Sorry for simply cross posting but it is very relevant to the discussion.

Post generated in GD: The mining 'buff' falacy.

Thoughts?

I think you are looking for mittens, though he is part of a not so silent minority.

Not running for CSM, but here is my 2 cents on the issue of mining bots...

I think CCP should develop a method for identifying bots such as follows...

In high sec, a pilot can project an electronic verification tag onto a miner (done through either a new module or whatever). This tag gives the ship owner an audio and message warning and has a 15 minute countdown. The ship owner can at any time make a few simple clicks to disable the tag. If this is not done by the end of the countdown, the tagged ship is classified by CONCORD as being "abandoned" and can be aggressied without facing a CONCORD response. Sort of like a reverse global criminal flag.

Thoughts?

Bots don't whine in local when you gank them.

2. CCP clearly is not serious about making mining with bots go away. You could easily modify the UI to make screen scraping harder and change client internals to make more sophisticated bots more difficult. In addition patches could change those internal elements regularly to break any bots that did manage to overcome the more complicated requirements. (before anyone says "cannot" I'm a software engineer by trade, I know what I'm talking about).

If CCP wanted to be really clever, they would do what Netflix did - release anonymized databases of log information (of known human players, known bot players, and a set of unclassified players) and have a content for interested parties to come up with the best adaptive bot detector. That would reverse the equation, because now the defenders will be more numerous, have more time, and be on-average smarter than the bot writers. I am sure such a contest would attract attention from outside the EVE community.

Interesting concept, but what are the downsides of this idea (if any)?

Updated as of 12 Feb YC 114

I feel that perhaps I should have required all candidates to post a reply with their own personal answers to the following questions.

Current Questions to all Candidates:

1. What do you candidates propose that CCP do in terms of gameplay to curb or discourage the use of mining bots without making it too much of a hassle or inconvenience for the legitimate miners out there?
2. How do you feel about the whole buff/nerf debate regarding the stats of certain exhumers such as the Hulk and Mackinaw? Do you think either/neither should happen?
3. Should the Orca have its corporate hangar/ore hold become scanneble and should any loot drop from such storage areas of the ship upon destruction of said ship or do you wish to leave it alone as it is?
4. Do you or do you not believe that iterating on the mining profession is overdue? If so, do you or do you not feel that it deserves its own dedicated expansion?
5. How hard will you press the issue of the mining profession when you are elected as a member of the Council of Stellar Management?

What do CSM candidates have to say about ore/mineral compression, considering how broken things are right now?

My original post got eaten by the forums and was much longer and explained where my question was coming from, perhaps I should've retyped it because you seem to have not really understood what I was trying to get at.

What about the fact ice compression takes so long it's actually safer and faster to not compress it in the first place and just make multiple trips with a rorqual?

How about modules/loot being the highest compression source of minerals in the game? Scrap metal is the most-compressed form of tritanium, and when it comes to importing minerals into null-sec from hi-sec, you usually buy pre-manufactured guns. This arguably makes non-ice ore compression worthless for anything other than small-trip movement, and even then you end up moving less while using more fuel.

These issues need to be addressed as well as the drone region nerf beofre null-sec mining becomes truly viable. Why would I risk my rorqual to lead a mining op when for less work, risk, and cost, I can import the mineral cost for a supercap in one trip from hi-sec?

Having more mining lasers and allowing compression to be used by other ships would not really address these issues. Personally they aren't ideas I would agree with, why would I risk my expensive rorqual when I could just fit a cheap T3 to do the same thing and not have the system-wide broadcast of HEY THERE'S A CYNO HERE! I don't mind risking my expensive special snowflake, but only if I have a reason to do it.

As for in-belt refining, why? Why would you have such a module instead of something like an in-system tower that has a refinery mod? Would the in-belt mod offer better or worse refining? Why would it be a good idea for one or the other?

A mining processing towers is an idea that also warrants discussion.

it was clear building it into modules and then reprocessing them was the only way to minimize the trips. That is so wrong on every level. From the intended purpose of the compression feature to the RP science explanation of what is going on. How would a module have more of the mineral that pure compressed block of it?

Refining mods for towers already exist, they are pointless to use as they are so inefficient as to usually warrant just flying the ore to any station with a reprocessing plant.

I'm gonna seriouspost here as I do that sometimes.


The basic problem is that mining in its most fun form is basically hanging out and chatting with people while pushing a button or two every twenty to thirty minutes, which is how I remember it from the days when I shamefully mined in S-U. Mining is virtually unaffected by actual player involvement in the activity, which is why botting is so effective.

Make it so if people want to just mine and chill, they can get as much as they do now, but add an additional, optional puzzle game to the process. It's not like there're any shortage of those. Make it so performing well in it results in a significantly increased yield of minerals. It's not like the end user cares whether his or her ship is made from botted or player mined minerals, and counterbalancing the removal of bots by adding an activity that would make mining mildly fun like a nice crossword puzzle is sensible enough that CCP would probably never do it.

The data covers the 393 exhumer kills during the months of December and January.

Out of these kills, a whopping 328 of the remaining pods remained in the belt for greater than 10 minutes after their ship was destroyed.

That's 83.6 percent of ice miners did not warp their pods off after having their ships destroyed.

Out of these 328 pods, an alarming 113 of the pods continued to warp back and forth to the station after having their ship destroyed.

That's 34.4 percent of remaining pods continue to warp between station and belt in a pod after having their exhumer purified.

Frankly, I find it shameful that this number of people are able to make free isk (no work invested) and CCP continues to allow it. Till CCP does something about these slothful players, we will continue the purification.

I am not talking about the current POS arrays. I want something I can anchor in the belt without a tower and in any sec system.

Issler Dainze
The Miner's Friend
CSM 7 Candidate

ugh, no. Please don't try getting this.

IF there was an inefficient POS module (e.g. 1 compression run/hour) then *maybe*. Otherwise you're stomping all over the Rorq ... (sure it boosts and can cynojump around ... but the compression is by far the nicest thing it has).

I believe that the most important thing to fix about mining, or even just industry in general, is getting it out to nullsec. As it stands, there isn't enough incentive for nullsec alliances to really want industrialists around, beyond having a guy that can actually run the supercap blueprint in a POS.

When mining and industry become essential enough for all of those PvP-centric nullers to actually want an industrial core to protect out in nullsec, it will be fixed.

I'm really interested in how CCP/CSM will reinvigorate the mining (as well as t2 industry clickfest and other mechanics, but mining most especially) industry in-game.

I'd like to point out this post from a highsec mining ganker.