People keep asking for various boosts to the mining industry in EvE but everything that makes mining more profitable as an activity has the knock on effect of raising the costs of every ship and module in the game that relies on minerals in order to exist.

Thus the value of the extra ISK income that industrialists see from any such buff is instantly countered by inflation.

Furthermore, unless macro mining is decisively dealt with this only leads to even further ruin. CCP will not fully eradicate macro mining since its prevalence provides them with a considerable income, which through poor decision making and now being accountable to investors is simply not going to happen.

There is literally nothing you can do to make mining more valuable an activity.

everything that makes mining more profitable as an activity has the knock on effect of raising the costs of every ship and module in the game

You are thinking that miners or CCP have any sort of control over mineral prices. They do not. The market controls this. CCP cannot make mining "profitable", they can only provide means to mine more efficiently by either creating new ships/skills/modules that increase m3 or decrease cycle time, or by changing the mineral content of the ores.

I didn't bother reading replies, so in case someone else post same thing I do now.. oops

OP, you're wrong. You assume that mining would get a flat out boost? There's plenty of other things you can do to make mining profitable/viable. I'll give a few examples:
* Remove drone alloys completely, replace them with bounties and loot.
* Nerf refining, perhaps heavily, so there's little (or none at all) high end minerals from refining.
* Combined with point two: to reduce the easy/cheap hauling of modules with JF's, that later gets refied and produced in null, shouldn't it be the other way around? Minerals mined in null, built in null, and sold in high.. the natural change would be to just remove all highend minerals completely from refined mods, and step two would be:
* Transform the cargo bay on exhumers and barges to an 'ore bay', and make ores massive in size. That way JF's and other ships can't just move shitloads of minerals around at nearly no cost. It has to be mined on the spot.
* Make belt mining better than upgraded sov mining sites and similar, the more appealing it is to belt mine, the more miners will spread out, the more people will find their 'own turf', this should appeal to both casual as well as solo-hardcore miners. Only gimping group mining a tad.

Neither of this above makes mining more powerful than it is today. The exhumers are already very very strong mining vessels. The above suggestions would rather transform the mineral value from NPC drops to the miners, instead. Back the way it used to be, pre-dronelands, pre-exhumers, pre-lv4's, pre-jumpbridges and jf's, etc.

Only concerns I have with removal of drone goo and other high end minerals in certain areas, is it completely negates availability in anywhere other than null sec areas or WHs.

Simply replacing drone poo with bounty rewards will not help inflation issues as you are simply increasing the amount of isk being generated if you similarly don't apply any adjustment to sinks to compensate for it.

Are you suggesting that allowing null sec mining to be profitable would be a bad thing?



Many people (including myself) would prefer to see drone poo being replaced with drone viscera: that is, items similar to salvage that can be used to produce drone-related implants & modules, or better drones through invention.

E.g. if refining yields from loot/drone goo where reduced and mining yields increased to "balance" it then effectively you havent changed the total amount of mineral assests in the game, thus not effetively changed anything in a global way within the economy.

GǪ

Mining mineral value = 100, Loot mineral value = 10,000 Total mineral value = 10,100

The figures are closer to 40 + 60 = 100. Removing drone poo (but leaving T1 meta-X loot in NPC drops) will do more to boost the profitability of mining than any other possible change. When profitability goes up, more people will do it, which will bring the profitability right back down.

Have a look at the mineral market today. Ripard Teg reckons that the drastic rise in Trit/Pyrite is due to strife in the Drone Regions limiting the supply of drone poo.

I agree with the basic theme of your thinking.

In addition to "rebalancing" mineral sources by simply removing drone poo, CCP could focus on further tightening which ores refine to produce which minerals. Thus GÇö for example GÇö pyerite might be more abundantly available in Gallente & Minmatar space, while Mexallon is more abundantly available in Amarr & Caldari space (i.e.: adjust Pyroxeres/Plagioclase, limit them to half the regions each). Regional specialisation is a requirement for trade: something has to be less abundant (or more rare) in one region in order for there to be a need to take that thing to the region.

Other boosts to mining could arise from simple things like restricting the availability of high-efficiency refineries in hisec to mining corporations and improving the efficiency of POS refineries (so that they refine "instantly" and take advantage of character skills and implants). Since grinding standings with mining corporations is painful, very few people will do it, so having access to high efficiency refineries will be a driver for trade.

I have both feet firmly on the ground of, "mining should be the majority contributor of minerals to the economy." I don't think refining of modules needs any nerds, though I do feel that mineral compression through module construction should be nerfed, and the supply of modules from NPCs needs to be nerfed.

The improved value of high-end minerals should be enough to fund the import of far higher volumes of low-ends (due to removal of mineral compression). Nullsec can profit highly from being the near-exclusive provider of high-end minerals.

So the OP is falling into the trap that prompted me to run for CSM 7.

Mining needs to be more fun!!

The buff mining needs is to make it fun. How ever that's the kind of paradox that would make your mind implode.

Well no, but if CCP removes the vast majority of mineral sources, which they seem like they are going for (Drone Compounds) Mineral prices are going to shoot up, and mining will suddenly be viable again, and then there will be more poor bastards waiting to be ganked than there is now :3

Which will drive the price of everything up. I.E. inflation. So you go from making 10 mil an hour to 12 mil an hour. And then you pay an extra 20% for everything in the game. Its like your 12 mil an hour is only worth 10 mil on the market prior to the 'mining buff'.

Can't entirely agree they give CCP any money at all as I understand it they pay with isk ie. plex there account, it's totally unrelated that someone has payed CCP for that plex it would have happened regardless.

I'm sorry but however you want to spin it I simply cannot condone the nerfing of high sec capabilities in order for null sec to have better competition and a controlling influence of resources as healthy for the game.

I don't understand how increasing the m3 harvested per hour, which would increase the volume of minerals available per gaming session to a miner and the supply of minerals in the game overall, I don't see how this can increase prices.

Thus the value of the extra ISK income that industrialists see from any such buff is instantly countered by inflation.

I'm sorry but however you want to spin it I simply cannot condone the nerfing of high sec capabilities in order for null sec to have better competition and a controlling influence of resources as healthy for the game.

Eh no. Removing drone poo as a mineral source will not have that effect. It will have the effect of nerfing a specific nullsec sector's capabilities in order to give all of nullsec better competition GÇö highsec does not even enter the equation. More importantly, it means nerfing GÇ£gun-miningGÇ¥ in favour of actual mining GÇö i.e. giving back purpose to an entire profession. It actually means that it gives all those highsec miners something to strive for again.

Mining needs to be more fun!!

Issler Dainze
The Miner's Friend
Csm 7 Candidate