It would be nice to have some weapon options on an exhumer to offer some protection and fair play against gankers.
Make it a hybrid rig that offers an additional turret port.
I would fit one or two.

The healer buffer could be somewhat of a cross between the Orca and logistics ships. Lose the hauling ability to buff/shield rep.

The healer buffer could be somewhat of a cross between the Orca and logistics ships.

Done and done.

[Orca, LogiOrca]

A way to fight back when someone comes to gank. I get that ganking is a style of game play, and I don't think anything should be safe. It would just seem less one sided if there was a way to escort an industrial ship. I'm not sure how that would/should work, but it would be nice. It could be a new role for existing ships, or a good excuse to add new ones to the game. Some ideas have already been put forward.

ECM, Webs, Logistics, DPS/Alpha are all ways to escort Industrials, Freighters, and Miners and protect them from ganks.

Miners can even do their own webbing if there are two or more of them.

Serious question: How does someone ECM or web a ganker without CONCORD smacking you? As it stands, the Catalyst warps to belt, locks, fires and the barge blows up. Same with a T1 Indy hauler. How does an escort put itself in between the ganker and the industrial?

Serious question: How does someone ECM or web a ganker without CONCORD smacking you? As it stands, the Catalyst warps to belt, locks, fires and the barge blows up. Same with a T1 Indy hauler. How does an escort put itself in between the ganker and the industrial?

It it were up to me (and thankfully for all concerned it's not) I'd replace the current system with a more dynamic one.

Basically as it stands there are giant rocks in space that contain a single ore type. These rocks are placed together for form belts or in scannable sites.

I would replace the individual ore rocks with a single "Asteroid" type. Each asteroid type contains a percentage of each of the ore types. The asteroids in high sec contain a much lower potion of the good ores, and the asteroids in null sec contain a better ratio of the good stuff. Low sec can go fu... i mean low sec contains a more balanced level.

Now this would be complicated further to make it more fun! The T2 mining crystals would allow you to pull out a greater portion of the ore you're after at the expense of wasting the ores you're not.
The server would track the total of each ore mined in a region and when downtime rolls around and the ores are respawned then the ore percentage balance that the newly spawned rocks will now contain will be adjusted by what was mined over the course of the last few days/weeks.

So for example, in a high sec region right after this goes live it's fairly obvious that everyone will be after the better ores so they will fit the T2 ark crystals and mine away. after a few days of this the percentage of ark in the high sec belts will be low enough that the return on mining this will be less than switching out to another crystal. Rinse and repeat.

This should create a steady source of the low ends in null sec which can be balanced so that importing from high sec is still required but a concerted effort to get them locally would be possible.

The base percentages could be regularly balanced to ensure the market is operating the way CCP want, i.e. export of high ends from null and import of lows from highsec.

Btw, the asteroid scanner would tell you the total m3 of the roid and the percentages of the various ores it contains.

Wanted to start a list of things miners wanted to see changed in hopes that it may catch some of the devs attention.

More hybrid mining vessels. We have two currently, a cloaky/mining frigate and a combat/mining cruiser. I'd like to see a healer/mining or healer/buffer. The healer buffer could be somewhat of a cross between the Orca and logistics ships. Lose the hauling ability to buff/shield rep.

CCP's Mineral Welfare Program should probably go away already. The current asteroid spawning system highly benefits Russians/Europeans while leaving players from other time zones with the scraps. There should be some balance on roid spawning mechanics. Same with Ice spawning, I've seen European players go nuts just before down time trying to mine out that last bit of Ice so they can have themselves a fresh new belt without waiting out the 4 hour timer like everyone else does.

New mining resources. I remember comet/ring mining being talked about a while back. Maybe moon mining? Can still keep the pos harvesters running but an option of using a ship and being more active and getting more materials in return?

#1 on everyone's list I'm sure is how incredibly boring mining is. I wouldn't mind seeing something more active like having waves of pirates or droids coming at you while you are mining. Fighting them off while you try to get as much mining done. This might even make players I dunno, group up? With the skiff for protection and a healer ship, it could work.

Wanted to start a list of things miners wanted to see changed in hopes that it may catch some of the devs attention.

.

4. Give me one type of compressed ore, not three. You can fiddle with the number of units required for compression to preserve the higher mineral concentrations in the better ores.

Really like 90% of the problems i see in this thread would be solved by leaving highsec and mining in null.

