Stephen Jones
Caldari
School of Applied Knowledge
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Posted - 2008.11.29 09:39:00 -
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Proposal to make missions a scarce resource
Make the number of missions available per single agent per period of time fixed and limited. If mission runners fulfill all the missions available at a single agent, they have the option of moving to another agent that has not been depleted yet, or waiting until the missions replenish.
Additional possibility is to create an auction-like system, where mission runners can bid on a mission from a list of missions available from that agent. The player that offers the lowest cost can win the bidding and be allowed to start the mission. Because many missions have the majority of profit within the bounties and loot, players should be allowed to bid a negative cost for the mission (in effect paying for the privilege of being sent on the mission).
Personal experiences with lowsec with my corp
My main's corporation is a mainly highsec industrialist carebear corp. We used to regularly mine in lowsec as a group and sometimes also ran missions in lowsec, either individually or as a group. We don't, any more. Why? Because it's no longer worth our time. Angry feelings aside, assuming we are willing to risk the gankers in lowsec, our problem is money.
I ran the numbers through the EVE ore calculator today, just to remind myself. The value of a single can of any non-nullsec ore is less than value of a can of veldspar, except for hedbergite, which nets you 10% more than a can of veldspar. This is not enough of a profit difference to risk lowsec. When a can of jaspet was 2, 3, or even 4 times the value of a can of veldspar, we didn't need any other incentive to risk lowsec, singly or as a group. We mined and missioned and ratted in lowsec, and made plans for POS, formed links with other corps doing the same, and fought over the turf occasionally.
I also checked with my corporation's mission runners. They usually run T2 or faction-fitted Ravens or Domis, usually worth 150 million upwards to more than a billion per ship in some cases. They run missions in near lowsec (0.5 space) and report income of about 10-15 million ISK per hour of dedicated mission running with good skills. If they ran the same missions in lowsec, they might yield maybe double that. Given cost of their ships, and how ill-suited they are to PvP, losing a single ship more often than once every two days would be ruinous for them (running 6 hour shifts daily, what few of us can afford to do). If lowsec income wanted to compete with highsec, they would have to make something like 4 times what highsec offers to offset the risk and potential losses.
Fix the incentives for mining (aka costs of minerals) and missioning (rewards, loot, bounties) and miners and missioners will go back to lowsec to earn more money. It's that simple.
P.S. You can fix things by making highsec pay less, or lowsec pay more. I personally don't care which, but others might complain either way.
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