Cade Windstalker
Donohue Enterprises
Ad-Astra
424
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Posted - 2015.05.01 18:01:18 -
[1] - Quote
They actually recently commented on comet mining. It did almost happen as part of the Mining and Anomaly changes, it just wasn't a terribly compelling feature compared to the various other options available. As far as I know there's no particular issue with making a rock move.
Personally I don't think this is particularly more compelling than any of the other ideas I've seen floated.
For one you're talking about a fairly fast moving NPC object, which you have to scan down and warp to. This means that you need to catch up to it once you've located it, and hope that you don't land on top of the damage cloud because of the angle of your warp in. There isn't any way to tune this either because ships warp at various speeds and from various directions relative to an anomaly. Unless you want an acceleration gate to magically follow this thing around at which point you're stretching suspension of disbelief so far past the breaking point they'll hear the 'snap' out in Thera. So, at the very least, that's the damage tail out as probably unfeasible.
On top of this you're talking about a fairly fast moving object, but Mining Barges and Exumers aren't fast moving. They also completely lack the powergrid to fit a Propulsion Module sized for their ship because if you buff their Powergrid it becomes way too easy to fit them, which means they're completely incapable of catching this cloud. This means mining these things is going to be left to retrofitted ships of other classes or Mining and Exploration Frigates, which runs smack into the damage cloud as a major problem, because Frigates don't have a great HP pool and the damage cloud from Mercoxit can actually kill them pretty easily.
Overall this feels like a lot of the other "spice up mining" ideas, that are mostly designed by combat pilots for combat pilots, but still don't really have enough interesting stuff to make combat pilots actually do them, but more than enough 'active' mechanics to annoy the crap out of miners who want something relaxing to do while they either fiddle with their production spreadsheets or watch TV. |