Fix the mex problem. Im constantlly having to import JF loads of mex to nullsec because its the one mineral we cant get enough of down here.

This would drive miners out to lowsec, where they have to have friends to protect them. This encourages team play, and makes mining a riskier activity.

Did anyone watch the Alliance tournament today?

One of the developers said he had spent time on a project designing ways to make mining more interesting. I couldn't tell if the project was active or defuct but he also did work on the data/relic mini-game.

When Ark is basically the same ISK/hr as Veld, something is badly wrong, and it's not just because hisec miners are pulling in too much ore. As I've said before -- the problem is that nullsec can't get enough cheap trit, so they're overmining high-ends to squeeze out more trit locally. I thought that adding compression arrays would alleviate the problem in hisec and make mining veld and scord more atractive to hisec miners, but apparently that pipeline hasn't yet caught up to the requirements of nullsec. Also I've heard a lot of complaints from null that the cost of compressed low-ends are still out of whack in Jita.

The solution to the high-end/low-end imbalance is to get hisec miners to go after veld and scord more often, and to compress the ore rather than refining it.

I don't know why more hisec miners don't go after veld and scord, myself. That's pretty much all I ever mine, unless I need other minerals for manufacturing. Veld is the best ISK/hr ore in the game (though Scord has been doing better recently due to the high pyerite prices). The addition of compression arrays was a boon, since I already had a couple of sticks going to support mining ops already. Being able to compress and haul in a Miasmos rather than a freighter is a real boon.

As I've said here and elsewhere, another good fix would be to add a Mobile Compression Unit so that solo and small-gang miners can just compress right in the belt and save the logistics hassle of maintaining a POS just for compressing ore. Right now the need to run a POS is the biggest bottleneck in the supply of compressed low-end ore. It's not that big a deal to run a POS in hisec now that no standings are needed and you can anchor in any system, but the startup cost and overhead of a POS is non-trivial (mainly fuel + charters). Of course you can leave the POS offlined until you need to actually compress your ore, but that just leads to other hassles (mainly, hauling all your ore back and forth to your POS for compression). An MCU would neatly solve the compression issue.

Well that says it all !! We don't anyone involved with what has happened to exploration going within one hundred miles of anything remotely connected with mining.

Forgot to add mining missions. They are pretty much useless. Their main use before was just to grind out faster standings to set up a POS. I don't know a single player who runs mining missions. They should be looked at to serve some sort of purpose other then "we have mining missions too."

I don't see the profit in mining and compressing ore in high sec as compared to just running a few level 4's . But then again I'm pretty much a solo player right now because real life has caught me... Work, wife, kids and other stuff that screws up men's lives.

Plus running a POS is way too expensive to compress ore. At least for someone in my boat.

I would like to see a change in the balance for minerals in ore.
As a nullsec miner I find my chokepoint mineral is mexallon. Followed perhaps by isogen, though I tend to find enough locally from the hedbergite miners usually.

CCP's Mineral Welfare Program should probably go away already. The current asteroid spawning system highly benefits Russians/Europeans while leaving players from other time zones with the scraps. There should be some balance on roid spawning mechanics. Same with Ice spawning, I've seen European players go nuts just before down time trying to mine out that last bit of Ice so they can have themselves a fresh new belt without waiting out the 4 hour timer like everyone else does.

More hedbergite and hemorphite anomolies in high sec.
Add a small percentage of megacyte to one or both.

A second turret on the skiff.

Eliminate the broken mechanic of getting stuck on a rock.

One change would increase mining yeld and improve safety would be auto targeting roids so lasers never go offline.

Several miners could clear a belt fasters exposing themselves less.

Holy God, could you be more bot-aspirant? Maybe you would like a 'remote mining bot' that strips the belts for you with no work and no risk while you remain safely in a station as well?

I posted something on this a fair time ago

Short form:
The basic process of mining works. There are many people who mine, because they don't want to do something that's at all actiony. Just get to a roid, and mine it for a few hours to relax.

I don't particularly see that change (only thing to do at that point would be to add something more active, but that's time limited in some fashion.

Where I would like to see changes is with the meta around mining. Static respawning asteroid belts offend me. What I'd prefer is the ability to prospect for your own sites to mine, and one you have them, you can stake a claim on it (at least in high and low) where if anyone else 'claimjumps' you can, umm, interact with them. More than a suspect flag, something longer term, and more targeted. (Kill right style)

I'd prefer claims were at corporation level (So NPC corp members can't claim them. An actual, mechanics based, reason for miners to join a PC corp. As there really isn't one right now) and possibly able to be set open.

