Originally by: Joerd Toastius

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The way to accommodate "lone prospector"-type characters is probably to have resources (eg roids) which will either give say a reasonable amount of wealth if you hit them all in one go but if carefully managed can keep on giving and giving moderate amounts on a regular basis. The key there though is "carefully managed" - you'd have to be careful not to overuse the resource or it wouldn't "regenerate", but equally if you left it too long without using it it'd expire and disappear. For example, you have a roid which you can find (through whatever method) which:
-Has a huge theoretical ore capacity, say 10k units (of random ore type z for which this is an awful lot; I don't mine)
-Mining rate such that a large barge can pull 100 units an hour and make a very decent profit
-Will disappear within 3 hours once you start mining it
-Can be "stabilised" (with appropriate skill and/or module) provided you mine less than 100 units in one go; every unit over 100 you mine makes it stabilise 10 units lower.
-At skill level 1 you lose say half the amount you mined from the roid in stabilising it; at skill level 3 you lose no units; at skill level 5 you actually add half the units you mined back on to the total.
-Stabilisation lasts for say 72h, after which time it needs restabilising or it'll disappear

Upshot is as follows:
-If you can pull 30 or so large barges together for a six-hour op, you can mine the roid dry. Bonanza.
-If you're on your own, at skill level 1 and assuming you only mine 100 units a go, you can milk it for about two months at 100 units/night
-If you have skill 3, you can do it for 3 months
-If you have skill 5 and you mine every night, you're looking at nearer 6 months
-If you don't keep checking back to keep it stable at least, you'll lose it. Yes, this means they'll never last for ever due to RL commitments, but they'll be plenty out there. The idea is that you could have three or four on the go and "do the rounds" every night to milk your cash cows

Could quite possibly alter this and make use of existing Mercoxit mechanics to keep it more in line with current stuff; the basic model should also be able to apply to non-roid resources.

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