Morux
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Posted - 2008.05.03 08:57:00 -
[1]
After spending hundreds of hours mining and exploring the game mechanics of roid belts, the two types of mining in the game have two separate problems, stemming from one source:
Mineral belts suffer from depleted volumes because of macrominers. I typically strip up to 1 mil m3 worth of ore in a night but usually this can only be done in systems with no stations (thus no macros). About 10-15% of hisec belts will grow to a size that is worth an uber-miner's time. The rest of them have a terrible yield and your return on effort goes down the drain. By the end of the day, a system with several macros will result in the lesser roids being completely gone, while the better roids are left in a depleted state that still makes it a waste of time.
The problem with the ice belts is the isk return in the marketplace - because the "roids" have such a neverending volume, macros can sit at a field all day and haul tons of ice, saturating the market with competing sell orders. It isn't that mining ice is bad, it's just that as an "ice miner", your competing with virtual players that can always undercut you in the marketplace because there is even less effort required than in regular belts (much more efficient for macros in ice fields).
I know this has been drudged over many times in the past, but this is really the source of the problem for miners. If there was an actual requirement of effort to acquire these resources, REAL players who want to mine for their "EvE profession" wouldn't be put in bad positions by these danged bots. And if ya think it's just an isolated number of systems that have this happening, spend some time exploring the macro usage in the game - some systems are so infected with these false players that it is just unbelievable. Most are pretty easy to spot and I'd wager a guess that about 50-70% of the barges in the game are NOT real players.
Looking at other threads, it seems that FW (factional warfare) may likely let the macroers escape wardecs again, so once more it appears that there won't be a good method of dealing with the issue (just a guess here... hopefully I'm wrong tho).
CCP - please give us an option of wardeccing these crappy bots !!!
Mkay... rant over. |