The act of prospecting would create the site (so no 'I claim all the sites in a system), and it would be able to support a reasonable number of characters mining, for a reasonable length of time. Big corps would have a reason to have dedicated prospectors, so they can keep their miners actually mining, rather than every so often, a player has to go scan their own site.

Claims could also be sold, allowing freelancers to have a market.

I'd also like to see mining missions updated, to have actual ore in them as well. Which would allow for people who don't want to mess with that side, to be able to make an income.

The lore has ORE finding a huge asteroid with lots of nocxium, which led to their current preeminence in mining. I don't want to see it go quite that far. But something similar.


Yes, it would then be harder to find miners to gank. But it's not like people don't gank mission runners. Just takes a little more effort.

I'm not going to make myself popular here.

I mine irregularly. I mine in high sec. I have a very busy job in real life and I like to mine BECAUSE it's slow. I use it to relax and to take the time to get my head out of the tornado.

I mine because it allows me to chat with friends and contacts within and outside EVE while I'm doing something that contributes to my manufacturing.

I've been doing this since 2005 in this way.

and I think it's perfect

working

as

intended

If I were to change one thing about mining, it would be this: to make high sec asteroid belts have about the same size rocks as null sec belts but fewer of them. I don't need to be kept entertained while I'm mining. I entertain myself. CCP's idea that miners need entertainment by constantly moving aroudn and locking new rocks is the wrong paradigm. What miners are after is not action... it's the exact oposite of action. It's rest.

Adjujst the size of the rocks. The isk per hour can remain the same.

T-

#1 on everyone's list I'm sure is how incredibly boring mining is. .

Comet Mining.

A comet spawns randomly in a system, it has ice as an outer layer, once the ice is gone, it has minerals as a second layer, and when that is gone, a little moon goo as the core. There is a trail of gas that can be mined as well.

The trick is, it moves at 1000 m/s (unless you web it), and particles fall off (so you take damage from the comet itself while mining).

It has to be scanned down to be found.

Oh, I like this idea!

I remember posting this idea back in late 2003, so don't get your hopes up!

#1 on everyone's list I'm sure is how incredibly boring mining is. I wouldn't mind seeing something more active like having waves of pirates or droids coming at you while you are mining. Fighting them off while you try to get as much mining done. This might even make players I dunno, group up? With the skiff for protection and a healer ship, it could work.

Make the laser and gas harvesters fit to any high slots. Is a mining missile boat that unbalanced? It would open up a lot of new fits, the nighthawk would be a good gas fleet leader with it's lows/cargo and highs.

Gas compression or 'Liquefied' gas is a great idea!
Because of its low density (10m3), it is not easy to store large amounts of gas or to transport it by ship.Liquefied gas (LG) is any gas that has been converted to liquid form for ease of storage or transport. It would take up about 1/600th the volume of gas in the gaseous state. Gas is turned into liquid at a liquefaction plant (POS), and is returned to gas form at regasification plant at the terminal. Shipborne regasification equipment could also be used.

"Oh come on. I don't want the Gas sucking Phoon/Ferox back. That was bad. " What is bad about a ship that can harvest and boost at the same time? Really think about it why limit this ships that can mount mining mods not talkinng the strippers and Ice harvesters, just the smaller mods any frig can use. And you can still put gas harvesters on a ferox FYI.

Bring the Rorqual to HS.
It would take the smallest amount of changes to the Rorqual and it would be a highly viable ship again.

All it would take is letting it com into high sec and travel in and out like a Jump Freighter.

