would give newer players a chance against frigates.

idk why 1 venture prompts a 12 cruiser fleet with webs and jamming and all that tho.

These fleet's are brilliant we need more advanced AI like this around the place for us to interact with, a friend of mine who hates to mine has been farming them for the ore, it's a neat combat way for him to mine without having to fly a barge and he's loving it, the AI is fairly good and if your not careful they will rip you easily.

In terms of miners these fleets offer some protection as their escort fleet will also rep players if their in danger which is really cool, personally I think we need more cool advanced player like AI doing more things for us to interact with, would love to see some AI Haulers with the same type of mechanic, scram them and their support fleet warps in giving you a cool PvE Encounter with the chance of some nice loot at the end.

CCP also said there are not to many of them around when I'v went looking for them its taken some times hours to find so its not like they are all over the place dropping on hundreds of miners, that's just not happening.

If I could offer suggestions to CCP I think the escort fleet that the NPC's have should warp in if ANY Player takes damage on the same belt, so if code for example try and blap some one with the NPC's on the same belt then their escort fleet should warp in and fight to protect the miners, small change but would I think make most miners happy to have them along side.

Don't think the approach will be a sucess, effort/risk/reward is not attractive.

My opinion stands, every cent spend on smarter NPCs is wasted money.

With the numbers of real miners dwindling ccp had to do something to keep minerals getting to the market. Without NPC miners we wouldn't have ships to explode other ships. It makes complete sense.

With the numbers of real miners dwindling ccp had to do something to keep minerals getting to the market. Without NPC miners we wouldn't have ships to explode other ships. It makes complete sense.

Gee I wonder why number of real miners is dwindling.....boredom? Low value ores? Or...people who suicide gank them just because.

Errr, the NPC miners are not selling their ore. Their ore is not used, like the tax in NPC corps.

I appreciate everyone's perspective here.

What this seems to boil down to, however, is that the number of players willing to mine is dwindling, so CCP put in rats that can be shot to snatch the ore they mined. I see a couple of problems with this approach:

1) Years ago, CCP changed the loot tables so that people couldn't just produce a ton of materials from dropped loot.

2) Adding a combat alternative to mining--that preys on the very resource the miners need--doesn't improve mining as a profession.

This change doesn't seem to give players a desperately needed reason to go out and actually mine rocks. This merely ensures that those who would've mined casually will no longer be inclined to do it at all.

You race ventures. They wer meant to mine. Those NPC haulers full of Dairy Products and Quafe just moved things around 'because' then right? This is EVE. Nothing is ever what it seems. And if it does seem, Its a trap.

I don't actually race Ventures. My racing days are long over. A friend chose the name Venture Racing for our team long before the Venture even existed in EVE.

The AI has taken over and soon they will feed on us as we have fed on them all these years.

Are you a drifter?

They offer no real competition for resources. If I have the need to mine whole belts, and want one for myself, then I'll simply agro one of the NPC miners and warp off.

No need to engage the defence fleet. Once the engagement is over both the miners and the defence fleet will warp off, and I can happily going about mining those rocks in peace.

Also, I'd actually enjoy this PvE content a lot more if the challenge level was a lot more proportionate. As it stand's it's easier a lot less risky to agro without any real battle - and achieves the desired purpose.