes we should accept it that its simply a common Part of Eve Online.

What about the people who use several accounts at the same time for a wide variety of things, including boosters for fleets, scouts for fleets, market PVP, industrial stuff excluding mining, Plex/Ano/Mission running? This idea has been suggested in a separate topic already and it was utterly demolished there. For the exact same reasons. Any more nice ideas on how to not solve issues?

Personally I would love to see only single accounts, that would even the odds quite a bit in EVE.

And I am also aware that it will never happen cos then all the multi account vets will start rage quiting :)

Number of hours played to earn a PLEX
Number of hours played to earn the ISK needed to buy (ship for use in example)
Amount of ore needed to manufacture (ship for use in example)

Q1: I hope you're not suggesting that decreasing ISK yield from mining will increase the amount of time it takes to earn a PLEX.

My suggestion was to dramatically reduce the ISK yield from mining, such that nobody even considers it a profession but rather just a side skill you do every now and then when minerals get low. At that point, the hauling is probably the bigger bottleneck. There will still be lots of ways for people to earn their PLEX.

Also I should point out that I'm not trying to gain support for my proposal. I made it to point out that defeating bots wouldn't actually be that difficult. That being said, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea.

My suggestion was to dramatically reduce the ISK yield from mining, such that nobody even considers it a profession but rather just a side skill you do every now and then when minerals get low. At that point, the hauling is probably the bigger bottleneck. There will still be lots of ways for people to earn their PLEX.

Also I should point out that I'm not trying to gain support for my proposal. I made it to point out that defeating bots wouldn't actually be that difficult. That being said, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea.

When it comes to being a booster character, good luck finding one, who wants to sit on a safe, watching for probes and not getting on any kills. You now are going to say that ongrid boosters should be used, which is indeed a viable option, until you realize that, on the one hand, you still cannot get on kills, because your utility slots and weapon slots are full with required boosters for the fleet, or, in the other hand, you get killed early in fights and thus doom your fleet.

Bot mining is extremely common because it is more than possible to mine enough income in highsec to plex the account using a simple computer program that can run the mining operation.

Solution: Make highsec mining not profitable enough to sustain an account all by itself.

Economic reaction: Nearly all highsec bot mining operations will disappear; the majority of remaining highsec bot miners will be characters that are used for other things as well. The only remaining characters devoted entirely to botting will have operators who run other passive income sources as well to suplement their income.

How to accomplish this: Reduce the demand for highsec minerals. Dramatically increase the prevalence of minerals tritanium, pyerite, mexallon, and isogen.

If normal players could mine in highsec enough for their own ships in their off time, then highsec mineral income would plummet. The economy could not sustain lots of bot miners because there simply wouldn't be enough demand for those minerals. A lot of manufacturers would refuse to pay large amounts of ISK for their minerals when they could just go mine them in a short amount of time.

Who cares kills?

I am ongrid booster since... 2 years and i am a very happy puppy, sure i cant get into big Fleet fights but i dont care, i prefer small Gangs and love to be the "Booster Sponge".

Think about it.

most people who want to plex their account rely on mining enough minerals to eventually get the isk to plex their account. making that impossible would mean a good chuck (maybe around 5,000-10,000) of active subscribers would dissappear.

Most botting happens in null sec. Apply your idea there.

Most bottling happens where there are most people. I win the Internets!

Even when i respond they still assume im using a program to mine while just "monitoring" my computer.

How do you know the majority of miners are bots? Only the devs can know for sure.

I've been attacked and called a bot numerous times while mining in hisec.

So essentially your plan is to ruin the game for legit players because you don't like your own speculation of the amount of bots being used for mining.

1.) Many of us define a bot miner as anyone who allows their EVE character to continue mining while they themselves are indulging in other activities. I personally define it as anyone who is able to not notice they are being bumped when they switch mining lasers to a new asteroid or warp away. Most of the miners I have checked around the Sinq Laison/Sanctum area are bots by my own definition, and a higher portion by many other players' definition.

2.) Have you stopped to think that maybe you ARE botting?