It would yield the following results:

1. Would reinstate the Rorqual to its rightful place as the Crown Jewel of the miners progression path.
2. It would actually allow the Capital tractor beam to be useful
3. It would allow corporations to use the Jump Clone Facility and get members jump clones rather than have them have to leave the corporation and join another to get clones and then come back.... because of the FUBAR standings requirements. This would fix what is now a work around to an onerous and broken mechanic.
4. Allows for mobile compression. Again, the idea of having to drop a POS and run it for an hour to compress ore and then turn it off again... is just another ANNOYING non game enhancing workaround. Make the Rorqual use fuel blocks for all I care... but it can move and compress with the mining fleet.
5. This would boost a flagging capital ship industry which is on the ropes since jump fatigue
6. Would drive trit and low end mineral prices down, which could possibly push the sagging high end mineral market back up and helps make null sec capitals less expensive. (.10 change in trit prices basically changes the price of a dread by 20 mil or so)
7. Allows for some protection of mining fleet in the belts from gankers. Does not prevent it of course, and with all the other top slots running, allows only a few spaces for remote rep units. But it gives some protection.
8. Allows for the transportation of an entire mining fleet...miners can be more nomadic. Can function as a mobile base of sorts.
9. Encourages miners to join groups that can field this force multiplier -- encouraging more social interaction.
10. Of course corps that actually field one would be much more juicy war targets, but meh, there are work arounds for that.
11. Will not interfere with the role of ship carrier that the Balloon Head will take.
12. It will be the first ship in the miners inventory without a glass jaw.

This combined with Fuzzy Steve's ideas of prospecting and/or other peoples suggestions of more random grav sites, this would add some much needed content to the mining profession.

Finally, yes isk per hour would drop for those without access to the Rorq,....but meh, adapt or die.

3. Ganks...... Ganks are what they are. Code and their Ilk will just coming smash our ships and pods and we'll just keep fitting them we no tanks. It's not worth the time or effort from an Isk/hour standpoint. Even if we survive a gank because of a perfect fit and perfect reaction time they'll just come back with bigger guns or more guns. Escalation causes everyone to lose. Besides we're the ones that mine the materals to build more Hulks and more Gank ships. They are really just driving up demand.

Rocks orbit the Sun, they don't appear in the same spot everyday on cue.

CCP has been kicking mining in the balls for years.

This is not a "people will react to the market and stop mining those ores" problem. You must mine those ores in order to cycle anomalies in nullsec. Arkonor- supposedly one of the most rare ores in the game - is in the bottom 3 ISK/HR to mine. This is purely a supply issue on CCP's end.

CCP has been kicking mining in the balls for years.

1. Making Grav Sites Scannable
2. Immunizing Interdictors from Warp Bubbles to protect mining ops
3. Nerfing the size of cargo bays so you could carry a gdam full set of crystals (partially fixed).
4. Making it harder to get Ores to market from Null Sec (Jump Drive Nerfs)
5. Spending 3B so you can boost a fleet / other than that the Rorqual is outright useless.
6. Banning Sweep Input automation for end game miners using ISBoxer

When it comes to mining CCP's position is NO FXXXX GIVEN. People who like to mine as a profession you know the people who do it because they actually enjoy it, basically CCP is telling you to find something better to do with your time so mineral prices will go back up. Leaving things unchanged is the proper thing to do since Jump drive changes killed Ice Mining values and the downard pressure on capital ship production should improve mineral production. So expect no changes, because they have made changes already.

Of course how many people decide to go do something better with their time that doesn't involve Eve, we shall see when the subscription killmails start rolling in when people no longer want to run those mining accounts.

Except that isn't true. Because there are tens of thousands of static belts (about 5* as much ore exists in Null static belts as in High) in Null that don't get Cherry Picked to make up the balance of minerals. Despite ores in those belts being more profitable to mine than the Anoms now.
It used to be that the belts were vastly more dangerous since the anoms were sigs, that is no longer true, danger is the same in both.
So cherry pick the belts and that imbalance will slowly correct. It will be slow because of how much overmining has been done on the ores in Anoms. But the means to correct the balance already exist in Null in the players hands, and always have.

Did anyone watch the Alliance tournament today?

One of the developers said he had spent time on a project designing ways to make mining more interesting. I couldn't tell if the project was active or defuct but he also did work on the data/relic mini-game.

1. Get rid of the whole mining mechanic and make it passive like PI.

2. If I can't have #1, then remove all fixed belts and abolish the zonal restrictions on ores. Make all belts anomalies, and make all types of ores crop up in random spawns anywhere in Eve space. (Proportionally, of course; Veld would spawn more often and in bigger rocks than high-ends.)

If I can't have #1 or #2....

3. Give me a Mobile Ore Compression module like the Mobile Tractor Unit or Mobile Depot so I can compress ore right in the belt. (If I can only have one thing, this would be my choice.)

4. Give me one type of compressed ore, not three. You can fiddle with the number of units required for compression to preserve the higher mineral concentrations in the better ores.