3.) my suggestion here isn't my plan. But if it were implemented (which I don't necessarily support), the only people whose game would be ruined are those whose gameplay revolves around not only mining but specifically wasting time doing it and/or earning a good income from doing it in highsec.

Maybe the real problem is that you think it is okay to earn a good in-game income from letting your character play for you in a safety zone.

What about a NPC mining "negotiator" that shows up in the belt (not every time of course, but once every so often)?

The "trick" would be to use a random UI (elements and questions) for these negotiations, making it difficult to program a macro.

If you are a player, you simply agree to the terms of the negotiations and they'll go away.

If you're a bot which would have difficulties responding, the ships' strip miners are infected with a lock down virus, until negotiations have concluded. At this time negotiations will have to be continued in a system station, where a station negotiator can be called upon.

A player would be given plenty of opportunity to respond, since a bot don't care about time so much anyways. If a player happens to get their strips disabled, simple enter a station and complete negotiations.

A bot on the other hand would be forced to continue with the strip miners not functioning, amk.

The bot would simply be programmed to recognis its strips being diabled and then go and dock up before returning

Compared to other sources of safe highsec income it's pretty high, and safe highsec income is generally much higher than it should be anyway. 25 mil an hour is way too much. Newbies would still mine if it were 5 mil an hour.

I'm also interested to hear how you armchair economists have come to the conclusion that it will destroy the EVE economy.

If the same need exists in the station environment, which the bot failed to address in space, then the bot is effectively put offline.

My question, knowing the server is a bot and this interaction won't be controlled by a living person, why would you expect one bot to reliably fool another one?

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

any interactive module or non passive action would require that, otherwise your just victimising 1 small part of the playerbase for a problem that is not of their making

bots don't just mine

bots also rat in nulsec
bots also do distribution missions
im pretty sure bot programmes are robust enough nowadays to be configured for pvp

Bot mining is extremely common because it is more than possible to mine enough income in highsec to plex the account using a simple computer program that can run the mining operation.

Solution: Make highsec mining not profitable enough to sustain an account all by itself.

Economic reaction: Nearly all highsec bot mining operations will disappear; the majority of remaining highsec bot miners will be characters that are used for other things as well. The only remaining characters devoted entirely to botting will have operators who run other passive income sources as well to suplement their income.

How to accomplish this: Reduce the demand for highsec minerals. Dramatically increase the prevalence of minerals tritanium, pyerite, mexallon, and isogen.

If normal players could mine in highsec enough for their own ships in their off time, then highsec mineral income would plummet. The economy could not sustain lots of bot miners because there simply wouldn't be enough demand for those minerals. A lot of manufacturers would refuse to pay large amounts of ISK for their minerals when they could just go mine them in a short amount of time.

you mean we miners should not be able to plex our accounts without mining 23/7 because we could do something else that would bring more isk with more effort and bot fleets and multiboxing fleets would case to exist because of that

dont make me laugh if the prices are low no human player would bother with mining bots dont care if they mine 23/7 players do you are promoting botting my friend

Once again I'll reiterate: I'm not saying this should be done, I'm saying it could be done. A lot of people spend a lot of time discussing ways to get rid of bots. Well I have a solution that would actually work, and without destroying the game in the process. You should probably either support it or accept the bots, because I haven't seen any better ideas around here.

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.

[Like moths to a flame, the bats will follow the prey.

I agree, highsec mining should not be very profitable. Removing highsec endless ice was done. If I understand you correctly, you want to do the same thing to highsec ore.

Afaik, CCP has known of bot/macro use for years, but took minimal action to stop it. Are IP bans the answer?

Many botters operate in nullsec. Sounds just like normal anti highsec junk

CCP is taking measures to decrease botting even more, but they are also aware that a very substantial amount of EVE's minerals come from bots mining, and that totally getting rid of them in one fell swoop would cause serious economic backlash.

strangely, i'd be perfectly fine with the economic backlash of mining's isk/hour not sucking balls.

Are you sure? No one would buy a Frigate that costs 20M to produce.

Are you sure? No one would buy a Frigate that costs 20M to produce.